Tag Archives: Ted Cruz

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Ted Cruz fought Rubio’s amnesty in 2013 and fought Obama’s executive amnesty in 2014

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Ted Cruz and Mike Lee go to war against amnesty
Ted Cruz and Mike Lee go to war against amnesty

Let’s do the 2013 Rubio amnesty first.

The leftist Washington Post reports on how Cruz tried to stop the Rubio amnesty by introducing amendments that would undermine support for the bill, or weaken the bill if it did get passed.

Excerpt:

Cruz has been a staunch opponent of giving a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who entered the United States illegally. In 2013, Cruz introduced five amendments:

  • Cruz 1: To triple the number of Border Patrol agents and quadrupling the equipment along the border.
  • Cruz 2: To deny means-tested government benefits to those who entered illegally.
  • Cruz 3: To strip away the pathway to citizenship.
  • Cruz 4: To expand legal immigration, by increasing employment-based immigration from 140,000 to 1,012,500 per year.
  • Cruz 5: To raise the H-1B high-skilled worker cap from 65,000 visas to 325,000 per year.

Note that “legalizing” someone can mean just giving them a temporary work permit, so that they are in the country legally, but have no permanent right to stay, much less get citizenship. The thing is, it’s not even clear that Cruz would have voted for the bill with his amendments. His goal was to derail the bill by embedding things in it that the supporters did not want. Like the “no path to citizenship” that Rubio wanted. And this is exactly how Democrats saw his amendments.

Here’s what happened:

When pressed about his 2013 statements and the citizenship amendment after the GOP debate, Cruz said: “It’s called calling their bluff.”

And in a Dec. 16, 2015, interview with Bret Baier on Fox News: “You’ve been around Washington long enough. You know how to defeat bad legislation, which is what that amendment did, is it revealed the hypocrisy of Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] and the Senate Democrats and the establishment Republicans who were supporting them because they all voted against it.”

[…]Current and former Democratic Senate staffers familiar with the negotiations confirmed to The Fact Checker that Cruz’s bill was, indeed, viewed as a poison pill in 2013. Consider the impact some of his amendments would have had on the fragile agreements the coalition negotiated:

  • Tripling Border Patrol agents: The Senate ultimately approved an amendment to double the number of Border Patrol agents. But tripling the number would’ve gone too far and lost the support of some immigration groups, which believed an even bigger increase would be badly received by border communities and the public.
  • Expanding legal immigration: Such a dramatic increase in employment-based immigration and H-1B visas went far beyond the coalition’s negotiated cap at 65,000. As The Washington Post’s Paul Kane reported, Democrats, Republicans and their allies in the labor movement and corporate America worked for months to agree on this number, which was backed by the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A slight increase or decrease would have jeopardized support from either the AFL-CIO or the Chamber of Commerce; Cruz’s proposal was a 400 percent increase from the negotiated cap.
  • Removing pathway to citizenship: This was the major negotiation point for the Gang of Eight, and would have killed the bill.

In reference to the citizenship amendment, then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said during the 2013 hearing: “My concern with this, I feel it would virtually gut the bill … and gut what has been a very careful balance by Republicans and Democrats and the sponsors of it.”

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a Gang of Eight Democrat, echoed the concern at the hearing: “If we do not have a path to citizenship, there is no reform, many of us feel. That is a bottom line here.” The Gang of Eight Republicans on the Judiciary Committee sided with Democrats in rejecting this amendment.

In a statement to The Fact Checker, Schumer confirmed Cruz’s bill was viewed as a poison pill: “This was an attempt to kill the bill, and there was no doubt at the time that Senator Cruz knew it would do exactly that.”

This is what Marco Rubio is getting angry with Cruz about in the debates. Cruz introduced 5 amendments meant to destroy the agreement among supporters of the bill. And the bill died. Rubio actually voted against Cruz’s amendment that would have taken citizenship off the table. He also opposed poison pill amendments by amnesty opponents Mike Lee and Jeff Sessions.

