RUSH: The State-Controlled Media hates Jim Bunning. We have a montage.
ED SCHULTZ: (music) Jim Bunning has been acting like not a real good guy.
LARRY O’DONNELL: Bunning is regarded as a very, very strange man with a nasty temper.
CHRIS HAYES: A bizarre character.
DANA BASH: (background noise) Bunning does not have a good relationship with his Republican leadership.
BOB BECKEL: He slid into too many bases head first.
JONATHAN KARL: Known for throwing brush-back pitches and isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Jim Bunning… He has a track record of saying terrible, terrible things.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He’s been behaving in a way that’s certainly outside the box.
JAY NEWTON-SMALL Look, he’s 78 years old. He’s really bitter.
DAVID CORN: He’s been erratic for years.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Angry words and an obscene gesture.
KELLY O’DONNELL: (background noise) A reputation for being prickly.
LARRY O’DONNELL: Bunning shot him the middle finger.
RUSH: Yeah. It was a Senators-only elevator. All the guy’s doing is standing up for a Senate rule called paygo.
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RUSH: All this is about unemployment compensation extension. He’s all for that. Bunning says he’s all for continuing benefits. He said, ‘We just got a new rule here that we gotta pay for it.’ Senator Bunning, the next time you take to the Senate floor, suggest to Dingy Harry: ‘Look at how much unspent money from the Porkulus bill is there and how much unspent TARP money. Why do we need to spend more than we don’t have? Why don’t you go get whatever this bill requires from what you’ve already allocated and be done with it?’
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RUSH: I want you to listen to this stuff again, all these media people talking about Bunning. It’s more appropriate if they were talking about Harry Reid. These comments about Bunning apply much more to Harry Reid than they do to Jim Bunning, who is a great guy. You know, Harry Reid could have easily dealt with this today but he didn’t. The Politico even says that rather than change things up a bit and address Bunning’s issue Harry Reid let the unemployment fund stall because he’s got a tourism bill he needed to work on to save his butt back in Nevada. But when you listen to this sound like they’re saying the R-word without using the R-word when they describe Bunning? Listen to it again and keep in mind they are more apt descriptions of Harry Reid than they are Jim Bunning.
ED SCHULTZ: (music) Jim Bunning has been acting like not a real good guy.
LARRY O’DONNELL: Bunning is regarded as a very, very strange man with a nasty temper.
CHRIS HAYES: A bizarre character.
DANA BASH: (background noise) Bunning does not have a good relationship with his Republican leadership.
BOB BECKEL: He slid into too many bases head first.
JONATHAN KARL: Known for throwing brush-back pitches and isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Jim Bunning… He has a track record of saying terrible, terrible things.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He’s been behaving in a way that’s certainly outside the box.
JAY NEWTON-SMALL Look, he’s 78 years old. He’s really bitter.
DAVID CORN: He’s been erratic for years.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Angry words and an obscene gesture.
KELLY O’DONNELL: (background noise) A reputation for being prickly.
LARRY O’DONNELL: Bunning shot him the middle finger.
RUSH: Sounds to me more like Harry Reid characterizations than it does Jim Bunning. Now, yesterday in Claremont, Florida, ‘Nobody Messes with Joe’ held a press conference to talk about Recovery Act funding for highway projects, and here is a portion of his remarks.
BIDEN: One of Bill’s colleagues is standing on the floor of the United States as we speak. He’s standing there, and preventing the Senate from being able to move forward on doing the kind of thing we’re doing here today. What’s that mean? (angry) Four hundred thousand people will be kicked off the rolls this month if he has his way!
RUSH: Come on, everybody knows these unemployment benefits are going to be extended. It’s gonna get done. This is how the Democrats play the game trying to make it look like Bunning doesn’t care. What Bunning knows is that this country is fit to be tied over this out-of-control spending. Jim Bunning knows that there is more anger in this country over spending than there is over any other issue. There is more anger over spending and the economy and lack of jobs, and Jim Bunning is a hero to people here for trying to finally get the Senate to abide by its paygo rules. But again, folks, the smidgen amount of money in this bill that Bunning is holding up? The money has already been allocated and unspent in any number of other areas. The Porkulus bill, the TARP bill, we know that not all that money has been spent. So why add to it? Why add onto it? It’s silly and it’s destructive and it’s purposeful. Now, here’s Robert Gibbs yesterday at the daily press briefing. During the Q&A, a reporter says, ‘Does the White House see this episode with Senator Bunning as something isolated or is there something larger you’re trying to draw attention to here?’
GIBBS: I think what we’re trying to draw attention to is the fact that hundreds of thousands of people who’ve lost their job and lost their health care because of that and their unemployment benefits, all that is threatened because one person has decided to stop the entire process. It’s hard to bargain with somebody when, if you say, ‘I won’t do that because of this,’ and you say, ‘Well, how about we vote on that?’ and you (sic) say, ‘I object?’
