In the midst of the debate over a mammoth government spending bill, Republicans and Democrats found something to agree on: their dislike for Sen. Ted Cruz, who forced a rare weekend session for the Senate.
But rather than back down, Cruz opted to call out Washington politicians on Sean Hannity’s radio show Monday.
“Too many politicians in Washington don’t believe we can stand and fight,” Cruz said.
“Enough is enough,” he told Hannity.
The outspoken Texas Republican joined with Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to force the Senate to take a vote related to funding President Obama’s recent immigration actions. The measure was defeated, 74-22, after Cruz said Republican leaders urged senators to vote against the constitutional point of order. (View the roll call vote.)
“Too many politicians in Washington don’t believe we can stand and fight,” Cruz told Hannity.
He lamented that Republican leaders frequently plead to put off tough fights for another day, as they wanted to do on immigration. Cruz predicted Republicans once again would find an excuse not to act next year as well:
Mark my words, Sean, the odds are enormous that come January or February, the very same voices are going to say, ‘Well, we’ve got a Republican majority, but we don’t have 60 votes, so we can’t fight yet.’ If we had 60 votes, they would come back and say, ‘You know, we have 60 votes but we don’t have 67. We don’t have enough to override a veto.’
“It’s always, always, always let’s fight tomorrow,” Cruz said. “At some point, what the heck are we doing? Either stand up and demonstrate we believe the principles we keep promising voters … or pack it up already.”
Cruz used the radio show to make a populist pitch. He said during the first six years of Obama’s presidency, “the rich and powerful have gotten richer and more powerful.” He noted that the top 1 percent in America today earn a higher share than in any year since 1928.
“The bigger government gets, the more it becomes a favor factory, the more it becomes special gifts for the powerful and connected,” Cruz said. “So what was the priority of both houses in this omnibus? It was every payoff for all the lobbyists rather than honoring the promises.”
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Cruz told Hannity that two issues drove the Republican wave in November: stopping Obamacare and halting Obama’s amnesty plans.
“Too many people in Washington treat the promises to the voters as just what you say when you’re campaigning and they treat the payoffs to K Street as really what their priorities are,” he said.
“It seems to me that is exactly backwards. We ought to be fighting for the working men and women who are getting hammered by this failed Obama agenda, and sadly, by too many Republicans willing to be complicit in it.”
