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Jan. 29, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:44
January 29, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Let me tell you something, folks, for all of you people that might be oh a little cynical about Senator Rubio on a I understand that, by the way.
I understand it, but Marco Rubio believes in this stuff.
He wants to take it out.
He wants to try to sell it.
He wants to try to break up this monopoly the left has on their caricatures and cliches about conservatives.
And he's got to be given credit for that.
And I just want to remind you, too, even Reagan was fooled by the first amnesty bill.
Back in 1986, Ronald Reagan said it's high time we gained the regained control of our borders, and this bill will do this.
And the bill would have had it been enforced.
There was border enforcement all over the 86 reform bill.
It just wasn't enforced.
And that was essentially asking Senator Rubio, what do you do if you get the perfect bill?
We've got a president who's not enforcing existing immigration law.
He says that he's not gonna have border protection in his bill, which he's announcing today.
And he even sued the state of Arizona for basically trying to enforce federal law.
But it's better that somebody's gonna try registering, ah, to hell with it, it's over, it's finished, we can't beat these guys.
He's not, you know, he's got the youthful exuberance that you need.
He's got the uh uh youthful uh attachment to possibilities, the useful youthful attachment to success.
You don't want somebody that's jaundiced and and and the victim of so much cynicism that they're defeatist in this thing.
And it even even fooled uh even fooled Reagan.
Anyway, great to have you back.
Uh Rush Limbaugh at the EIB network of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The real question here, the the Democrats, I've got it here in the stack, the Democrats yesterday were begging Obama not to gum up the works by offering his own bill that would compete with whatever the Congress comes up with.
And he's gonna do it anyway, and he's gonna come up, he's gonna have a provision in his bill that undercuts the Senate bill.
The linch pen of the Senate bill, and that's if we take everybody at their word here, and I know, I know, but for the sake of the discussion, we will just for now.
You take everybody at their word, they're promising border security first.
Don't, don't, I'm not.
I'm not buying into it, don't misunderstand.
I'm just for the sake of the hypothetical, they're all saying, they're all agreeing, they'll secure the border first and then start on the pathway to citizenship and all the rest.
And the point is Obama is saying, no, I am not going to secure the border first, and I don't believe in this.
He's gonna undercut them here in about a half hour or two hours uh well, 45 minutes when he makes his speech.
He's gonna undercut the whole thing.
So the question is, what's his purpose here?
And I think he wants the issue.
I don't think Obama wants to compromise on anything.
Obama's out for political victories.
Our guys are out for compromise.
And our guys think that's what the American people want.
Obama makes people think that he's engaging in compromise.
He's got his fair approach, his balanced approach, but he's not.
He's out for total political victory.
He wants to essentially annihilate the Republican Party.
So torpedoing the foundation of the Rubio Bill, torpedoing the foundation of the Senate bill.
If in fact he does that in his Las Vegas speech, tells me that he's not interested immigration reform.
He wants the unsettledness and the chaos and the argument to go on for two more years because it allows him to beat up Republicans and lie about them and continue To call them anti-Hispanic, insensitive, anti-immigrant, and all that, while he's the obstacle, while he's the guy standing in the way of anything happening, he get two years here to blame the Republicans for it in hopes of winning the House.
If he wins the House and he's got total control of the government again, why leave in 2016?
The Hill.com.
Story by Alexander Bolton.
Yesterday, immigration reformers credit Kennedy.
The late Senator Edward Kennedy continues to exert an influence on the Senate.
Democrats cited Kennedy, long known as the Lion of the Senate, as an inspiration when they passed the health care reform law at the start of Obama's first term, and now nearly four years after Kennedy's death, senators in both parties are channeling his memory as they pursue immigration reform.
Senator McCain said, if we do succeed, and I think we will, it'll be a testimonial to Ted Kennedy's effort.
Years ago that laid the groundwork for this agreement.
Years ago is 1986, and it was Ted Kennedy who promised that we would never have to face what we're now facing.
If we just did Simpson Mazzoli, just sign the omnesty bill back in 1986.
If we did it, it's the end of it, we'll never have to do it again.
So here we are.
What is it?
27, 26, whatever years later, and everything's repeating, including using Ted Kennedy to sell the damn thing.
And crediting Ted Kennedy for what has been a failure was what turned out to be a giant misrepresentation.
So the logical question to ask is, okay, they gave us amnesty in 86, and they said they were going to do border enforcement, which means no more illegals.
