So here's uh here's an example of the reporting radio news at the top of the hour.
You might have just heard this.
After 18 days, Egyptian people have been given what they wanted.
What did they want?
Did somebody take a poll?
What did they want?
Well, they wanted Mubarigone.
Oh, they wanted Mubarik.
Really, that's all they wanted.
How does anybody know what they want?
The point is, the whole point of that ABC report is look what Obama did.
Look what Obama did.
He got the Egyptian people what they wanted in 18 days, and he's gonna have a press availability at three o'clock today to take credit for it.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, email address L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
All right.
We give you a heads up here.
The story of defunding Obamacare.
It's complicated.
And as it stands, it won't make you happy.
I have spent this week collecting information on what's going on.
This is one of the most challenging synthesizing efforts I have had.
I mean literally.
I have reams of stuff on this.
It's it's akin to when I learned about baseline budgeting.
I learned about baseline budgeting in a four-hour dinner.
And I was faced with the challenge of explaining to you, making the complex understandable in 20 minutes.
15 minutes monologue.
We got the same challenge here because so much of this is oriented around house rules.
But I'm going to give a stab at it.
Take a stab at it later in this hour, but I do want to get some phone calls in since it's open line Friday, and I think we've only taken three.
I don't want to add to that.
Before we get to the phones, though, I must follow through on something I mentioned earlier.
One of the Democrats' fieriest voices on Capitol Hill has accused the Republicans of turning Congress into a clogged toilet.
This would be the estimable Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas, said today that House Republicans were blocking the proper functioning of the House by debating a bill instructing committees to give closer scrutiny to regulations.
Here is what Sheila Jackson Lee said today.
What we will be doing is ignoring the people's business of creating jobs and frankly putting ourselves in the role of a clogged toilet.
Meaning that we're doing nothing.
We're stuffed up.
Yeah, when's the last job you're created, Miss Jackson Lee?
What do you do?
Who are you trying to kid?
You Democrats in the House is sitting here trying to create jobs.
Where you been the last two years.
Anyway, it's funny.
I wanted to share it with you.
Here we go back to the phones.
Bill in Tampa.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Very much appreciate that.
Appreciate that.
And hello.
Oh my goodness.
Rush, how are you?
Very well, sir.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Great to have you here.
How's the golf today?
Hey, it's uh you know, a little dreary, but whatever.
I sit here on uh by my 5,000 square foot home with my nicotine stained hands from the Cohiba I'm smoking.
Oh, oh, oh.
I just I just saw a box of uh of brand new Kohiba Siglo Sixes, the uh these reservas from 2005, I think it is.
Oh man, did they look good?
Oh my goodness, they are, yeah.
And in perfecto and perfecto.
Rush, I I gotta tell you, I'm calling because I I've been listening to you pre-Snapple days.
I love you.
You are doing such a service to our country.
Thank you, sir.
And I'm calling because the time has come.
I think the time may be the Ides of March, March 15th.
That we as a people say no to the insanity that is going on by the regime.
I personally believe that we as a people have an obligation to you know our children to recognize the absolutely reckless behavior of the people in Congress as well as the regime who are refusing to hear us when we say cut it back.
And by that I mean a 20% rollback across the country in federal spending.
What do you think?
Well, obviously this has to happen at some point.
The starting point is key, and there's reason for hopefulness out there, Bill.
The original plan, the pledge during last campaign was a hundred billion dollars cut in the federal budget to get started.
Then the Republicans assumed office and the 100 billion became 32 billion or 36 billion.
32.
This didn't sit well with voters, didn't sit well with freshman members of Congress.
They raised hell about it.
So what that was our pledge was for a hundred billion.
The answer was, well, we're never gonna get a hundred billion cut.
We don't care.
We promised our voters were gonna try.
It's like we probably can't repeal Obamacare the first try, but we promised them we're gonna do it.
And it's the same theory.
We're gonna propose a hundred billion dollars in cuts.
We promise our voters are gonna do it.
If Obama vetoes it, fine.
We keep proposing it, he keeps vetoing it.
Leadership said 32.
This led to Contreton.
Uh and I cited a piece, Quinn Hillier at the American Spectator writing a piece.
