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The House just passed essentially a test vote of the Boehner bill, which means that it will pass on the real vote later this afternoon when it's brought up for final vote.
And then, of course, they'll send it over to Reed, where immediately Harry Reid will realize he's been snookered.
Brett Baer was just on Fox here during the top of the hour.
Just reported that in a conference call, Standard and Poor's just reiterated that even $4 trillion in cuts will only be a down payment on the debt, that the cuts should be more than that.
And neither the Reed nor Boehner bills get anywhere near $4 trillion in the cuts.
So if they are to be believed, we are in for the first downgrade in U.S. history no matter what happens.
And then a whole nother blame game begins.
But I'll get to that in greater detail here in just a second.
First, a couple soundbites.
Mike, grab numbers 30 and 31 from the Republican presser this afternoon.
The leaders.
Here first is Speaker Boehner.
The bill's not perfect.
I've never said it was perfect.
Nobody in my caucus believes it's perfect.
But what this bill reflects is a sincere, honest effort to end this crisis in a bipartisan way to send it to the Senate where it can receive action.
I'm asking the representatives in the House in a bipartisan way and asking my colleagues in the Senate, let's pass this bill and end this crisis.
Well, so there you have it.
End the crisis.
Get it off our plates here.
But again, Standard and Poor's just reiterated it's going to take $4 trillion in cuts as a mere down payment on the debt, that the cuts ought to be more.
Neither the Reed nor the Boehner bill get anywhere near that.
So if S ⁇ P is to be believed, we're headed for the first downgrade in history.
So all the bipartisanship in the world here and all the compromise in the world here and all the action, all the best we can do isn't going to result in the credit rating not being lowered.
So says S ⁇ P.
But again, more on that in a moment.
Here's Eric Cantor describing what the Republicans think they've done here in terms of positioning Dingy Harry.
The way I see it is Harry Reid has three different options.
One is to suffer the economic consequences of default, which I hope, which all of us hope, he doesn't choose.
Two is to bring up the bill that we sent prior, the one that he claims to be opposed to.
Or to accept the compromise bill that we are sending over today so we can resolve this crisis and get on about the business of this country.
So those are the three choices, but there's actually a fourth choice for Harry Reid.
And the fourth choice for Harry Reid is to take this bill that they send over today and maybe take some things out of the bill that they sent over previously and then combine it with Dingy Harry's own bill and come up with a brand new bill that has everything in it Obama wants and then send that back to Eric Cantor.
And then Reid would conduct a press conference that says that John Boehner's got three choices.
Now, here's the S ⁇ P story that I referenced earlier.
See, what is nuclear phasing?
Here it is.
Right here, my formerly nicotine-stained finger.
The head of a top credit agency says some of the deficit cutting plans Congress is considering could lower the U.S. debt burden to a level that would allow the country to keep its AAA credit rating.
Standard and Porce President Devin Sharma told a congressional panel yesterday that previous reports indicating Congress would need to make $4 trillion in deficit cuts over 10 years were inaccurate.
Now, that story is from yesterday.
Brett Baer just said there was a conference call with the S ⁇ P guy, and the S ⁇ P people reiterated that $4 trillion in cuts is not enough, that there should be more.
So if SP, now wait, if Brett Baer is to be believed, if the details of the conference call today are to be believed, we're in for the first downgrade in U.S. history, no matter what, because there isn't a bill anywhere that cuts spending $4 trillion or cuts the debt $4 trillion.
Yet, yesterday, an SNP official said, this $4 trillion number, that's inaccurate.
I don't know where that came from.
So I don't know what to think.
Yesterday, the $4 trillion number was out there.
Yesterday, the S ⁇ P said $4 trillion deficit reduction or debt reduction, or you're going to have, as a minimum, or we have to downgrade your rating.
And then after that story appeared, this story ran.
The S ⁇ P president, Devin Sharma, told a congressional panel that that $4 trillion deficit cuts over 10 years, inaccurate.
Today, it's back to being accurate.
So we don't know.
Don't know who to believe.
Here's something we do know for sure.
