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Published January 27, 2017
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," October 16, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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Hi, I'm Bill O'Reilly. Thanks for watching us tonight.
You're looking at a live picture from Washington, D.C. where the Senate is voting to reopen the government. We expect that vote will pass fairly easily. So what we're going to do is we're going to wing it here for a while. They're going to get a little vote and we're going it do our regular FACTOR. But the President may speak during this hour. If he does, I'm going to throw to my pal Bret Baier who is standing by in Washington. Are you down there, Baier?
BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I am. Hi, Bill.
O'REILLY: Are you working tonight? Atta boy.
BAIER: I am indeed.
O'REILLY: All right so if Barack Obama comes up to take a curtain call, whatever is he going to do tonight. I'm going to hand it over to you and you can take it, all right?
BAIER: That sounds good -- deal.
O'REILLY: All right. Now, in the meantime, does this -- does this bill have a name to it or what? I mean what exactly -- I know they are voting to reopen the government and go ahead and fund until January 15th and then the debt ceiling until February 7th. I know all of that, but is there a name? Is it Lonnie's bill or something like that?
BAIER: No. It's an HR and 2775. The reason it's HR is it's a House bill, started in the House. It has to go to the Senate. Obviously they are putting all of the -- the deal in there and then they'll send it back to the House. As you know in the Constitution, the funding for the government has to start in the House. That's why they have this House vehicle HR 2775. So that is the official name.
O'REILLY: OK so there is no real name on it. It's just the Senate does it; it kicks it back to the House. These guys got to stay up late tonight. We just heard Boehner in the cold open the Speaker of the Houses say that he thinks he lost. Is that the prevailing wisdom that you are hearing, the Republican Party thinks they lost in this?
BAIER: Yes, I mean, they didn't get a lot of out of it. And they are backed up against the wall and the House will vote. The Senate just voted 83-16 over that cloture vote. So that was the big vote to watch in the Senate. Now they are going to vote currently and they're going to pass it right out of there. It goes to the House and they are jammed. They don't have any other options.
So that is the prevailing wisdom that Republicans were on the wrong side of this that, perhaps, the tactics were wrong from the beginning -- many Republicans saying that.
But in the big picture, they are going to be back at the table, Bill. December is this budget conference committee where the House and Senate try to reconcile two budgets. And then the next deadlines January 15th --
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: Yes.
BAIER: -- for the continuing resolution and February 7th for the debt ceiling.
O'REILLY: Look, I think people just want this to end. And they want these -- both parties to get together now. You said that part of this resolution that they are going to form new committees. And that's all we need is more committees. All right and then Paul Ryan is on. And some Democrats and they are trying to come together with some kind of look. Here is what the budget should look like. We've got to cut a little bit of spending. Maybe they will get it done, probably not.
But, let's just keep optimistic for tonight.
BAIER: Yes.
O'REILLY: Do we have Cameron and Rosen? Are they around? All right. Rosen is around. James Rosen. Let's bring him in. So, Rosen, I know you live for this. You love this kind of stuff. All right?
But you know people are getting a little fed up with it outside of the Beltway there. You know they've got a headache and all of this. I don't see it as a win-lose by the way for the Republican Party. They got two things, Rosen. They got a verification of income, if you apply for Obamacare subsidies. They got that. That wasn't in there -- that's a good thing. And what else did they get? They got one other thing. Do you remember?
JAMES ROSEN, FOX NEWS CHIEF CORRESPONDENT: Oh, gosh. I'm just blanking on that myself. But look, first of all, Bill, if we were pals, if we really hung out which I have extended that invitation to you for years now.
O'REILLY: That will never happen, Rosen but go ahead.
ROSEN: You -- you would know that I'm not jazzed so much by stuff like this which I am by the new McCartney album which I know you're going to be talking about later. And you did also ask Bret Baier just now about Speaker Boehner and where he stands on this and what is the sense of his future right now.
There has been a lot of talk especially in liberal media about him being a SINO as Speaker in Name Only and someone whose speakership is in danger and that sort of mean. The fact is that if you pay careful attention to what House Republicans have been saying, just in the past 24 hours and particularly those who have not been so kind to Speaker Boehner throughout this episode, they are now saying more impressive things about him. He received a standing ovation from the House GOP caucus when they met in the basement of the Capitol this afternoon.
And from a certain point of view, you can say that he emerges at least within his own party and within the chamber of the House, in better standing, perhaps, than when he entered this episode two weeks ago.
O'REILLY: All right. Let's bring in Carl Cameron. Why would that be then? If there are -- if the Tea Party and we have, I hope we're going to be able to get to Congressman Steve King, Tea Party guy from Iowa. You know, you never know how this stuff is going to float.
But, why would the Speaker Boehner be now more acceptable to his own party if the Republicans didn't get very much, Cameron?
CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, what part of the party are we talking about? And that is the Tea Party conservatives, the sort of 30 or so most conservative members of the Republican conference in the House. And they have been the real thorn in the leadership's side, bucking John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy and others on things like the farm bill and a host of things that were real embarrassments for the leadership. So they could give him a headache.
