Water Resources Development Act of 2013 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I rise in praise of Majority Leader Harry Reid. He said the following:

My friend from Texas ..... is like the schoolyard bully. He pushes everyone around and is losing, and instead of playing the game according to the rules, he not only takes the ball home with him but he changes the rules.

Today Leader Reid continued his demonstration of civility by referring to me as the "very junior Senator from Texas.''

As I noted yesterday, the Senate is not a schoolyard. Setting aside the irony of calling someone a bully and then shouting them down when they attempt to respond, today I simply wish to commend my friend from Nevada for his candor.

Yesterday I expressed my concern that sending the budget to conference could be used to pass tax increases or a debt ceiling increase through reconciliation--a backdoor path that would circumvent the longstanding protections of the minority in the Senate. And I observed that I would readily consent to the leader's request if he would simply agree that no such procedural tricks would be employed. It is perhaps rare for a so-called bully to offer to waive all objections if the other side will simply agree to abide by the rules, but I commend the majority leader for his response.

He did not disagree that he hoped to use reconciliation to try to force through tax increases or a debt ceiling increase on a straight party-line vote. He did not pretend that his intentions were otherwise. When the economy is struggling so mightily, as it is now--for the past 4 years our economy has grown at just 0.9 percent a year--it would be profoundly damaging to millions of Americans to raise taxes yet again, on top of the $1.7 trillion in new taxes that have already been enacted in the last 4 years. And with our national debt approaching $17 trillion--larger than the size of our entire economy--it would be deeply irresponsible to raise the debt ceiling yet again without taking real steps to address our fiscal and economic crisis.

If done through reconciliation, the majority could increase taxes or the debt ceiling with a 50-vote threshold rather than needing 60 votes. The American people already saw ObamaCare pass through backroom deals and procedural tricks. It should not happen again.

The majority leader could have claimed that he had no intention of trying to undermine the protections of the minority or of forcing through tax increases or yet another increase in the debt ceiling. But, in a refreshing display of candor, he did not do so, and I commend him for his honesty, so that our substantive policy disagreement can be made clear to the American people.

Let me be explicit. We have no objection to proceeding to conference if the leader is willing to agree not to use it as a backdoor tool to raise the debt ceiling. If not, he is certainly being candid, but the American people are rightly tired of backroom secret deals to raise the debt ceiling even further. And we should not be complicit in digging this Nation even further into debt on merely a 50-vote threshold.

Finally, I would note that the leader made a plea to regular order, and yet he was seeking unanimous consent to set aside regular order, granting that concept could open the door to even more tax increases and crushing national debt, and in my judgment the Senate should not employ a procedural backdoor to do so.

For reasons unknown, the majority leader deemed my saying so out loud as somehow "bullying.'' Speaking the truth, shining light on substantive disagreements of our elected representatives, is not bullying; it is the responsibility of each of us. It is what we were elected to do. All of us should speak the truth and do so in candor. All of us should work together to solve the crushing economic and fiscal challenges in this country. All of us should exercise candor, and I commend the majority leader and thank him for his willingness to do so.

I yield the floor.

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