RUSH: Somebody asked me this morning, it was Mr. Snerdley. Mr. Snerdley came in today, and said, “Does it ever get boring?” And I said, “What are you talking about?” “Everything you mention, everything you predict, when it comes to the Democrats, comes true!” I said, “What are you talking about?” “This Amtrak stuff, everything you told us yesterday, the Democrats are doing, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, no matter what else.” No, it never gets boring.

You know, I used to ask professional golfers that, “Does it ever get boring hitting it straight every time?” They said, “Never.” “Does it ever get boring the ball going where you want it to go?” “Never.” I said, “Really?” I would never know on the golf course, but I know about this, and, folks, it never gets boring being able to predict. It gets frustrating that it always works.

By the way, great to have you, Rush Limbaugh, 800-282-2882.

So we have a tragedy. We have a down-to-earth tragedy. We have a train derailing. We’ve got people dead. We’ve got hundreds of people injured, and the first thing the Democrat Party sees is an opportunity. They want you to see, or want you to think that they are the ones that see tragedy and that have the compassion necessary to deal with it. They don’t see the tragedy.

They see the opportunity. It’s the Republicans that see the tragedy and get caught flat-footed dealing with it that way. It’s amazing. Within minutes of this train derailment you just knew the word “infrastructure” was gonna be bandied about all over the place, and it was.

The word “infrastructure” was halfway around the world before anybody found out that infrastructure had nothing to do with this, that it was a driver, an engineer, who now says he doesn’t remember, who was doing twice the choo-choo train’s speed limit at the turn. So now it’s infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, and the low-information voters, what do they end up knowing?

Well, to find out you gotta go to Yahoo News, turn on CNN, or whatever it is, Facebook, whatever they get their news, and they’re going to once again hear that a terrible accident happened because the Republicans are chintzy, the Republicans are cheap, the Republicans don’t care about people. So, no, it doesn’t get boring being able to predict it, but it gets frustrating that the Democrats get away with this all the time.

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RUSH: It’s the same old, same old. It’s the same old story. It’s the same old tactic. It’s the same pattern repeated time and time and time again, and the low-information voter’s conclusion once again is that the Republicans are cheapskates. They’re chintzy. They only care about the rich. They don’t care about the poor, they don’t care about the middle class, and they don’t care if people die.

Now, the Republicans did push back on the floor of the House. They had some serious arguments that took place on that. We have the audio sound bites to back all of this up. Oh, by the way, did you know — and I’m not saying there’s any big deal about this, mind you. Did you know that the engineer, the Amtrak engineer, was a same-sex marriage advocate? (interruption) You didn’t know that? (interruption) Well, I’m not making a big deal of it.

That’s not my point, to say that the Amtrak engineer was an advocate for gay marriage. I’m not trying to make a big deal out of that. (interruption) If he was a Tea Party supporter, can you imagine? That would be the reason for everything. If he was a Tea Party supporter, you know what they would say? “Well, it all makes sense now! He was reading blogs or he was reading the latest Tea Party literature! He was all excited about taking it to Obama and embarrassing the Democrats, and he took his eyes off the tracks.”

But gay marriage activist? What could he have been doing instead of watching tracks? I mean, if we’re gonna play this the way the media…? I mean, if the guy were a Tea Party activist, that’s all you would say know about him, right? (interruption) Can we agree on this? If he was a Tea Party activist, if he listened to talk radio, that’s all we would know about the guy, and it would be the reason why he was guilty.

And it might even overcome the idea that there wasn’t enough spending on infrastructure. But he wasn’t Tea Party; he wasn’t a radio talk show fan. He was and is a supporter of gay marriage. So if we played the game the way they do, what would we speculate the engineer was doing instead of watching the tracks, as an advocate for gay marriage? (interruption) Same-sex mar…? (interruption) What would you think you might be doing? (interruption) Hmm? (interruption) “Entertaining himself” how? (interruption) Specifically, sir, what are you referring to when you say…?

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RUSH: Now, back to the Amtrak derailment here. I have some audio sound bites on this that I want you to hear. But let me go through some things here, because the very first thing that happens… Look at the New York Times headline: “One Day After Wreck, Increased Funding for Amtrak Fails in a House Panel.” You can’t have any more purposeful bias in a news story and headline than that: “One Day After Wreck, Increased Funding for Amtrak Fails in a House Panel”?

