GOP Sells America Down the River

Guest Post by Rush Limbaugh

The country was just sold down the river again by your very Republican Party.

I have a headline here from the Washington Times:  “White House Declares Total Victory Over GOP in Budget Battle.” That headline’s a misnomer.  There was never a battle.  None of this was opposed.  The Republican Party didn’t stand up to any of it, and the die has been cast for a long time on this.  I know many of you are dispirited, depressed, angry, combination of all of that. But, folks, there was no other way this could go. Because two years ago when the Republican Party declared they would never do anything that would shut down the government and they would not impeach Obama, there were no obstacles in Obama’s way and there were no obstacles in the way of the Democrat Party.

When you surrender the power of the purse — and that’s the primary power the House of Representatives has.  Not a penny of money can be spent in this country by this government without the House of Representatives authorizing it.  Obama can spend all he wants, but if the House doesn’t give him the mechanism, he can’t spend any of it.  But the Republicans squandered that.  They gave up the power of the purse.  The reason they did that is because for some inexplicable reason, they are literally paranoid and scared to death of even being accused of doing something that would shut down the government.

So to avoid even the accusation that they were going to or would ever even think of shutting down the government, they signaled that whatever Obama wanted to spend, he would get, because they figured that had less damage to them politically than the allegation that they were shutting down the government.  So, very simply, ever since the Republican Party became the party of keeping the government open at all costs, we get bills like this.  There’s simply no stopping the Democrats.  There’s no mechanism.  Every constitutional mechanism found in the power of the purse, Separation of Powers, the Republican Party years ago gave it away, in total fear of the media.

Now, there’s also a factor that needs to be mentioned, too, and that is that many Republican donors want every bit of this money spent, and they have donated voluminously to key Republicans in order to get the money spent. So it’s not all Republican fears. It’s not all Republican caving.  A lot of it is Republican fealty and loyalty to some of their donors.  Some people today looking at this, and this is 2,009 pages.  It’s said to be a spending bill.  Among the things that it does, it fully funds Obamacare.

It fully funds Planned Parenthood.  That, to me, is unforgivable, with everything now known about what goes on behind closed doors at Planned Parenthood, and that the federal government, led by a Republican Party, sees fit to pay for it.  It is beyond comprehension, and it is a total squandering of moral authority to fully fund the butchery at Planned Parenthood.  This spending bill fully pays for Obama’s refugee plans, fully.  This spending bill, this budget bill quadruples the number of visas Obama wants for foreign workers.  This is even a slap at American union workers.  Not the leaders.  The union leaders seem to be in favor of it, but blue-collar people, known as working people, have been sold down the river along with everybody else here.

This spending bill even fully pays for every dime asked for by Obama on all of this idiocy that’s tied up into climate change.  Everything Obama wanted, everything he asked for, he got.  You go down the list of things, it’s there.

And this is causing some people to wonder if they just dreamed all that stuff about Boehner resigning.  And then other people are wondering if they even dreamed all that stuff about the Republicans winning the largest number of seats they’ve had in Congress since the Civil War.  We had two midterm elections in 2010 and 2014, which were landslide victories for the Republican Party.  The Democrat Party lost over a thousand seats nationwide in just those two elections.  People went to the polls in droves wanting exactly what was rubber-stamped last night (or what will be) stopped.

And instead they showed up in record numbers and they it turned out and they just defeated Democrats down the ballot. In the process, they elected Republicans to stop this.  And now the Republicans have the largest number of seats in the House they’ve had in Congress since the Civil War.  And it hasn’t made any difference at all.  It is as though Nancy Pelosi is still running the House and Harry Reid is still running the Senate.  “Betrayed” is not even the word here.  What has happened here is worse than betrayal. Betrayal is pretty bad, but it’s worse than that.

This was out-and-out, in-our-face lying, from the campaigns to individual statements made about the philosophical approach Republicans had to all this spending.  There is no Republican Party!  You know, we don’t even need a Republican Party if they’re gonna do this.  You know, just elect Democrats, disband the Republican Party, and let the Democrats run it, because that’s what’s happening anyway.  And these same Republican leaders doing this can’t, for the life of them, figure out why Donald Trump has all the support that he has?  They really can’t figure this out?

