Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, in "Gulliver's Travels,'' Swift told us of two fictional lands--Lilliput and Blefuscu--that had been at war for years over which end of the egg to open first. In Lilliput they opened the big end of the egg, and in Blefuscu they opened the small end of the egg, and the big-enders and little-enders battled endlessly. I am sorry to say that satirical depiction often reflects what occurs in this august body. We spend a great deal of time arguing about procedural niceties, about motions to commit or not commit that do not matter to the American people, and all the meantime we are bankrupting our children and our grandchildren.

If I could, I wish to cut through all of the arguments back and forth because in my view most of the arguments are by design missing the point of this disagreement. This disagreement is over one issue and one issue only: Can the Senate raise our debt limit with only 50 votes or does it take 60? Everything else that is being talked about is smoke, is a side issue. The central fight is, Should the Senate be able to raise the debt limit with 50 votes or 60?

I will note that my friend from Arizona questioned the knowledge of those who are objecting, and he suggested that perhaps our knowledge was lacking because this could not be done. Well, I know my friend from Arizona is a long veteran of this body, and he surely knows it was done in 1987 and 1990. This is not a hypothetical. In 1995 and in 2004 it was attempted. It didn't quite get accomplished, but it was attempted.

What occurs under the Budget Act of 1974 is that when a conference report is adopted and reconciliation instructions are sent, that raises the debt ceiling, and that can then be passed by this body with merely 50 votes. This is all an avenue to allow a debt ceiling increase to be raised with 50 votes. And I know my friend from Arizona is well aware of that because he is such an esteemed historian of this body, he knows not only that it can be done but that it has been done.

We don't need to hypothesize over whether that is what this is about because for 62 days we have asked the majority leader: Simply say we won't use this as a procedural trick to raise the debt ceiling with 50 votes and then we can go to conference. For 62 days the majority leader has said: No, no, I will not do that; I will not do that. And those protestations make absolutely clear what this is about.

I think that on both sides of the Chamber there are different things at work. On the Democratic side of the Chamber--President Obama has been very explicit. He wants to raise the debt limit, and he has said he wants no debate about it. He is unwilling to debate. He wants to shut down the discussion. He simply wants a blank check. He simply wants an unlimited credit card to keep digging the debt hole this Nation is in deeper and deeper and deeper. He said this publicly, repeatedly from the White House.

What our friends the Democrats are doing is standing shoulder to shoulder with the Democratic President in fighting to enable the Senate to raise the debt limit with just 50 votes, which means, if that happens, that would then allow the 55-Member Democratic majority to vote to do so without listening to a word from the minority. That is what this fight is about, and there is no other issue being contested here.

What is happening on the Republican side? Well, some have suggested we ought to just have a motion to instruct. The problem with the motion to instruct is that a motion to instruct is nonbinding, so it is a purely symbolic gesture. But even a motion to instruct not to raise the debt ceiling would lose. Why? Because there are 55 Democrats, and the 55 Democrats would vote against it.

Here is the dirty little secret about some of those on the right side of the aisle: There are some who would very much like to cast a symbolic vote against raising the debt ceiling and nonetheless allow our friends on the left side of the aisle to raise the debt ceiling.

That, to some Republicans, is the ideal outcome because they can go to their constituents and say: See, I voted no, and yet at the same time, wonderfully, they lost, and they did not actually have to stand up and stop what was happening. That is an outcome I believe some on this side of the aisle desire.

I do feel obliged to rise in defense of my colleagues, the Republicans, because the senior Senator from Arizona has impugned the Republicans by claiming repeatedly it is only a minority of Republicans who are opposed to raising the debt ceiling on 50 votes. He has repeatedly suggested on the floor of the Senate that, in fact, it may be a small minority, that the overwhelming majority of Republicans, the senior Senator from Arizona said, stand with Harry Reid in wanting to be able to raise the debt ceiling on 50 votes.

Let me suggest to the senior Senator from Arizona that, No. 1, in saying that, he is impugning all 45 Republicans in this body, but, No. 2, it has been suggested that those of us who are fighting to defend liberty, fighting to turn around the out-of-control spending and out-of-control debt in this country, fighting to defend the Constitution--it has been suggested we are wacko birds. Well, if that is the case, I will suggest to my friend from Arizona there may be more wacko birds in the Senate than are suspected. Indeed, I would encourage my friend, the senior Senator from Arizona, that if he were to circulate to Republicans a simple statement that said: We, the undersigned Republican Senators, hereby state we support giving Harry Reid and the Democrats the ability to raise the debt ceiling with 50 votes instead of 60, I believe he will find his representation to this body that it is only a minority of Republicans who oppose that is not accurate.

This issue gets obscured by the procedural complexities, and that is not by accident. Washington is very good at speaking doublespeak that makes the citizens' eyes glaze over. But as its heart it is very simple. Majority Leader Reid and the Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling. They have stated they want to raise the debt ceiling, and they want to do so consistent with President Obama's instructions to do so without debate because he does not want to debate this issue, without conditions, without anything to fix our out-of-control spending, our out-of-control debt--simply give him an additional blank credit card because going from $10 trillion to $17 trillion has not been enough. That is the desire of the Democrats, and it is candid.

We could go to conference right now, today, if the Democrats would simply say: We will not raise the debt ceiling with just using 50 votes. We will debate it on the floor with a 60-vote threshold and actually be forced to find some bipartisan agreement. But that is not what the majority wants to do.

Those who are arguing that Republicans should accede to that demand are arguing that all of us who have told our constituents we are going to fight to solve this economic problem, we are going to fight to stop out-of-control spending, we are going to fight to stop bankrupting our kids--that those promises are hollow, those are just what we tell constituents at home, that is not actually what we do when we are on the floor of the Senate.

I would note, indeed, when the senior Senator from Arizona said it is only a small minority that believes this on the Republican side, if my friend, the senior Senator, is able to produce a written letter with the signature of a majority of Republicans, I will offer here and now to go to a home game of my Houston Astros wearing an Arizona Diamondback hat. And I can guarantee you, in Houston that will not be well received. But yet I stand in complete comfort that I will not find myself in that situation because I do not believe it is right that a majority of the Republicans in this body have given up the fight on spending, have given up the fight on reining in out-of-control Washington bipartisan spending, deficits, and debt. I believe we are seeing leadership in this body stand together to fix the problem. That is what the American people want.

Let me say this in closing: It is easy to get confused by all of the procedural discussions back and forth. This issue is about one issue alone: Should Majority Leader Harry Reid be able to raise the debt limit an unlimited amount with just 50 votes or should it require 60? If it requires 60, there will have to be some positive steps made to fix the problem. If it is just 50, the majority leader has the votes right now, today, to write a blank check for the Federal debt.

That is the issue, and I think the American people are not conflicted in the answer to that issue. The American people want us to fix the problem and stop digging the debt hole deeper and deeper, stop putting our kids and grandkids on the path to Greece.

I am proud so many Senators are standing here working very hard to honor our commitments to our constituents because that is exactly what our job is.

I yield the floor.

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