RUSH: Last night on the Fox News Channel’s Special Report, correspondent James Rosen interviewed South Carolina Senator Lindsey Grahamnesty, and Grahamnesty said this about the Gang of Ten.
GRAHAM: If your goal is to come back in and embarrass Democrats and not solve the energy prices, you’re missing the point. America will not tolerate either party ignoring this issue. It doesn’t increase taxes by one dime. It’s an incentive. And what I think would be good public policy is to give incentives to create alternatives to oil, not give oil companies an incentive to do what they’re going to do anyway.
RUSH: You know, this is one of our guys. Supposedly this is a Republican talking about alternatives to oil. They’re already out there! They’re being worked on! It’s a snail’s pace. We can’t get rid of it. There are tax increases throughout this bill. It’s a Democrat bill that these Republicans went long with, and they went along with it because they’re under the mistaken notion that the American people want to see the two parties ‘work together’ in Washington. This is a falsehood, and it is a mistaken premise, and it has always been a mistaken premise. Yeah, they might want us to work together in time of war, but we don’t even do that anymore! The Democrats can’t even bring themselves to join the country when we’re at war. I mean, for crying out loud! So why in the world do they think there’s going to be something for them to gain by making a deal that’s written by Democrats?
The silly notion that the American people want to see us work together and get things done? Senator Graham, your voters want to see you wipe the floor with Democrats. They want to see you come up with a plan that will increase the supply of oil, that will lower the price of products, including gasoline. Not something that… But you know what these guys have done? The Gang of Ten bill — as we originally explained it to you a week ago, the Gang of Ten deal — basically bans drilling except in four states, and it limits drilling to 50 miles or more offshore. Well, most of the rich deposits are closer to shore than that. Now, guess what? Jim DeMint has come up with another resolution that Grahamnesty and Saxby Chambliss have signed which basically opens up the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling.
It’s in direct conflict with the Gang of Ten bill that they signed. So don’t tell me they’re not responding to the heat. But I want to see how this works out. I don’t know that either of these are going to become federal law, but the Gang of Ten bill specifically prohibits drilling for oil in areas where the resolution DeMint came up with permits it. So these guys are contradicting themselves. I don’t care what the Democrats are doing. We know what the Democrats are going to do. Senator Graham, I wish you’d look at the Democrats the way you look at the oil companies. This line here, we don’t want to ‘give oil companies incentives to do what they’re going to do anyway.’ We need this product. The oil companies… The oil companies are not the bad guys here! Frankly, I was talking about this at the beginning of the program.
This is more pandering to this high gasoline price, from politicians in both parties believing that a majority of the American people are stupid enough to think that if you throw a bunch of nasty words at the oil companies and raise taxes on the oil companies, somehow gasoline prices are going to come down. They actually think that, and they’re going to have to take nothing harder than simply target the oil companies. That’s pandering. They think that enough Americans will vote for them simply because they also can act like they are mad at the oil companies as members of the Senate or members of the House. They are badly mistaken, and they are really insulting the average intelligence of people of this country if they believe that most people think that gasoline will be cheaper and more plentiful if senators pass resolutions ripping the oil companies to shreds or raising taxes on them. This absence of leadership is just depressing. It is shocking. We live in an opportunity here, politically, to wipe out the liberal Democrats on so many issues here, and we don’t have anybody on our side that even cares to do it or sees the opportunity. It doesn’t seem like we do. Another sound bite here, Bob Corker, Tennessee senator, said this about the Gang of Ten bill.
CORKER: Having been heavily involved in the Republican-only bill, and certainly being heavily involved in this one, this actually has far stronger production provisions and one, to me, that is anything but a sellout.
RUSH: I… I… I… (groans) Senator Corker and the rest of you, you heard Nancy Pelosi, right? You heard Obama: We’re going to get rid of oil in ten years. Pelosi: We’re not going to drill anywhere. She’s going through the machinations of making people think she’s going to allow debate on it. She’s not going to allow passage of any bill on drilling. Senator Corker, do you not understand that the Democrats will come up with something ’cause they know they’re losing on the issue? So they’ll come up with something they think you can sign that will never, ever happen or become law so that they can then go and say, ‘We’re trying to do something about this,’ when they have no earthly reason to be able to claim credit on this issue at all, because the Democrats are the ones standing in the way of progress! Why you think that there is some sort of magic in joining forces with people who are trying to sandbag the whole process of creating more oil resources, especially since you know these people. You know who liberal Democrats are. I just sit here in stunned amazement, and here is James Rosen closing out the piece on Fox.
