You have a daily desire for me to end up in the toilet, right?
With the left wanting to flush me.
We're watching the Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House.
Warren Buffett just got his Medal of Freedom.
John Sweeney will soon get his Medal of Freedom.
George H.W. Bush is getting his Medal of Freedom now.
Stan Mushill yet to come.
He will get his Medal of Freedom.
Snerdley wants to know what John Sweeney, it's AFL-CIO.
Why in the world is Sweeney and Warren Buffett being given the Medal of Freedom?
Look, is this not does it not answer itself?
Does it not?
When they just cited Buffett, they said that he's got the Medal of Freedom because he is spearheading a movement for all wealthy people to give away half of everything they have to charities.
I haven't heard why Sweeney...
Well, no, Sweeney was...
Sweeney did hear it.
Something about elevating the middle class to true prosperity.
Sweeney has played a large role in that, creating and elevating the middle class.
May Angelou got the Medal of Freedom, a famous poem, Clinton's inauguration, the Vive de Lac, and the guy that created the Natural Resources Defense Council and environmentalist Wacko got the Medal of Freedom for his stewardship of our beautiful planet and freedom and so forth.
So they're all getting a Medal of Freedom.
There's 14 of them up there.
And Obama's, and I have, I've been to one of these ceremonies.
It was my birthday in George Bush's last, sort of in 2009, January 12, 2009.
Tony Blair got one that day and John Metal Block, the Prime Minister from Australia.
John Howard, that's right.
And they didn't speak.
The president gives the award and that's it.
None of them speak.
I don't know if that will be the case.
Sweeney built the Service Employees International Union, probably why he is getting the award.
I mean, I don't know to what extent presidents are involved in choosing, but I would have to say there is some involvement given some of these recipients.
But I'm not going to sit here, Snerdley.
I'm not going to sit here and decry any of this.
Because someday when I get mine, there are going to be people asking, what in the world is Rush Limbaugh doing up there getting a congressional or the American Medal of Freedom?
What in the, how did that happen?
They're going to be the same thing is going to happen.
I will be in that club.
I will be in that fraternity.
And I'm not going to go on record here as besmirching the fraternity.
I think John Lewis is going to get the Medal of Freedom today.
Yeah, he got beat upside the head marching in Selma.
And so Bill Russell of the Celtics got it today.
So it's a cross-section of Americans receiving the Medal of Freedom.
I think this is maybe the highest honor that the United States government bestows upon people, not just its citizens.
I think it was Blair and Howard who got the Medal of Freedom.
It might have been something else.
I don't know if it might well have been that.
Anyway, welcome back, my friend.
Oh, it's the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Okay, so obviously Obama has some say in it.
Great to have you back.
Rush Limbaugh, the fastest three hours in the media, telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address L.Rushball.
If you at EIBNet.com.
Ladies and gentlemen, you remember, was it earlier this week?
No, because this is Tuesday.
It's had to be late last week.
Some controversy over three Patriot Act provisions that were voted down by 26 Republicans.
And I said, folks, this is just a preliminary vote.
It's not binding.
This is one of these votes that requires two-thirds.
It's all going to get done.
Be patient.
Lo and behold, from the politics section of the New York Times, just as we predicted would happen last week.
The House yesterday voted to reauthorize and extend through December the 8th three ways in which Congress expanded the FBI's counterterrorism powers after 9-11.
Last week, an effort to extend these provisions failed to pass after falling just short of the two-thirds majority needed under a special rule.
On Monday, however, the bill was able to pass with only a simple majority, and it did so 275 to 144.
Now, the interesting thing to note here is how much attention the vote against the extension got last week.
It was big news to the point of people calling here, what's going on with the Republicans, Rush?
And how little attention the vote passing today is getting.
So it's all done.
And it's exactly as we predicted.
The audio summary.
And now we're back to Soundbite 3, which I told the broadcast engineer was coming up next in the first half hour of this show.
That's how it works.
And we're back now to the budget and liberals on the budget.
We have a montage of a whole bunch of former elected officials, government appointees, and what have you talking about the need to reduce health care costs.
Listen to this.
We have to deal with rising health care costs.
Our health care system's a disaster.
We spend more than twice as much per person as Canada, as Germany.
We couldn't even wrap our arms around health care.
It's a monster.
Until we get health care costs under control in this country.
Quite simply, we're going to have to get a handle on health care costs.
The big killer in the budget over the long term is trying to get health care costs overall across the board.