Conservative Mark Levin recently interviewed Jeff Sessions about Ted Cruz’s role in the battle over amnesty, and you can read about it here on the Daily Wire.

The second amnesty battle

Rubio’s amnesty was defeated in 2013, but there was another amnesty to come in 2014. This time, from the pen of Barack Obama.

The Blaze reports:

On Saturday night, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) won a battle, but not the war, against President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration.

Cruz led the fight to force a Senate vote on Obama’s immigration plans, as a condition of approving a massive, $1.1 trillion spending bill for 2015. He was able to make that vote happen by arguing that the spending bill violated the Constitution because it would fund Obama’s plan — a plan Cruz and other Republicans say is illegal because it rewrites immigration law without any input from Congress.

“Tonight is the first opportunity that Congress has to express its disapproval,” Cruz said late Saturday of Obama’s immigration plan.

Cruz lost the vote, as expected in a Senate that is still controlled by Democrats for a few more weeks. But Cruz’s tactics — which forced the Senate to work unexpectedly late into Saturday night — also drew criticism from Republicans, and several GOP senators vote against Cruz.

In the final vote, the Senate decided 22-74 against Cruz — less than half of the Senate’s 45 Republicans voted with Cruz.

[…]Cruz raised his constitutional argument against the bill on Friday night, a move that surprised both Republicans and Democrats and forced the Senate back into the office for a rare Saturday session. After several hours of negotiating, Democrats finally agreed to give Cruz his vote.

The vote itself was a victory — many Republicans have been begging for either the House or Senate to go on the record about Obama’s unilateral immigration decision.

This is why Cruz has few friends in the Senate. It’s not because he is a mean person, it’s because he fights hard for what is right. And few stand with him.

Cruz keeps telling the truth, and people keep calling him a liar for citing their actual words and actions:

It’s important to understand that on Washington, most of the politicians in both parties want amnesty. And that’s why they hate Cruz so much. It’s not his personality, it’s his conservatism.

News

Meet Ted Cruz’s secret weapon: his supportive and loving wife Heidi Cruz

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Texas senator Ted Cruz, his wife Heidi Cruz and their two daughters
Texas senator Ted Cruz, his wife Heidi Cruz and their two daughters

For Valentine’s Day, I thought it would be a good idea to post something about the power behind GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz. I read a half-dozen articles for this post about Heidi, as well as Ted Cruz’s book where he talks about her. But this article from the Texas Tribune basically captures the point that I wanted to make about what makes a woman great.

The article says:

[Heidi] Cruz, 43, grew up in San Luis Obispo, Calif., the daughter of a dentist and dental hygienist who are Seventh-day Adventists.

When she was 5, Heidi’s parents signed her up for piano lessons, and she insisted on practicing an hour and sometimes two each night. At age 8, when her parents first enrolled her in school, a family trip to Washington sparked an interest in politics. By fifth grade, Heidi announced she wanted to go to Harvard Business School.

“I don’t even know how she knew about Harvard Business School. It wasn’t in our world at all,” her mother, Suzanne Nelson, said in an interview. “A good word to describe her is ‘driven.’ I don’t really know what has made her so driven.”

[…]Cruz went to Claremont McKenna College and was active in the college Republicans and interested in appointive political office, said her mentor, Edward Haley. She also was intent on a career in business first. She moved to New York after graduation and worked on emerging markets at J.P. Morgan, an area in which she was interested after spending summers in Africa doing missionary work with her parents. She was put on the Latin America desk and taught herself to speak Spanish between 18-hour work days.

Cruz achieved her dream of attending Harvard Business School but turned down a job at Goldman Sachs to work on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign.

[…][S]he met Ted Cruz, who by his own admission turned off campaign colleagues with what he described as a “cocky” attitude. But not Heidi Nelson. She said he reminded her of “a 1950s movie star.” He grilled her on her hopes, aspirations and dreams during their first date. They were married the following year.

