Posted on 09/29/2015 3:16:15 PM PDT by VinL
Sen. Ted Cruz blasted outgoing Speaker John A. Boehner Monday for sticking around for a month after the Ohio Republican announced his intent to resign.
The Republican presidential candidate from Texas was rebuffed by his colleagues from even getting the show of 11 hands needed for a sufficient second of a motion for a roll call vote on a process that would set up an amendment to the “clean” continuing resolution on defunding Planned Parenthood and the international nuclear agreement with Iran.
After saying he would repeat his procedural maneuvering Tuesday, he turned much of his focus to the decision by Boehner to move the CR ahead of his recently announced retirement plan.
“Speaker Boehner has decided to cut a deal with Leader Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats, that this dirty CR that’s going to be passed out of the Senate is going to go to the House and the speaker’s going to take it up on the floor, pass it with all the Democrats just like Leader McConnell just did, and a handful of Republicans who will go with Republican leadership,” Cruz said. “A very significant percentage will vote no, but here is the problem: Speaker Boehner’s done that more than once.”
The stopgap spending bill, which runs through Dec. 11, will arrive in the House no later than early Wednesday, which happens to be the last day of the current fiscal year. The motion to thwart a filibuster threat garnered 77 votes in the Senate, meaning all that remains is burning the clock.
“I believe if Speaker Boehner had done that, had passed a dirty CR funding Planned Parenthood and funding this Iranian nuclear deal, that he would have lost his speakership,” Cruz said, accusing Boehner of “leading the Democratic Party.”
Boehner said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation” he was confident he would have survived an effort to vacate the presiding officer’s chair like the one introduced by Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C.
“Speaker Boehner faced a conundrum. If he does what he and Leader McConnell promised, which is fund all of Barack Obama’s priorities, he would have lost his job,” Cruz said, even though Boehner told CBS he could have gotten roughly 400 votes, meaning that Democrats in the House would have joined to thwart the procedural maneuvering.
“Notice he said he’s going to stay a month. He’s going to stay a month in order to join with the Democrats and fund Barack Obama’s priorities,” said Cruz, before turning his attention back to Senate Republicans.
Cruz criticized the “Herculean procedural steps” to get legislation through that would revive the Export-Import Bank, contrasting it with the effort to block appropriations to Plann
Bttt
“Cruz is right. Boehner has cut a deal with Pelousey and he wants to see the betrayal through before retiring to a cushy lobbyist job.”
Correct on both counts
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