If healthcare costs keep going up, it's going to break the country.
That's James Carville there wrapping it up.
Now, I thought that we solved this problem with Obamacare.
That's why I, for you, am playing the sound bait.
I thought that, well, what about all the deficit reduction?
In fact, we had to pass Obamacare or else the deficit was going to spiral out of control.
We had to pass it.
Well, we have.
Obamacare is the unconstitutional law of the land now.
And yet here come these leftists claiming that we got to do something about health care costs.
They're going to wreck the country.
Are they not admitting here that Obamacare does not and did not solve this?
Sounds like it's going to be.
So it's more evidence here that nothing's been done vis-a-vis Obamacare to reduce health care costs.
It's just the exact opposite.
Jean Kennedy Smith just received the Medal of Freedom at the White House ceremony.
She was introduced this way.
Gene Kennedy Smith, the eighth of nine children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, joined the family business, which was, I'm going to paraphrase this because I was a little taken aback at what the Kennedy family business was.
Gene Kennedy Smith, the eighth of nine children of Joe and Rose Kennedy, joined the family business to improve the lives of American people.
I didn't know that was the Kennedy family business.
The Kennedy family business could be described in any number of ways.
We all know.
But I just have never heard it described either.
The Kennedy family, she joined the Kennedy family business of improving the lives of the American people.
Given that criteria, I mean, there can't be any doubt that I will someday be in this club.
You know it.
I mean, it's bound to happen at some point.
I want to tell you a little Stan Musiel story.
Actually, it's a Stan Mulsiel story.
You know, I grew up in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
I've told this on the air before, but it's been a while.
And if you've heard it, please indulge me for those who haven't.
My parents would take my brother and I to St. Louis as often as they could for Cardinals baseball.
And I was young enough, born at the right time to be able to see Stan Museel toward the peak and the end of his career when he got his 3,000th hit.
I mean, I didn't see that.
I think that was in Chicago, but nevertheless, I was able to see him play quite often.
And sometimes my parents would take us to his restaurant.
He had a big restaurant in St. Louis called Stan Museel and Biggie's.
His partner was named Biggie.
And we went in one February, it was not baseball season.
We went in one February.
My dad had business in St. Louis, and it was the dead of winter, but they took us to Mulsiel's restaurant, and he was there making the rounds, saying hello to people at the tables.
And he came up, he's signing autographs.
And I asked him when the broadcasts of spring training games would begin.
He was as nice as he could be.
He looked at me and said, March the 12th.
And we had, he stood there for maybe two or three minutes, had a nice conversation.
And he walked off.
And my brother and I, we just can't believe it.
We just met Stan Museel.
It was a big deal.
Now, my brother and I were young, and we had ordered hamburgers.
So not long after Mulziel left our table, they brought the hamburgers for my brother and I.
And I took one bite, and I didn't like it because it was just too much pepper.
It was really pepper hot.
And I told my mother, this is not, I don't like this.
Now, my mother was many things in addition to being brilliant.
She did not want me thinking any ill of Stan Museel.
I'm young enough.
I'm in Musiel's restaurant.
She didn't want me blaming him for a hamburger I didn't like because she knew that I looked up to Mulziel and I'm a young kid.
I probably think Museel's back in the kitchen fixing it for everybody.
So she said, no, no, no, no, he's very smart.
He knows this is how you'll like it when you get older.
And I've never forgotten that.
That was a brilliant recovery on her part.
She was just, she was just, she was just afraid that the hamburger being too pepper with too much pepper in it could somehow distort my view of Museal and she didn't want that to happen.
Did I eat it?
I think so.
I don't remember if I ate the whole thing.
I probably did eat all the french fries.
I mean, look, this wasn't a big mech.
I mean, this is a giant, this was a white tablecloth restaurant.
This was a, people went to this place in jackets and ties.
It was white tablecloth.
It was, the way you'd categorize it today, be a four-star restaurant.
It was a, it was, it was just a real treat to go to this place.
And, oh, yeah, pepper, cayenne, oil.
Oh, yeah.
My mother was exactly right.
Heck yes.
Not just pepper, but cayenne, all kinds of, I do like pepper.
Now, she was, she was exactly right now.
And she said, you know why you're going to, because you're going to get older and your taste buds are going to get older with you, and you're going to need pepper.
You can taste it better now than you will be able to when you get older.