Reports of Washington Post reports confirm decelerating economy by Neil Irwin.
The latest evidence on the economy suggests that the tense standoff between Congress and the Obama regime over raising the debt ceiling is coming at a terrible time, not in a period of robust or even passable growth, but at a time the U.S. economy is barely eking out any expansion at all.
But wait, we were told that the economy turned the corner.
We were told the economy turned the corner.
U.S. economic picture for the first half of 2011 will not be a pretty one.
Gregory Daco, principal U.S. economist for IHS Global Insights, said in a report, one will remember the slowdown in the manufacturing sector, a bounce back in the unemployment rate, weak housing, poor confidence in the debt ceiling debacle.
Washington Post actually reporting a decelerating economy even before the GDP numbers come out tomorrow.
Now, one of two things is going on here.
The unemployment number is out today and it's under 400,000.
Now, look at me.
Follow me on this.
The unemployment number is out today, and for the first time in a number of weeks, the number of claims is under 400,000.
It's 398,000.
So they can say, hey, look at what's happening here.
We're going to have fewer claims, and it's fewer than expected.
I mean, this is robust news.
They're reporting this is pretty good news.
Economists were surprised.
Now, next week, the number is going to be revised upward, and it will be over 400,000.
But forget that.
Nobody will remember that.
So 398,000.
Unexpected.
Wait a second now.
Tomorrow we're going to get an unemployment number.
We're at 9.2.
What if it goes down?
Stick with me on this.
Now we've got a story in the Washington Post.
Reports confirm decelerating economy.
This story comes a day before the GDP numbers come out.
What if this story is a purposely wrong setup?
And the GDP numbers and the unemployment numbers tomorrow are much better than expected.
Psychological gameplay.
I don't know that that's going to be the case.
I'm just with these people.
I don't trust anything.
I don't trust anything.
Everything is a political calculation.
We know that the mainstream media is on Obama's team.
We know that they are there to advance his agenda.
And we know that they're into manipulation of thinking, mind control, all that.
So here comes a, we haven't seen a story like this before.
Decelerating.
This whole story, I mean, it's the biggest depressing story I've ever read about the economy in the Washington Post.
We'd lost momentum even before the debt limit really became a big issue, said James O'Sullivan, the chief economist at MF Global.
It's never a good time for something like this, but if we were coming off six months of 250,000 job growth per month, we'd be much more able to withstand this.
The economy does look vulnerable right now.
On Friday, the government released its broadest measure of economic activity for the spring.
Forecasters expecting it to show a painfully weak economy.
But the forecasters are always wrong.
And the news is always surprising, whether it's up or down.
It's always surprising.
Gross domestic product is forecast to have risen 1.8% in the three months ended June 30th, almost identical to the 1.9% rise in the first quarter.
Now, you and I know there is no recovery.
If the story is honest, he could sum it very quickly, sum it up very quickly.
Washington Post headline: there is no recovery.
Details on Friday.
Women and minorities hardest hit.
And that would be the story.
Two reports Wednesday confirmed that the economy was decelerating even before the standoff over the debt ceiling came to a head in July.
The Commerce Department said that orders for durable goods fell a surprising 2.1% in June.
Analysts had forecast a 0.3% gain.
Now, to decelerate is like a snail decelerating.
Technically, it could be true, but we'll just have to wait and see.
But we may be being set up here.
It's not unprecedented.
You remember, you remember, you may not remember, so I will remember for you.
We'll never forget this.
During Clinton's secret, videotaped grand jury deposition or testimony, whatever, in the blue dress case, the Monica Lewinsky and all that.
Two days before the video was released, the press had a story that there was a question there where Clinton lost it.
That Clinton blew up Clinton, the crest wall and it was a personal sexual question or what have you.
This guaranteed that everybody would watch the whole thing when it came out.
And it turns out that the event they were talking about was one small, wide open eyebrow raise.
And that was it.
There was no Clinton breakdown.
There was no Clinton anything.
In fact, his testimony, his performance was pretty good.
They wanted everybody to watch it.
