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After 21-Hour Cruz Speech, Senate Votes to Take Up Budget
(about 1 hour later)
WASHINGTON — Senator Ted Cruz ended his overnight assault on the new health care program at noon Wednesday after more than 21 hours on the Senate floor, clearing the way for a test vote on a plan to finance the government after Oct. 1 only if money is denied for the health law.
WASHINGTON — Republican Senator Ted Cruz’s 21-hour, 19-minute verbal assault on President Obama’s signature health care law ended Wednesday when the Senate voted 100-to-0 to break off debate and move to consider House legislation that Democrats plan to use to keep the government open next week.
“My plea to this body is that we listen to the American people,” said Mr. Cruz, Republican of Texas, as he wrapped up his effort to block Democrats from moving ahead with a plan to restore funding.
Mr. Cruz’s marathon session — which began Tuesday afternoon, went straight through the night and ended at a predetermined noon deadline — did not win over senators from either party, and in fact Mr. Cruz even voted to open debate. After the vote, Senate Mike Lee, Republican of Utah and a Cruz ally, said Mr. Cruz never intended to oppose the motion to take up the bill, a position contradicted by his words and procedural motions for days before the tally.
But Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader who sparred with Mr. Cruz briefly, predicted Mr. Cruz would lose despite his all night talk-a-thon.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, greeted the conclusion of Mr. Cruz’s performance by declaring it “a big waste of time.”
“He has spoken and at 1 o’clock the Senate will speak,” Mr. Reid said.
The vote ended debate and the Senate will formally take up a bill the House passed that keeps the government open through Dec. 15 while gutting the president’s Affordable Care Act.
At 1 p.m., Republicans and Democrats are expected to vote overwhelmingly to move ahead so the Senate can begin considering a bill, approved by the House last week, that would finance most of the government but not the Affordable Care Act.
That legislation is precisely what Mr. Cruz, a Texas Republican, has clamored for, but he opposed taking it up, knowing that Democratic leaders would most likely have the votes to strip out the health care language and other Republican policies attached.
By the end, Mr. Cruz was looking weary, his eyes slightly droopy. He had loosened his tie. Stacks of thick three-ring binders — containing his notes and other materials he read aloud — were scattered around his feet and on the desks near where he stood.
But with his indefatigable loquaciousness, Mr. Cruz managed to raise his own profile, anger some colleagues, thrill others, and elevate further the war over the health care law. The program begins enrolling the uninsured on Tuesday, the same day much of the government would shut down if the budget showdown were not resolved.
A spokesman for Mr. Reid said Wednesday morning that Mr. Cruz had not left the Senate floor since he began speaking on Tuesday. He has had intermittent breaks from talking while other senators like Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky have posed open-ended and sometimes long-winded questions that allowed the senator from Texas to pace around and stretch his legs.
“We must all hang together or we most assuredly will all hang separately,” Mr. Cruz said in the 11th hour of his stand, quoting Benjamin Franklin and addressing his fellow Republican senators. He vowed to keep up his parliamentary battle to thwart “the train wreck, the nightmare, the disaster that is Obamacare.”
The scene inside the Senate chamber in the late night and early morning hours was sometimes an unusual one for the staid body, especially when Mr. Cruz paused briefly in his attack to read his two young daughters a bedtime story — “Green Eggs and Ham” by Dr. Seuss.
Just feet away from the Senate chamber, in the ornate Lyndon Baines Johnson Room, Senate Democratic women gathered with mothers and babies to castigate the effort and defend the health care law.
“They can talk for the rest of this term. They can stand there day and night. They can shut down government, and those who are colluders can stand with them,” fumed Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland. “We are going to stand with the people of the United States of America.”
Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, said Mr. Cruz’s performance “changes nothing. He’s gotten a lot of airtime, and that’s something I’m sure he’s pleased about.”
Wednesday’s vote is the first in a series that will culminate in a final vote on Sunday. Later this week, Mr. Reid will formally introduce a new version of the House stopgap-spending bill stripped of the health care language and shortened to keep the government operating from Oct. 1 to Nov. 15 rather than Dec. 15, as the House wanted. The biggest vote will most likely come this weekend, when Democrats must win over 60 senators to cut off debate on their leader’s bill.