RUSH: As usual, the White House press secretary making absolutely zero sense, and I’m not going to waste your time or mine translating it. Let’s go to the Senate floor late yesterday, Jim Bunning.
BUNNING: If we can’t find $10 billion to pay for something that we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of this US Senate. I have offered several ways to do this, including trying to negotiate with the majority leader’s staff. None have been successful. We cannot keep adding to the debt. It’s over $14 trillion and going up fast. If the budget that is before us passes, it will add another $1.5 trillion to the debt.
RUSH: Dingy Harry is not interested in solving this. He likes the press helping his party portray Republicans as heartless, cold, mean-spirited, unfeeling extremists when in fact they’re trying to enforce a little spending discipline on an out-of-control Congress. I guarantee you, the anger at all this spending is huge. People know they can’t live their own lives like this, and they know the government can’t, either. It’s out of control, simply out of control. Dingy Harry doesn’t want to negotiate. He wants the issue out there. Gibbs wants the issue out there. Obama wants it out there. All the press wants it out there. And this is how much, and to what a great degree, they’re just out of touch with people in the country. Here’s Dingy Harry playing the violin for these poor wretches standing in line for unemployment benefits that will not be available because of the evil troll, Jim Bunning.
HARRY REID: My friends on the other side of the aisle are opposing extending unemployment benefits for people who are out of work. Where was my friend from Kentucky when we had two wars that were unpaid for during the Bush administration; tax cuts that cost more than a trillion dollars, unpaid for? Where was my friend and the Republicans objecting to that? I hope Republicans will reconsider, think about their constituents standing in the unemployment line as we speak.
RUSH: They’re not standing in the unemployment line. They’re standing in the unemployment benefits line. I saw on CNBC today… I’m going to have to go back and see if I can source this. I think I was on CNBC where a guy, a recipient is getting 30 grand in unemployment compensation? What did I do with that? He’s getting $30,000 of unemployment compensation. If he’s got a wife and she’s unemployed, that’s 60 grand. Plus they’ve got food stamps. If that number is pretty representative, then we can’t keep going. None of this can be sustained. Nobody is going to start looking for work. We’re now extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks. None of this, none of this is sustainable and there’s one voice of some sort of sanity addressing this issue in the United States Senate. So Dick Durbin was next up. He had to whine about Jim Bunning yesterday afternoon on the Senate floor.
DURBIN: When the victims in the middle of the debate are unemployed people, I don’t think that’s fair. This one young man, David Senor, showed me a list of 300 applications that he had made to try to find a job during the last year. He said, ‘I go online every day,’ and this is a man who had worked for years, had a strong work record until he was laid off, and he said, ‘I just can’t find anything. I’m desperate. I’m trying everything I can think of and now you’re going to cut off my unemployment benefits.’
RUSH: No your unemployment benefits are not going to be ‘cut off.’ All these federal workers being furloughed, you know they’re going to get their back pay. Nobody is going to lose a dime here. Everybody knows this. This little episode here is a great illustration, a microcosm of the difference in the two parties and exactly who’s out of touch and who’s in touch and exactly how destructive to the country as we know it the Democrat Party has become. So it continued this morning. On the floor, Jim Bunning keeps stating his case.
BUNNING: It’s really hypocritical of the Democratic side of this aisle passing a paygo bill — what does paygo mean? It means you pay for the bills as they appear on the floor of the US Senate — and then to present a bill that not only is not paid for but just paid for a little bit, paid for a third of. That was the Reid bill on the jobs bill that he presented to us: $5 billion was paid for, $10 billion was not.
RUSH: Harry Reid calls Bunning a hypocrite.
HARRY REID: My friend just is… He’s throwing around words like ‘hypocrite.’ People can make their own decision as to who is a hypocrite.
RUSH: We have.
HARRY REID: I’m not calling anyone ‘hypocrite,’ although I’m just stating the facts. Someone boasts about the good effects of paygo but votes against it, talks about the doc fix but votes against it. So I would think that, uh, my friend from Kentucky should get a different historian to help him with his facts because they’re simply wrong. So I object.
RUSH: Yeah, go ahead! This is the guy who said at the health summit last week, ‘Reconciliation? You may be entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts, Lamar. You can’t sit there and say that! Nobody’s talking about reconciliation.’ That’s all anybody was talking about. That’s all they’re talking about now. So when Dingy Harry says somebody is not entitled to their own facts, the way I interpret it is, he doesn’t have any to support his own argument.
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RUSH: Somewhere Virginia. This is Nancy. Great to have you on the program.