Look, folks, you gotta understand the hundred hundred billion they meant for the first full fiscal year, which doesn't start, the next fiscal year doesn't start till October.
The thirty-two billion this year is just for a few months here.
They can't do a hundred billion this year.
And he was he was making a valid point.
But it doesn't matter.
The leadership capitulated to the demands of the freshmen.
I told, I remember telling people, um, you don't know who these people are.
This is not your average freshman class.
This this is these Tea Party people are not to be trifled with.
They're they're they're not this this class is not gonna go up there uh and and have the leadership say, well, yeah, that's what you thought you were gonna do, but the way things are done here is that they this is evidence of it.
So a hundred billion dollars, it doesn't seem like much, but it is a start.
The objective here is to go back to 2008 levels.
Just this defund back to 2008.
It's ridiculous to say we can't.
There's so much look at look at the duplication, the redundancy, look at all the waste that's been found just in the health and human services budget that we pointed out this week.
So obviously it can be done.
Uh and and the Tea Party members, the freshman class, they're very serious about it.
And they will make it happen.
So nobody disagrees with you on that bill.
Nobody at all.
This is um uh these these freshmen and the Republicans, they're they're despite all this stuff going on in Egypt.
I remember saying it's it's kind of a shame all this stuff is going on because there is some really good work being done by these guys.
It's not getting a lot of coverage.
So open line Friday we stick in the phones, James in Arizona City, Arizona.
Nice to have you, sir.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
Thank you.
I hear all the news media talking heads reporting on the high unemployment rate in Egypt, but I don't hear any of them addressing the fact that Egypt doesn't have an economy that will create new jobs.
Well, Obama's gonna fix that.
That's what all this protest is about.
He'll talk about that at three o'clock.
Uh uh, the networks are planning, you wouldn't believe.
I just saw a report the networks are planning State of the Union type coverage of Obama's speech at three o'clock today.
So I guarantee you, in one form or another, Obama will talk about uh how Egypt can create jobs after he means how to do it here.
Yes, yes.
Oh.
Thank you for your service, Rush.
Right.
Well, you're right.
The Egyptian economy is uh uh it's not a job creating economy at all.
And mobs are not patient.
No.
Well, in fact, and get this.
CNN, what did I tell you?
What did I tell you?
CNN is running a video clip of one of the protesters thanking CNN for being part of the revolution, claiming CNN needs to be very proud, and CNN needs to take a lot of credit for being part of the revolution.
Dare I ask, is that the is that the purpose of the media to be part of revolutions?
But that's what one of the revolutionaries said.
James, thank you, Huntington Beach, California.
This is Darren.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
I'm digging us and discover why we're known as the nicest people in town.
You have the assurance that comes with all of our two thousand.
We were on hold.
Is that what that was?
Selling us.
Oh, hello.
Hi.
Oh, Russ, am I actually talking to you?
Yeah, Darren.
I thought where you're gonna sell me insurance there for a second.
No, you know, I'm I'm uh I'm here at my part-time job, I'm a student and all that, and I'm uh do I'm so stoked to finally get to talk to you.
I guess I'm gonna go.
Well, I appreciate that.
Thank you very much, sir.
You bet.
Hey, you know, what I was calling about is this whole deal about the uh, you know, Obama focusing in like a laser on our jobs.
You know, I I've yet to see where there's any focus uh uh anything laser-like at all.
And uh, you haven't seen Obama on Egypt then.
I mean, there has been a laser-like focus.
That's all he'd been doing the past three or four days, and uh look at what he's accomplished.
Well, you know, uh all I know is I got two friends yesterday asking me if I know anybody hiring uh anything at all.
If I've heard of anything, my friends are losing jobs left and right.
I'm about you know, I I'd say probably about fifty, sixty, maybe even seventy percent of my friends are uh out of work since he's become president.
And you know, this guy, Mr. Wellspoken, you know, stammering every chance he uh doesn't have a teleprompter in front of him.
All right, so what are you doing seem to find a job for us?
What do you think when you hear?
Uh look for example, each week when the unemployment numbers come out.
What do you think when you read about what the economy is in a great recovery mode?
Damn it, we just don't seem to be creating jobs as quickly as the economy's recovering.
How does it all hit you?
