CSPAN / AP
In an image made from the C-Span broadcast, Sen. Ted Cruz continues to speak on the floor of the U.S. Senate at 5:21 a.m. EDT Wednesday Sept. 25, 2013. Since Tuesday afternoon, Cruz — with occasional remarks by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and other GOP conservatives — has controlled the Senate floor and railed against Obamacare. By 5 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Cruz and his allies had spoken for more than 14 hours, the eighth longest since precise record-keeping began in 1900.
Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013 | 11:08 a.m.
WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s 21-hour, 19-minute verbal assault on President Barack Obama’s signature health care law ended Wednesday when the Senate voted 100-0 to break off debate and move to consider House legislation that Democrats plan to use to keep the government open next week.
Cruz’s marathon session — which began Tuesday afternoon, went straight through the night and ended at a predetermined noon deadline — did not win over senators from either party, and in fact Cruz, R-Texas, even voted to open debate. After the vote, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a Cruz ally, said the Texan never intended to oppose the motion to take up the bill, a position contradicted by his words and procedural motions for days before the tally.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate majority leader, greeted the conclusion of Cruz’s performance by declaring it “a big waste of time.”
The vote ended debate and the Senate will formally take up a bill the House passed that keeps the government open through Dec. 15 and guts the president’s Affordable Care Act.
That legislation is precisely what Cruz has clamored for, but he opposed taking it up, knowing that Democratic leaders would likely have the votes to strip out the health care language and other Republican policies attached.
But with his indefatigable loquaciousness, Cruz managed to raise his own profile, anger some colleagues, thrill others and elevate further the war over the health care law. The program begins enrolling the uninsured Tuesday, the same day much of the government would shut down if the budget showdown were not resolved.
“We must all hang together or we most assuredly will all hang separately,” Cruz said in the 11th hour of his stand, quoting Benjamin Franklin and addressing his fellow Republican senators.
He vowed to keep up his parliamentary battle to thwart “the train wreck, the nightmare, the disaster that is Obamacare.”
Wednesday’s vote is the first in a series that will culminate in a final vote Sunday. Later this week, Reid will formally introduce a new version of the House stopgap-spending bill stripped of the health care language and shortened to keep the government operating from Oct. 1 to Nov. 15 rather than Dec. 15, as the House wanted.
The biggest vote will most likely come this weekend, when Democrats must win over 60 senators to cut off debate on their leader’s bill.
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