ICYMI: Sen. Cruz on KTSA San Antonio with Trey Ware

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today spoke with KTSA San Antonio’s Trey Ware about the omnibus spending bill, health care reform, and the NBA conference semifinals series between the Houston Rockets and the San Antonio Spurs, among other topics. 

“On the spending side, it’s just unfortunate, they have cut a deal that largely gave the Democrats everything they wanted. There is a reason Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are celebrating, because the spending measure funds everything they want and funds virtually none of the priorities we were elected to fund. This bill funds sanctuary cities, funds Planned Parenthood, it funds Obamacare and I think that was unfortunate and it’s a real missed opportunity,” Cruz told Trey Ware. 

On health care reform, Cruz discussed his optimism: “I’m encouraged on Obamacare. The House has been working diligently, and it looks like they’ve reached an agreement and it appears that the votes are there to pass it out of the House today. I think that’s a positive thing. What we’ve seen between when it was first introduced and now, is the Freedom Caucus – the strong conservatives in the House have been pressing really hard to improve this bill and to make it better. And what they’ve been focusing on quite rightly is that we’ve got to lower health insurance premiums – that’s going to be the test of success or failure. Do premiums go up or do they go down? If we can lower premiums it’s a victory.”

Cruz continued, discussing his efforts in the Senate to reach consensus across the ideological spectrum: “If it passes today and comes over to the Senate, then it’s going to be incumbent on us to work to make it even better. Getting it out of the Senate is not going to be easy. […] Now what I’ve been doing, Trey, for over a month now, is I assembled a group of senators -- Republicans across the ideological spectrum -- and we have been meeting weekly, sitting down and trying to come to common ground, trying to come together and say ‘Where do we all agree on how we repeal Obamacare and fix the underlying problem? What are consensus ideas?’ And when there are disagreements, ‘How can we reach a resolution that satisfies that core objectives of each?’ and so we’ve got the full ideological spectrum. We have people who are conservatives, we have people who are much more moderate, and we’re … now meeting twice a week to try to work through and come to agreement. It, frankly, is the process I think the House of Representatives should have started with, and they didn’t. But we’re going to try to do it in the Senate and I hope we can get it done. My view is failure is not an option. We’ve been promising the voters we’d repeal Obamacare for seven years, and I think if we fail to deliver on that I think the consequences would be catastrophic.”

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