Sen. Cruz: This Budget Deal Is a Corrupt Betrayal of the American People

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today delivered a speech on the Senate floor, denouncing the shockingly bad budget deal and outlining the Republican establishment’s multitude of broken promises.

Excerpts of Sen. Cruz’s speech can be read below. Watch the speech in its entirety here.

 “Mr. President, for many months, I’ve been speaking about what I call the Washington Cartel. The Washington Cartel consists of career politicians in both parties who get in bed with lobbyists and special interests here in Washington and grow and grow and grow government. The Washington Cartel is, I believe, the source of the volcanic frustration Americans face across this country. And it is difficult to find a better illustration of the Washington Cartel than the charade we are engaged in this evening. This deal that we are here to vote on is both shockingly bad on the merits, and it is also a manifestation of the bipartisan corruption that suffuses Washington, D.C.

“What are the terms of this budget deal? Well, in short, what the House of Representatives has passed and what the senate is expected to pass shortly is a bill that adds $85 billion in spending increases…$85 billion in spending increases…$85 billion to our national debt…85 billion to your children and my children that they’re somehow expected to pay. I don’t know about your kids, but my girls don’t have $85 billion laying around in their rooms…”

“…It’s worth thinking about just how much $85 billion is. It’s more than the Senate negotiated with the House when Harry Reid was majority leader. When Harry Reid was majority leader, the Ryan-Murray budget agreement, which was a flawed agreement, an agreement I voted against, increased spending by $63 billion over two years. Now, Mr. President, what does it say to you that a supposedly Republican majority of the United States Senate negotiates a bigger spending bill than Harry Reid and the Democrats?

“…Republican majorities have just given President Obama is a diamond-encrusted, glow-in-the-dark AmEx card. And it has a special feature. The president gets to spend it now, and they don’t even send him the bill. They send the bill to your kids and my kids. It’s a pretty nifty card. You don’t have to pay for it. You get to spend it and it’s somebody else’s problem.”

“…Let me point something out. You know, this bill that we’re voting on, this bill was not cooked up overnight. This wasn’t a slapdash on a post-it note last night. This represents days or weeks or months of negotiations. This represents the Cartel in all of its glory because this is the combined work product of John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid. The entire time Republican leaders have been promising, ‘We’re going to do something on the budget. We’re going to rein in the president,’ they have been in the back room negotiating to fund every single thing Obama did. 

“…Now, if someone is an effective Democratic leader, you would expect them to be able to pass legislation when a majority of Democrats supported it and a majority of Republicans opposed it -- if you're a partisan Democrat, that would be almost the definition of an effective Democratic leader. Nineteen times in the last ten months this so-called Republican majority has passed legislation, has had a vote succeed where a majority of Democrats supported it and a majority of Republicans opposed it…”

###