So idiots that read the New York Times are supposed to conclude that the derailment happened because the Republicans are cheap, and don’t care about people and don’t like trains. “That’s right, the Republicans don’t like trains. You know why? Because trains are big in Europe, and the Democrats love Europe, and leftists love Europe. That means leftists love trains, and Republicans hate Europe, and Republicans hate leftists, and Republicans hate socialists, and socialists love trains, so Republicans hate trains.”

I mean, that’s how it goes. That’s the line of thought. That is the message for your average Democrat Party base voter and low-information voter. But let’s review, shall we? Let’s plug some reality into all this. The over $800 billion stimulus bill back in 2009 was an infrastructure bill (so we were told) to repair roads, bridges, schools, and all that. It turns out to be as big a lie as Obamacare. The stimulus bill wasn’t about infrastructure any more than Obamacare is about affordable health insurance.

Both the stimulus bill and Obamacare are executive fraud, pure and simple. More money has been misdirected and misspent in Obamacare and the stimulus bill than we can comprehend. But the point is, you can never fully fund fraud. You can never satisfy con men. And fraud is what we have been subjected to all too often from our government. There’s way too much, way too often, and you cannot fully fund it. Fraud is never, ever, totally paid for.

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I want to finish my train of thought on all of this fraud that is occurring to the American people. It didn’t start with Obama, and I don’t want anybody to think that that’s what I believe. Fraud, at the highest levels of US government, has been going on for a while. It would be hard, actually, to peg when it began.

Washington is where every dollar in this country goes, to then be disbursed. There’s a reason so many people want to live in Washington. If you want money, that’s where it is; that’s where it’s allocated; that’s where it’s taxed; that’s where it’s collected; that’s where it’s banked; that’s where it is spent.

So it’s just obvious that people would go there. When there’s a big pile of money around and all you have to do is just maybe reach your fist out and grab some of it, it’s very tempting. But the degree and the level of fraud and deceit in the past six and a half years is so bad and so deep that it’s the reason we have the Tea Party. The degree of fraud, the irresponsible spending and money that we don’t have, has millions of Americans legitimately concerned for the future of the country, particularly in terms of economic opportunity for their kids and grandkids, because people instinctively know.

So here comes Obama in 2009, his first couple of months in office, loving the fact that the economy’s in bad shape, blame it on Bush, blame it on Iraq, just continue that theme and say, “You know what? I’m gonna come out here, I’m gonna step on the gas and I’m gonna get this economy kicking again. I’m gonna get it churning. We’re gonna speed back that recovery. I want $800 billion to stimulate this economy.” And the low-information crowd, “Yay,” new president can do anything he wants.

They love him. Whatever they want him to be is who he is. So they’re gonna jump-start the economy and he adds to it by telling and promising people he’s gonna rebuild all these roads and bridges and schools, and it’s gonna be utopia, man, it’s gonna be so cool. Finally somebody knows what to do. Nobody stops to think that there is no way to pump $800 billion of found money that’s not already being used into the economy, because we’re already, at that point, $12 trillion in debt.

Where do you get the $800 billion that you’re gonna pump into the economy, for example? It’s not as though there’s $800 billion laying around that isn’t being used. It’s not as though there’s $800 billion or a trillion or $500 million or a quarter, there’s not that money laying around idle that you can just take it and put it in a syringe and inject it into the economy and massively grow it. That’s not how it happens. Where does the government get the money?

They have to take it in the form of taxes or borrowing. They take the money from the economy that they’re gonna stimulate. It simply was mathematically economically impossible to stimulate the federal economy the way they did it. The way they did it was to take $800 million out of it and then put it back in. But it was worse than that. Because the money didn’t go to infrastructure. It didn’t go to roads and bridges and schools and all that. It went to union employees so that they would not lose be their jobs, so that their dues would continue to be paid and circuitously end up back in campaign coffers of Democrats.

It was total fraud, just like Obamacare. The stimulus bill was not about infrastructure any more than Obamacare is about affordable health insurance. As I said before the break, you cannot fully fund fraud. You can never satisfy con men. Look, when Elizabeth Warren said this, the Democrats stood up and cheered and Obama even picked up on it. The Democrats tell us we didn’t build our businesses, that they did.

They tell us that we did not raise our families. They did. A village did. You didn’t achieve anything on your own. You got nothing to brag about. You got nothing to feel good about. Your success wouldn’t have happened without us, the Democrats. Your kids turn out the way they are because of us, because of all of our education and our preschool and kindergarten, all that stuff, Head Start. We are raising your kids, the village, you don’t know how to do it. Hillary wrote the book about it. They tells us that we don’t care about our kids. That’s why they have to take over. Yet look at the crud Michelle Obama decides to feed your kids at what is called lunch in the public schools. Her husband has tried to take away school choice from those who need it most.