So they told everybody that something profoundly embarrassing to Clinton happened in the process when nothing did.
So we've got unemployment claims under $400,000 for the first time in 27 weeks.
And now we've got a story of the economy decelerating.
Oh, it's horrible.
GDP numbers coming out tomorrow.
Oh, it's going to be bad.
Debt ceiling, blah, blah, blah.
It's not going to take much for the media to be able to say anything.
You know what?
Everybody was expecting another plumbing, but look at what happened.
There's actually a game here.
Maybe we're turning the corner.
It's re-election time in Washington.
The press is on Obama's side.
And I don't believe anything that I read in the mainstream press.
I got to take a brief time out.
We'll come back and continue before you know it.
Okay, let's roll a nice.
See what we get on the phones.
James in Reston, Virginia.
Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network.
Great to have you here.
Hello.
You remember during the presidential campaign, there were these people crying because they were so happy, because they never thought during their lifetime they would see a president that looked like them.
No.
Well, I'm a person who has no debt.
My wife and I disposed of our debts.
We don't carry a credit card balance.
We paid off the house.
We don't have car payments.
When, before I die, am I going to see a country that is debt-free like me?
You know, I can't tell you how much I understand exactly the way you feel.
I can't tell you.
I say it all the time to myself about not just debt, but culture and morality and so forth.
I do.
When is the country going to be like I am?
That a little took him off.
I just got off before I called.
I was on the phone with Frank Wolf's office.
I called him up and I read back to him, I ran back to the nice person in the office, a speech that Frank Wolf gave on 20 January, where he said very definitively, and this is six months ago, said that he would not vote for a debt increase unless the long-term fiscal problems of the country had been addressed in the same legislation.
I called him up and said, is he going to stick to this and not vote for the Boehner plan, which clearly does not do this?
Yes.
Is he going to turn around and say, let's get cut, oh, geez, cap, cut, and balance, resubmit it to the Senate and say, here, act on this.
We sent you this one.
Get some action on this thing.
Let's compromise on the thing with the $4 billion instead of the $1.2 billion.
Trillion dollars.
Too many zeros.
You know, it's this, all of this, all of this is insane.
I have no debts except for the debts placed upon me by myself.
Well, wait a minute.
I might have missed something here, but what did Wolf's office say when you call him?
Well, the cut-cut and balance is already over.
No, no, no, it's already over there, but no one's talking about it.
They're all talking about this Boehner plan, which is either going to crash and burn, or if it's going to crash and burn here, it's going to crash and burn once it's through the Senate and back through the compromise process.
Let's go back to the plan that actually has a chance of doing what he said he'd do in his speech six months ago.
They thank me very much.
All right.
So you were not satisfied.
I wasn't satisfied that that's going to happen.
You know, Frank is one who goes kind of back and forth.
Sometimes he's good, sometimes he's bad.
I would be guessing he's not going to be good on this one.
Well, I don't know.
Thomas Sowell has a piece out today supporting the Boehner plan.
Is that how you feel?
I had people left and right sending it to me.
Boehner is tweeting it.
Boehner is tweeting.
Tom Sowell says it's not the best we can do but support it.
And Tom Sowell has profound respect.
A lot of people.
When it was first sent to me, it was during the program today.
Look, all I can do here, I shouldn't say this.
I really shouldn't, because Thomas Sowell, I have profound respect for.
And I read it.
And my first thought was, this doesn't sound like the Thomas, does it read like the Thomas Sowell I read?
That it is.
It just doesn't sound like the same guy.
But it is.
I'm sure he wrote it, and I'm sure he's serious about it, and so forth.
So on.
There's a mindset that says, look, we don't control a show here.
And Sowell's point is we really need to give these guys a lot of praise because they hung in there and they're going to get this bill doesn't have any tax increases in it.
He said it is remarkable.
Tom Soul thinks it is profound that the Republicans did not cave long before they did, that they've hung in there and that they have seen to it that whatever bill there is doesn't, that they pass doesn't have a tax increase in it.
He thinks they deserve a lot of praise for that.
He thinks they deserve a lot of credit for that.
