In one last effort to rally Republicans to defund the Affordable Care Act, even if doing so leads to a government shutdown, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas started speaking on the Senate floor in opposition to the health care bill without stopping for over 17 hours, according to CNN.
Cruz started speaking at about 2:40 p.m. ET Tuesday afternoon completely alone in the Senate chamber. As of 9:30 a.m. Wednesday he was still going. From time to time other Republican Senators have come in and also spoken against the law they refer to as Obamacare. One of those that spoke was Sen. Rand Paul who stayed on the Senate floor in a filibuster over the use of drones that lasted over 12 hours earlier in the year, according to Fox News.
"I intend to speak in support of defunding Obamacare until I am no longer able to stand," Cruz said on Tuesday. "All across this country, Americans are suffering because of Obamacare. Obamacare isn't working."
The entire issue revolves around a bill that would give the government the funds they need in order to keep running past Oct. 1. The bill was passed in the House with a rider that completely defunds the 3-year-old Affordable Care Act which virtually guarantees that it will not pass the Democrat controlled Senate or get signed into law by President Barack Obama.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is planning on using Senate procedure in order to strip the defunding rider off of the bill by a simple majority before attempting to pass the rest of the bill and sending it back to the House for a vote. Most likely the process will not be complete until late in the week essentially forcing the Republican controlled House to either pass the bill without the defunding or force a government shutdown.
Cruz's speech is technically not a filibuster. A filibuster prevents the Senate from doing business; there is a vote scheduled for 1:00 p.m. Wednesday that Reid says is going to go on as scheduled even if the junior senator from Texas is still on the floor, according to CNN.
While attacking the Affordable Care Act Cruz's speech has touched on a myriad of other topics. He has quoted from Ayn Rand, talked about his father who was Cuban immigrant and even read passages from Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs and Ham," according to the Associated Press.
"When Americans tried it, they discovered they did not like green eggs and ham and they did not like Obamacare either," Cruz said. "They did not like Obamacare in a box, with a fox, in a house or with a mouse. It is not working."
While some Republicans did show up to show support for Cruz others, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., thought that he was fighting a pointless battle.
"We'd all be hard-pressed to explain why we were opposed to a bill we were in favor of," McConnell said. "And invoking cloture that defunds Obamacare, doesn't raise taxes, and respects the Budget Control Act strikes me as a no-brainer."
Sen. Ted Cruz is still on the floor talking as of the publishing of this article, to watch a live stream of his speech from C-Span click on this link.
