ThinkProgress Logo

Stories tagged with “Ted Cruz”

Immigration

Hours After Supreme Court Strikes Down Voter Suppression Law, Senator Introduces Bill To Overturn Decision

By Scott Keyes on Jun 17, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) (Credit: Houston Chronicle)

The Supreme Court struck down an Arizona voter suppression law in a surprise move Monday, but one Republican senator is already trying to work around that decision.

Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the 7-2 opinion in the Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona case Monday which invalidated the state law requiring voters that prove they were citizens before registering. Such “proof of citizenship” requirements can suppress the vote by making it far more difficult for people to get registered. Aside from Arizona, four other states currently require proof of citizenship to vote, including Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, and Tennessee.

However, even Scalia’s jurisprudence is apparently too liberal for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who announced Monday afternoon that he will file a bill overturning the decision. As The Hill reports, Cruz will file an amendment to the Senate immigration bill that would reverse the decision and allow states to require proof of citizenship in order to register and vote.

Cruz also warned on his Facebook page that Monday’s decision “encourages voter fraud,” despite the fact that you are far more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud.

Though this amendment is highly unlikely to pass, particularly on the heels of the Supreme Court decision, it would have disastrous consequences if it were to sneak through. At least 11 percent of all Americans don’t have a photo ID. Among Latinos the number rises to 1 in 5, and among African Americans it’s 1 in 4. Requiring citizens to show their birth certificate or a photo ID before allowing them to vote would result in widespread disenfranchisement, particularly among minorities.

LGBT

Ted Cruz Defends Military ‘License To Discriminate’ Amendment

By Zack Ford on Jun 14, 2013 at 10:22 am

Last week, House Republicans adopted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that expands “conscience protections” for military chaplains and servicemembers. The provision, offered by Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) enables anti-gay bullying by tying the hands of commanding officers when harassment is taking place. The White House noted its objection to the amendment in its threat to veto the bill as currently drafted, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is not happy about President Obama’s opposition:

CRUZ: We have reports of servicemen and women being told that, ‘If you share your faith with others, you will face disciplinary action and perhaps court martial.’ The idea that we would say to men and women who are risking their lives … that they have to check their First Amendment rights at the door and give up the right to speak the truth and to speak and defend their faith, it’s wrong and it’s unconstitutional.

Congress is acting right now to make very clear in the law that our service men and women don’t give up their faith when they sign up to defend this country. The Obama administration has explicitly said it opposes such efforts and has threatened to veto.

Cruz was speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference, which according to Politico, he arrived an hour late for and proceeded to only speak for seven minutes.

There is a difference between the religious beliefs a person holds and the actions that person takes. Somehow, conservatives have co-opted the idea that “faith” is synonymous with condemning people for being gay or openly discriminating against them. In addition to justifying such oppression, this approach insults the many people of faith who do support LGBT equality — or are LGBT themselves.

Cruz, Fleming, and other proponents of this “license to discriminate” should provide evidence of the supposed disciplinary action they claim is taking place. If it is actually happening — which the evidence suggests it is not — they should have to stand by the specifics of the anti-LGBT harassment they are clearly trying to defend.

Immigration

POLL: Voters Overwhelmingly Support Senate Immigration Reform Bill

By Kirsten Gibson, Guest Blogger on Jun 13, 2013 at 10:09 am

Credit: ABC News

An overwhelming majority of Americans support the Gang of Eight legislation for immigration reform, according to polls released Thursday by three pro-reform groups. The bill, which is currently being considered by the Senate, includes a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, as well as a plan for stronger border security.

The poll, conducted by the Partnership for a New American Economy, the Alliance for Citizenship, and Republicans for Immigration Reform, found that an average of 68 percent of voters support the bill. Some key states highlighted were Florida, South Carolina, and Texas.

In Florida, where some 825,000 undocumented immigrants reside, 72 percent of voters said they support the legislation and 45 percent strongly support it. In South Carolina, a state with 55,000 undocumented immigrants, 62 percent support the Gang of Eight bill. And in Texas, which has the highest ratio of undocumented immigrants of the three at 1.65 million, 67 percent said they could support the reform bill as described and 72 percent backed a pathway to citizenship.

