Senator Cruz entirely understands the widespread suspicion of the President. Nobody has been more vocal in pointing out the President’s lawlessness or more passionate about fighting his usurpation of congressional authority.
Senator Cruz would not and will not give President Obama one more inch of unrestricted power.
How can Senator Cruz trust Obama?
He doesn’t. Not at all. No part of Senator Cruz’s support for TPA was based on trusting Obama. However, under TPA, every trade deal is still subject to approval by Congress. If the Obama Administration tries to do something terrible in a trade agreement, Congress can vote it down. And most congressional Democrats will always vote no—because union bosses oppose free trade, so do most Democrats—which means a handful of conservative congressional Republicans have the votes to kill any bad deal. That’s a serious check on presidential power.
Cruz himself gave a speech saying TPA gave Obama “dangerous powers”.
Cruz introduced an amendment to “fix” that flaw and remove those powers from the TPA bill.
The amendment failed.
Cruz voted for TPA anyway, giving Obama the “dangerous powers”.
This is a pattern with Cruz. He speaks out against a bill, offers an amendment he knows will fail, then votes for it anyway.
He did that with the Corker Iran bill. Cruz & Toomey offered an amendment to the bill. It failed. Cruz voted to give Obama the power anyway.
Ironically, both bills were heavily supported by the US Chamber of Commerce, which donated big money to Senators who supported the bills.