It actually infuriates me because they come out this week, we're down to 9%.
Unemployment's dropping, but we only added thirty-six thousand jobs across the whole country.
The the math doesn't add up.
The guy's full of crap.
I feel like they're blatantly lying to us and the public.
Really?
Yeah, I think he's lying.
You really think they're lying to you?
I I believe it.
When did that when did you first get uh that that feeling?
Have that thought that they're lying to you.
Oh Lord, I think I got the feeling about the time he uh was inaugurated.
I didn't believe anything he was saying about getting us a job before he was even president.
So, you know, he's talking about socialism and everything.
Well, you know, he's not saying socialism, but everything he says really is socialism.
And uh socialism does not create jobs, not in any country, especially not in the good old US of A. You know, we need to get back to being the USA and uh, you know, leading the world and manufacturing, and let's get some jobs.
And I'm not hearing any of this stuff about uh, hey, all these illegal aliens, they're just taking jobs Americans don't want.
Because Rush, I'll tell you, I go to school right now.
I'm a college student, I'm a long-haired hippie, pierced out, tattoo covered, Republican.
You I'd probably the last guy you'd ever think would be.
You know, have you ever thought about going to the it's an uphill struggle fighting with these kids I go to school with, trying to tell them Obama and the way our country's going, and the Democrats are not what's right for America ever.
You say you're a long-haired maggot infested hippie type looking guy.
Well, yeah.
You ever thought about I'm the last guy you would think would be a Republican.
Have you ever thought about going to CPAC?
Gosh, yes, I do.
Uh I did think about that.
You know, and I've I've done some things where I went to Sacramento and everything else.
I tried to get to the uh the uh Obama speech when he was here in Costa Mesa a while back that uh, you know, they interview everybody out in line, and if you don't say something that they like enough, well, you're not even considered.
But hey, I'm a real American, concerned about our country, and yeah, this guy's got me scared, you know.
I I I don't even know if I'll be able to get a real full-time job.
Well, once I get out of school, I might as well just stay in there and get a master's and a doctor.
They're not gonna keep you down for long, I can tell.
You're n you I think you're probably at your wit's end um, And and soon enough you're gonna realize that waiting around for Obama to take steps isn't gonna happen.
You have to do it yourself, which you will.
By the way, folks, Cookie gave me excerpts from my CPAC speech from last year, speaking of CPAC.
And I'm not gonna have time to get to them today.
I just now remembered.
I mean they're the last things in the audio summit roster, I just now remembered.
But I'm uh I promised here to try to explain this defunding of Obamacare.
You really do need to know what's going on with this, because the bottom line is the plan right now is not to defund Obamacare, it's to defund only the discretionary spending of Obamacare.
It's the way I understand it is akin to well, yeah, we'll cut a hundred billion, but we'll start with thirty-two billion.
And I I I've made a commitment here to try to explain this to you.
So I think what we'll do, CPAC raps, CPAC raps Saturday, right?
So maybe Monday we'll go back and we will relive my CPAC speech moments.
And who knows, maybe I'll get some of them in today.
What are you frowning at?
What do you find the plan right now, as I understand it, is not to fully defund Obamacare, just the discretionary spending part of Obamacare.
That's and Steve King, Republican from Iowa, is trying.
It's it's it's all tied up in rules language, and Steve King is trying to write new language to get past the rule that would allow the whole thing to be subject to defunding.
Then we've learned that that buried in Obamacare, buried inside this 2000-page monstrosity.
Pelosi stuck a provision in there mandating a hundred billion dollars be spent every year to implement the thing.
That supposedly can't be removed.
As I say, I'm I'm still trying to.
This is a massive synthesizing I've got to do here.
And I'll give it a I'll give it a first stab as we get program unfolds even uh even more.
All right, now let's see.
Stephen, or might be pronounced Stefan in Windsor, Connecticut.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hello.
Yeah, hi.
Rush, how are you?
Very good, sir.
Thank you.
Pleasure to pleasure to finally be able to talk to you.
Thank you, sir, very much.
Just had a few things uh on on the lighter note, but I just wanted to say one thing about regarding Obama and uh, you know, trying to reform the jobs in Egypt.
