Thread: Ted Cruz Calls Mitch McConnell a Liar on the Senate Floor

July 24, 2015

by Mike De Bonis

Firebrand Republican senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Friday rushed across a line rarely crossed on the Senate floor: He called the leader of his party, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a liar.



"What we just saw today was an absolute demonstration that not only what he told every Republican senator, but what he told the press over and over and over again, was a simple lie," Cruz said Friday morning. "We know now that when the majority leader looks us in the eyes and makes an explicit commitment, that he is willing to say things that he knows are false. That has consequences for how this body operates."


Prompting Cruz's outburst: McConnell's move to set up amendment votes on a must-pass transportation bill. After senators voted to consider the bill, McConnell (R-Ky.) set up votes on two controversial measures -- a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and a reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of the United States -- and did it in such a way that will make it difficult for other amendments to be considered.


That move incensed Cruz -- who, like many conservatives, strongly opposes the bank's reauthorization, though it enjoys support from a supermajority of his Senate colleagues. While McConnell has personally spoken against Ex-Im reauthorization, Democrats said in June he had agreed to schedule an Ex-Im vote in order to get highly divisive trade legislation passed.


But McConnell at the time denied that any deal had been made, and Cruz said the same assurance was given in a private Republican conference meeting.
"Like Saint Peter, he repeated it three times," Cruz said Friday.

(snip)



http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...-senate-floor/

Rush Limbaugh interviews Ted Cruz today on his radio show to discuss the situation with Senator McConnell.

July 24, 2015

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It's Open Line Friday, folks. That's another element that we want to squeeze into today's programming content, that is, phone calls from you, and on Friday pretty much whatever you wish to talk about is fine.

We're also gonna add another element to the program today, which we very rarely do, and that is we're going to have a guest. Yes indeed. The guest is going to be on the phone. Senator Ted Cruz from Texas went to the floor of the United States Senate today and called Mitch McConnell a liar numerous times. He called Mitch McConnell a liar, accused him of lying, gave examples of it. I watched it on C-SPAN2, and I've gotta talk to him about this. We got the audio sound bites of it to roll for you here in just a second. It's about the Export-Import Bank.


And there's another phony -- I don't know how dumb they think we are. It's another phony repeal Obamacare vote that McConnell has offered the Republican senators in exchange for a vote to continue the Export-Import. Folks, if we can't cut the Export-Import Bank, you know, there's a term out there, crony capitalism -- crony socialism. It's neither of the two. This is just cronyism, it's just pure cronyism. The Export-Import Bank is corporate welfare. And I'm gonna tell you, it used to be that that was a term exclusively used by the left. And whenever we heard that term used we always rejected it. This is some years ago now, but it's accurate.


There's no reason the federal government needs to be funneling taxpayer dollars to corporations, and it's not just with the Export-Import Bank. That's just one vehicle for doing it, and what it has led to is the interests of the American people and the interests of voters being subordinated to financial interests and their power, which is lobbyists and donors and what have you.


Anyway, Ted Cruz went to the floor of the Senate today and called everybody out on it. I've never seen anything like this. He said there's no difference in McConnell and Harry Reid. No difference in Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid. Stop and think about that.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here's Ted Cruz this morning on the floor of the United States Senate. This is a debate on the highway bill, actually, highway mass transit spending. But what this is really about is the Export-Import Bank and its reauthorization and the Export-Import Bank is simply cronyism. It is the United States Congress funneling taxpayer dollars to corporate -- Boeing is one of the big recipients, by the way, of money from the Export-Import Bank. And most of these corporations have a healthy bottom line; they don't need it.

But of course rule of thumb in money is always use somebody else's if you can. I don't subscribe to that, by the way. I just don't. But it seems to be the normal way Big Business operates to use somebody else's money, borrow it if you have to, get a good repayment schedule. Corporations do the same thing. And what's changed in the last 25 years -- I mean there's always been a degree of this, but now, and especially in the last six and a half years. I mean, you have GE, any number of businesses, who have been throwing away and casting aside best interests of the country. And one of the advantages of getting in bed with Washington is you are able to nail your competitors, who don't get in bed in Washington, because they can't. Why? You know, Boeing is in bed, but nobody else is -- they get assistance.


Anyway, Cruz goes to the Senate floor and explains that he's been lied to by Mitch McConnell. So, let's just get started, and I have not heard anything like this before, you know, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington type stuff here. First one coming up.