And this is why I'm going to, probably one of the reasons why he got the Medal of Freedom is because he knew that his hamburgers might not be totally appreciated by young kids, but that they would be appreciated when those kids got older.
I wouldn't doubt that that's a factor in this at all.
Now, I want to dial back to something that we spent some time on last week, and that is defunding Obamacare.
Because there is controversy that has sprung up.
When we last discussed this, there was, or there were two factions among House Republicans over what to do here.
And remember, if you were here last week, it was a very convoluted thing that was happening in terms of trying to explain it to people because it was about the minutia of House rules.
And essentially, the two warring factions in the Republicans were saying, look, the rules do not prevent, do not allow us, because we're talking about a continuing resolution here instead of a budget.
The rules do not allow us to totally defund.
It's something we're going to have to do every year, element by element.
Well, the other side of the argument is, what do you mean, element by element?
We want to defund it now.
We told our voters last campaign that we were going to either repeal this or we're going to defund it.
We're going to stop this dead in its tracks.
We're not going to stop it a little bit every year.
We're going to stop it now.
So the argument was over stopping it now dead total in its tracks or trying to, or being true to House rules and so forth, which was important to the leadership because the Democrats were not.
The Democrats just paid no attention to House rules.
If they wanted to omit Republicans from procedure, they just did it regardless of what the rules said.
And the current Republican leadership does not want that albatross around their neck, even though I think when it comes to health care, the rules be damned.
We're more concerned about the Constitution than we are House rules, right?
Leadership obviously want to be concerned with rules.
So at the forefront of this is Iowa Congressman Steve King, who says that we can defund Obamacare completely within the rules.
And he is attempting to get this done, and it is causing some controversy within the Republican caucus in the House.
Now, King is worried that the House is on the verge of passing the continuing resolution without addressing the automatic appropriations written into Obamacare by Pelosi.
Pelosi wrote into Obamacare that there's a certain amount of spending every year that is devoted ostensibly to its implementation.
In addition to all the other costs of health care, it's $105 billion a year for 10 years written into the bill as spending, ostensibly to implement it.
Pelosi wrote automatic funding provisions into Obamacare, which will over 10, and it was hidden.
Nobody knew about this.
One of these things we didn't know until it was passed.
Now, King is of the belief that he and a majority of Republicans campaigned on the promise to repeal, defund, and deauthorize Obamacare.
And now they've got an unconstitutional bill to boot, which is more ammo for them.
Every Republican in the House and Senate has voted to repeal every provision of Obamacare.
That has already happened.
The next step is to defund it, all of it, 100% of it.
And if they succeed, then Obamacare will be frozen in place until the next president actually signs the repeal bill.
And they can't get Obama to agree to repeal.
He'll veto it, but they can defund it.
And Steve King's leading the Republican effort here to do that.
He believes that if they don't shut off all the funding, and he compares Obamacare to a malignant tumor, if we don't defund all of it, then this Pelosi implementation, $105 billion every year, will be spent, and it'll be harder to eradicate and get back the things that money has been spent on.
And we also know that Obamacare has been ruled unconstitutional by two federal courts, and the Supreme Court will eventually take it, and nobody knows how that's going to turn out.
I'll tell you this.
One thing that's interesting, they already know the people are working to get this repealed and have Judge Vinson's ruling upheld, who are going to be involved in arguing this, have already written off the four liberal justices on the court.
They know there is no persuading them to agree with Judge Vinson.
So we're already down four when we get to the Supreme Court.
Here's what the argument is about rules-wise.
Well, it's not really about this, but what this is really all about is fear of a government shutdown in March.
Let me take you there in the right order, because that's where this argument about the rules is really based on a fear of a government shutdown.
Republicans, remember 1995, they're afraid they'll get creamed.
That's why the Democrats are talking about a shutdown every day.
No matter what is proposed, Schumer and Durbin are running around talking about government shutdown, shutdown, shutdown, because they think they're going to win if there's a government shutdown.
They wouldn't even mind it.
I think they're wrong.
I think a government shutdown over health care would help us.
But that's just me.
But in a nutshell, a rule says that you cannot change funding already designated, which is Pelosi's in the health care bill, under a continuing resolution, which is what we're arguing.
We don't have a budget.
The continuing resolution is a substitute for it because Obama and the Democrats did not present a budget last year because they knew it would not help their reelection efforts.
So I think it's, I think it's kind of ironic to be so prissy about adherence to the rules after the Democrats broke all the rules in passing health care in the first place for crying out loud.
