GOP Sells America Down the River
December 17, 2015
RUSH: 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.
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/12/17/gop_sells_america_down_the_river