Notably, some of the states with the highest support for the bill are represented by senators who voted not to even begin debate on it, including, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Mike Kirk (R-IL).

The legislation is due for another vote before July 4th and will then head to the House, where House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has said he believes it will pass by the end of the year.

Kirsten Gibson is an intern for ThinkProgress.

Economy

Ted Cruz Calls For Abolishing The IRS In Response To Scandal

By Alan Pyke on Jun 3, 2013 at 4:00 pm

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

In an interview Sunday on Fox News, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) offered a simple solution to the political storm around the extra scrutiny paid to conservative nonprofits by the Cincinnati office of the Internal Revenue Service: Abolish the IRS.

Cruz’s modest proposal is to eliminate the agency and replace the tax code it enforces with a flat tax, “where the average American can fill out our taxes on a postcard.” The flaws with a flat tax are well known, especially so soon after a presidential election that featured flat tax proposals from nearly every Republican candidate. The primary flaw is that a flat tax is steeply regressive. It would raise rates for low- and middle-income Americans, while providing the wealthy with a tax cut.

But beyond the standard issue of fairness, Cruz’s specific proposal is incoherent. The problem is with his very next sentence after the familiar line about shrinking the tax return down to postcard size: “Put down how much you earned, put down a deduction for charitable contributions, for home mortgage, and how much you owe.”

Cruz suggests maintaining charitable deductions – in effect, a statutory diversion of public dollars to groups designated to be fulfilling a charitable purpose. This would require some legal definition of what qualifies a group to receive such subsidy, and then some process to assure that those groups that claim to meet such definition are in fact in compliance with it. It is difficult to imagine how a system of charitable deductions could exist without the agents and bureaucracy Cruz proposes to abolish, at least without opening the door to vast waste, fraud, and abuse.

Cruz is only the latest of many Republicans to allege a clear and Watergate-like connection between President Obama and the Cincinnati IRS office’s actions, despite an Inspector General’s report finding no such conspiracy. The IG’s report states that the IRS used “inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status,” and that every staffer it interviewed attributed the origination of those criteria to “first-line management” in the agency’s “Determinations Unit,” not to political officials or the office of the president. The IG’s report includes multiple recommendations for how agents and bureaucrats can establish and enforce the appropriate criteria upon which tax-deductible charitable giving depend.

Economy

Reid Blasts Cruz As ‘Schoolyard Bully’ For Blocking Budget Negotiations GOP Demanded

By Travis Waldron on May 7, 2013 at 10:15 am

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) slammed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) for being a “schoolyard bully” on the Senate floor Monday, after Cruz blocked an effort to move forward on budget negotiations Republicans in the House and Senate have demanded for the past four years. The GOP, which spent those years blaming Senate Democrats for America’s supposed “runaway spending” because they hadn’t passed a budget, attached a provision to fiscal cliff negotiations requiring the passage of a budget plan.

But now that Senate Democrats have followed through and passed a budget, Republicans in both the House and Senate have rebuked efforts to form a budget conference meant to hammer out the differences between the Senate budget and the plan passed by House Republicans. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) blocked Senate efforts to form a conference last month; Monday, it was Cruz who blocked Reid’s effort to go to conference because he wanted to first ensure that the committee would neither consider new revenues nor a debt ceiling increase.

“The senator from Texas was on the losing side. He had his view, and it lost. But now he wants us to agree by consent to adopt the losing side’s view or else he’s not going to let us go to conference,” Reid said, adding that Cruz was “like a schoolyard bully” who “pushes everybody around” when he is losing. “Why are my Republican colleagues so afraid?” Reid asked. “We have our differences but Democrats aren’t afraid to work out those differences.”

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, have both said they wouldn’t enter conference until both sides agreed on a “framework” for those negotiations. But Cruz made it clear what that framework meant: the GOP will again demand that a final budget document includes only spending reductions and no new revenue, the same demand they have made — and that Democrats have met more than once — in previous negotiations over deficits and debt. Any new deal, in fact, would have to find 90 percent of its deficit reduction from revenue to bring balance to overall reduction efforts since President Obama took office.

So after spending four years demanding a budget, Republican intransigence on revenues is now causing them to block negotiations that could actually lead to one.

