Sen. Cruz: If Senate Votes to Raise Debt Ceiling, We Should Do So After Fair and Open Debate

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) today took the Senate floor to again object sending the budget bill straight to conference, as Democrats continue to pursue, which would bypass thorough debate and enable Democrats to raise the debt ceiling with a 50-vote threshold. If the bill went through normal order, raising the debt ceiling would require 60 votes.

In a joint statement with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Cruz has previously stated that he has no objection to sending the budget to conference if Democrats agree not to use it as a back-door tool to raise taxes or the debt ceiling. So far, Democrats have made no such assurances, nor have they denied that their intent in bypassing regular order is to take advantage of a lower vote threshold in order to raise the debt ceiling.

Below is video of Sen. Cruz's remarks:

Below are rush excerpts of Sen. Cruz’s comments:

The issue before this body is the debt ceiling and whether the Senate will be able to raise the debt ceiling using a procedural back door that would allow only 51 votes [to pass]. My friend from Nevada, my friend from Washington State, both of them could go to conference on the budget right now today if they would simply agree that this budget would not be used as a back door to use a procedural trick to raise the debt limit not on 60 votes, but on 50 votes.

I would point out in the budget we debated, nothing in that budget raised the debt ceiling. And I would suggest that the American people are not interested in procedural games. I think they're tired of games by the Democrats, and they're tired of games by the Republicans.

What they are interested in is leadership in this body to address the enormous fiscal and economic challenges facing this country. Our national debt is nearly $17 trillion. It is larger than the size of our entire economy. The last four years our economy has grown 0.9 percent a year. Twenty-three million people are struggling to find jobs. This body should be debating every day how do we get the economy moving, how do we get people back to work, how do we stop our unsustainable debt?

This issue is very simple: Will the senate allow a procedural back door to raise the debt ceiling and to do it while not fixing any of the problems?

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Now, this body may well vote to raise the debt ceiling, but if this body votes to raise the debt ceiling, we should do so after fair and open debate where the threshold is the traditional 60-vote threshold where we can address what I think is imperative to fixing the problem.

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I have 26 million Texans who I am not willing to go to and say if they ask me ‘Why did you go along with a procedural game to raise the debt ceiling, to allow Republicans in the senate to be shut out, to give up any ability to force pro-growth reforms, to get jobs back, to get the economy back, to get people working. Why did you give up?’

We may well have a vote, but if we had a vote, the vote would be a 51-vote threshold, which would mean my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle have been very explicit that in their collective judgment, the debt ceiling should be raised with no conditions.

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