And that you get what you can when you can get it.
You know when that point is, and then you realize this is it for now.
That's his point.
That happens to also be the point of the Republican establishment.
This is it.
This is as good as we can do for now until we get all three.
Now, we had all three for a while, didn't we?
Well, we were close.
We had all the way to House, Senate, and the presidency, and we tried entitlement reform, didn't we?
What happened?
Here's the story on the Arctic scientist under investigation, a federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize a global warming movement, has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article.
Charles Monette, an anchorage-based scientist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, was told on July 18th that he was being put on leave pending results of an investigation into integrity issues.
But he's not yet been informed by the Inspector General's office of specific charges or questions related to the scientific integrity of his work, said Jeff Ruck, Executive Director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
Now, yesterday, today, sorry, today, Ruck's watchdog group plans to file a complaint with the agency on Manette's behalf, asserting that Obama regime officials have actively persecuted him in violation of policy intended to protect scientists from political interference.
Protect him from political interference while he is in the process.
He's playing the game of political interference.
Manette, who has coordinated much of the agency's research on Arctic wildlife and ecology, has duties that include managing about $50 million worth of studies, according to the complaint, a copy of which provided to the AP.
The complaint seeks Manette's reinstatement along with a public apology from the agency and the Inspector General.
Also seeks to have the investigation dropped or to have the charges specified and the matter carry out.
I will bet you the guy survives.
I will bet you, the way things are going, this guy survives.
But this is the guy who got the whole ball rolling here on the polar bears dying because the Arctic was melting.
Fraudulent articles, fraudulent pictures.
He's now under investigation.
I guarantee you, ladies and gentlemen, well, I don't guarantee you.
In Germany, they are phasing out nuclear power.
This is from De Spiegel.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's government insists that electricity bills will only go up modestly as a result of the nuclear energy phase-out.
Experts, however, disagree, with many pointing to Berlin's massive subsidies for solar power as the culprit.
A pioneering spirit's taken hold in Germany thanks to the government's radical reworking of the country's energy policies.
Hardly a week goes by without the foundation being laid someplace in the country for a new solar farm, another biogas plant, or an even bigger wind turbine.
They actually think that they are going to replace all of the nuclear energy that they produce with windmills, solar farms, and biogas plants.
And in the process, their electricity bills are only going to modestly increase.
These people have no clue what they're doing.
These people are Dunkoffs.
These people are wide-eyed, bright-eyed theorists of Nirvana utopia.
You watch what happens here.
The electricity is going to be in short supply.
The prices are going to skyrocket.
There won't be any more free beer in Brentwurst anywhere in Germany.
Man, the insanity.
The insanity, the common sense that's lost all over the world.
Killed off by liberalism.
Brief timeout.
Back after this.
Don't go away.
I know.
Just looking for something very quickly here.
Can't find it.
Prosper Texas.
Pam.
Is this the first woman we've had on the phone?
That's the biggest thrill of my life.
My first biggest thrill was when I followed you in the gallery at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic in 2001 at Lakinta Country Club.
Your partners were Arnold Palmer and Emmett Smith.
And so it's a privilege to talk to you again today.
Thank you very much.
Gosh, I remember that.
It was fun.
Oh, it was one of the thrills of my life.
But what concerns me is I saw Martha McCallum on Fox News interview a female press aide for Obama, and she said Obama is considering invoking the 14th Amendment, and he thinks he has the right to do so, and he can go ahead and on his own increase the debt limit here, and the crisis will be averted.
However, there was a gentleman that she interviewed subsequently named Mike Carvin, and he said that Obama is not paying attention to one section, one bit of wording in the 14th Amendment, and that says that he has to be authorized by law, meaning he needs a vote of the Congress to be able to raise the debt limit on his own.
Is this going to be an impeachable offense for us?
Well, nobody is going to bring up impeachment articles against Obama.
That isn't going to happen.
Now, this 14th Amendment business, we dealt with that, what, three weeks ago, three weeks ago in profound detail.
What you need to know about this is, quite simply, the 14th Amendment does not authorize the President of the United States to spend money.
