Cruz spoke out against giving Obama the power to lift sanctions on Iran.
Rubio, Paul, Cruz vote to allow Obama to lift Iran sanctions
The Iran vote was another unconstitutional surrender of congressional power to the executive branch.
Just like TPA, it makes stopping Obama's Iran deal a 67 vote supermajority, while approval only requires 51 votes.
OK, stopping Obama's trade deals only needs 60 votes, but 51 to ratify.
That is two times that Cruz spoke out against an unconstitutional shift in power and then voted for it.
> “That is two times that Cruz spoke out against an unconstitutional shift in power and then voted for it.”
Two times spoke against and voted for it? I know of only one, what’s the other?
Ted voted NO on cloture for the Iran deal and then voted for it because as a sponsor (meaning an affirmative vote for) he gains certain privileges for tracking and participating in the legislation he sponsored namely in this case the Iran negotiations.
Where the deception occurs is when a Senator votes YES on cloture and then votes NO on the bill because he/she will know they are covered and can tell their constituents they voted against the bill even though they enabled it to pass by voting for cloture.
Ted was never deceptive on voting NO on cloture and then YES on the bill once he knew it was a done deal. It makes no sense, there is no benefit to doing it that way. No one votes NO on cloture in an attempt to deceive. If there were not enough votes for cloture, the Iran bill would have died. Usually cloture is called BEFORE the Senate Majority Leader and his Whip know they have the votes. Before cloture no one knows for sure if it’s a done deal. After cloture everyone knows it’s a done deal. Cloture is about cutting off debate. If there aren’t enough votes, debate continues. Cloture can be called several times and if there aren’t 60 votes, the debate continues until there are enough votes or the bill dies.
Ted spoke out against lifting sanctions on Iran but once he saw cloture had passed which he voted No on, he saw it was a done deal. He knew McConnell had the votes. There’s no point in continuing to work against something that is passed. It’s best to work with what you have and try and change it later.
I imagine Ted Cruz chose to become a sponsor of the bill for innocuous reasons as travel budget for he and his staff to Israel or other intermediate points where the Iran negotiations were taking place. As a sponsor he gains certain privileges. I also imagine the Israeli lobby asked him to stay involved.
For whatever reason, the Iran bill was kept tightly secret and that is where a legitimate gripe can be made because it leaves the public in the dark. Surely there were parts of the bill that had National Security implications; maybe there were a lot of such parts. We don’t know. It may very well be that secrecy was absolutely necessary. For example, terms for dealing with covert agencies, monitoring agencies etc. We simply do not know.
As for all the secret trade deals, Ted Cruz has said the secrecy surrounding them is “STUPID” and that the secrecy should be lifted NOW.