If they succeed, Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio would have a matter of hours to decide whether to have the House vote on the Senate’s spending bill over the strenuous opposition of conservative activists or to add new Republican policy provisions to the spending bill and send it back to the Senate, a move sure to shutter the government.
Even many Republicans have encouraged House leaders to relent.
“There’s no other way,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “As soon as we have 67 votes in the United States Senate, we’ll win. Unfortunately we’re not even close.”
For now, Mr. Cruz is basking in his moment.
His performance was not technically a filibuster. He merely held the floor until the clock ran out on the procedural vote, which he could not delay. But nine months into his first term in elective office, the Texan has become a lightning rod, a hero to conservative activists, a rogue to others in both parties.
When he yielded the Senate floor, he did not rush off. He sat for 10 seconds, then stood for the day’s opening prayer, accepted congratulations, greeted House Republicans who came over to watch, and walked away in no haste six minutes later — tie loosened, but little worse for the wear.
“Coming into this debate, we clearly were not united,” he said, greeting reporters off the floor. “There were significant divisions in the conference. I hope those divisions dissolve, that we come together in party unity and that all 46 Republicans vote against cloture on the bill on Friday or Saturday, whenever that vote occurs.”
“Otherwise,” he warned, “I will say this: Any senator who votes with majority leader Harry Reid and the Democrats to give majority leader Reid the ability to fund Obamacare on a pure 51-vote party vote has made the decision to allow Obamacare to be funded.”
But those divisions were far from healed. Mr. McCain followed Mr. Cruz to the floor with a blistering speech, saying the health care law was subject to months of debate in committee and on the floor, was amended repeatedly and was subject to a presidential election. He was especially incensed by Mr. Cruz’s comparison of Republicans who are not standing with him to appeasers who allowed Hitler to maraud through Europe.
“Elections have consequences, and those elections were clear,” Mr. McCain said. “A majority of the American people supported the president of the United States and renewed his stewardship of this country.”
The scene inside the Senate chamber late Tuesday night and into early Wednesday morning was sometimes an unusual one for the staid body, especially when Mr. Cruz paused briefly in his attack to read his two young daughters a bedtime story — “Green Eggs and Ham” by Dr. Seuss.
At other times, he compared his fight to efforts by leaders who stood against the Nazis, ended the cold war or started the American Revolution.
At other times, he compared his fight to efforts by leaders who stood against the Nazis, ended the cold war or started the American Revolution.
“Everyone in America knows Obamacare is destroying the economy,” said Mr. Cruz, who began speaking at 2:41 p.m. “Where is the urgency?”
“Everyone in America knows Obamacare is destroying the economy,” said Mr. Cruz, who began speaking at 2:41 p.m. on Tuesday. “Where is the urgency?”
His speech was already rivaling some of the longest Senate filibusters on record, including those by Robert M. La Follette, who spoke for 18 hours and 23 minutes in 1908 and Alfonse D’Amato, who went on for 23 hours and 30 minutes in 1986. The record was set by Strom Thurmond at 24 hours and 18 minutes in 1957.
His Senate speech was among some of the longest on record, including those by Robert M. La Follette, who spoke for 18 hours and 23 minutes in 1908 and Alfonse M. D’Amato, who went on for 23 hours and 30 minutes in 1986. The record was set by Strom Thurmond at 24 hours and 18 minutes in 1957.
Mr. Cruz called on his colleagues to stonewall the House measure they technically supported, arguing that Senate Democrats would be successful in stripping the health care provision from the funding bill once the way was cleared to a Senate vote on the issue. His basic demand was an agreement that a final vote require 60 supporters, a demand Democrats rejected.
Other Republicans said they saw no reason to oppose debating a measure they actually backed.
“We’d be hard-pressed to explain why we were opposed to a bill we’re in favor of,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.
