Making Continuing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2014--Motion to Proceed--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. So the Senator will not vote to continue government operations unless ObamaCare is defunded?

Mr. CRUZ. The Senator from Virginia is correct, and I have stated that I will not vote for a continuing resolution that funds ObamaCare. I believe this body should not vote for a continuing resolution that funds ObamaCare. Why? Because the facts show it is not working.

That is why the unions that used to support it are, one after the other, coming out against it.

Mr. KAINE. I want to switch and ask the Senator a question about ``MakeWashingtonListen.'' That is the second piece. If the Senator will let me get back into a little bit of campaigning activity, he and I were candidates at the same time in 2012, and I gather that he told his constituents that he was opposed to ObamaCare and that he would vote to repeal or defund it if he were elected to office. Is that correct?

Mr. CRUZ. That is most assuredly correct.

Mr. KAINE. I believe I am correct that the Senator won his election not by a small margin but by a large margin. Is that correct?

Mr. CRUZ. Thanks to the work of a whole lot of Texas men and women across the State who really worked their hearts out. Yes, we were privileged to win the primary by 14 points and to win the general election by 15 points.

Mr. KAINE. Would it be fair to say that part of the Senator's mission here is he told his voters what he would do. They knew what the Senator would do and chose him to do the job. One of the things the Senator is doing today on the floor with this effort is to basically live up to the promise that he made to them, and the mandate that they gave to him?

Mr. CRUZ. I would agree with all of that.

Mr. KAINE. Let me offer a hypothetical situation. Contemplate another State and another race between two candidates, where one candidate took the strong position that ObamaCare should be repealed and the other candidate took the strong position that ObamaCare should not be repealed. In that State, the candidate that won by a sizable margin was the candidate who said ObamaCare should not be repealed, having been plain about it with the voters, and the voters having heard the choices and made a choice. Does the Senator think it is also the case that a Senator in that hypothetical State should come to the body and do what he said he was going to do for his voters?

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Mr. KAINE. The last thing I would ask the Senator is--the three Senators who are now in the Chamber are each from different States. We all ran in 2012. I do not know about the presiding officer's situation. I was in that hypothetical, as you understand, running against a candidate who promised to repeal ObamaCare. I promised to work on reform efforts but to reject any effort to repeal or defund ObamaCare. The voters of Virginia chose the candidate who was not for repeal of ObamaCare. I do not know if it was the same situation in Connecticut or not. I suspect it probably was. We each represent one State.

There was also a national election in 2012, between a candidate, a President, who said that the Affordable Care Act was the law of the land and I am willing to work on it and improve it, but I will fight against efforts to repeal it or defund it, and a candidate who pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

An election result in a Presidential election is listening to America, I believe. I am a believer in this system. I am a believer in democracy and the power of Presidential elections and mandates. I think the result in that election between the candidate who promised to maintain the Affordable Care Act and work to improve it and the candidate who promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act was not particularly close. I think it was a 53 to 47 percent election among the large size of a national electorate, rejecting the repeal of the Affordable Care Act position.

Is that something that this body should at least consider or take into account as we wrestle with this question?

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Mr. KAINE. I have a comment and a final question. I am not skilled at how campaigns are run, but I would challenge the Senator's assertion. I think virtually everyone in the country who voted in the Presidential election in 2012 knew that one candidate, the President, would fight to maintain the Affordable Care Act, and another pledged to repeal it.

How much they did it in ads and on TV I cannot count. I actually saw a lot of ads about the very subject in the battleground State of Virginia. But I think the voters knew exactly the position of the two candidates on this issue. While it was not the only issue in the campaign, it was an important one. They had that before them as they made the decision.

The last question I will ask is a little bit of a rhetorical one but it is a sincere one. I very much hope that regardless of the outcome of this debate over the next few days--and I strongly want the outcome of this debate to be that government continues and that we continue to provide the services that we need to provide, and that we save the debate about health care reform for another day. But I very much hope that the Senator introduces legislation about health care reform ideas and that the legislation not be wrapped up with the question of whether government should shut down or not but that it be stand-alone legislation, that it not be wrapped up with a question of whether we should default on our debts or not, but that it should be stand-alone legislation.

I have a feeling that there are many Democrats and Republicans that would love to work on reform ideas. In this body and in the House we have a somewhat limited bandwidth. We are trying to deal with a lot of different issues. Health care is a hugely important one.

Its connection to the economy is equally important, and I think there are a lot of Members here who would love to have a debate about reform.

But for the last 3-plus years the only debate has been about the repealing or defunding instead of about reform. That makes it a fairly simple vote for many of us. It makes it a simple vote for many of us who feel as though the will of this body has been expressed, that the Supreme Court has rendered an opinion about the Affordable Care Act, that the American public rendered an opinion about two positions in a Presidential election in 2012.

A defunding repeal strategy, which has been now done four dozen times by the House, is actually a pretty simple thing to move aside based on the foregoing, but if we set aside those efforts and try to take up the kinds of concrete reform ideas the Senator talked about earlier, I actually think there might be a number of things that we could all do together to improve the situation, but we don't need to do it while we are talking about the shutdown of the government or defaulting on America's bills for the first time in our history.

Thank you. I yield the floor, and I yield back.

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