Repeated stabs in the back like this — which have been going on for years — combined with Obama’s policy destruction of this country, is what has given rise to Donald Trump.  If Donald Trump didn’t exist and if the Republican Party actually does want to win someday, they’d have to invent him.  It’s just mind-boggling when you figure out everything that has been granted Obama. All the money, the tax increases, the Cadillac plans in Obamacare. All kinds of punitive things in Obamacare, delayed yet again so that people will not be made aware of the pain and suffering Obamacare’s gonna cause.

This budget even gives Obamacare cover by delaying some of the most harsh aspects of it.  And the reason for that is, delay the harsh aspects and you prevent people from learning what they are, at the same time you get more years for the tentacles of Obamacare to deeply weave themselves into the fabric of society, making repeal of the thing more politically difficult.  So you could also say that the Republican budget bill actually improves the odds of Obamacare surviving and growing.  You have to look long and hard for this whole thing to find any opposition to anything the Democrat Party wants.

Jeff Sessions, senator from Alabama, is calling this a betrayal, fully funding the Obama immigration agenda, the climate change agenda, increasing foreign workers.  He said, “This is why Trump is now triumphing here and probably will win.  The voters have come to believe that their own party’s elites are not only uninterested in defending their interests, but — as with this legislation and fast tracking the president’s international trade deal — Republican voters would not be wrong to conclude that their own Republican leaders are hostile to them, just as Democrat leaders are hostile to Republican voters.”

And as Sessions points out, “This legislation represents a further disenfranchisement of the American voter.” Clearly! In the last two midterm elections, the American electorate has stood up and loudly stated, ‘No. We don’t want this. Stop this.”  It didn’t matter.  It’s so bad that over at Slate.com they’re making excuses for Paul Ryan.  I think in some places in the left-wing media, they can’t believe the scope of the betrayal.  They’re feeling a little guilty at how easy this has been.  They’re feeling a little guilty here.  I’m joking, of course.  But one of the Salon.com columnists said, “Hey, you know, you guys need to cut Ryan some slack.  He was left with a huge mess and not much time to fix it.”

Isn’t that what they always said with Boehner? “He was left with a huge mess”? Isn’t that what they always say about Obama?  “He was left with a huge mess. Man, it was much worse than he even knew.  Nobody told him the truth.”  It seems to be a constant refrain and excuse.  “According to Sessions, the American people elected Republicans to the majority in Congress in 2014 as a rejection of the Obama administration’s immigration policies,” and any number of other things. “‘That loyalty has been repaid with betrayal,’ he said. … Sessions added, ‘As feared, the effect is to fund the president’s entire immigration agenda.'”

“Planned Parenthood Unscathed in Spending Bill,” from a very happy and cheering TheHill.com.  “Planned Parenthood is praising Democrats in Congress after the spending bill released early Wednesday morning spared the organization from cuts.  As expected, the spending bill does not defund Planned Parenthood, a clear deal-breaker for Democrats, but the absence of spending cuts is still noteworthy given the intensity of the push to defund the group…” There was never any intensity to… It’s what we now know.

There wasn’t any intensity to defund.  All there was is just a bunch of words, just a bunch of people standing up saying they were going to.  This wouldn’t stand.  They were gonna lead an effort to defund it. But nobody ever meant it.  “Planned Parenthood Vice President Dana Singiser praised congressional Democrats on Wednesday for ‘holding the line against these harmful policy riders and cuts to key women’s health programs.'”  Also from TheHill.com, another reporter cheering as well. “Funds for Obama Climate Deal Survive.”

They were never threatened, never in peril.  There wasn’t a battle.  “Secret Deal Quadruples Foreign Workers — Chamber of Commerce Backs Guest Worker Program.”  Translation:  More cheap labor will eagerly be brought into the country under a visa program or they will be employed.  “Hey, why not, Rush?  The unemployment’s rate’s 5%.  We got plenty of room for foreign workers.”  Right.  That, to me… All this Republican campaign stuff going on obfuscating or clouding this a little bit, but that really is the news of the last 12 to 18 hours.