CRUZ: I asked the majority leader very directly what was the deal that was just cut on TPA and was there a deal for the Export-Import Bank. It was a direct question I asked the majority leader in front of all the Republicans senators. The majority leader was visibly angry with me that I would ask such a question, and the majority leader looked at me and said, "There is no deal, there is no deal, there is no deal." Like St. Peter, he repeated it three times. TPA moved on. As it evergreen to the house it became abundantly there was a deal. There was a deal in the house for the Export-Import Bank. And so the second time TPA come up, I voted "no" because of that corrupt deal.

RUSH: It goes on next to describe how, in another instance, Mitch McConnell refused to act on a Marco Rubio amendment on the Iran deal and, instead, behaved just like Harry Reid.


CRUZ: I urge the majority leader, invoke cloture on Senator Rubio's amendment, calling on Iran to recognize Israel's right to exist and setting that as a precondition any lifting of sanctions. I argued vociferously with the majority leader that if the Democrats were so opposed to voting on that amendment, that was all the more reason 'cause it was important substantively, and the majority leader said no, he would not do so -- that invoking cloture on an amendment was an extraordinary step, and he wouldn't do so. So, he cut off every amendment -- the same procedural abuse that Harry Reid did over and over and over again in this body. Now, the Republican leader is behaving like the senior senator from Nevada.


RUSH: Now, the point of all this -- and we can't play everything. That's why we have him on here the next hour to get into detail about this, but he went on to explain that these Republicans are running for election promising you that they're gonna fight the Democrats, and they're gonna do everything they can to end Obamacare, to make sure that executive amnesty is done -- or is not done, whatever. They make all these promises. They get to Washington, as we all know, and the promises go by the wayside. But it's worse than that. It's not just the promises go by the wayside. The Republicans end up joining the Democrats in trying to defeat the conservatives in the Congress and in the Senate.

Now, in this instance, they were talking about lifting Iran's sanctions, and Rubio had an amendment. He wanted an amendment in this -- well, he wanted a statement of the amendment that would recognize -- Iran would have to recognize Israel's right to exist as a precondition for lifting any sanctions. And Cruz said that he argued with McConnell that if the Democrats were so opposed to voting on that, that's all the better. (Paraphrasing Cruz) "Let's expose them on this for political reasons. Let's expose the Democrats and their unwillingness to treat Israel as an ally." And McConnell would have no part of it. According to Cruz, he wanted no part of it.
This was an important substantive thing. McConnell said no, he wouldn't do it, 'cause invoking cloture on an amendment's an extraordinary measure. In other words, we're not going to go that far astray from the traditional way we've operated here in the Senate. And Cruz said (Paraphrasing), "Well, Harry Reid did this kind of stuff. Harry Reid bottled things up like you're bottling things up. You're just like Harry Reid here." Finally, Cruz vents the frustration that every Republican voter has felt with Congress since 2010.

CRUZ: There is a pronounced it disappointment among the American people, because we keep winning elections, and then we keep getting leaders who don't do anything they promised. The American people were told, "You know, the problem is the Senate. If only we get a Republican majority in the Senate and retire Harry Reid as majority leader, then things will be different." What has that majority done? We came back and passed a trillion-dollar Cromnibus plan, filled with pork and corporate welfare. That was the very first thing we did. Then this Republican majority voted to fund Obamacare, voted to fund President Obama's unconstitutional executive amnesty, and then leadership rammed through the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as attorney general. Madam President, which of those decisions would be one iota difference if Harry Reid were still majority leader? Not a one.

RUSH: Bingo. It's exactly right. Now, this was near the tail end of it. Now, the whole thing was a stem-winding barber, and I lost count of the number of times Senator Cruz directly challenged Mitch McConnell as a liar -- lying to him personally, lying to the Republican caucus about things.