They're going to enforce the border, and it's going to shut it down.
We're going to grant these one and a half million people.
That's what we were talking about in '86.
One and a half million illegals.
We're going to legalize them, we're going to grant them amnesty, and that's so here come the same people with the same language.
Why are we supposed to expect anything different this time around?
Especially with a president like Barack Obama.
What's going to be different?
Especially when they're citing the words of Ted Kennedy.
Well, that's where Rubio comes in.
Rubio is a true believer.
Now Rubio admitted he's new to the ways of the Senate.
He's going to learn fast.
He is new to the ways of the Senate, but he has lived the immigration problem.
And he knows how to talk about it.
So we will see how this all plays out.
Now there are detractors, Senator Jeff Sessions, who is the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee.
Former ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a statement on the new push for comprehensive immigration reform and amnesty.
He said, Americans overwhelmingly oppose illegal immigration.
They've pleaded with Congress to end the mass illegality for decades to little avail.
All the while millions have been added to the total of those illegally here.
It's time to fix this broken system.
And now we're told that the Obama administration and members of Congress say that they have a plan.
They promise will do the job.
So the American people will need to watch closely, and members of Congress must insist that they have a full and complete opportunity to study and amend such legislation.
Nothing in secret here.
That's part of Sessions statement.
Ted Cruz, the new senator from Texas, said, I appreciate the good work senators and both parties have put into trying to fix the system.
There's some good elements in this proposal, especially increasing the resources and manpower to secure our border and also improving and streamlining legal immigration.
However, Senator Cruz said, I have deep concerns with the proposed path to citizenship.
To allow those who came here illegally to be placed on such a path is both inconsistent with the rule of law and profoundly unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who waited for years, if not decades, to come to America legally.
And he's exactly right, and it of course leads to the question what's special about immigrants from Mexico, Latin America, what's special?
And we all know the answer.
They're plentiful and they vote Democrat.
And I'm folks, you can say that I'm just being cynical and but I'm not.
It's the truth.
It's reality.
It's like I say, if 70% of these illegals voted Republican, the Democrats would be the ones building the wall on the border.
If 70% of the Democrats or 70% of the illegals voted Republican, the Democrats would be the ones refusing amnesty, demanding border security, building the wall, doing everything they could.
They'd be arming everybody to keep them out.
So let there be no mistake what this is about from the Democrat side.
They need a permanent underclass, they need voters.
They need money to fund social security, they need all kinds of things.
And as the economy improves, if it ever does, and people do raise their their economic circumstances, you need people to fill in at the lower end.
And that's what this is about for them.
Make no mistake.
I I offered a proposal prior to the election.
You know, I'm a powerful, influential member of the media.
If a guy like me came out for amnesty, do you realize in fact I'll tell you a little secret.
I can't divulge names.
I mean, I could, but uh I was I was sworn to um not secrecy, but uh you know, the old promise about anonymity.
But I've I've I've met with some senators, and they've said to me, people support this.
If you call it amnesty, it's dead.
And they were trying to convince me how it's not amnesty.
They were doing everything they could to tell me we're not talking amnesty, we're talking a pathway to citizenship, we're talking an ID card, green card, we're talking uh enforcement and proof mechanisms, uh employer uh uh uh surveys and and monitoring and this kind of thing.
They said if you call it amnesty, then it doesn't have a prayer.
And they were essentially saying, look at whatever you do, if you disagree with the fund, don't call it amnesty, it won't have a prayer.
So in light of that, prior to the election, I very magnanimously made a proposal that I would support amnesty.
That I would say so on television if necessary.
I would write an op-ed.
I will announce it on my radio show that I Il Rushboy.
Just one proviso.
All of those who are in the country illegally and who are granted amnesty cannot vote for 25 years.
I thought that was fair, and I thought that was a way of getting to the nub of all this.
Now, some people thought that I was just trying to be funny.
I was trying to make a point.
I'll support amnesty.
We'll make them full-fledged citizens.
They can't vote, but as a penalty for having been here illegally, they can't vote for 25 years.
Seems fair.
And I didn't get one person asking me to join the uh the cause.
Because it is about votes and money and all the other things.
Gotta take a quick time out.
We are going to get to some of these sound bites, and uh, we have more of your phone calls coming up, so every reason in the world to stay glued to where you are.
Okay, let's go to this press conference yesterday.
This is we got Chuck Schumer leading off.
I just what I'm gonna lead up here.
