As the 113th Congress draws to a close, Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah are facing harsh criticism from colleagues for supposedly opening the door to confirmation of presidential nominees — a claim Lee’s office said is “a complete fabrication.”
Through a series of procedural moves, Lee and Cruz tried to slow passage of the $1.1 trillion government spending bill, which kept the Senate in session through the weekend — a rarity in Washington — instead of returning to address the measure Monday.
The move angered lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. According to The Washington Post, senators were forced to miss events like the Army-Navy football game in Baltimore and holiday festivities in their home states.
Now, Lee and Cruz stand accused of paving the way for Reid to push through more than two dozen pending presidential nominees.
Lee’s office contends the Senate would have voted on the nominees before the session ended either way.
“It’s a total lie,” Brian Phillips, a spokesman for Lee, told The Daily Signal. “It’s a complete fabrication, an absolute distortion of the truth because people were angry that they had to be there.”
“It’s a total lie. It’s a complete fabrication, an absolute distortion of the truth,” says @SenLeeComms.
Reid, he said, had every intention of voting on nominations before ending his tenure as majority leader.
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Earlier this month, Reid laid out the priorities for the lame-duck session of the 113th Congress. In addition to passing the government spending bill, the majority leader said senators should be prepared to remain in Washington, D.C., until the the third week of December voting on “a number of vitally important nominations that must be confirmed.”
“We have a lot to do, and there isn’t much time to accomplish it,” Reid told his fellow senators. “I urge all senators to work hard to complete our work in a timely and efficient fashion.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., attempted to adjourn the Senate for the year on Friday without acting on the remaining nominees, but Reid blocked him.
The majority leader’s spokesman, Adam Jentleson, took to his Twitter account to mock McConnell’s attempt and reiterated Reid’s commitment to approving Obama’s nominations.
Sen. McConnell just generously offered to adjourn Senate for the year without processing any more nominees. Sen. Reid of course objected.
— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) December 12, 2014
C'mon guys you're gonna have to be a little sharper than that, he's gonna be majority leader next year.
— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) December 12, 2014
Sen. McConnell has known for weeks if not months that Sen. Reid planned to move forward on these noms. Maybe he failed to inform his caucus.
— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) December 13, 2014
Reid’s office did not return The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
Despite Reid’s long-anticipated plans to address nominations before convening, Phillips said lawmakers have twisted the events to place the blame on Cruz and Lee.
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“Someone said, ‘We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Cruz and Lee,’ and it evolved into, ‘We wouldn’t be passing nominees if it weren’t for Cruz and Lee,’” Phillips said.
The Texas conservative responded to the blame placed on Lee and him in an op-ed for Politico magazine.
“Some critics have disingenuously suggested that, by fighting on amnesty, we somehow facilitated these nominations,” Cruz said. “That’s nonsense; Harry Reid had announced a week earlier he was going to force through every one of these bad nominations — from an unqualified and extreme surgeon general to the new head of immigration who has pledged to uphold Obama’s amnesty — and there is no doubt he would have done the exact same thing on Monday and Tuesday, with the very same result.”
Cruz’s office did not return The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
While speaking with reporters today, McConnell was asked whether the senators’ procedural move opened the door for passage of the president’s nominations.
“I’m not going to go back and rehash the events of the last few days,” he said. “You know exactly what happened over the weekend. We are where we are.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R- Ky. (Photo: Newscom)
Cruz and Lee joined forces to push the Senate to vote on a “point of order” related to the constitutionality of funding the president’s executive actions on immigration. Last month, Obama unilaterally moved to grant legal status to more than 5 million illegal immigrants.
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Though the Senate ultimately voted on the point of order, it was defeated, 74-22. (View the roll call vote.)
Conservatives wanted to use the so-called “CRomnibus,” a cross between an omnibus spending bill and continuing resolution, to “defund” the president’s executive action.
In the $1.1 trillion bill, most of the government received funding until September 2015. The Department of Homeland Security, though, is funded until Feb. 27, 2015.
Some Republicans viewed the short-term funding of the agency as an adequate way to block Obama’s executive actions. Others though, including Cruz and Lee, said it failed to defund the president’s unilateral move.
The CRomnibus didn’t anger just conservatives, though. Liberal senators such as Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, along with organizations such as the AFL-CIO, Teamsters and Common Cause, objected to the spending bill because it included a rider that rolled back some of the Dodd-Frank law.
And Reid’s support of the bill put him at odds with those in the Democratic caucus. Those intraparty disagreements, Phillips said, put a strain on Reid.
“Reid was feeling the pressure from the press and others for the omnibus,” Phillips said. “We thought it made sense to stay in session and for him to continue to feel the pressure. We wanted to focus people’s attention on what was really going on — Republicans and Democrats opposing the omnibus.”