She was the star when the couple arrived in Washington, netting jobs at the Treasury Department and then the White House, working as a Latin America director on the National Security Council. Ted Cruz was floundering, and he moved back to Texas to become the state’s solicitor general with hopes of launching a political career. They lived apart for more than a year, until she gave up her job and moved to Texas.

After the move, she suffered through a period of depression.

“When I moved to Texas, it really was for Ted, and I wasn’t comfortable with that,” she told The Washington Post in September. She said she recovered with spiritual counseling. She started working at Goldman Sachs in Houston; she was promoted to managing director.

And she began to apply her talents to her husband’s political career.

[…]She now holds her own campaign events, talking up her husband’s values and laying out what the campaign sees as a grass-roots path to victory.

[…]She remains the campaign’s top fundraiser, now making many calls from the road instead of from the campaign’s airy Houston headquarters, where she installed a playroom with pillows decorated with raspberry prints for the girls. Cruz said she aims to make 30 calls a day but typically averages about 20 to 25; she is calling from the campaign and super PAC lists and trying to persuade donors to give the maximum allowed under federal election law.

“I don’t want to say it’s easy, and I don’t close every deal,” she said. “I think people want to be a part of something that addresses the main issue of the day, number one, which is Washington versus the people.”

[…]Ted Cruz told an audience in Winterset, Iowa, on Monday that the couple’s decision to run for president was difficult for his wife.

“Heidi spent a lot of years building a very, very successful career. And when we were deciding whether to run, particularly when you’re parents of young girls, that’s not an easy decision. And she was struggling with it,” he said.

Ted Cruz said his wife was driving, listening to a CD of Christian music sent by her sister-in-law. She was struck by a song about seeking the face of the Lord and pulled over on the freeway and started crying, he said. That moment, he said, “changed her heart,” and she decided that the race was about God, the country and the future.

Now, Heidi Cruz says her main job is to bolster her husband’s candidacy.

“There are women who use their husband’s candidacies for their own” purposes, she said recently while being driven to yet another airport. “I love my life. I love my career. This is not for me. This is for our country.”

She has a great education and work experience. And she wants to use that to help her husband. It hasn’t been easy, but in the end, she chose her husband’s plan over her own.

How to get kissed: Heidi Cruz helping her husband
How to get kissed by a man who loves you: Heidi Cruz helping her husband

Here is one more quote from a 2013 article on Heidi Cruz, from the radically leftist New York Times, of all places:

In a glimpse into their marriage that Mr. Cruz called “illustrative,” he recalled saying to his wife in the weeks before his Senate primary, when he was still behind in the polls, “Sweetheart, I’d like us to liquidate our entire net worth, liquid net worth, and put it into the campaign.”

“What astonished me, then and now, was Heidi within 60 seconds said, ‘Absolutely,’ with no hesitation,” said Mr. Cruz, who invested about $1.2 million — “which is all we had saved,” he added — into his campaign.

A lot of that money was money she had earned, working those 18-hour-days at J.P. Morgan. All that education, all that hard work – she sacrificed it all because her husband was running for the Senate to make a difference.

It was a good idea for her to go and do those difficult degrees and take those difficult jobs, otherwise, she would not have the background and skills necessary to be effective for her husband. But, when push comes to shove and her husband gets himself mixed up in something important, then she drops everything to support him. That’s what a Christian wife ought to do.

News

Bush, Rubio and Christie spent $70 million in NH – Cruz beat them and spent $580 thousand

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NH primary results early Wednesday morning with 95% counted
NH primary results early Wednesday morning with 95% counted

(Source: Fox News)

According to this tweet from the Weekly Standard’s Stephen F. Hayes, here are the totals of combined candidate/Super PAC spending in the New Hampshire primary:

  • $36 Million Jeb Bush
  • $18.5 Million Chris Christie
  • $15.2 Million Marco Rubio
  • $12.1 Million John Kasich
  • $3.7 Million Donald Trump
  • $1.8 Million Carly Fiorina
  • $580 Thousand Ted Cruz