Justice

Five Conspiracy Theories 2016 Hopeful Ted Cruz Actually Believes

By Ian Millhiser on May 1, 2013 at 10:33 am

(Credit: AP)

On Wednesday morning, the National Review broke the news that tea party Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is considering a presidential run, a scoop that should surprise no one who’s paid attention to his short Senate career. As Jonathan Bernstein explains, Cruz has spent his few months in the Senate alienating his colleagues by constantly trying to distinguish himself as the more-conservative-than-thou alternative to “establishment” Republicans. Such behavior makes no sense if Cruz is interested in building the coalitions necessary to legislate, but it makes perfect sense if he has his eyes set on winning a tea-soaked GOP primary in 2016.

If Cruz runs, he would give voice to the conspiracy-minded, John Birch Society wing of the Republican Party that the National Review’s founder fought so hard to purge several decades ago. Cruz is the Glenn Beck of the United States Senate, promoting new conspiracy theories just as easily as Mr. Beck adds new names to his chalkboard. Here are five examples of such theories that Cruz actually believes in:

  • George Soros leads a global conspiracy to abolish the game of golf. In a January 2012 article published on Cruz’s senate campaign website, the future senator argues that a twenty year-old non-binding United Nations resolution signed by 178 nations including the United States under President George H.W. Bush, is actually a nefarious plot to “abolish ‘unsustainable’ environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads.” Cruz attributes this plot to a common tea party boogieman — “[t]he originator of this grand scheme is George Soros, who candidly supports socialism and believes that global development must progress through eliminating national sovereignty and private property.”
  • Communists infiltrated Harvard Law School. Almost three years ago, Cruz gave a speech to the tea party group Americans for Prosperity in which he claimed that revolutionary communists were a major presence on Harvard’s law faculty. According to Cruz, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.” Cruz’s claims came as a big surprise to Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried, a Republican who served as President Reagan’s solicitor general, who says that “I would be surprised if there were any members of the faculty who ‘believed in the Communists overthrowing the U.S. government.’”
  • Islamic law threatens the United States. Echoing a common fear among very conservative politicians that Sharia law is somehow creeping into American life, Cruz told a senate candidate’s forum last year that “Sharia law is an enormous problem” in the United States. In reality, there are barely any examples of Islamic or Sharia law even being mentioned in American legal proceedings, and when it is mentioned it is typically because a contract, will or other document drafted by a private citizen invokes Sharia law, not because the court wishes to replace American law with something else.
  • Obama wants the immigration bill to fail so he can campaign on it in 2016. Cruz claims that “the reason that the White House is insisting on a path to citizenship” in the immigration bill making its way through Congress “is because the White House knows that insisting on that is very likely to scuttle the bill” giving Obama an issue to campaign on in 2014 and 2016. In reality, a path to citizenship was a key prong of the immigration bill President Bush supported in 2007. It’s also a major prong of the Gang of Eight bill — a gang which includes Republican Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). So if the path to citizenship is actually an Obama plot to give himself a campaign issue, Obama has some unexpected co-conspirators in this scheme.
  • George W. Bush led an assault on Texas’ “sovereignty.” Cruz’s first campaign ad touted his victory in a Supreme Court case permitting the state of Texas to execute a Mexican national, despite the fact that Texas violated America’s treaty obligations by not permitting this Mexican citizen “to request assistance from the consul of his own state.” President Bush objected to Texas’s effort to flout a treaty that even North Korea had honored when it detained two American journalists for five months in 2009. Cruz dismissed Bush’s objections as an intrusion on “the sovereignty of the States.”

    • If elected to the White House, Cruz is unlikely to step back from his penchant for Glenn Beck-style conspiracies. In an interview with Fox News Sunday just a few days after he became a senator, Cruz claimed that “I don’t think what Washington needs is more compromise, I think what Washington needs is more common sense and more principle.”

Health

Ted Cruz: Obamacare Forces States To Release Violent Criminals Onto The Streets

By Igor Volsky on Apr 1, 2013 at 11:00 am

States that expand their Medicaid programs under a provision in the Affordable Care Act will be forced to open their prison doors and allow violent criminals to roam the streets, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) claimed during a radio interview on Monday, insisting that the cost of providing health care to lower-income residents would reduce state funding for priorities like incarceration or education.