They're claiming that the Constitution gives the President the authority to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.
It does not.
They are taking out of context one sentence in the 14th Amendment.
They are ignoring a couple of Supreme Court decisions.
This has been written about extensively by legal scholars.
If the 14th Amendment allowed the president to spend money anytime he wants for whatever reason, it would have been done by now.
Yes, right.
By plenty of other Democrat presidents when we needed to raise the debt ceiling, it does not authorize that.
Now, the left-wing activists believe it does.
You know, they read the Constitution and they don't see the Second Amendment in it.
You know, the Constitution says whatever they want it to say.
They'll leave a sentence out.
They'll skip a paragraph to have it say what they want them to say.
I think that what you heard from the female press aide, it's just a threat.
Now, I don't doubt Obama wants to.
Obama would love to be able to just, by diktat, do anything he wants to do.
Absolutely.
But the 14th Amendment does not.
We've been through it.
I don't have the legalese in front of me, and I'm not going to have time to go get it today, but it's on our website.
In fact, I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
I'm going to have Coco repost that whole segment that we did at rushlimbaugh.com, complete with monologue links to all the places we cited so that you can see for yourself, read it for yourself, and rest assured that the authority does not exist.
Well, I listen to you every day, Rush.
You're doing the Lord's work, and I think of that song that that operatic star sang for you.
Thank God, Rush Limbaugh's on.
I say that every morning, first thing when I get up in the morning, you're always in my thoughts and prayers.
Keep up the good work, Russia.
Thank you very much.
That was the Rush Hawkins Singers.
Oh, that was great.
Thank the Lord, Rush Limbaugh's on.
And we should play that once in a while.
Yeah, we should.
I should go back to the archives.
The Groovy Art of Forgotten Favorites.
And there was also Barbara Chennault Law, who did her take on a Puccini.
La Boem.
Thank the Lord for Rush Limbaugh, right?
We've got both of those, and I think you probably have heard both.
No doubt about it.
I appreciate the call, Pam.
Thanks much.
Dan in Minneapolis, hello, and welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi.
Yeah, I'm going to try to make this quick because my battery is dying.
I just wanted to say that I am sick and tired.
And I'm actually surprised that you, Rush, out of all the people, have not recognized that at the end of the day, if we keep following the same trait, is basically the difference is Democrats are going to take us down the wrong path much quicker than Republicans.
And at the end of the day, unless we literally vote in Bachmann's, Marco Rubio's, and Palazzo into the office, this is all going to collapse.
And I'm sick and tired of waiting for anything to change.
I am not voting.
Last time I bit my tongue and I voted for McCain.
This time, I'm not voting.
I don't care who is running, unless Boehner changes his plan.
If this gets through, I am done.
It's third-party time.
I don't care if freaking Obama is going to win again.
These people, including Paul Ryan, I can't believe he changed to Boehner's plan.
These people are losers.
And the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
I was surprised that they talked for their voters, and Republicans promise, but they never do.
So can you please explain to me this?
I'm sorry, I'm very angry, but I'm just done with this.
What do you want me to explain to you?
What I want to basically, I agree with a previous color, not this previous color, but a couple colors before, who basically questioned.
I've listened to the way you interview Boehner, and your whole tone changes.
And my point is, either press that person or that guy needs to get out of there.
My point is this.
I know what's going on.
Nothing is going to change.
We're going to talk about this every day on your program.
Same thing, same thing.
I know what's going on.
But you told us Reagan got fooled.
You told us Nixon got fooled.
Everyone got fooled.
And nothing changed.
It's all my fault.
No, it's not your fault.
It's all my fault.
I tell you what.
The people who we vote for, they promise one thing, but they never deliver.
Exactly what's going on here.
You are part of a third-party crowd, and so was the other guy.
I think that's what's it's bubbling up out there, this third-party business.
I guarantee you, that's what.
Folks, don't doubt me on this.
I know what this is.
And the real anger at me is that I have steadfastly opposed the third party.
That's not saying that so much.
It's that I'm not hard enough on Boehner or what have you.