Ted Cruz is still trying to defend his role in derailing legislation to help veterans. It's not going well. - MaddowBlog
“[W]hat the dispute is about is, the Democrats played a budgetary trick, which is, they took $400 billion in discretionary spending and they shifted it to mandatory. The reason they did that is, they want to spend $400 billion more discretionary funds on completely unrelated matters. So, it’s just part of the out-of-control spending from the left.”
He added that if the “budgetary trick” were removed, the bill would likely pass “with 80 or 90 votes.” Let’s briefly pause to note that, according to Cruz, even if this budgetary provision were addressed, a significant number of Senate Republicans — 10 to 20 — would apparently vote against it anyway. But I digress. The budgetary question surrounding reclassifying V.A. spending from discretionary to mandatory accounts is admittedly complex, and for Republicans like Sen. Pat Toomey, it’s been the principal reason to oppose the PACT Act.
But there’s one thing that Cruz has conveniently skipped right past: The provision he calls a “budgetary trick” was in the bill when he voted for it., “Several Republican senators who objected last week have justified their flip in recent days by insisting that Democrats only recently inserted the problematic issues into the bill, but the discretionary spending language provisions are the same as June, when the measure easily passed the Senate.
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