But that was not the case today. In fact, Louie Gohmert, who actually attempted a coup against Boehner at the beginning part of this year, a congressman from Texas, has said that there really isn't any push to do that now, in part because Boehner went the extra mile. He took this thing up right until now. It will pass the House sometime tonight. But perhaps even a second or two past midnight. Who knows?
And what many of these Tea Party conservatives who have been a real pain for Boehner have said is, look, he gave us an opportunity to try it over and over and over again. He hung in there with us. And now is he acting as the Speaker.
Let's remember, the Speaker of the House is a constitutional office and he supposed to represent everybody in the House. He is actually elected by all of the members. It just so happens that Republicans have the majority and he was able to beat Nancy Pelosi. So it's not an entirely partisan gig.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: All right so he's not a lot -- right it is not a lot about OK we've got to surrender. It's more we fought the good fight -- and I will see what Congressman King has to say about it.
Baier let me just bring you back in for one more thing here. It's a fait accompli, right, that the Senate is going to pass this funding bill it, then will go back to the House as you mentioned earlier. It looks like they will pass it as well. That's a consensus, right?
BAIER: Yes, definitely. And this will be an easy vote in the Senate. The House it will be interesting to see if Speaker Boehner gets a majority of his majority for this bill. Especially since the President will be talking, we believe, sometime after the Senate votes and how it affects House votes will be interesting to see.
I do want to point out one thing. The income verification is really the only thing added to Obamacare. The other things are just dates on the board -- the conference committee in December, January 15th and February 7th. There are some things in this bill which is pretty interesting page 20 has $174,000 appropriated for the widow of former -- the late senator of New Jersey Frank Lautenberg, a death gratuity.
And there is also some funding for a dam project on the Ohio River that quadruples the project from $775 million to $3 billion. So these are appropriated in this bill that deals with the opening of the government and the debt ceiling increase things that don't often get talked about.
O'REILLY: Yes. And I know and I mean $3 billion to the federal government is chump change these days with a -- approaching a $17 trillion debt so, what's another $3 billion. We'll give it to the Ohio dam people.
Interestingly enough where and by the way, an alert to all THE FACTOR viewers, we're not going to take commercials for a while and that's good, right? That's a good thing. You guys get to see Baier, Cameron, Rosen and whoever else we can dredge up.
BAIER: Absolutely.
O'REILLY: You know, I -- I have to say though in my analysis of this whole thing. I think everybody, Bret and you are involved with this. I think everybody has come out looking badly. Boehner may now be getting standing ovations from the guys that he has to caucus with and all of that. But I don't think anybody won here. I really don't.
BAIER: You're exactly right. I mean, listen, the President took a hit. He had the lowest approval rating according to the Associated Press at 37 percent. He didn't get talked about a lot. A lot of the talk was about the polls that hit Republicans and clearly they were hit hard in poll after poll.
O'REILLY: Yes.
BAIER: But you're right Washington took a big hit.
O'REILLY: Yes and the President. The President took a huge hit. He didn't lead. And I'm not saying this in any kind of ideological way. But he -- and this could have been done in August. I mean you know he didn't, you know. Come on.
CAMERON: Bill -- Bill, you just hit it right on the head. These guys took August off --
O'REILLY: Yes.
CAMERON: -- we knew in July that they we're going to face these deadlines. Now we're in October. Mostly what this bill does is punt in order to buy more time. GOP leaders say they haven't given up the fight to defund or delay Obamacare. It's in 13 weeks that the next deadline will come up. So take out a week for Thanksgiving, a couple of weeks for Christmas and New Year's. In nine weeks of work, they are going to be back at these very same shutdown showdown debt limit problems all over again. They've gone full circle.
ROSEN: And Bill, if I could jump in one observation I would like to make which is that we did see something fairly extraordinary happen in this entire episode. And that is that we saw some freshmen senators in the person of Ted Cruz and Mike Lee vault themselves into a kind of quasi- leadership role exerting that leadership even across the chamber into the House. And that's unprecedented.
Many years ago, if you -- you know, if you look back to the pre- Watergate era, you would have never seen in when we had a seniority system prevail this kind of thing happen. You're viewers want to know why is it constantly like this, why is it Carl Cameron says that we're going to be back in this problem box 13 weeks from now? Is it just the typical spit ball fights between liberals and conservatives or Democrats and Republicans? The answer is that it is much easier now to primary an incumbent lawmaker than ever before. They are not dependent on the party as to much not for fundraising.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: No, because there is a third party, there is a Tea Party. And now there is a different dynamic. It's not just look, before you could get threatened. Remember Lyndon Johnson used to say if you don't vote my way I'll kill you and bury you in the Rio Grande and whatever.
All right we want to go to the senate floor.
BAIER: Can I just interrupt Bill.
O'REILLY: Go.
BAIER: Yes, it's done. This vote has passed 81 to 18. It goes now from the Senate to the House. That will be a short matter of time and the House will take it up pretty soon. Once it gets over there, it's got a fast track. They have kind of moved the rules a little bit.
So it could be within an hour or so before the House series of votes takes place.
O'REILLY: all right. You guys thanks very much. We appreciate it. But like I'm tired of you so I have to get some glamour into this program - -
CAMERON: Love you, too.
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