So you didn’t build your business; they did. You didn’t raise your families. No, no. The village did, the Democrat Party, the American left, they know how, they care more. You’re not even any good at feeding your kids. Michelle Obama had to take that over. And look at it. They tell us we don’t care enough about infrastructure, but we handed them $800 billion, when they assured us they were gonna rebuild all these things.

Even after it was learned that the train was going twice the speed limit, didn’t matter. Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, Republicans are cheap, accident because of Republicans not caring about average people. Republicans only care about the rich. Average people died, Republicans don’t care. We Democrats do. Well, where were all of the speed reduction systems? There’s supposed to be some. But do you know the national transportation safety board has given Amtrak until the end of the year to install them all. They weren’t installed yet.

At some point there will be speed arrest devices on these tracks, but they’re not there yet. Not in time. Who’s running the show here? Who’s in charge of all this infrastructure spending? Who’s in charge of fixing roads, bridges, schools? Who has been in charge of everything for the past seven years? And yet magically and mysteriously, it’s always the Republicans’ fault.

When normal people yesterday, average, ordinary, the people that make this country work, when they were mourning the dead, when they were seriously worried about the accident and the damage and the injuries, the Democrats were out celebrating a crisis while the bodies were still scattered across an accident site.

The Democrats saw the dead bodies, they saw the injured, they saw the mangled wreckage, and what did they see? They saw an opportunity to advance their agenda. They saw an opportunity to expand government. They saw an opportunity to once again defame conservatives and Republicans. They misstated facts, such as dilapidated infrastructure was the cause of the derailment. They did that to get more guilt money to launder for their political party.

But that’s the MO, folks, that’s the MO of the Democrat Party. This is how Democrats work. Clinton Crime Family Foundation is the stimulus bill, is Obamacare, it’s a lie packaged as compassion.

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RUSH: This is Ron in Houston. Great to have you. Welcome to the program, Ron.

CALLER: Redstone dittos to you, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: You know, I think more of our federal budget ought to be allocated toward physical resources. Like not necessarily Amtrak ’cause it’s not making money, but in 1960 15% of our federal budget went to physical resources and only 35% went to transfer payments. In 2004, that’s turned around. Now only about 5% goes to physical resources, and two-thirds of the federal budget goes to transfer payments.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: The physical resources, that’s investment; that’s stimulation of the economy.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: Transfer payments don’t stimulate the economy.

RUSH: Oh, yes, they do!

CALLER: No, they don’t.

RUSH: Yes, they do! You have forgotten Nancy Pelosi. Every $1 of unemployment benefits creates $1.50 in economic growth.

CALLER: Well, that’s what Nancy says.

RUSH: Well, she does. Look, you can give me those numbers all day long. The numbers prove nothing’s gonna change. Two-thirds of the budget is transfer payments. That means two-thirds of the budget is spent buying votes for the Democrat Party. It isn’t going to change. Whatever figure you gave for resources, if infrastructure is included… Some of this infrastructure stuff is state level, by the way. Not all of it is federal. Now, Amtrak would be federal, but not every road and bridge and school is federal.

It’s up to states to do some of this stuff, too. Or a combined federal-state effort. But the way the Democrat Party is structured today… Use your number and let’s say it’s accurate, that 5% of the federal budget is for infrastructure. Fine and dandy. That just means the Democrats are gonna have some crumbling infrastructure they can blame on the Republicans. You have to understand what the purpose is here. Do not make the mistake of thinking the Democrat Party is about responsible government, good governance. It isn’t.

Today’s Democrat Party — and I don’t know how long ago you have to go back to be able to say that the Democrat Party had people in it that were focused on good governance, responsible government and all that. All I know is you’ve gotta go back a long way. Today, the whole purpose of virtually everything is the advancement of the Democrat Party agenda, and the Democrat Party agenda can be summed up in basically two things: The never-ending growth of government and the demise of any opposition.

That is the Democrat Party agenda.

They are not interested in debate.

They’re not interested in being shown that they’re wrong and how to improve.

They’re not interested in any of that. They’re not interested in fiscal responsibility. They’re not interested in proper budgeting or any of that. The Democrat Party is completely leftist, radical, and extreme now, and it is not interested in the things… The numbers that you gave me: Two-thirds is transfer payments and 5% is infrastructure, and you said if they would just switch that a little bit, we could have some economic growth? They don’t care about that.

