I have a really bad habit. When I come home from work, I like to wind down on the couch with MSNBC on and a nice glass of cold water (filtered via a pitcher in fridge because our water sucks). I digress. The nasty habit is switching over to Fox on commercials. I know, right? How could I? But my dad watches Fox faithfully, so I like to hear what he hears for my next trip to visit.
I switched over at the perfect time to catch the tail end of a Fox interview with Ted Cruz. "He's finally back on the air after his fauxlibuster," I'm thinking. I only caught the tail end, where the fantastic quote comes from. So I pulled out the laptop to stream it from the Fox website, to make sure I'm not taking anything out of context.
They start with some Dem bashing, namely Reid. Then this is all fueling their base with visits to horrible website, they're building momentum, even with other House members. Senate Republicans and uniting and supporting the House Republicans. You know, just hitting all the talking points on how they're united and we're refusing to listen and negotiate.
He flat out says at 2:05, "This is Harry Reid's shutdown." Then he says this is the approach laid out by Obama.
"So, wait a minute, Mr. Diarist," you say. "How does Cruz accept blame if he's saying this is Reid's shutdown with an approach that Obama laid out?"
At the 6:10 mark, Cruz says:
And in fact, Senator Rob Portman has legislation that would eliminate government shutdowns. Senator Pat Toomey, Republican from Pennsylvania, has legislation that would eliminate threat of a default on the debt ceiling. What happens on both of those is Harry Reid and the Democrats have killed both of those because Harry Reid and the Democrats want government by crisis, because it's the way they keep exploding the size of government. It's the reason we've got nearly a $17 trillion national debt. And it's why so many Americans are frustrated with Washington, because the place is broken, and it's like a leviathan that keeps growing and growing and growing. The only way we can change it is what's happening right now. If we can force DC to listen to the American people I think that's the only we can change it.
The breakdown below the fold.
The interesting things for me, in no particular order.
President Obama has referenced "governing by crisis" several times, and it's a point he likes to hit the Republicans on. It's humorous that Cruz wants to steal this. Despite being completely wrong (come on, I'm not telling you anything new here), he's got nothing original. Dr. Seuss? Obama's lines? What's the matter, Cruz, no original thoughts behind that smug look?
If we're under the sequestration budget that's barely above the Ryan budget in terms of dollars, just how the hell is government exploding in size? Perhaps he means the size of reach, in terms of ACA, but his next point was about debt and dollars. And on this point, what isn't being talked about by anyone, is that the CBO said ACA saves as much as $84 billion over just 11 years. I mean, seriously, let's talk about healthcare and lives and all that, but it's also just plain sound fiscal policy. Why defund what's saving money? Why delay that? Why the hell aren't we hammering them on this point??
Anyway, my final point, back on topic... How can this be an approach Obama laid out, and a shutdown that Senator Reid wants, if this is Cruz and the Republicans forcing DC to listen? Is that really his argument here? "Look, the Democrats wanted this really bad thing of a shutdown, and that's why Republicans are forcing DC to listen through a shutdown. I mean, it wasn't our idea and we didn't want, but we're sure working hard to keep it going and make it work!"
Check out the full video for yourself, if you can survive a trip to the Faux website. (And I can't find an embed link, and there's no way I'm ripping Fox video to my harddrive to upload to YouTube.)