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In a stunning floor speech Friday morning, Republican presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz accused Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of lying to Senate Republicans about whether there was a secret agreement to allow a vote on an amendment to extend the Export-Import Bank, which conservatives staunchly oppose. Cruz unleashed his anger at McConnell moments after the Senate voted to move ahead on a highway funding bill that will include amendments to extend the Ex-Im Bank and to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The deal doesn't provide Cruz with an equal opportunity to bring up his own amendments, including one that would...

NBC NEWS CLIP--- "Ted Cruz Calls Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a Liar" (30 second video)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell started a fast-track process Friday on legislation to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding in the wake of two controversial videos showing officials discussing delivery of fetal parts. The Republican leader began "Rule 14," which will let the legislation skip the committee process and be placed on the Senate calendar so it can be brought up for a floor vote. The move comes after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) slammed McConnell during a blistering floor speech earlier Friday, suggesting the Kentucky Republican wanted to dodge a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood. "There are a host of...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, delivered a brutal speech bashing his own party’s leadership’s failures on the Senate floor on Friday morning after Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) moved forward with a plot to reauthorize the Export Import Bank. In the speech, Cruz says—calling him out personally—McConnell lied to the entire Republican conference. Cruz’s speech stemmed from how McConnell—despite telling the entire GOP conference there was no such secret deal with the Democrats during the Obamatrade process to later bring up Ex-Im reauthorization—actually did cut a deal with Democrats, specifically Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA). “Today...

In a fiery floor speech Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) railed against a seemingly obscure agency he derided as "corporate welfare" for our nation's biggest corporations. --- Supporters say the bank helps level the playing field for U.S. companies against competitors in Europe and China, who get significant help from their governments. Detractors call the bank crony capitalism that mostly helps big business. But really, as Cruz's speech showed Friday, the bank has become a proxy battle for something else entirely: Government's place in business. And it appears those who want government out of business have won this battle --...

--- It's impossible to look at the senator's vehement speech -- which our veteran man on the Hill, Paul Kane, said was "unlike anything I've ever seen" -- outside of the context of Cruz's presidential campaign. --- If it is purely a coincidence that the Bozell endorsement was released an hour before Cruz made headlines by attacking McConnell over the same issue, it's an extremely fortuitous one. (Editor's note: There are no coincidences in politics. At least not ones like this.) Cruz was reacting to McConnell's actions on the floor, but likely had some sense of where the wind was...

Bravo Ted Cruz! A Profile in Courage Today, Ted Cruz got up on the Senate floor during a debate and called out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a liar and clone of his predecessor, the despicable Harry Reid. Senator Cruz did not mince words. He did not lapse into the soft euphemisms and dodgy language that marks so much of the drivel emitted in the hallowed chambers of Congress. He came right out and said that McConnell lied to him when he promised that there were no secret side deals employed to gain passage of the TPA, when of...

Senator Cruz on Rush Limbaugh now.

WASHINGTON -- In a stunning attack on a leader of his own party, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of lying to him and said he couldn't be trusted. Cruz, a Texan who is running for president but ranks low in early polling, delivered the broadside in a speech on the Senate floor, an extraordinary departure from the norms of Senate behavior that demand courtesy and respect. At issue are assurances Cruz claimed McConnell, R-Ky., had given that there was no deal to allow a vote to renew the federal Export-Import Bank - a little-known federal...

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...