Others warned of political repercussions if Republicans, who hope to regain control of the Senate in the elections next year, were seen as contributing to a shuttering of the government. “Getting the majority in the Senate in 2014 is possible, and we don’t want to go down roads that make it harder,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who is up for re-election next year. “Repealing Obamacare is a goal all Republicans share,” he added, “but the tactics of achieving that goal can have a backlash.”
Mr. Cruz’s critics have said that he is not engaging in a filibuster in the sense it is most commonly understood: a tactic meant to block legislation from moving forward. But Senate historians said that there is, in fact, no hard-and-fast definition for the word.
“The filibuster is not just to delay legislative action,” said Katherine Scott, a historian for the Senate Historical Office. “It’s been used in a lot of ways, and one way has been to draw attention to a particular issue a member has concern about.”
Senior Senate Republicans pushed Mr. Cruz on Tuesday to give up his stalling tactics and let the Senate take its final votes as soon as possible to strip out the health care language and other policy prescriptions, then approve new language to keep the government operating until mid-November. An early vote would give the House speaker, John A. Boehner, more time to plan his next move: whether to put the Senate-passed bill up for a vote and ensure no government shutdown or to add new Republican-favored language and send it back to the Senate.
Some Senate Republicans suggested a quick vote on a stopgap spending measure could allow the House to attach a measure related to the Affordable Care Act but one that could split Democrats and possibly become law. The obvious target would be a tax on medical devices that helps finance the law, but which has strong opponents in both parties. House Republicans are also considering adding a one-year delay in the individual mandate.
Such procedural niceties carried little weight with the conservative activists backing Mr. Cruz, and the conservative advocacy groups egging them on. Phone lines were jammed by Cruz supporters. E-mails flew, encouraged by organizations like the Tea Party Patriots and the Heritage Foundation. The Senate Conservative Fund, a group that has been running advertisements attacking Republicans who are not supporting the “defund Obamacare” effort, called Mr. McConnell and the No. 2 Senate Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, “turncoats.”
But most Republicans showed little fear of a backlash for voting to take up the House bill. “If this is what you wanted, consideration of this bill, I don’t know how you can be against taking it up,” said Senator Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina.
Mr. Reid moved Tuesday to change the House-passed bill, shortening the stopgap spending measure so it would finance the government only through mid-November instead of mid-December. Senator Barbara Mikulski, the Democrat from Maryland who leads the Appropriations Committee, requested the change to raise pressure on the House to address the automatic spending cuts that are squeezing federal programs and are reflected in the spending plan passed by the House.
But such narrow issues took a back seat to Mr. Cruz’s crusade, with bit parts granted to his Senate Republican supporters. They included Mr. Rubio, Mike Lee of Utah, Pat Roberts of Kansas, David Vitter of Louisiana, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Mr. Paul, whose own filibuster this year over the government’s use of lethal drone strikes lasted 12 hours and 52 minutes.
Topics Mr. Cruz addressed included his affection for the little hamburgers at White Castle, the fast-food chain that says its growth is slowing because of the health care law, and a tough-love speech by Ashton Kutcher. He doled out insults to the Washington establishment, blasting politicians in “cheap suits” and “bad haircuts,” and branding journalistic fact-checking as a “particularly pernicious bit of yellow journalism.” At one point, he read some of his daughters’ favorite stories.
Under the current timetable, the Senate will vote Wednesday to cut off debate on a motion to take up the House bill and vote Thursday to actually take up the House bill. Mr. Reid will then introduce his version of the stopgap spending bill, stripped of the health care language and other policy measures.
The real showdown vote will probably come on Saturday, when the Senate votes to cut off debate on Mr. Reid’s version of the bill. If that receives 60 votes, a final vote would come on Sunday, leaving the House one day to act before much of the government closes its doors.
That would give Mr. Boehner a stark choice: pass a short-term spending bill with Democratic votes and risk the wrath of conservative activists or try again to take a bit out of the health care law with no time left on the clock and ensure a shutdown.
“I don’t know what all the scenes are, but I’ve seen how this movie ends,” said Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona. “We will end up not shutting the government down, and we will not defund Obamacare.”
