House Republicans Renege on Every Promise with Infuriating Budget Deal

RUSH: This budget deal -- and every time this subject comes up I have to point out that, well, even 25 years ago when this program started, to discuss something like the federal budget was one of the biggest mistakes you could make in terms of programming content. I mean, it was so esoteric and so boring, and it contained its own language that did not relate to people. It was instant death. You just didn't talk about the budget.

My, how things have changed. This budget deal -- and we first alerted it to you on Monday, saw a little flash news blurb from Bloomberg detailing what the House Republicans were doing, getting ready to do. And they've done it. They have crafted a budget that essentially gives nobody any reason not to vote for Hillary Clinton.

It is astounding what they have done, particularly when you balance it against what they've promised us they would do. They have reneged on every promise, written and oral, that they have made, beginning back in 2010 when it comes to what they would do vis-a-vis the budget, government spending overall, and how they would behave in battle with the Democrats. They've tossed it all aside.

Everything Obama wants and then some is in this budget. Raising the debt limit over $1 trillion which takes it off the table as an issue all the way through next year. The budget is also a two-year budget which takes it out of the presidential campaign which makes whoever the next president is, and the next Congress, they're saddled with this budget. I mean, every budget is technically a one-year budget. I know this, and they can make 10-year projections, five-year, what they've actually done here is try to craft a two-year budget.

And when I went through it last night and looked at it, and I went back and with the assistance of a column written by my buddy Andy McCarthy at PJMedia.com, I started boiling. I was literally infuriated. I have to tell you, folks, I am beyond able to understand the political thinking now of the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, particularly as it relates to the presidential race. I can't figure it out. What they are doing makes literally and absolutely no sense. It makes no sense in dollars and cents. It makes no sense budgetarily. It makes no sense politically. They're not even an opposition party. They're not even pretending anymore to be an opposition party.

When you look at what they've done with this budget -- we'll get into some details -- basically all you need to know is whatever Obama wants, he's got. Whatever Hillary wants, she's got. Whatever you thought you were voting for in 2010 and 2014, you've been lied to, in terms of how your representatives were gonna fight the Democrats, fight spending, fight this constant bloat. We can now officially claim that the Republicans are responsible for five trillion additional new dollars added to the national debt. Spending bills originate in the Congress. The president could ask and demand and do whatever, but he can't write the bills, he can't write the laws. All he can do is sign them or veto them.

We turned over the writing of the budget to Obama and the Democrats, essentially. It wouldn't be much different if they had started the whole process and completed it. So I don't know how this helps them. I don't know how they think it helps them. I don't know why it's happening. Is this all because of the demands made by donors? I mean, that's the latest excuse we're given for everything else they're doing. "Well, the donor class, they're demanding this, and donor class is demanding amnesty, donor class is demanding nuke deal with Iran." Is what explains this budget deal, that donors are demanding all of this? Or have the Republican leadership just become a bunch of pathological actual left-wingers in the last couple years?

I don't see the difference in the current Republican House leadership. When it comes to government spending, the whole philosophy behind government spending, big government, I don't see any difference between the Republican leadership and the Democrat leadership. When I look on the Democrat side I see Pelosi and Reid and everybody cheering the budget. Are they still scared to death of Obama? Do they still think that they have to show that they can work with Obama, be cooperative, let Obama have everything he wants otherwise the media's gonna call them racists?

We've got a year to go, for crying out loud, just one more year of this. And they are going to put it on paper that we get two more years of this. It's the most confounding thing. We've got one year of Obama left, but the Republican leadership in the House has passed a budget, or is about to, that will essentially give us another year of Obama in terms of philosophy on government size and spending.

Are they doing this to prove that they can be bipartisan? Do they think that's gonna help them in the presidential race? Are they doing this to show they can cooperate? Are they doing this to show that they love and support entitlements and nobody should think Republicans are gonna take anything away from them. Are they that defensive? Are they that scared? Are they that convinced the media can define them and there's nothing they can do about it so they may as well do everything the media is demanding of them so that the media will shut up and not be mean to them anymore? Is that what's going on here?

