Ted Cruz took to the Senate floor Friday and charged that Mitch McConnell told a “lie”, escalating his campaign against GOP leaders and challenging the traditions of the usually decorous chamber.
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The charges from the Texas senator and GOP presidential candidate were a rare departure from the Senate’s usual staid decorum, even for a politician famous for his fiery speeches.
Cruz said McConnell lied about how he would handle a vote to renew a federal lending institution.
“I don’t see the Senate (bill) flying in the House”, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters earlier in the day.
“Now the Republican leader is behaving like the senior senator from Nevada”, Cruz complained.
Madam President, I went back to my office, and my staff told me that afternoon, “He’s lying to you”. “The majority and minority leader, arm-in-arm again, should not team up against the American taxpayers”.
No senator rose to defend McConnell on the floor, as some Republicans sought to avoid engaging in the dispute and giving Cruz still more attention.
According to the AP, the Senate’s historian, Betty K. Koed, said it’s not necessarily a breach of Senate rules to call another senator a liar, “but pointed to rules cautioning against talking ill of other members or imputing unbecoming conduct or motives”.
Conservatives say the bank known as “Ex-Im” doled out “corporate welfare” and should unwind the last of its obligations.
McConnell has long indicated he would allow a vote on the Export-Import Bank as an amendment on the highway bill, which is the course he’s now following. The bank, which helps U.S. companies sell their products overseas, has been largely non-controversial over the years, but conservatives recently targeted it as an example of what they called “crony capitalism”.
Cruz delivered his remarks moments after McConnell had lined up a vote to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank.
During his speech, Cruz also strongly rebuked the GOP Senate majority’s record this Congress, rebutting McConnell’s argument that the new Republican majority has fulfilled its promises to voters.
In addition to the Ex-Im vote, McConnell also set up a vote on repealing ObamaCare.
But since the Obamacare vote will fail to surmount a Democratic filibuster, Cruz lashed McConnell for “empty showmanship”.
“Keep in mind, he’s running for president”, Hatch added. “And then the leadership rammed through the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as attorney general”.
The Senate agreed Wednesday to take up a sweeping transportation bill a little over a week before states will face a cutoff of highway and transit aid in the middle of the summer construction season.
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The Senate voted 62 to 36 in favor of invoking cloture on the motion to proceed to the legislative vehicle for the highway bill, just above the 60 votes needed. Cruz said McConnell denied to him that there had been such a deal.