We got we got Chuck Hugh Schumer, and we have um McCain and Bob Menendez, which, you know, this is crazy menendez with the prostitutes down in the Caribbean.
Uh uh and he's, of course, untouchable, he's no problem.
And then Alan Simpson from nineteen eighty seven.
I just want you to hear the similarities.
Up up first here is Chuck Yushumer.
This is from yesterday Capitol Hill.
To prove to the American people that we're seriously that we are serious about permanently ending illegal immigration to the U.S., we say that we will never put these individuals on a path to citizenship until we have fully secured our borders and combated the pattern of people overstaying their legal immigration visas.
Okay, that's uh that's Chuck Hugh.
Here's McCain.
I think everyone agrees that it's not beneficial for our country to have these people here hidden in the shadows.
Let's create a system to bring them forward.
Allow them to settle their debt to society and fulfill the necessary requirements to become law-abiding citizens of this country.
Bob Menendez says that once we give them this amnesty, that's it.
It's their last chance, borders or becomes a law, individuals who are undocumented in the country would come forward at that moment and they would register with the government and have a pending status.
Now that is not permanent residency.
They have to earn that over a long period of time.
We're going to have to have the security elements of the border, and then we will have a process where they'll have to wait at the end of the line, make sure that people who are presently waiting under the existing system to adjust to get their status here in the United States, which is part of uh what we envision having to deal with.
Okay, Chuck U, John McCain, Bob Menendez.
Now let's go back from the archives, C-SPAN.
March 16, 1987.
It's Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, then Senator Alan Simpson, then Congressman Bill Richardson participated in a debate about immigration reform.
Simpson is the Simpson in Simpson, Missoula.
During the audience QA, somebody said, Senator Simpson, don't you think that legalizing the illegal aliens will just encourage more aliens to come here, hoping that Congress will pass another bill six years down the road?
It's unfair to others who've waited in line.
People would say, Do you mean, Simpson, that you would legalize people who are here illegally while millions are standing in line to get in legally?
And I said, Yes, I would, under these conditions, to remove from our society a fearful subculture of human beings who are afraid to go to the cops, afraid to go to a hospital, afraid to go to their employers.
The alternative is if you couldn't find them coming in, how do you find them to get them out?
And you do that by going on the hunt.
And I'll skip that one, thank you.
They can take my name off the bill if they go on the hunt.
That's your alternative to legalization.
There is no other alternative except setting the date.
Another audience member said, Senator Simpson, what happens to an alien if, for example, an employer says you're gonna stay here in this country conditional on your employment, and as soon as you leave your employment with me, you're subject to deportation.
It's a technical problem, but I think there'll be a lot of people stuck in that gap whereby they'll be deported if they leave their current employer.
There are going to be people who are going to slip through the cracks.
And that's what oversight is about.
There are going to be a group of aliens who who have come after eighty-two and before this date, who may have U.S. citizen children on top of that.
And this group is going to be treated like any other alien in the U.S. They will apply if eligible to be immigrants under our legal immigration system.
If they do not qualify and are apprehended, they will be subject to deportation.
Up next was Bill Richardson question.
Many of the opponents said that it was rewarding the lawbreakers.
What do you say to that?
We had an opportunity to bring four million people out of the shadows who'd been working, participating constructively in this society, and I think it was our obligation as a nation of immigrants to give them that not instant citizenship, not amnesty, but a process by which they would move from temporary resident to permanent residents into a citizenship within a period Of five years.
The hook to proceed with legalization was to have at the same time sanctions.
So that those coming in would not be given that same privilege.
That was the hook.
If you're going to have legalization, you have sanctions.
Okay, so that's Bill Richardson and Alan Simpson back in 1987, sounding just like people who speak on this today.
Let's go back to October 15, 1986, during the heat of the battle here on the Today Show, Chuck U Schumer talking about Simpson Mazzoli.
The American people have become aware that millions of people are just coming over the borders and that nothing has been done.
And for once, people have said, look, it may not be a perfect bill, but it's better than nothing.
Right.
So we did Simpson Mazzoli.
It was going to end all of this.
After we do Simpson Mazzoli, we're not going to have to deal with any of this anymore.
And then yesterday, or back to 2007, I don't care where you go.
Certain years in the Bush administration second term yesterday.
Current day proponents get up, start talking about the issue.
It's the same damn thing.
Folks, I'll tell you what's being happening.
We're we're being whipsawed out there.