I think that he needs to spend a little bit more time on his people himself, you know, turning around this unemployment.
Uh it's just ridiculous.
But uh on a lighter note, I just wanted to call and ask you how you liked working with Hank Haney on the golf channel.
How do I like working with Haney?
Yeah.
Haney's been very helpful.
Um I think uh I think you're a great face to have on the golf channel.
I'd like to see you there more often.
Well, let me tell you something.
You d this is one of the reasons I get so frustrated with television.
The most recent episode, which was at Baker's Bay in the Bahamas, which well, I mean, it was a killer episode.
It was a great, great episode.
Um that episode, 22 and a half minutes.
That episode required 14 and a half hours to put together over three days.
Now it didn't require it.
I mean, that's what that that's the amount of time it ended up taking.
Could have done it probably in in much less time, but it's just the way television works.
Right, right.
And I'm Mr. One Take spontaneity here.
Uh yeah on on radio and television is for example, you watch, you watch this, I'll pick a show.
There's a uh Kath and I watched a show because a relative uh had a cameo in it last night called up from wherever.
And it was a volleyball scene, a bunch of kids playing volleyball on a beach in Hawaii.
And the scene took maybe a minute and a half.
And and they told me they were on that beach for twelve hours shooting that minute and a half.
That's just what that's just the way TV is.
I could never be an actor.
I couldn't do it.
I I wouldn't, I wouldn't last a week with all the hurry up and wait stuff, the retakes and all that.
But Haney has been fun to work with.
He's uh is he's he's a delight.
Hi, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh and the excellence in broadcasting network telephone number 800-282-2882.
Back to the phones, Fort Pierce, Florida.
This is Ray.
Ray, great to have you.
Hi, Rush.
Uh Megadiddos from uh golfing paradise of the world.
Uh, I was uh very impressed uh with your uh appearance on the Hank Haney program, and I was really impressed.
I came out of my chair on that bunker shot you made last week.
Oh, yeah, that oh man, what a shot.
I uh let me tell you about that.
That that that hole, that was the 18th hole at Baker's Bay.
Uh that whole 600 yards from the T I used, the professional in that shot, Pat Perez, his T price 640 yards, 35 mile an hour wind behind us.
I hit a drive.
My second shot was 260 yards in.
So I must have hit a 300 plus yard drive with the wind behind me.
And I pull out a forwood and I hit that shot, and I aimed a little bit too far right, counting for the wind, and I end up in that in that bunker.
Uh greenside bunker that you saw.
Then Perez is 40 yards ahead of me on this T shot.
He's in a fairway bunker.
He pulls out a six-iron, hits it 240 yards.
His putt is so long, he pulls out a range finder to see how long the putt is.
The putt was 39 yards.
So times three, almost 120 feet.
So he thinks he's got this hole in the bag because I've got this long bunker shot, and they're both telling me before we shoot it, look, Rush, you know, this this is an impossible shot.
Even pros don't like this shot.
Just, you know, just try to get out.
Just just do whatever you can get out of here.
Just get the ball out of the bunker.
So you saw the shot, it ends up 12 feet away, and they were stunned.
They were going bonkers.
Perez, Haney, they just couldn't believe it.
I was happy as I could be.
What they didn't show you was, they may use this footage in another show.
Haney was so ecstatic, he grabbed a camera crew and followed him into the bunker where he explained the technique and what you do to make that shot and how it happened.
I guess they didn't have time to include that in the show itself.
I would have liked to have seen his face.
Yeah, you were they were convinced I'm gonna leave it in the trap a couple times before I get out.
They were convinced I was I was uh the typical amateur who's gonna get stuck in there.
Because that was one of your uh as I'm as I remember this, you had uh a lot of trouble getting out of bunkers, and that was one of the things that he worked with you in the beginnings of the show, and to see you pull that shot off under that situation with the wind and everything.
I mean, I I came out of my chair.
I was so impressed.
Well, thank you.
Thank thanks very much.
You know, it's all confidence, and I had none in the bunkers.
I really knew I didn't know what I was doing.
I uh I had literally no confidence, and I found out why I was having trouble.
It was uh he he uh explained it to a T. It all had to do with swing plane and hitting way too far behind the ball.