And if you want to know why Donald Trump is resonating with people -- You know, I saw somebody in the Drive-By Media today -- maybe it wasn't -- it was somebody at PJ Media, I don't remember who -- made the point (Paraphrasing), "Hey, Trump's not resonating 'cause he's Trump. Trump's resonating 'cause he's channeling the anger." Well, how do you separate the two? It is Trump because he's the only one that is actually behaving in ways Republican voters thought they were gonna get in 2010 and 2012, '14, and the midterms.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Okay. We spent some time today on Ted Cruz -- how he dealt with Code Pink yesterday, what he did today on the Senate floor, taking it straight to Republican leadership.
Yesterday or maybe the day before yesterday, Carly Fiorina took Jake Tapper to school over on -- more properly stated, Carly Fiorina showed other Republicans how it's done when the media tries to pigeonhole them on issues, social issues like abortion. She just showed everybody how to do it in much the same way that Trump is, in the way he's dealing with the press and on immigration. And we have those sound bites from Carly Fiorina, just a couple of them coming up after the break here at the bottom of the hour.

Now, the AP is out with a story on what Ted Cruz did today on the floor of the Senate, and the way they headline it, "Cruz on Senate floor accuses GOP leader McConnell of Lying." And then the end of the AP story goes like this: "The Senate's historian, Betty K. Koed, said it was not a specific breach of Senate rules to call another senator a liar but pointed to rules cautioning against talking ill of other members or imputing unbecoming conduct or motives. In more recent times there's been very little of this type of behavior," she said.

So, you can you can call somebody a liar, but you cannot impute. You can directly call them a liar, but you can't imply it. You better say it, apparently is the rule. But the point is, at the end of that story -- "in more recent times there's been very little of this type of behavior." See, the Senate was much more polite when Harry Reid and the Democrats were running the place. Never mind how they used to freeze out Republicans from hearings and making and offering amendments and debating things, turning the lights out on 'em or turning off their microphones.

And I'll tell you, it's unique what happened today. It's not unprecedented, but it's really rare to have this kind of intraparty dirty laundry aired on the floor. Now, the Export-Import Bank, this thing is a dinosaur. It's Jurassic Park. It's left over from the New Deal. It was to help us get out of the depression, and it's like a tax that never goes away.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me mention this quickly, before we get back to Fiorina. Ted Cruz did mention that Mitch McConnell is blocking a vote to defund Planned Parenthood, even after all these videos have surfaced, even after it has become widely known what's going on with taxpayer money. And this story's in TheHill.com.
"Several Republican senators are accusing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of blocking a vote to defund Planned Parenthood during the debate on the highway funding bill." It's the same thing Cruz was mad about. Blocking amendments on all kinds of things, Export-Import Bank, defunding Planned Parenthood, sanctuary cities is being blocked. An amendment to defund and deal with sanctuary cities is being blocked. And in exchange the Republicans are being told, "You can vote to repeal Obamacare again," as though that's somehow gonna mollify people? A vote to defund Obamacare? Been there, done that the last how many years. It's insulting!

It's like saying to a dog, "Here, take this bone." The meat's off the bone, here you can have what's left. There are a lot of amendments. The American people are focused on Planned Parenthood, all that, and McConnell doesn't want to have any votes on them. Yeah, he did say that. He mentioned it toward the end of the interview. Yes, he did, so there you have it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Zack in Salem, West Virginia. Glad you waited, Zack. Great to have you with us. Hello.


CALLER: How you doing, Rush? Just like to say thank you to Ted Cruz for letting us know what's going on with the Senate and everything and how they're lying to us and stuff, and I hope that him and Donald Trump continue to take out the trash up there in Washington.


RUSH: He-he. Excuse me. Well, you know, a lot of people, when they hear about what Cruz did today, are going to appreciate. But I'm gonna make a prediction to you. And this is, by the way, not a very well difficult prediction to make. I mean, you could make it yourself if you thought about it. I would say by the time we get to, oh, let's say, what, Special Report with Bret Baier tonight on Fox, that there will be -- either have been already or will be an effort made to suggest to Senator Cruz it would be wise for him to apologize to Senator McConnell.


This kind of intraparty squabble is not good. It's not productive, especially when we're on the verge here -- it is said -- of winning the White House, this is not good. And right in the mix of all this will be the Drive-By Media, the ruling class media.

My timeline is the only thing about this I don't know. I'm relatively certain that at some point, somewhere, somehow, somebody will get the ball rolling that Cruz needs to apologize -- that this is just not done, and this is not helpful to united Republican front as we head to the all-important presidential year of 2016.



END TRANSCRIPT

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/20...connell_a_liar

Video of Senator Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate talking about Senator McConnell lying to him and other Republicans.


http://www.c-span.org/video/?c454584...eauthorization