CALLER: Hello, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: I’m calling you after being floored yesterday. I’m one of the 2,000 employees in the Department of Transportation who was told to go home yesterday, and I just wanted to give you some thoughts, because I support Jim Bunning and I support everything he’s saying because I care more about the future of the country and my children’s future and my long-term financial viability than I do about this job. And I didn’t just start working there yesterday. I have a long federal career, and the way that the leadership talked to us yesterday, they were very apologetic, it was such a surprise because we’ve had continuing resolutions so many times before.
RUSH: Hm-hm.
CALLER: It’s always passed without a problem so they were really shocked that somebody actually stood up and voted against it this time. They were livid.
RUSH: I appreciate you calling here. Now I know why you identified your location as somewhere.
CALLER: Yes. Because I will tell you, I live a life of politically correct hell. I have to watch everything I say, I have to not disclose my true feelings about some of the things that we work on that is nothing but a boondoggle and squandering of the taxpayers’ money. I have to watch things go on every day that I think most taxpayers would not be proud of. And I also work with a lot of dedicated, caring people who try to do a good job and we do a lot of good work in the Department of Transportation. Anybody that’s driven on the roads and bridges lately knows we do a lot of good work. But mixed in with that —
RUSH: Well, except in Minneapolis.
CALLER: Mixed in with that is a lot of stuff honest hardworking people should not be having to deal with. And I have relatives all over the country, I sent them all e-mails this morning begging them to please — I told them I have been furloughed and I said, ‘Please contact the Republican leadership and your representatives and urge them to support Jim Bunning,’ and don’t leave him standing out there by himself.
RUSH: Well, he is for now.
CALLER: For now.
RUSH: Very gutsy on your part. I just want to correct one thing.
CALLER: If I’d really been gutsy, I would have given you my real name, Rush.
RUSH: I appreciate that. This is instructive in itself. This is a woman who works for federal government afraid for anybody to know who she is in the federal government. At any rate, Bunning is not — this may sound like a technical point — he’s not voting to furlough you, he’s not voting against unemployment benefits, he says —
CALLER: No.
RUSH: — we got a $14 trillion — we gotta start paying for some of this stuff somehow, we can’t sustain it. And you’re gonna get your back pay. It always happens.
CALLER: Oh, I know. We were assured of that yesterday.
RUSH: You’re going to get your back pay —
CALLER: — promise you —
RUSH: The only guy that hasn’t been paid back in anything like this is the sleigh ride operator —
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: — at Jellystone. Everybody got their Thanksgiving, Christmas turkeys during the government shutdown, and you’re going to get your back pay and the unemployment benefits will eventually be funded and everybody knows this. Bunning is simply making a point. I’ll tell you something else. He’s retiring. He’s not running for reelection. That frees one up quite a bit.
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RUSH: By the way, it was President Obama and his weekly radio, YouTube speech, whatever it was — we’re getting the audio even now — who lauded the whole concept of paygo, just lauded it, and Harry Reid has lauded the whole concept of paygo. I mean every bit of ammo for Bunning to have some defense in there from his colleagues is just waiting to be used.
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RUSH: Kevin in Vienna, Virginia. Welcome to the program. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. I appreciate you putting me on —
RUSH: Thank you, sir. You bet.
CALLER: — and dittos from a second-time caller. I just wanted to make an observation that I think the press is doing a disservice to the citizens because just look at the amount of energy that they’re using going after Bunning and compared to the amount of energy going after Charlie Rangel.
RUSH: Well, come on now! Charlie Rangel, Pelosi said it herself, doesn’t do anything to harm national security or any of that, big deal. Plus Dick Durbin threw down the race card, ‘Hey, he’s black! He served in a segregated unit in Korea. Cut the guy some slack. He’s entitled to go on junkets and have freebies for 500 grand because he comes from a slave heritage.’ You gotta understand the priorities here. Bunning is a white guy in the Hall of Fame. That’s unfair as it is.
CALLER: I guess my priorities are all wrong.
RUSH: Ah, you’re right.
CALLER: I spent 20 years in the Special Forces and I’m a taxpayer now and they still haven’t cut me any slack.
RUSH: Well, I know. It’s hypocrisy on parade. They’re going to pay for all of this. They will pay for all this. There’s a lot of people unemployed paying attention to what these people are doing because they think that these are the people that screwed it up and therefore they think these are the people that have to fix it because these are the people saying they’re going to. Obama’s been saying for over a year (doing impression), ‘I’m going to put you back to work, stimulus bill, maybe three.’ Meanwhile, unemployment numbers keep going up and the Council of Economic Advisors grand pooh-bah says, ‘Hey, it’s going to be so bad Friday, ignore the number. It’s because of the blizzards.’ Meanwhile, Charlie Rangel with a half million dollars here, tax evasion over there, bunch of junkets down the Caribbean, caught napping on a beach down there.
