Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday delivered a scathing assessment of Republican leaders in Congress, and said they continue to surrender to President Obama, who he compared to Arnold Scharzenegger’s Terminator for his tenacity when it comes to supporting Democratic issues.
“He is like the Terminator,” Cruz, who is fifth in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings, charged in a lengthy speech on the Senate floor. “He never stops, he never gives up, he moves forward and forward and forward.”
Cruz said Republicans have been surrendering for years, and more recently, by saying out loud that they won’t jeopardize government funding in their fights against Planned Parenthood, the debt ceiling, the Iran nuclear deal, or other other issues.
“How is it, you might wonder, that a pre-emptive surrender is put in place?” he asked. “Well, it all begins with the relatively innocuous statement: there shall be no shutdowns.”
“Republican leadership has said we will never, ever, ever shut down the government, and suddenly, President Obama understands the easy key to winning every battle. He simply has to utter the word ‘shutdown,’ and Republican leadership runs to the hills,” he added.
He said Democrats see the opportunity this gives them, and use it to their advantage.
“So what does he say?” Cruz said of Obama. “If you don’t fund this one private organization that’s not part of the government, that’s under multiple criminal investigations, I, Barack Obama, will veto funding for the entire federal government and shut it down.”
“And what does Republican leadership say?” he asked. “Well, it will surprise no one. Republican leadership says, we surrender.”
He said the result is that Republicans end up funding anything the Democrats want, including Planned Parenthood. The House and Senate are about to pass a “clean” spending bill, but Cruz said that bill is anything but clean.
“It is essentially a blank check to Barack Obama,” he said. “That’s not very clean to me. That actually sounds like a very dirty appropriations bill.”