Are they hell-bent on showing their ability to cooperate, cross the aisle? They think that's helping the presidential field by doing this? Are they ambivalent? Are they unfeeling in any way about...? Folks, the blatant lies that Republicans in the House have told their voters during campaigns. All the documents, the contracts, the pledges that they wrote and signed that none of this would happen. Virtually everything they pledged not to do, they are doing in this budget deal.

Are they unconcerned about destroying the economy? Are they so secure in their own existence that they don't care what happens outside their own lives? Are they set now for the rest of their lives because of the votes that they have secured for big donors? Are they happy that in the places they live there isn't any unemployment, there isn't any real difficulty managing the cost of living?

Are they unconcerned about destroying our culture? Do you have any idea what this budget's gonna do to our culture? This culture is creating more dependence and more dependence. It's practically designed to put people on the welfare rolls. It's practically designed to tell people to stop relying on themselves and look to government for whatever you need or whatever you want. That's not who we are. But that's what this budget deal does.

The spending caps that they negotiated with Obama? They've blown those up. The one thing that they won, spending caps, they got rid of them themselves in this deal. I'm trying to understand, are they totally in debt to K Street? Do they all have jobs waiting for them on K Street? It doesn't compute here. Who are these people in the House Republican leadership? What are they? I'll tell you what I've concluded, and it's something that I have forecast before, mentioned before. We've even discussed it on this program.

I think what's going on in Washington right now -- and it isn't new, it's just more visible than it's ever been. I think there's all kinds of bipartisanship going on in Washington. I think there's all kinds of cooperation going on in Washington. I think that it's kumbaya time. I think they are linked arm in arm. I think the bipartisan project is to destroy conservatism. I think they would be happy. They would prefer... I'm talking about the Republican leadership. Not the whole membership, but the Republican leadership.

I have the idea they would be happier with Hillary Clinton as president than Ted Cruz, and that's not a feeling. I know that almost for a fact. I know that with almost ontological certitude. They, as members of the inside-the-Beltway establishment, no way, no how do they want anybody like Ted Cruz in the White House. They would much prefer Hillary. The only thing that explains this, looked at in any kind of prism of common sense, is that there is a combined bipartisan effort to finally render conservatives and conservatism as irrelevant as a pockmark.

The only thing that explains this: This is not good budgeting. Not only is this not conservative, it's not even Republican, even moderate Republican. This is rubber-stamp liberal Democrat budgetary philosophy. This violates every pledge and promise that they've made in election campaigns going back to 2010, repeated in 2012 during the presidential race, and repeated again in 2014. And I shall remind you word by word of some of the pledges they've made, the contracts they wrote, reminiscent of the Contract with America.

I actually think... You know the Democrats want to get rid of conservatism. They want to get rid of all opposition. That's their modus operandi. The thing here is the Republican leadership in the House and Senate, I think, wants to do the same thing. I think we're a burr on their butts. I think we're a pain in the rear to them. I think they much more resent us than they do liberal Democrats. Romney gave it all away the other day. He gave it all away when he came out -- and have you noticed how there hasn't been any reaction to that anywhere?

I have been studiously observing. Mitt Romney comes out, laments/longs for the good old days when we all get the same facts. There were only three different places you could get news America: ABC, CBS, and NBC. Those were the good old days. Those were the good old days when everybody got the same news, everybody got the same facts, and it's easy to collaborate. Democrats and Republicans could work together. But now we have these insurgent, extremist right wingers in this New Media confusing everybody with different facts.

And he also did give some lip service to saying the left has their own version, but he's not concerned about them because the extremists on the left still have the same facts that the Democrat Party has. However, us? We extremists on the right. We seem to be operating with a totally different set of facts and the mainstream doesn't want to deal with it, and the establishment doesn't want to deal with it.