Look at all the rules.
They were going budget, reconciliation, every little trick known to exist to pass this debacle.
And everybody's getting all prissy about the rules.
Now here is Steve King's amendment.
Very short.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, none of the funds made available in this act, Obamacare, or any other previous act, may be used to carry out the provisions of public law, blah, or any amendment made by either such law.
Now, the hitch for Steve King is that the rules say you cannot legislate on a continuing resolution.
And they claim that this is legislation, that his rule is legislation.
But you aren't supposed to legislate with budget reconciliation either.
So how the heck can adjusting health care funding be legislating if the health care law itself wasn't legislating?
So King thinks that the Constitution trumps House rules, that any time you're acting to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution takes precedence over whatever rules have been written in the House.
He also believes, you know, King is fearless.
He knows that at some point the Republicans are going to have to confront Obama or he will get everything he wants.
And he believes that the continuing resolution represents maximum leverage because it's must-pass legislation.
They have to pass this.
This is funding for the government.
If they don't pass this by March, whatever, there's a shutdown.
So it's must-pass.
So put this in a must-pass piece of legislation, he thinks, is great leverage, the best terrain on which to fight.
Now, he also is of the belief that the Republican majority is as strong right now as it'll ever be for the rest of this Congress.
All these freshmen, brand new, still vigorous, still idealistic, still loaded for bear.
This is the time, he believes, to marshal that energy and that sense of purpose and use their political capital.
Now, in the final analysis, he's of the belief that what's really driving this, the opposition to his amendment, what's really driving that is not blind dedication to the rules.
He thinks the leadership is afraid of facing this potential government shutdown, fear of which arises from what happened in 1995 in that shutdown when the Republicans were humiliated.
But this isn't 1995 and the school lunch program over which the, well, that was the issue that theoretically everybody shut the government down over.
This is a whole different thing.
The American people, by poll after poll after poll, want no part of this bill.
The judge has ruled it unconstitutional.
And as usual, the base, the population, the people are way ahead of elected officials on this.
You and I are way ahead.
We don't care about the rules right now.
We care about the Constitution.
There's something else about Pelosi's rule that needs to be attacked.
This business that no Congress can change anything she wrote in Obamacare, that that $100 billion has to be spent year after year after year.
No current Congress can bind a future Congress under the Constitution.
There would be no point in voting every election cycle if one Congress could dictate everything that happens from there on after.
Why have another Congress?
So clearly, one Congress cannot bind another.
The problem here is that we have a lawless administration that's going to continue to implement this law no matter what, which is why everything needs to be done to defund it.
The aggressor sets the terms of any fight, of any battle.
And we're dealing with an aggressor that doesn't care that this law has been vacated, that it has been deemed unconstitutional.
So the barbarians are at the gates, and we're worried about if the lock on the door was installed legally or not.
And if a law was, if the lock was installed legally, then we can't close the door.
Now, Obama's behavior proves Steve King right, doesn't it?
Obama's ignoring a federal court.
He's ignoring the will of the electorate.
Do rules matter to Obama?
The single greatest set of rules we have is the Constitution.
Is Obama paying attention to it?
Are the Democrats?
No.
And the rules in the House, they're made with each House, different set of rules.
These are not written in stone.
These are not from the burning bush compared to the Constitution, which is.
Now, last night, the House Rules Committee, which is, I think, chaired by David Dreyer of California, shut down Steve King's ability to offer his amendment to completely defund Obamacare on the continuing resolution to fund the government through the end of the year.
And the House Republicans are, look, I hate to put it this way, but they're hiding behind parliamentary rules to say that would somehow violate what their new majority is all about to allow his amendment.
They seem to be saying that we're going to run an ethically proper house.
Pelosi didn't, but we are.
And even if our rules hurt us, we're going to remain true to them, which has so many people scratching their heads.
What's the point of the election?
The point of the election was to stop all this spending and to repeal this health care bill or defund it.
That doesn't appear to be, I say doesn't appear to be, the priority of the House leadership.
Obamacare is a mix of what is called discretionary and mandatory spending.
And the people opposing Steve King only want to talk about the discretionary spending.
He wants to talk about all of it.
He wants to shut down all of it.
He wants to defund the entire law.
But the people who are expressing such loyalty to the rules are arguing his amendment is out of order, i.e. against the rules, because it attempts to mess with programs that are not strictly discretionary.
So it's the equivalent of tying one hand behind our back.