Here is the guy who should be doing some cross-party fusion. He rallied a lot of Americans in bipartisan fashion on national security. He seemed to be playing his cards right. And . . . ? Bernie Sanders is kicking his butt in campaign fundraising. In fact, I dare say Sanders froze Paul’s chance at fusion. All the little rich libertine millennials that Paul was counting on, instead got excited for Sanders. But I am still really surprised by this. Paul only raised $6.9 million. Ben Carson raised $10.6. And that is money raised by the candidate, not the Super...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell concedes that there’s little congressional Republicans can do to fight the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide, though he predicted a flurry of litigation aimed at protecting “religious liberty” in light of the decision. The Kentucky Republican has been a staunch opponent of same-sex marriage: He was one of just six Senate Republicans to sign an amicus brief urging the high court to reject federal protection of same-sex marriage. And though he reiterated to Kentucky TV station WDRB on Tuesday evening that his position has not changed, he also said there is...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says there's not much Congress can do in the wake of the ruling by the Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage. In an interview Tuesday night on Kentucky television station WDRB, McConnell restated that he still holds to the traditional view of marriage. "I’ve always felt that marriage is between one man and one woman and the Supreme Court has held otherwise. That’s the law of the land," the Kentucky Republican said. When he was asked if there is anything Congress can do, he answered: "I don’t think so. I think the courts have pretty well...

Are key Republican leaders in D.C. from the Senate, House and Supreme Court being blackmailed? Tell me you haven’t thought the exact same thing? Something is very wrong. Something smells rotten in DC. Rotten like a dead fish left at the front door of a Congressmen’s office by the Obama Crime Family. Rotten like a photo of a Supreme Court Justice with his robe down at his ankles. Because what’s happening just isn’t normal. Please tell me how it’s possible that President Obama and his socialist cabal suffered the most massive and historic defeat in modern political history only 9...

Cruz accuses McConnell and GOP leadership of maneuvering to dry up his fundraising and plant hit pieces in the press aimed at hurting him politically. He says GOP leaders cowered from joining him in big fights over the debt ceiling, Obamacare and gun control, accusing his colleagues of “mendacity” and capitulating to Democrats to avoid bad headlines.He contends that McConnell misled him in vowing to stay out of primaries when Cruz accepted a senior-level position at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. And he accuses a GOP rival, Rand Paul of Kentucky, of parroting McConnell’s talking points by seeking to “undermine”...

resident Obama signed hard-fought trade legislation Monday, thanking Republican leaders who helped get it done and saying the package will “reinforce America’s leadership role in the world.” “I think it’s fair to say that getting these bills through Congress has not been easy,” Mr. Obama said as he signed the trade bills into law in the East Room. “They’ve been declared dead more than once.” The two major pieces of legislation grant Mr. Obama “fast track” trade-promotion authority

When President Obama neared the end of his eulogy Friday for the late South Carolina state Sen. Clementa Pinckney (D), a victim of the shootings at a Charleston church last week, he paused. A long pause. It was a moment of genuine drama. Had he lost his place? Were his emotions getting to him? Then, he started to sing -- the opening bars to "Amazing Grace." Soon, the entire congregation at the AME Emanuel Church joined him in song...

“Speaker Cruz” is looking for a comeback. With House GOP leaders meting out punishment against conservatives, and with the House and Senate moving ahead on a plan that would give President Barack Obama the authority to negotiate a major trade deal, Sen. Ted Cruz changed his mind on Trade Promotion Authority Tuesday and, in a blistering op-ed, decided to take some shots at GOP leaders along the way. Without offering any real proof, Cruz accused Speaker John A. Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of agreeing to vote on renewing the Export-Import Bank if pro-trade Democrats would vote for...

Later this afternoon, the Senate will hold a procedural vote on Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) in an attempt to reach cloture and guarantee a floor vote on fast-track authority for Barack Obama on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free-trade agreement. On its first go-around, TPA barely made it past this procedural hurdle, with only 13 Democrats coming along for the ride — and that package included Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), a key Democratic priority to buffer the effects of globalization for American workers. Without it, even those few Democrats may take a pass on TPA, which would once again put fast-track...

The President's trade agenda scored a major victory Tuesday when the Senate voted to advance a bill to allow "fast-track" approval of large international trade bills. The outcome of this key procedural vote had been in doubt as a group of 14 pro-trade Democrats weighed whether to continue their support of the bill out of concern that a related workers' assistance package might not pass both chambers. But after repeated assurances by GOP congressional leaders that workers' assistance measure will be adopted, 13 out of 14 backed the bill. The vote was 60 to 37, passing by the slimmest margin...