ROSEN: Still, many conservatives — including Rush Limbaugh — not only reject but seem to resent the Gang of Ten plan.
BAIER: No regrets from those two Gang of Ten?
ROSEN: (snorts) So far not.
RUSH: We will be right back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, folks, let me address this Gang of Ten business in a different way. I didn’t urge you to call these people last time, and I’m not doing that now, you can do that if you want, that’s not the point. The point of this is we are being told, ladies and gentlemen, that we can’t drill our way out of this problem, but we can inflate our way out of it by maintaining our tire pressure. Yes, that’s the brilliance from The Messiah. Okay, we can’t drill our way out of this problem. Let me give you a profundity. Write this down. You cannot legislate new energy technologies into existence. If the market cannot find a replacement for gasoline at four dollars a gallon, the replacement doesn’t exist, and there’s nothing anybody in Congress, Gang of Ten, gang of 100, can do about it. All they can do is stand in the way of the market taking its normal course and meeting the increased demand with more supply. There’s not one piece of legislation, there’s not one thing your president, your congressman, your senator, your mayor, your governor, your dogcatcher, there’s not one thing that your individual representatives can do in the form of writing a new law that will create new energy technologies and put them into existence. It isn’t possible. The market does that.
So this Gang of Ten deal, these people are trying to say that they are coming up with some solution to the four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline price point when they can’t. They cannot legislate a lower gasoline price. Well, they could do that, and I shudder to think, but they can’t create a new technology. All they can do is stand in the way, and they can’t do anything but get out of the way and let existing technology be used more. Right now your elected officials and the entire Democrat Party and, sadly, way too many Republicans as well, have as a official position that we’re not going to do anything to help expand the amount of oil that we get domestically. So the Gang of Ten comes up with this piece of legislation that just convolutes what’s already going on in the market, doesn’t create anything new. It’s a smoke screen designed to make you think they hear you, and they’re pandering to your concerns and your complaints about the price of gasoline. It’s written under the auspices and the authorship of Democrats, who are official and proud when they proclaim there will not be any new drilling. So why these Republicans think that there’s going to be some new drilling because they have agreed to a compromise written by Democrats, whose official position is there won’t be drilling. You got me.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to go back, ladies and gentlemen, to an audio sound bite from a member of the Gang of Ten, Lindsey Grahamnesty that we played in the last hour. There was something he said that I failed to comment on that I need to comment on now. He was talking on the Fox News Channel last night about the Gang of Ten deal.
GRAHAM: If your goal is to come back in and embarrass Democrats and not solve the energy crisis, you’re missing the point. America will not tolerate —
RUSH: That’s it, stop it. Senator Graham is taking a swipe as those of us who oppose his Gang of Ten deal with that comment. When he says, ‘If your goal is to come back in and embarrass Democrats and not solve the energy crisis, you’re missing the point.’ Senator Graham is taking a swipe at all of us here, saying all we want to do is embarrass Democrats and we don’t care about getting prices down. Senator Graham, you couldn’t be further from the truth. This is a sniveling little trick here from Senator Graham; cast anybody who disagrees with him as not wanting to solve the problem. The fact is we do want to solve the problem of energy prices. The people he just soul kissed legislatively are the ones who, as I have said many times, the American people — well, these are the people that want the American people suffering. It is Democrats that want us suffering, they want you mad, they want you upset, they want you blaming Republicans, they want your prices to stay high. That way they can blame the Republicans, give more and more power to the government, cause people to do this.
Never forget this, folks. Legislation cannot create one new technology. The market does that. If there isn’t a new technology to either lower the gas price, create more energy, or come up with an alternative, it’s ’cause the market hasn’t come up with it, not because Congress hasn’t acted. All Congress can do is get in the way of the market functioning in as free a fashion as possible. For this sniveling little senator to sit there and say that people who are disagreeing with this Gang of Ten deal only want a political victory over Democrats but not solve the price crisis is absurd. See, this is the same attitude he had during the amnesty immigration bill. ‘We gotta work with Democrats to get something done. It’s not about embarrassing Democrats here.’ Somebody ought to be thinking about embarrassing Democrats because they’re destroying the country as we know it, Senator Graham. Shazam.