Did anybody talk about whether defunding the Vietnam War was done in accordance with the rules of the House or not?
That's eventually what ended that.
We defunded it.
Anybody worried what the House rules were at that time?
So, by the way, there's some people on the rules committee who claim that they have the same objectives that Steve King has, that he's just making it really, really hard for him.
If he would just back off, that they'll again get to this.
But they want to do it within the rules.
This is, I think, I'm pretty sure this is how the Democrats defunded the Vietnam War.
And that was a continuing resolution, which was the last time Congress failed to pass a real budget up until last year when the Democrats in Congress and Obama didn't want to do it because they didn't want anybody to know just how irresponsible their continued spending was going to be.
So that's where we are.
Those are the battle lines.
Those are the two sides.
And so now the defunding of Obamacare is limited to the discretionary side, which, as we all know, in our own budget, discretionary spending pales compared to the mandatory.
Same thing in Obamacare.
And do not fail to take into account the fear of a government shutdown.
The Republicans, they've got that history from 1995.
That was, as far as they're concerned, a debacle.
That was their worst hour, they think.
And if you were alive then paying attention, you remember how it was.
I mean, we knew when we found out later that Clinton had gotten together with a bunch of government unions and promised them, look, we're going to let them shut down, but don't worry, you're going to get your Thanksgiving turkey.
You're going to get your Christmas turkey.
You're going to get your back pay.
But we're going to let them shut it down.
And we're going to make it.
I want you people to go out there and act like you're penniless, that you've lost everything.
Thanksgiving is lost because of the Republicans.
Christmas is lost because of the Republicans.
And there was CNN, I mean, CNN went so far as to go out to Jellystone Park, and they found the guy that ran a sleigh ride concession.
And they even had that guy on talking about how his life had been ruined during the government shutdown because he was paid and it was something by the government.
So people couldn't get sleigh rides in Jellystone Park because the government shutdown.
Now, that guy has since called us back then.
This is 1995.
He called us and talked about this.
He maintained he was not a tool of any of this.
It was legitimate pain that he was suffering because of it.
And he went on TV to say so.
Now, we've had the government shut down several times in the past six months because of snow.
Look at the pain and suffering.
You remember that?
Folks, I don't know about you.
I don't know.
I could barely get out of bed.
It was a close call.
I remember I got close to calling a grief counselor.
Can I go to work today?
The government's not functioning.
The shutdown is everything okay.
The idea that we can't withstand the government shutdown.
We know the Democrats and the media are going to jump on it.
They're going to try to recreate 1995.
This is what has the Republicans frightened.
They think you'll abandon them.
They think the independents will abandon them.
They believe that the vast majority of Americans look at government as they look at God, and you don't shut God down.
They're wrong, but their history is such they paid a huge price for it, and they don't want to go through it again.
So they're going to try to find ways to defund this piecemeal when the opportunity there is to just zap it in its entirety.
Mark in Nashville, Tennessee, I'm glad you held on.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to our program.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, Rush, and dittos to my favorite microphone, Maureen.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I haven't heard that in a long time.
I love the microphone, Maureen.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, I called about Obama's comment earlier, the energy source of the past.
Yeah.
And I'd like for him and the other Democrats and liberals to set an example for us and give up oil, gas, and coal and anything that comes from those.
See how far we go.
That's an excellent point.
Where's the leadership?
Anybody that's listening to us, if you look around, there's not anything that you can see unless you're out in the wilderness and butt-naked that didn't come from oil, gas, or coal in one way or another.
Exactly right.
Exactly right.
You know, they're windmills, they're solar panels, they're electric cars, their batteries.
I remember a few years ago, you had a guy call in, and he was in the tire business, I believe, and he said at that time, I think it was seven or eight quarts of oil go into every tire that's made.
Yep.
And, you know, how many gallons of oil go into an electric car?
How many gallons of oil go into a windmill?
How many gallons of oil go into solar panels?
How many gallons of oil does it take to power the electric car with a backup gasoline engine when your battery dies?
Exactly.
Good point.
Where is the leadership on these people?
Showing us the way.
Show us how to live without oil.
Show us.
Show us how it makes your life better.
Show us how the White House runs more efficiently without it.
Yeah, I like it.
Gosh, I almost forgot.
Another Haney project episode tonight.
There are three to go.
What?
No, this is my least favorite.
The way it got put together, it's not bad.
It's just the things I know that you won't when watching, but it's my least favorite of them.