And I don't have time here to tell you what the fixes were, but but uh as you as you could see from that shot, it worked.
Well, congratulations and keep up the good work.
Thank you very much.
Uh I appreciate that, Ray, very much.
All right, folks.
Let me take a stab here.
At least get started on what's happening with defunding of Obamacare in the House.
Now you you you need to know this.
Here's and and the first part of this comes from Politico, what the Republican leadership has told Politico and the Tea Parties.
And the key here is the continuing resolution.
Remember, we don't have a budget this year.
We're a continuing resolution, which is how the government's going to be funded.
House Republican leadership has told Politico and the Tea Parties that they're going to use the continuing resolution to defund Obamacare.
But in reality, they're planning on using the continuing resolution to go after only the discretionary spending in Obamacare rather than go for the whole shooting match.
Now, why this has people upset is that the continuing resolution is a must vote.
You have to vote on a budget.
This this is going to require votes.
The continuing resolution Must be voted on.
And therefore it's a must-pass opportunity.
It's a golden opportunity.
If we want to defund Obamacare, here's the continuing resolution.
This is the place to do it.
And there aren't very many of these must-pass opportunities in terms of legislation.
So people are looking at this as a golden opportunity to go after all of the funding, not just the discretionary, but also more importantly the stuff that's in there that's mandatory spending.
And that would that would reach back and shut off over a hundred billion dollars in funding.
It's already there for Obamacare, signed into the law with the bill.
That's the stuff that'll that Pelosi has snuck in.
If you remember when Pelosi said that we'd have to pass the bill to find out what's in it, she put she buried deep inside this thing, uh, provisions that basically say enactment of the law is automatic without anybody ever having to cast another vote to fund the implementation.
It is, it simply happens, it's automatic.
And it's 107 billion dollars over the next ten years.
Now, this is a law that's unconstitutional, but there's a provision in the law.
It basically says the enactment of the law is automatic without anyone ever having to cast another vote on it.
In other words, it binds future Congresses to spend all of this money on the eventual year year-to-year enactment.
And that probably is that wouldn't stand a test either.
No Congress is going to be bound by a previous one.
Anything is subject to change.
This provision says that it isn't.
You may have heard about this when it was all being debated.
So what happens here, the leadership, as best I've been able to ascertain, the House Republican leadership plans to bring the continuing resolution to the floor with what they're with an open rule, and they're going to allow Congressman Denny Rayburg to offer an amendment that would prohibit the use of any money appropriated in the continuing resolution for purposes of implementing Obamacare.
But the Rayburg amendment does not touch the self-executing mandatory spending that I just described here that Pelosi put in Obamacare when the Democrats wrote the legislation.
They wrote it in such a way that enactment of the legislation would simultaneously enact mandatory appropriations that would bind future Congresses without anyone ever getting a chance to separate or have to separate the votes on this.
So while this the amendment, this Rayburg amendment would block the funding for discretionary items related to Obamacare, it would do nothing to block mandatory spending already enacted and underway.
Well, this is not what anybody wants.
We want to defund the whole thing.
So, enter Steve King, Republican Iowa.
He wants to offer an amendment that would prohibit all funding for Obamacare, both discretionary and mandatory.
What King wants to do is what every one of us thought everybody wanted to do, and that is to freeze Obamacare in its tracks by defunding it, just like the Vietnam War was frozen by defunding it.
Thank you.
And thus significantly add to the spending cuts that the leadership is hoping to focus on next week.
But King's amendment would include funding that falls outside the purview of the continuing resolution.
And thus it would be a violation of the newly voted on House rule that prohibits legislating on an appropriations bill.
This is where this gets so convoluted, and it's all oriented in rules.
The leadership is tying itself up in rules here, because they believe that you think that the Democrats ran the House like a bunch of autocrat Nazis, and the Democrats wrote rules that didn't allow the Republicans any participation, and the Republicans think they've got to the Democrats can be involved because they want us to work together only yada yada yada.
And so fealty to rules, which the Republicans can write on their own is standing in the way of a total defunding of the bill.
Now the leadership was asked at a bunch of meetings about alternative strategies to accomplish the defunding.
They didn't have any uh creative alternatives and and nothing tied to must pass legislation like the continuing resolution.