Here are the results of the election with 95% counted:

  • Trump 94,821 (35%)
  • Kasich 42,699 (16%)
  • Cruz 31,425 (12%)
  • Bush 29,851 (11%)
  • Rubio 28,353 (11%)
  • Christie 20,152 (7%)
  • Fiorina 11,248 (4%)

And this is how much each candidate spent per vote:

  • Bush: $1206 per vote
  • Christie: $918 per vote
  • Rubio: $536 per vote
  • Kasich: $283 per vote
  • Fiorina: $160 per vote
  • Trump: $39 per vote
  • Cruz: $18 per vote

Here are the most recent “cash on hand” numbers for the campaigns:

Cash on Hand (12/31/2015)

  1. Ted Cruz $18,734,794.46
  2. Marco Rubio $10,398,592.91
  3. Jeb Bush $7,589,858.03
  4. Donald Trump $6,964,324.88
  5. Ben Carson $6,567,647.25
  6. Carly Fiorina $4,484,307.21
  7. John Kasich $2,537,300.60
  8. Chris Christie $1,126,158.09

Cruz is backed primarily by individual small donors.

So what does it mean?

It means that you can tell a lot about a candidate from the way they spend money that is entrusted to them. You can tell a lot about a candidate by how much they can get done with the least possible expense. These are useful skills.

Ted Cruz meets voters at a campaign event
Ted Cruz meets voters at a campaign event

Ted Cruz’s record of conservative achievements

Ted Cruz is also the most qualified candidate running.

Young Conservatives explains his achievements:

  • Graduated valedictorian in 1988 from Second Baptist High School
  • Graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 1992
  • Graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1995
  • 1992 U.S. National Debate Champion representing Princeton
  • 1995 World Debating Championship semi-finalist representing Harvard
  • Served a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, making him the first Hispanic ever to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States
  • Served as Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to 2008, making him the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas, the youngest Solicitor General in the entire country and the longest tenure in Texas history
  • Partner at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he led the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice
  • Authored over 80 SCOTUS briefs and presented over 40 oral arguments before The Court
  • Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation

Smart guy.

Here are the specifically conservative achievements:

  • In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Cruz assembled a coalition of 31 states in defense of the principle that the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms
  • Presented oral arguments before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
  • Defended the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds,
  • Defended the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools
  • Defended the State of Texas against an attempt by the International Court of Justice to re-open the criminal convictions of 51 murderers on death row throughout the United States

He’s 5 for 9 arguing cases before the Supreme Court. Cruz knows how to convince liberal scholars to come over to his side. That’s what he enjoys – persuading people who disagree with him.

Here’s some of the legislation he introduced:

  • ObamaCare Repeal Act
  • Disarm Criminals and Protect Communities Act
  • Defund Obamacare Act of 2013
  • A bill to amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to permit States to require proof of citizenship for registration to vote in elections for Federal office
  • State Marriage Defense Act of 2014
  • A bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit the intentional discrimination of a person or organization by an employee of the Internal Revenue Service
  • A bill to prohibit the Department of the Treasury from assigning tax statuses to organizations based on their political beliefs and activities
  • American Energy Renaissance Act of 2014
  • A bill to deny admission to the United States to any representative to the United Nations who has been found to have been engaged in espionage activities or a terrorist activity against the United States and poses a threat to United States national security interests
  • SuperPAC Elimination Act of 2014
  • Free All Speech Act of 2014
  • A bill to prevent the expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program unlawfully created by Executive memorandum on August 15, 2012
  • Sanction Iran, Safeguard America Act of 2014

And he has gotten more legislation passed than Marco Rubio in the Senate:

Laws enacted per year in Congress
Laws enacted per year in Congress

He has done something to address so many of the things I’ve been writing about on this blog – voter fraud, IRS discriminating against conservatives, etc. I am a Cruz supporter because I like Cruz, not because I oppose Trump and Rubio.