Appearing on 550 KTSA to promote an event touting Gov. Rick Perry’s (R-TX) opposition to the health care law, Cruz explained that expanding Medicaid would “put enormous financial pressures on the state” since the federal government’s share of financing coverage for Americans up to 133 percent of the poverty line starts at 100 percent in 2014, but then “goes down and down and down”:

CRUZ: And it will become a bigger and bigger part of the state budget and so if Texas did as some other states are doing and signed on to the expansion of Medicaid, what we would see is Medicaid growing even faster than it is now as a percentage of the state budget and crowding out every other priority. So if you think it’s important for the state to continue spending on public education, you should be glad that the state is not signing on to Medicaid expansion. If you want state funds to provide for our prisons and law enforcement to incarcerate violent criminals and keep them off the streets you should be glad we’re not signing up for this Medicaid expansion because every state that does so is going to be regretting it mightily because the pressure is going to crowd out just about every other priority in the budget.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government fully funds Medicaid expansion until 2016 and gradually reduces its contribution to 90 percent in 2020 and subsequent years. Texas would never pay more than 10 percent of the cost of expansion, while extending coverage to more than 1.5 million uninsured Texans and saving millions in costs to taxpayers of caring for the uninsured.

For instance, a recent analysis from the Perryman Group found that Medicaid expansion could provide substantial economic stimulus — the state would contribute “$15.6 billion over a 10-year period, while receiving $20.0 billion in revenue” from increased economic activity and productivity. The report found that for “every dollar spent by the State for additional Medicaid coverage, total spending in the economy would go up by $43.50, output (real gross product) would rise by $21.72, personal income would grow by $14.34, and retail sales would expand by $6.13.”

Eight Republican governors have endorsed Medicaid expansion.

Climate Progress

Cruz Gets Senate To Censor Innocuous Mention Of ‘Changes In Climate’ In Resolution For International Women’s Day

By Joe Romm on Mar 28, 2013 at 7:10 pm

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

Gail Collins has a terrific piece in how the GOP used to be concerned about the environment, but now, not so much.

The whole column, “Cooling on Warming,” is worth reading, but one thing in particular caught my eye:

… earlier this month, a deeply noncontroversial Senate resolution commemorating International Women’s Day had to be taken back and edited because someone objected to a paragraph — which had been in an almost identical version passed in the last Congress — stating that women in developing countries “are disproportionately affected by changes in climate because of their need to secure water, food and fuel for their livelihood.”

You may be wondering who the objecting senator was. Normally, these things are supposed to be kind of confidential, but in this case the lawmaker in question is proud to let you know that he is — yes! — Ted Cruz of Texas.

“A provision expressing the Senate’s views on such a controversial topic as ‘climate change’ has no place in a supposedly noncontroversial resolution requiring consent of all 100 U.S. senators,” a Cruz spokesman said.

Note that the offending statement doesn’t even spell out what caused these “changes in climate.” It merely states that when such changes occur, women in developing countries are disproportionately affected. Kind of a “duh” statement.

But not for the Senator from drought-stricken Texas. Thank goodness Cruz swooped in to make sure that even purely ceremonial resolutions don’t contain any words that people might associate with the threat of human-caused global warming. I suppose his ultimate goal is to erase any Congressional reference to climate change whatsoever because what you don’t know can’t hurt future generations, right?

And speaking of future generations Collins notes:

There was a time, children, when the Republican Party was a hotbed of environmental worrywarts. The last big clean air act of the Bush I administration passed the House 401 to 21. But no more, no more. You’re not going to get any sympathy for controlling climate change from a group that doesn’t believe the climate is actually changing. As Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, used to say, “Only nature can change the climate — a volcano, for instance.”

It’s sort of ironic. These are the same folks who constantly seed their antideficit speeches with references to our poor, betrayed descendants. (“This is a burden our children and grandchildren will have to bear.”) Don’t you think the children and grandchildren would appreciate being allowed to hang onto the Arctic ice cap?

I’m sure our children and grandchildren would like to live in a world with a livable climate that could actually sustain its projected population, too, but that isn’t where we are headed if Cruz has his way.