So Romney comes out and sides with the people who called him a liar about paying his taxes, who told everybody he hated women and hated his employees and allowed them to get cancer and didn't care -- and put the dog on the roof of the station wagon -- and much more incendiary stuff designed to destroy his career and his reputation, and that's who he thinks his friends are. So Romney let it out of the bag with this idea that the good old days, you have to go back 25, 27, 28 years to find them. (paraphrased) "Yeah, everybody got the same news!

"Everybody got the same facts! There weren't any controversy day to day over what was what. We could collaborate and get along and everything was fine and dandy and hunky-dory. Yeah. Now we can't do." There hasn't been a... I haven't found any reaction to that anywhere. Have you, Mr. Snerdley? Have you seen it? (interruption) Not a peep. And to me it was the biggest news because it confirmed long-held suspicions. But there hasn't been a repeat of that. There hasn't been a repeat. There hasn't been anybody. I have not seen it other than where it originally appeared, in Breitbart.

RUSH: Now, back to the budget deal for just one or two things here. I mentioned at the outset that the Republican leadership has violated practically every promise they made to voters in 2010, 2012, 2014 about how they would behave if they were elected. And what they would do to stop Obama, stop the Democrats, stop the spending. One of the things that Boehner promised was three full days, 72 hours to read all legislation before voting on it.

Not here. This is being rammed through. This is going to have to happen today. It has to happen before Paul Ryan becomes Speaker so his fingerprints are not on it. This is supposedly Boehner's gift to Paul Ryan, a clean Speakership with no budget battles in the immediate future, the budget's done, no arguments with the Democrats. The conservatives out in the country can't do anything to you because it's a done deal, no threats of government shutdown. Boehner thinks this is his present to Ryan as new Speaker, a clean slate when it comes to the budget.

But to make it happen, they have to violate the promise and the pledge that Boehner and the leadership made. If the vote happens before 11:36 p.m. tomorrow, then Boehner's pledge would be violated. It's 144 pages. It raises the debt limit by a trillion dollars. Why does it take 144 pages to do that? But there are many more promises that were made and pledges that were signed way back when.

Let's talk about a Pledge to America, a little pamphlet the Republican leadership put out. It had all kinds of pictures of Boehner and Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, other Republican leaders. And this Pledge to America began thus: "An unchecked executive, a compliant legislature, and an overreaching judiciary have combined to thwart the will of the people and overturn their votes and their values, striking down long-standing laws and institutions and scorning the deepest beliefs of the American people.

"An arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions, issues mandates, and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many. Rising joblessness, crushing debt, and a polarizing political environment are fraying the bonds among our people and blurring our sense of national purpose."

Well, we all read that, those of us who did, we all heard that, those of us who did, "Man, these guys get it. These guys get it. They're gonna go in there and they're gonna stop this stuff. They understand all this elites are implementing things with executive action. The will of the people is being thwarted. Spending is out of control." We bought it. We elected 'em in droves. By the way, this pledge was made when all they had was the House. And this pledge did not say anything about we must have the Senate before we could do any of this. That came later.

They were making these promises when all the Republicans controlled were the House of Representatives, folks. And when they won the House of Representatives, that's when they said, "We can't do any more. We need the Senate." But yet they made these promises when they didn't control the Senate. The Republicans in this Pledge to America promised to do a lot of things to address this crisis. "They said they had 'A Plan to Reform Congress and Restore Trust.' They committed to change the abuses of Democratic leadership, who had 'consolidated authority, abusing the letter and spirit of the House rules to get the outcome desired, while ignoring voices of the American people, the minority, and even dissenters within [its] own party,'" and they were gonna make the Democrats pay for that. It's right from the Pledge to America.

When you hear that now, if you happen to read that now, how do you not snicker or get enraged? When you remember all of the complex, voluminous, endless bills, great consequence, that would no longer be dumped on members, they'd be given no meaningful opportunity to read the legislation, much less propose changes. Everything they pledged just kind of drifted away by the wayside when reality set in.

