Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and House Republicans Are Plotting Another Government Shutdown

Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and House Republicans are already plotting another government shutdown/default crisis in an attempt to stop the ACA.

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As soon as the bill was passed to reopen the government, the same Republican extremists who carried out the first government shutdown were already plotting round two. Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) told The New York Times, “I’ll vote against it, but that will get us into Round 2. See, we’re going to start this all over again.”

On top of Fleming’s explicit threat, here is what Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) had to say when Sean Hannity said that it looks like they aren’t going away.

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Sen. Lee said, “We’re not going away, and neither are the many millions of Americans who have joined this dialogue, who have made their voices heard by Washington, D.C. And not only are we not going anywhere, but they aren’t either, because their numbers are growing, because more people are hurting as a result of this law every single day. And as they continue to call in and ask for help, we’re going to continue to do everything that we can to help them. And the way that we can help them is to stop this law, and to stop the implementation, and enforcement…We’re not going to fund it. That’s what we said then, and that’s what we still think we should do.”

Sen. Cruz said that, “This is going to be multi-staged extended political battle.”

Democrats and Republicans who thought that Cruz, Lee, and their House Republicans would learn anything from the political spanking that just delivered to the by the American people were wrong. What President Obama tried to do in his speech this morning was build a coalition of Democrats and Republicans that will work around Cruz and the House extremists to get things done.

It is up to House and Senate Republicans to get their fringe under control. President Obama and congressional Democrats are the last firewall of defense to prevent the far right Republicans in Congress from wrecking the economy, but Democrats have been placed in this role only because the House Republican leadership can’t control their own people.

Unless the same coalition that prevented a default last night continues to work together, Ted Cruz and his lemmings will shutdown the government or try to force a default in early 2014. House Republicans can avoid a future shutdown by taking the budget conference seriously and working with Senate Democrats, but Ted Cruz and quest to the use the ACA to get elected president in 2016 aren’t going anywhere.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association