So Steve King wants to offer language that would open up all of the Obamacare spending to continuing resolution votes and thus freeze it.
The language that King wants to offer uh needs to either have leadership agree to write it in the continuing resolution before it's brought to the floor, or if the leadership's not willing to do that, and to this point they haven't been, then the leadership and members of the rules committee would need to write a rule for consideration of the continuing resolution that'll protect King's amendment from point of order china.
You see how convoluted this is.
The bottom line here is that there appear to be forces in the Republican Party that don't want to defund the whole thing.
They only want to defund the discretionary spending, but not the mandatory stuff.
And they're saying, well, we can't really go after mandatory because rules requiring language and continuing resolutions prohibit us from doing that.
Steve King's got an alternative that they're not really interested in.
King says his alternative is not a violation of the rules.
Uh so uh it's it's still fluid.
I mean, the the point is that there are still uh how can I put this?
It's not that the leadership doesn't want to do away with the funding for Obamacare, they're being caught up in the rules.
Uh under the guise of the American people, you know, want the rules to be adhered to, and uh, they don't want charges of coming Republicans treated the Democrats the way the Democrats treated the uh the Republicans.
It's a process problem.
They really are obsessed with the uh with with with problems.
And Steve in Steve King is just trying to make the point here that courts have long held that Congress cannot mind future Congresses.
So right here, it's it's that's why he claims his language is not in violation of the of the rules.
So I, as I say, I will I'm gonna have more on this.
Uh I have about six pages of notes that I've taken, people I've talked to.
Uh and the longer I go with this, the longer the more confused you are going to be about it.
I've tried to synthesize it as best I can.
The the bottom line is that there needs to be, as there was pressure on 100 billion in cuts versus 36.
There has to be pressure.
Would you just defund the whole thing?
What are we doing here?
We're look at all the opportunities.
We got an unconstitutional piece of legislation.
Let's defund it.
We got everything on our side here.
We got momentum, we've got votes, we got the majority, we've got public opinion.
So let's just do it.
Because the mandatory spending, it's like in the budget.
Mandatory spending is far more than discretionary, which you know, social security, Medicare, all these entitlements, that's mandatory.
They dwarf discretionary.
Same thing in the Obamacare bill itself.
A quick timeout, we'll be back and continue right after this.
Who's next?
Jim in Westfield, Indiana.
Great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
24-7 Ditto.
Thank you very much, sir.
Listen, Neil, the whole uh funding of Obamacare, Obamacare is no longer the law of the land, period.
It's been ruled unconstitutional.
And there is no reason to even debate the rules or the little clauses that Pelosi put in there or anything else.
The law is unconstitutional.
If anybody passes a vote to to fund it in any way, continuing or anything.
not quite.
Not quite.
It is still possible that a court will find it constitutional.
The appeals process isn't over.
You cannot, we cannot, we cannot rely on the fact that the final is in.
So that the process of defunding it has to take place anyway.
Just like they're continuing to implement it, fine.
We got to continue to try to defund it.
The fact that it's unconstitutional.
The fact that it's unconstitutional is just another piece of ammunition in our quiver.
I know it's not the law of the land.
It's been vacated, but the other side is still implementing the damn thing.
We can sit here and shop in the rooftops.
Hey, Obama's unconstitutional.
He's flipping us the bird.
Okay.
Here's two birds back.
We're going to defund it.
That's I mean, it's the law.
It's it's it's it's the reality we're dealing with.
I mean, there are people that violate the Geneva Conventions in war all the time.
It doesn't mean the war stops.
It doesn't mean those guys lose the war.
We're dealing with a bunch of extra-constitutional cheaters here.
We caught them cheating, but they're not stopping.
So we got to continue to attack this.
The fact it's unconstitutional has been vacated should give our guys even more confidence and vim and vigor to go defund this monstrosity.
Folks, let's hope Obama's coming up with his post-limbaugh press availability on Egypt.
Let's hope they don't screw up the uh teleprompter.
Well, no, let's hope they do.
Wouldn't it be great if Obama read what they wrote for Mubarak to read, and Obama says I'm stepping down.
Yes, if they really screwed the prompter up, that would be fabulous.