Further from the pledge: "We recognize that if we are truly committed to addressing the American people’s highest priorities, the House of Representatives must operate differently -- differently from the way the Democrats do now, and differently from the way Republicans did in the past. Change begins at home." This is what they promised to win the House. And here's the requirement to read the bill part of the pledge: "We will ensure that bills are debated and discussed in the public square by publishing the text online for at least three days before coming up for a vote in the House of Representatives. No more hiding legislative language from the minority party, opponents, and the public. Legislation should be understood by all interested parties before it is voted on."

Can't blame Republican voters for eating this up. It's exactly what needed to be done. It's exactly what they promised to do. So they were elected and they gained control of the House. And then we began to hear, "Wait. We forgot to tell you something. None of this can be done 'til we have the Senate." But this just scratches the surface on pledges and promises which were made.

Even though we continue to contend with one another, I do want to mention that I do appreciate your kind words back up the thread.

They were written sincerely. I have always held you in great respect, make no mistake about that. The only thing I am 'contending' with at this point is the tendency of some purist FReepers to point their fingers, second guess the motivations of other FReepers as to why they did thus-and-so, when that train has left the station, once again - the past is past, and the most important thing now is to focus on the present, which is still dynamic and is something we can influence, nothing more and nothing less.

I’m still looking for a candidate who will keep the most important fundamental obligations of his oath, and thereby represent me and what I believe.

If the Republicans won’t give us one, we’ll do what we can to make sure there is one on the ballot. If nothing else, we’ll once again rob the compromisers of any legitimate excuse, just like we’ve done the last two presidential election cycles.

As to the question of whether I’ll run again? Don’t want to. What sane person would? The personal abuse is beyond anything that those who have never experienced it could possibly understand. But I probably will do it again if no one else can be found.

What can I say? I believe you should ‘lead, follow, or get out of the way.’

Thanks again.

Look, at least speaking for myself, these sorts of reviews of the recent past may be a bit harsh at times, but they are not personal.

However, we are talking about fundamental approaches to how we do politics that are going to determine whether or not the republic is ever going to be revived and preserved for our posterity.

As they say, ‘politics ain’t beanbag.’

I’m getting old. In the great scheme of things, I won’t be around that much longer, no matter how you cut it.

But I’ve got nine kids and three grand kids so far, and what is going to happen to them matters a whole lot to me.

And so, I continue in my firm belief that the only way to save the republic is to reestablish the plumb line of principle that made the greatness of this country possible in the first place, and to then convince my fellow Americans that they must stop compromising the things that should be beyond political compromise.

Well, again, no sane person wants these things to be settled violently, if it can possibly be avoided.

But...

‘If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.’

— Winston Churchill

I was at a place the other night where my choice was either Coke or Pepsi. Or water. Guess what I opted for? You assumed "restaurants," dear. WRONG assumption, and in any case a red herring.

Hindsight is always 20/20. Absolutely correct -- as a matter of fact, the hindsight that served me well in my decision to vote for a plurality in 2012, was derived from 35 years of voting your way, exactly as you advise, and using the same rationale, as in your post 106. I've already tried your way -- for more than three decades.

My 20/20 hindsight, which was also adopted by enough fellow conservatives in 2012, served our nation and all "conservatives" who voted for Romney very well -- the bastard lost, and you, MKJ, are off the hook for all the garbage statism and amoral evil he would done in your name with your endorsement.

Yes, your endorsement. Whether he was your first, second, or 100th choice is totally beside the point, as relevant to the outcome as potato chips are relevant to bicycle tires.

Most important, though, is that your entire strategy is based on an illusion -- that of voting "against." I believed in that illusion for decades, the same as you do still. I finally wised up -- you are still laboring in blindness.

