The News with Sen. Cruz - June 11, 2013

Greetings,

It has been a difficult week for public trust in government. More details continue to emerge about the National Security Agency's intrusive surveillance of American citizens, the President made a troubling nomination for Ambassador to the United Nations, and the Senate continues to push forward with a problematic immigration bill that was put together using backroom deals. 

In addition, the Senate voted on the Farm Bill, and I had an opportunity to go on the air to discuss abolishing the IRS, defending the Bill of Rights, and more. Please keep reading below to learn more and then share this newsletter with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

All the best,

Ted Cruz

THE SENATE PASSES THE FARM BILL

Yesterday evening, the Senate voted to pass the Farm Bill. While agriculture forms the backbone of the Texas economy and is an integral part of our proud heritage, as it is for the rest of the nation, the current farm bill gives far less attention to the needs of farmers than it does to politicians and special interests.

Sen. Cruz is disappointed that Washington's cynical politics have again trumped any real reform. This farm bill costs 60 percent more than the 2008 bill and nearly 80 percent of it is comprised of food stamps. It fails to provide a true safety net for difficult years, fails to fully target assistance to those most in need, and fails to prioritize farm aid over duplicative programs, subsidizing unrelated programs from green energy to housing.

It is important to address the true needs of American farmers, but the bill considered by the Senate does much more harm than good. For that reason, Sen. Cruz voted against it and hopes the House will include needed reforms that the Senate omitted in its flawed consideration of this important issue.

BALANCING LIBERTY WITH SECURITY

While details continue to emerge on the NSA's gathering of private phone records and invasive surveillance, Sen. Cruz released a statement on the President's call to trust that there is a system of checks and balances to prevent abuses of power. We have discovered over the past few months an ongoing pattern of disregard not only for Americans' privacy, but for the truth -- the Department of Justice's (DOJ) refusal to be forthcoming about drone policy, the IRS targeting groups for their political beliefs and then misleading the American people about it, the DOJ's targeting of journalists for doing their jobs, and now what seems an unprecedented intrusion into Americans' personal phone records and potentially their broader online activities.

Trust in government to respect the Bill of Rights has been broken, and the only way to earn it back is to tell the truth. Sen. Cruz believes that is what Americans deserve and he will continue to work with his colleagues in the Senate to ensure they have all the facts about these surveillance programs, and that our government is appropriately balancing concerns of national security with personal liberties.

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S NOMINATION FOR U.N. AMBASSADOR

On Wednesday, President Obama nominated Samantha Power to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Sen. Cruz believes this nomination is deeply troubling because Ms. Power has publicly embraced the need for America to apologize to the world for perceived transgressions, even going so far as to explicitly urge "instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa." Ms. Power has strongly supported the expansion of international institutions and international law and has also publicly stated, "We have to believe in international law and binding ourselves to international standards in the interest of getting others bound to those standards."

Sen. Cruz stressed that "America needs a U.N. Ambassador to be an advocate for our own interests at the U.N.--not an advocate of elevating U.N. interests over U.S. sovereignty and the rights of the American people."

PROMOTING COMMON SENSE IMMIGRATION REFORM

Last Tuesday, Sen. Cruz joined with Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in sending a letter to their Senate colleagues that highlights numerous concerns with the Gang of Eight's immigration reform bill. In the letter, they noted the numerous opportunities the Senate Judiciary Committee had to improve the bill during the markup process, yet the committee failed to enact any of them. They also criticized the backroom deal that was struck by the Gang of Eight and Democrats on the Judiciary Committee prior to the markup, which prevented any meaningful improvements to the bill.

The Senators pointed to several areas of concern in the current bill that must be addressed on the Senate floor in order to pass effective legislation, including:

• Provides immediate legalization without securing the border
• Rewards criminal aliens, absconders, and deportees and undermines law enforcement
• Contains extremely dangerous national security loopholes
• Facilitates fraud in our immigration system
• Creates no real penalties for illegal immigrants and rewards them with entitlements
• Delays for years the implementation of E-Verify
• Does not fix our legal immigration system
• Advanced through a process predicated on a deal struck before markup
• Rewards those who have broken our laws by offering a special path to citizenship

ON THE RADIO

Last week, Sen. Cruz took to the airwaves to discuss the latest in the fight to abolish the IRS, defend the Bill of Rights, the nomination of Susan Power to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and more. You can listen to the segments below:

Sen. Cruz with Mark Levin - 06/04/2013

Sen. Cruz with Mark Davis - 06/05/2013

Sen. Cruz with Glenn Beck - 06/06/2013

Sen. Cruz with Chad Hasty - 06/06/2013

Sen. Cruz with Jay Sekulow - 06/10/2013

FREEDOM MINUTE

Yesterday, Sen. Cruz released the latest in a series of "Freedom Minute" radio segments focused on this Administration's pattern of disregard for the Bill of Rights and the need for citizens to continue to speak out. Listen to the "Freedom Minute."