They believe that the private sector economy — however you want to call it, the economy, the private sector, whatever. They think it’s a golden goose that will always lay eggs. They think it’s always going to have enough money that they will always be able to take whatever they want from it. They don’t think they will ever kill it. They don’t even… They wouldn’t mind if they made it smaller and smaller and smaller. They don’t believe any of the horror stories that the economy with shrink and go into negative growth over protracted lengths of time, even if we had depressions.

They think they can spend their way out of that. So there isn’t anything spending money won’t fix. And the more things that need spending money, the better for them. I’m not kidding! If you really want to understand today’s Democrats, you’ve got to erase any notion that they are about good government, proper spending, good governance. That’s not what it’s about in any way, shape, manner or form.

We’re in the midst of what the Democrat Party thinks could be the last necessary power grab. They believe if they play their cards right in the next two years, there will not be a viable Republican Party to even worry about. That’s what they want. They want to eliminate opposition. They don’t care about a fair playing field or any of that folderol.

Jeff in Anderson, Indiana. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. It’s great to have you here. Hello.

CALLER: Dittos, Rush. Hey, our tax dollars are spent running the Amtrak trains, and we have to pay for the so-called union expert train engineers. Now they’re getting ready to ask us to spend more of our tax dollars so they can computerize the trains so they can slow down, because it’s obviously too hard for a union guy to slow down on a corner. Not to mention the scam of how they get their retirements jacked up to high.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: Just wanted your input on it. Thank you, Maha Rushie.

RUSH: What specifically are you seeking input on? Your theory, or is there a specific question?

CALLER: Well, I guess more of a comment. You know, “Do it the union way. We’ve got the best workers in the world,” and then they’re not about to go up and say, “Boy, this union worker just was too lazy to pull back on the throttle.” They want to blame it on “infrastructure.” They want to —

RUSH: No, no. No, no. Yeah, yeah. Okay. When this is all over, the driver is not gonna have any culpability or responsibility whatsoever. If it is that the —

CALLER: He would if he was a Tea Party guy.

RUSH: Pardon?

CALLER: He would if he was a Tea Party guy. (laughing)

RUSH: Well, of course. But this guy is a gay marriage activist, and he claims that he fell asleep right as the train… Well, he says he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember what happened. He remembers going into the turn, and then after that it’s all blank. He doesn’t remember. So therefore he can’t be blamed. He wouldn’t be blamed anyway. It doesn’t matter. The real reason this happened is going to be obscured in favor of the Republicans don’t care enough to properly fund it.

Folks, why did Baltimore happen? Why is Freddie Gray dead? Because the Republicans don’t believe in properly funding the inner city. Republicans don’t like minorities. Republicans have stood in the way every time the Democrats have asked for more funding for these poverty-stricken inner city areas. So, therefore, Baltimore is all the fault of Republicans, even though a Republican can’t even get noticed there. There aren’t enough of ’em. The Republicans haven’t had anything to say about what happens in Baltimore since the 1960s.

The Democrats have run that town and the suburbs — most of them — for decades. Doesn’t matter. So here we have a train derailment, and the union’s not gonna get blamed and the driver isn’t gonna get blamed, especially if it’s his fault. That’s gonna get covered up as best the Democrats could do it, because they’ve got this readymade, how-many-votes-they-can-already-count excuse. That train derailed…

Folks, this is defamation. The message they’re putting out is: “The train derailed because Republicans don’t care about people. We know that because the Republicans chose not to spend enough money on infrastructure.” It’s automatic. Every time one of these things happens, the Democrats trot out their preferred explanation. Sometimes they stick; sometimes they don’t. They always try to blame the Tea Party when a mass shooting takes place. Those have blown up in their faces.

They haven’t yet been able to convert one of those into a national movement for gun control. But that’s what they try to do. In a case like this, Republicans don’t care. Freddie Gray, inner city turmoil, Gentle Giant? Republicans, Republicans, Republicans don’t care. And if they can make it stick, then that’s what they’re going to stay with. As far as, you know, you’re looking at this realistically, “Okay, we’ve got a unionized driver. Union workers, we are told, are the best workers in America, and yet here’s a guy that doesn’t remember what happened.”

This is made to order for the Democrats.

How can we blame him? We don’t know what happened. He doesn’t remember. We don’t know why the train was doing twice the speed limit. But I guarantee you, they’ll try to blame that on lack of infrastructure. They’ll say that there were speed-arresting devices that were supposed to have been installed, but for some reason they weren’t. If they haven’t been installed, it’s because of this Regime has other priorities, but they’ll blame that on the Republicans for not funding it.

Look, I have some sound bites backing all this stuff up, I’m sure, here in the roster.