You are basing your strategy along the same lines as someone planning a trip by using unicorns as the mode of transportation. Because you are beginning on a totally false, imaginary premise -- that of voting "against," the results are GUARANTEED to fail. And they have failed and will continue to fail. Voting "against" is as real is unicorns -- and you will get the same results by depending on either one to deliver them.

Yep!!! I've had people say, "But I voted against Prop XYZ on the ballot!"

And I tell them what my dear wise ol' pop would say: No, you voted for nixing Prop XYZ.

For so many decades I believed in voting "against," the same as our FRiend MKJessup and so many others still believe. Thinking that a goal can be accomplished by relying on an imaginary resource, is folly; the goal will remain elusive every time. It's like planning with wisdom and precision a nice trip, itinerary, budgeting and saving up for plane tickets and hotels, etc. -- and counting on the Tooth Fairy to act as your travel agent. No matter how good the plan, the trip will never materialize because from the git-go, you've lost it -- there's no such thing as the Tooth Fairy, and there's no such thing as voting "against."

And ... did you miss the part that I, like many others here, have already tried your way? For decades? If your way is so smart, when is it going to start working? Because so far, all that has happened is things have gotten worse. You're the one who brought up "Hindsight is always 20/20." EXACTLY RIGHT -- it is that hindsight that finally helped me, and many other lesser mortals on the same level as you, to see things more clearly.

Again, please resist the temptation to take personal offense -- I was right there with you for decades, MKJ. And please understand that MANY OF US HAVE ALREADY TRIED YOUR WAY. It fails. And we think we know why -- because it's based on a false premise of voting "against."

Thought Limbaugh was going to blow a gasket. I had to do some deep breathing/counting myself.

Almost the entire political system has gone off on drunken spending spree now. Recourse? Pretty much nothing at this point.

Finally today, I realized that a complete financial collapse is going to be the only thing bringing this country back to reality. Until recently, I felt the chance of this was 50-75% in the next 10 years. Now, I think it is closer to 75-90%

Again, please resist the temptation to take personal offense -- I was right there with you for decades...

Pretty hard not to take it personal when you and your ilk (and your 'elk') make such posts with such personally aimed vitriol (and if you need examples, you need only review your own posts or if unable to do so, I can go back and quote you verbatim), you Defenders of the Conservative Faith(c) (I think I'm going to copyright that phrase) come roaring into threads like this with your self righteous "I told you so" comments, your self assured judgmental conclusions that this-FReeper or that-FReeper voted for thus-and-so, or said this or that, based upon whatever motives or intents you randomly assign to those FReepers who have (in your not-so-humble opinions) warranted your purist wrath, so don't hand me that crap about "nothing personal FRiend" because that dog won't hunt.

You are far too eager to assign the worst of motives to your fellow FReepers when the fact is that you are NOT mind readers, you do not have the gift of divining the contents of another's mind or soul.

Now as for this deal about voting 'for' or 'against' someone, simple logic dictates that if you have two candidates, and you cast your vote for 'candidate 1' that by default, you have voted AGAINST 'candidate 2', and vice versa. And it also stands to reason that if (as in 2012) a potential vote that was NOT cast for the Republican ticket, resulted in NOT nullifying a vote that was cast for the 'RAT ticket. It's nothing but a numbers game, if Obama ended up with 'x' number of votes in 2012, if you factor in the total number of votes that were NOT cast for Romney, you end up with the equation of 'x' + 'number of votes not cast' which effectively increased the margin of victory for Obama. It's not rocket science.

You can twist words into all sorts of pretzel-like pseudo logic, but you cannot escape the mathematical truth of the formula I have just described for you.

But to return to the original "don't take it personal" comment of yours, I do exclude EV from my observations of the type and tenor of the comments from 'you and your elk' (that's just some subtle humor there in case you didn't get it the first time), because Eternal Vigilance has always conducted himself as a gentleman without any accusatory rancor directed at others.

The rest of you Defenders of the Conservative Faith would do well to emulate him.

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