You know, just five minutes ago.
In practical terms, five minutes ago, we got to get rid of guns.
We got to get rid of every gun.
It's absolutely essential we get rid of guns.
Today we got to have amnesty.
Tomorrow it's going to be something else.
And in every case, you know who the enemy is?
Us.
Law-abiding people who believe in the rule of law.
We're the ones that have to be dealt with.
We're the problem.
The rule of law types are the problem.
This is a diabolical attack on the philosophical underpinnings of the country going.
By the way, for those of you who are subscribers to the Limbaugh Letter, the digital version, the electronic version, the February 13 issue is now available.
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Back to the phones to St. Louis.
This is Jonathan, and I'm glad you waited, sir.
Hello.
Rush, uh, God bless you from a left-wing loon.
I'm uh I'm a former Republican.
I'm a very social liberal.
I'm sorry, very social conservative, very fiscally liberal.
One of the things that nobody's talking about with this immigration is I know the unions at the top have come out for it, but a lot of the locals are dead set against this because this is gonna flood the country with cheap labor.
And that's just not good for anybody.
Now, wait a second.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Wait, wait, just a second.
No, you didn't say I'm telling you that the unions are not that opposed to this.
That's one of the things that's I mean, the the unions are in the tank for the Democrats politically.
The Democrats want this, and the unions are biting the bullet on it in um in a number of ways.
One of the ways the unions like this is they ultimately see it as a way to raise the minimum wage, and that's why they support it.
Every time the minimum wage goes up, the union guys get better because they say, Look, if you're giving these low skilled schlubs all this money, well, we're skilled, we're highly skilled, we're valuable union people.
We need a bump.
And that's why it's um valuable to them.
I mean, common sense would say that big unions would oppose this because these people are taking jobs.
But don't forget, the cliche is that these are jobs that the American Union man won't do anymore.
These jobs are beneath the American Union worker.
And uh I mean I the union thugs bite their they bite the bullet on this.
I mean they're not crazy about it, but they've found ways for it to be advantageous.
I'm gonna tell you this.
Obama's gonna be out in Vegas in about if he's on time, fifteen minutes making his speech, and I'll tell you, Jonathan's gonna be on stage with him.
Richard Trumka of the AFL CIO and other union leaders are gonna be on the stage with Obama when he makes his Amnesty introduction, his amnesty bill.
So it's not necessarily true that the unions oppose this.
They've got they've got their hooks into it for unseen reasons.
This is Bryce and Augusta, Georgia.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
How are you?
Very good.
Thank you.
I just wanted to call and um let you weigh in a little bit on uh uh I have a I guess I have a theory that uh um Obamacare pretty much already gets uh Obama and um his cohorts the uh votes that he needs,
he doesn't really even need a vote because he can use the guise of health care um to affect anything that he wants, uh whether it be gun control, immigration, and amnesty.
Um my wife and I are both nurses.
We're in our third semester of nursing school, and we're in a pediatric course right now.
Um in the textbook, I'm consistently uh confronted with um basically uh ways that we need to improve pediatric health care.
Yeah, um and and one major way is we have to look at the demographics from which these children come.
Uh one of them being immigrants, illegal, um, or migrant workers.
Um basically they are saying that these children are denied health care or or they're by either the health care professionals or their family members, because um there may be people in the house, even if they're a citizen by birth, there may be people in the house with a um illegal immigrant status or they're undocumented or whatever you want to call it.
Um and that that that's a barrier that as health care professionals we need to overcome and push for the city.
Well, that's that's exactly right.
It's exactly we can't have people in the shadows.
That's not good for our public health.
And so they're all gonna have your your point is they're gonna get Obamacare, even if they're illegal, so Obama's covered on getting their votes anyway, no matter what.
That's your point.
Well uh my point is is that he doesn't whether he gets the votes now or later, it doesn't matter.
They already have somewhere in that twenty seven hundred page bill, they already have the mechanism to um through health care, they can just make it an issue of health care.
Well, we need to cover these children, and in order to cover these children, their parents have to be citizens or else they're not gonna bring them.
And so we'll they'll just do it that way.
He doesn't need anyone to vote on it.
I think it's already in there.
Oh, so you think that he'll just grant blanket amnesty because we're gonna have to treat the kids of these people.
They're citizens, and if their parents aren't, we're just easy he'll just use the Obamacare trigger mechanism to grant them amnesty, and he doesn't even need a piece of legislation for it.
