During Saturday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Life, Liberty & Levin,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) blamed the federal government shutdown on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
He accused the New York State Democrat U.S. Senator of having a “temper tantrum” that prevented the federal government from reopening.
“So Ted Cruz, we’ve established that the government as exists today wasn’t intended by the framers of the Constitution,” host Mark Levin said. “There’s nothing we can find that would suggest otherwise. Well, we’ve gone a long way from that. In other words, now the debate is whether a Continuing Resolution, which is just supposed to be a little bridge between spending bills while Congress finishes their appropriation bills should be used to completely blow up the budget, further blow up the debt, $1.5 trillion, hundreds of billions of dollars for illegal aliens in health care, even though the Democrats are lying about that. They have no compunction about any compliance with the Constitution whatsoever, do they? Or any rational fiscal position for that matter?”
“Look, you’re absolutely right,” Cruz replied. “The reason we’re here with this shutdown is a different constitutional principle, which is that the Executive Branch cannot spend money that Congress has not appropriated. Congress has the power of the purse. On September 30, it was the end of the fiscal year, and so at midnight, September 30, Congress’ appropriations expired, and the question is, is Congress going to appropriate more funds to keep the federal government running? Now, shutdown is a misnomer. About 82 to 83 percent of the federal government continues, everything that is deemed essential continues, regardless. So the military continues, law enforcement continues, Border Patrol and ICE continues; Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, all of that continues; VA benefits continues.”
He continued, “But things that are deemed non-essential, things like National Parks, things like the Smithsonian Museum, things like cancer research in the National Institutes of Health, all of those have shut down because the Democrats have decided to filibuster funding for the government, and why are they forcing a government shutdown? The principal reason is they want free health care for illegal aliens. This is where the Democratic Party has decided to go. Now that is wildly unpopular with the American people. Well, we all remember every Democrat on the debate stage raising their hand saying, we support free health care at taxpayer expense for every illegal alien in America.”
“That’s why we’re having a shutdown, but at the same time, Mark, that’s actually not why we’re having the shutdown,” Cruz replied. “The real reason we’re having the shutdown is Chuck Schumer is in a political crisis. A couple of months ago, he agreed to allow the government to stay open, and his left-wing base got furious with him. He is looking over his left shoulder, terrified that AOC is going to primary him, and so this is a temper tantrum. This is Chuck Schumer and the Democrats saying we hate Donald Trump, and we hate Donald Trump so much we are going to shut the government down. The government will reopen when Schumer’s temper tantrum ends, but this is pure political theater trying to guard his left base.”
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