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RUSH: Here we go. This afternoon on the House floor during one-minute speeches this is Democrat Corrine Brown from Florida.

BROWN: It is sad that the Republicans, on the day that seven or eight people died and 200 was injured, voted to cut funding for Amtrak. It is a shame that in the people’s house, the people’s house, that the people that represent the people are stuck on stupid. We need a comprehensive transportation system and we need to stop starving Amtrak. It is amazing that this House voted the day of the accident to cut Amtrak. It is unacceptable.

RUSH: You see how this works? None of what she said happened. The budget and the transportation department, this debate has been ongoing for weeks. So here comes the Amtrak accident, which it’s gonna be human error unless, you know, something to do with global warming caused that train to speed up on its own. Never know. Something might have happened out there to cause that train to speed up on its own and fail to make that turn ’cause it was exceeding the speed limit by a factor of two.

But this is all because (imitating Brown), “We got stuck on stupid. Two hundred people by the people of the people for the people, we’re screwing the people by undercutting the Amtrak budget. Damn.” That’s her voters, every damn one of them, this is what they’re all gonna think. Here’s Steve Israel, who’s the former head, may still be, Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee during House Appropriations Committee hearing on transportation funding for the fiscal year 2016.

ISRAEL: They expect us to watch over their safety when they get on trains, when they?’re on planes, when they?’re in cars on highways, and last night we failed them. We failed to invest in their safety. We failed to make their safety a priority. What we should have been doing is subsidizing the safety of those passengers on that Amtrak train yesterday. So this is just a matter of simple priorities. Thoughts are wonderful, prayers are critically important, but priorities are important as well.

RUSH: So you see it derails, and it’s a Republican caused event, and why? Because there isn’t enough money, and why? Because the Republicans don’t care about people’s safety. The Republicans are not willing to subsidize nor are they willing to invest in the safety of the passengers on that Amtrak train yesterday. Now, all the other Amtrak trains I guess were properly funded, and I guess all the other Amtrak trains yesterday, the day before, today, next day, tomorrow, whatever, I guess the Republicans care about the people on those trains. And I guess the Republicans properly funded those trains.

But this one train that derailed, somehow the Republicans targeted it, and they didn’t properly fund it, and they didn’t have enough compassion, and they didn’t have enough care, therefore there wasn’t enough safety. This one train that derailed, traced right back to the Republicans and the lack of hearts that we know they don’t have. It’s so predictable that you would think by now the Republicans would have an answer to this. Now, we did get one. This is Mike Simpson yesterday during the House Appropriations Committee, same meeting that Israel was just speaking out, and Simpson responded to it.

SIMPSON: You have no idea, no idea what caused this accident. And to use that as a means of supporting the last amendment, support it if you want to, but don’t use this tragedy in that way. It was beneath you.

ISRAEL: But continuing to divest from safety and training and training of personnel is a lack of priorities, but that is the point that I was making.

SIMPSON: Would the gentlemen yield?

ISRAEL: I will.

SIMPSON: That’s not what you said. You tied it directly to an accident, a tragedy that happened last night and suggested because we hadn’t funded it, that’s what caused that accident, and you have no idea what caused it, and that’s a shame.

RUSH: He doesn’t care. You can’t shame these people. And he added something to it. We divested from safety and training, and the training of personnel, lack of priorities. So this one train, in this one trip, the Republicans decided not to properly train the driver, the engineer. Man, look at how we’re undercutting Amtrak. Look at how much the Republicans don’t care. This one incident gets folded into all the others. We need Obamacare because the Republicans don’t care if you get sick and die, see. We need to get out of Iraq because Republicans don’t care that American soldiers get killed. We have to get out because Republicans don’t care that our soldiers are raping and murdering Iraqi women and children. We gotta get out because the Republicans are doing all this horrible, rotten stuff.

And here’s the mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, who all of a sudden has presidential aspirations and some people are even taking it seriously. He’s on Capitol Hill yesterday, bipartisan group from around the country, press conference, to talk about lobbying Congress on the transportation bill.

DE BLASIO: This is a wake-up call. It’s a reminder of how much we depend on our mass transit, how many we depend on our roads and bridges, how much our safety is directly linked to the kind of investments we make in how we get around.

RUSH: Again, $800 billion in 2009 for just this purpose, and it didn’t get spent rebuilding roads, rebuilding bridges, schools, you name it. I can’t tell you the number of infrastructure bills and pieces of legislation. This Regime, the Democrat Party has been running this country for the last seven years, and yet it’s all the Republicans’ fault.