‘Uhhh, look, he served in a segregated unit in Korea! He’s a black guy, slave heritage. You gotta cut the guy some slack. Besides his wife did it once and his staff did it the other times.’ But Jim Bunning? ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha! Republican, Baseball Hall of Fame, probably pays for everything he buys himself? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. And now wants people to starve?’ as they say. This is what they’re saying. I’m just telling you, people are noticing this stuff. They are noticing.
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RUSH: To Nashville, Tennessee, this is David. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Earlier when you said that you had an idea that maybe Jim Bunning could ask to, you know, divert some of the TARP funds or stimulus bill funds, you know, for something like this, I saw an article from AP, it was buried in the paper here last Thursday, and it says: ‘Future measures are going to be much more difficult to pass, especially since a top Senate Democrat –‘ unnamed, it just says top Senate Democrat, ‘– has blocked unused funds from the Wall Street bailout program from being used in the future for jobs bills and other initiatives.’ And I thought, well, he’s blocking things, too, you know, but we don’t know who that was. And I heard this morning that Jim Bunning actually did ask someone for the authority to, you know, use those stimulus funds, and they turned him down.
RUSH: Really?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Really? Okay, cool. So the Democrats are the ones objecting to using —
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: — already allocated funds for this.
CALLER: And this says top Senate Democrat — I assume they mean a Senator, I don’t know, it says top Senate Democrat has blocked these funds from being used. Well, that’s very similar to what they’re accusing, you know, it struck me as —
RUSH: It’s just a trick for more spending. That’s all they want to do is spend, spend, spend, spend, pure and simple. Thanks for that update out there, David. I missed that buried AP story. How many writers did it have, 15? The last two AP stories I’ve seen had 15 writers, both on Obama’s health care plan.
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RUSH: Now, Obama and paygo. Jim Bunning says, ‘Hey we got paygo, we got paygo, we can’t pay for this and so we’re not going to extend the benefits until we come up with a way to pay for it, we got paygo, we got a rule here.’ He’s being creamed; he’s getting bomb threats; he’s being assaulted by the media. Everybody is mischaracterizing what’s going on here. Let’s go-go back to February 13th, 2010, Obama’s weekly YouTube address.
OBAMA: What also has made these large deficits possible was the end of a common-sense rule called pay-as-you-go. It’s pretty simple. It says to Congress, you have to pay as you go. You can’t spend a dollar unless you cut a dollar elsewhere. This is how a responsible family or business manages a budget. This is how a responsible government manages a budget as well.
RUSH: February 13th. That’s like 18, 19 days ago. Paygo. All for it. Now he’s joining the cast and crew who are trying to destroy Jim Bunning for saying, ‘Hey, we got this paygo rule here.’ Here’s more Obama from that same YouTube address on February 13th.
OBAMA: Now, in a perfect world Congress would not have needed a law to act responsibly to remember that every dollar spent would come from taxpayers today or our children tomorrow. But this isn’t a perfect world. This is Washington. That’s why this rule is necessary, and that’s why I’m pleased that Congress fulfilled my request to restore it. Last night I signed the pay-as-you-go rule into law. Now Congress will have to pay for what it spends just like everybody else.
RUSH: Now, the real irony here is that he hasn’t had to. This guy is the most reckless, out of control spender we’ve ever had, but beside that, here he is touting paygo February 13th, Congress can’t spend the money they don’t have. Not going to do it anymore. So is it any wonder Bunning is standing up? He’s just said what the president said, and the president’s own party and the president’s own media is trying to destroy the guy.
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RUSH: We’re at Radcliff, Kentucky. Aaron, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you, sir.
CALLER: American Kentucky dittos, Rush. God bless you, sir.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: It seems to me yesterday when I was first hearing about this, that the Republicans may have staged this Bunning objection a little. My political instincts aren’t as good as yours, but as soon as I heard about it, it just struck me that Senator Bunning was not running again and therefore he’s the perfect candidate to be the lone objector to renewing the unemployment benefits. Since the Drive-Bys are going to tear up the Republicans anyway over this issue, it may as well be someone who’s not running again.
RUSH: Well, I think that may be one of the reasons he’s doing it, but I would find it hard to believe that there’s some sort of behind-the-scenes conspiracy where they said, ‘Hey, Jim, you’re not running. Go out and run interference for us.’ There’s nothing to gain party-wide if they all don’t get on board this.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: In fact, if they don’t get on board this… I mean, they sent Susan Collins out there today on the Senate floor to trash Jim Bunning and she’s a Republican.
CALLER: Right. I see your point on that. It just seemed funny to me also I heard this morning that he’s talking about, you know, using the stimulus money — and the first thing the Democrats did, especially Senator Reid, was turn around and start deflecting. Because seems to me they don’t want anybody to know that there’s like $800 billion or something like that sitting there.
RUSH: They know.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: They know.