And yes, the see-no-climate-burden Cruz is also one of the GOP’s hate-the-debt-burden hypocrites, as this recent tweet shows:

Seriously, we need a reminder to put an end to our irresponsible life-style that threatens our children’s future….

Politics

As Obama Calls On Nation To Remember Newtown, Rubio Pledges To Block Gun Reform

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Mar 28, 2013 at 1:48 pm

Minutes before President Obama delivered an emotional speech asking lawmakers to pass sensible gun safety measures in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, word came from Capitol Hill that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) had signed onto a letter pledging to block votes on any of Obama’s proposals for gun legislation.

Obama delivered his speech surrounded by a group of victims of gun violence, including three parents of Newtown victims. All had come to Washington to demand that Congress take action to stop gun violence. Obama’s speech called on average citizens to ask for the same:

The notion that two months or three months after something as horrific as what happened in Newtown happens and we’ve moved on to other things, that’s not who we are. That’s not who we are.

And I want to make sure every American is listening today. Less than 100 days ago that happened, and the entire country was shocked. And the entire country pledged we would do something about it and that this time would be different. Shame on us if we’ve forgotten. I haven’t forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we’ve forgotten.

If there’s one thing I’ve said consistently since I first ran for this office: Nothing is more powerful than millions of voices calling for change. And that’s why it’s so important that all these moms and dads are here today. But that’s also why it’s important that we’ve got grassroots groups out there that got started and are out there mobilizing and organizing and keeping up the fight.

Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) office was the first to announce that Rubio had signed onto the filibuster pledge, a joint effort by the offices of Lee and Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX). In an earlier statement, Lee claimed that Obama was using “the tragedy at Newtown as a backdrop for pushing legislation that would have done nothing to prevent that horrible crime.”

There’s no question that some parts of Obama’s gun violence prevention proposals would elicit strong opinions in the Senate, but by promising to filibuster them, Rubio, Lee, Cruz, and Paul are actually blocking the “robust and open debate” that they claim to be seeking. A majority of Americans support background checks and bans on high capacity ammunition, two of the proposals in Obama’s package, but thanks to the filibuster they might never see a debate on the floor.

In his speech on Thursday, Obama pushed for proposals including universal background checks, stricter penalties for people who buy guns with the intention of selling them to criminals (straw purchasers), an assault weapons ban, and a limit on high-capacity magazine clips.

Education

Senate Republicans Unanimously Support Repeal of Student Loan Reform Law

By Josh Israel on Mar 22, 2013 at 2:30 pm

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

All 45 Senate Republicans voted Friday for a budget amendment that endorsed the repeal of both Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. While Congressional Republicans attempting to repeal Obamacare is nothing new — this marks the 39th repeal attempt — this proposal also aimed to repeal the student loan reform and Pell Grant expansions that were enacted at the same time.

All 54 Senate Democrats present successfully voted to defeat the amendment, offered by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). If passed, it would have put the Senate on record in support of a repeal of
provisions that moved student loans from commercial banks to direct lending from the U.S. Education Department and:

  • Used half of the the estimated $61 billion in savings to increase the maximum annual Pell Grant scholarship to $5,550 in 2010 and to $5,975 by 2017, while indexing the grants to inflation.
  • Lowered monthly payments on federal student loans and shortened the debt forgiveness timeline. For new loans after 2014, this will mean graduates will have to pay 10 percent of disposable income, instead of 15.
  • Provided $2.55 billion to support historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions; $2 billion for community colleges; and $750 million for a college access and completion program for students.

Such a repeal would have meant a return to larger payments, smaller Pell Grants, and reduced support colleges and universities while putting billions of dollars back in the coffers of Wall Street banks. But in his floor speech explaining the amendment, Cruz told his colleagues only that his proposal was about defunding and repealing Obamacare, making no mention of the billions of dollars he would take from higher education to give back to for-profit banks.

Though every Congressional Republican voted against the health care and student loan reforms, House Republicans specifically exempted the student loan reform provisions from previous repeal attempts, though they have repeatedly slammed the reform as a “Washington takeover” of the student loan industry.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Cruz received more than $180,000 in PAC contributions from the financial sector in his 2012 campaign.

Update

The Senate passed the budget in a vote of 50-49 early on Saturday morning.

Older

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up