I I think he would like a piece of legislation because it would be faster, I think that he would have to wait for Obamacare to be implemented and uh and see this is that point.
This is why.
I mean you're you've got a pretty good example here.
This is why all during this Obamacare debate tried to point out for everybody what it was really all about.
Once once it's implemented and next year is full implementation, 2014, it can be used as a tool to get control over everything.
Anything and everything.
Because everything can be said to have costs related to health care.
And the government's in charge of those, and therefore they've got control over it.
And it's a this I'll tell you this this Obamacare, this this Nationalizing one-sixth of the economy.
There's a reason that we're people calling it ball game if it if it wasn't repealed and if it uh if it passed.
Look, there's no question that the task ahead.
Obama is devastating this country, folks.
There's no question about it.
It's like I say, we're we're being whipsawed back and forth.
Yesterday we had to get rid of our guns.
Today we got to grant amnesty.
In every one of these things, who is the enemy of Obama?
In every one of these things the Democrats want, who is it and what is it that stands in his way?
Right now the rule of law is what stands in his way.
And next is those who abide by it, the law-abiding citizens.
They represent the problem to what Obama wants to do.
That we and you and others who are law-abiding citizens, we're the ones Obama has to overcome.
And we are put this in a football term.
They're running the no-huddle offense on us.
We don't even have a time to catch our breath.
They're running play after play after play.
We don't even know what defense we're going to run.
We don't get new defensive personnel on the field.
We're just, we're just hustling to barely keep up, but we never even end up on offense.
Now the the thing about Rubio and his uh his interview here in the last busy broadcast hour.
The reason that I was praiseworthy, and he was praiseworthy, and the reason I was excited about it, is it is an issue that's going to have to be dealt with at some point.
And if Rubio can solve this in the way he set forth, it would be a good thing.
I don't know what the odds are.
At some point there's there's there's gonna be I mean the bill is amnesty, but if these border restrictions, I mean that's the common denominator in every discussion about illegal immigration is border security.
And the reason it is that's how you stop it.
It has to be stopped.
The border has to be secured.
You j we just can't go on like we have been with anybody and everybody who wants to get into the country doing so.
There has to be border security.
Now, if these guys can pull that off, you know the question is how sincere are the Democrats on that?
I don't think they are at all.
And I know Obama isn't, he's gonna say in his speech today that he's not, he doesn't care about it.
Border security is not a requirement for the rest of his immigration bill.
So there's no common ground here to find compromise with.
We're not talking about compromise.
Somebody's gonna win and somebody's gonna lose this.
It's it's like the Israelis and the Palestinians or anything else.
But we don't have anything in common.
I mentioned that to Rubio.
We don't, you know, Obama is seeking political victories and we're seeking compromise.
And how's that gonna end up?
I just but but if Rubio ever does succeed in spreading his message, folks, one of the things that, as far as we conservatives are concerned, is there isn't any conservative leadership in Washington right now.
It's not there is no conservative leader in the blogs or in the conservative media and in the elected ranks of the Republican Party, there isn't, and Rubio could fill that role.
Or somebody like Ted Cruz.
It's something that does need to happen.
And if it if it does, if it ever did happen, then it would change the complexion of this a little bit.
I got to take a break.
Look, I I uh Bryce, I appreciate the call.
I just saw the clock.
I'm way long here.
I've got to be right back.
Okay, so Obama's playing his usual tricks.
He's giving his immigration speech, and just like the left says that the next Marion Joseph might be in the current homeless population.
Guess what?
The next chairman of Intel might be among the illegals.
Or the next founder of Instagram might be in that population of illegals.
We got to change our immigration so that these people, after they come here and get educated, don't leave.
He's mixing up the he's mixing up legal immigrants versus illegal.
Andy Grove was not an illegal immigrant.
He came in with the B visa.
But that Obama is drawing no distinction here between the illegal and legal immigrants of this country.
And he's trying to make a claim that the illegals are harboring the next great CEO, the next great Steve Jobs, the next great inventor.
And we can't kick him out.
And nobody's talking about kicking them out.
So he's constructing his usual straw dogs, exactly straw men as predicted.
By the way, I thought we were supposed to resent successful people.
I thought they were the problem, right?
So what is Obama doing talking about the next great CEO or inventor being among the illegal immigrant population?
I don't think we like those people.
I hope you have a great day, folks.
The rest of the day we'll be back here tomorrow, do it all over again.
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