Another step in exposing a Texas sized fraud occurred today when Ted Cruz wilted and melted down on CNN when asked what he would do to fix or replace the ACA.
Video:
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
CUOMO: What do you say to them, Senator? When they say, “Please help me”, what is the fix that you offer them? I looked at the list of bills that you’ve sponsored. There’s not one that offers a solution to the current problems with health care except to get rid of the existing law. Is that enough?
CRUZ: Well, that’s the only solution that will work. All of these Band-Aid fixes that the president is pushing, the congressional Democrats are pushing won’t fix the problem. Every one of those bills, they have great titles, like “if you like your plan you can really, really, really keep them”, but if they were passed into law, it wouldn’t fix the problem for the 5 million people who have lost their health insurance, they wouldn’t get it back.
The way to get — CUOMO: You don’t think you have a responsibility as a U.S. senator to do better than that in terms of offering a solution for what to do next?
CRUZ: Well, I — I appreciate your trying to lecture me in the morning. Thank you for that.
CUOMO: No, not all, Senator. I’m worried, the same as you. Anybody who looks at the situation has worries. Families need health insurance.
CRUZ: So, if you’re worried, did you speak out for the 5 million people who lost your insurance?
CUOMO: Absolutely. We’ve been covering it doggedly. We’ve been covering it doggedly and you know that I’m sure you watch the show. The problem is I don’t have the power to fix it; you do. That’s what a U.S. senator does, is you sponsor law. You know this. It’s not a lecture, it’s a concern.
I’m asking, what are you going to do about it?
CRUZ: Well, and I share that concern and have every day been working to highlight the millions of people who have lost their job because of Obamacare, the millions of people who have been forced into part-time work, there are single moms, there are young people, Hispanics, African-Americans, people struggling who are now on part-time work. You can’t feed your kids with 29 hours a week. There’s over 5 million people who have lost their health insurance.
And the way to fix that is to stop this broken law. It was broken at the outset, and all of the bills that have been proposed by the Democrats, they’re designed to be political Band-Aids. Their effort is to cover their political rear ends, not to fix the problem. And the common sense reasonable thing to say is this thing isn’t working.
Now, in addition to that, you want a positive, affirmative solution? You know, the single best thing we can do is expand competition. Let people purchase health insurance across state lines. If you want to expand access, what you want to do is increase choices and drive down cost.
What Obamacare does is decreases choices and drives up cost. It doesn’t make sense, and it isn’t working.
CUOMO: And how does that —
CRUZ: I’d like to see something that empowers consumers, not Washington bureaucrats.
CUOMO: And I think those are strong ideas that need to be developed as plans. We haven’t really heard them in a great way. That’s what people are waiting for, what are the better ideas, but you do also have to think, how do you deal with the problems of the system as it existed before, pre-existing conditions, caps on service, slow walking of claims, that the insurers had too much power. That was a big part of what this law was about, not to mention the 20 plus million uninsured people. You can’t forget about all that, senator, can you?
Sen. Cruz thinks that it isn’t part of his job to propose policy solutions and alternatives. Cruz is cut from the same tea party cloth as the House Republicans who believe that their job is to stop laws from being passed.
Cruz wilted under the pressure of being held to the standard of having an alternative to replace the ACA with. Cruz is a fraud. If he and other Republicans seriously believe that the millions of people who will eventually have access to healthcare thanks to the ACA are going to be satisfied with the Republican solution of taking their new healthcare away, they are going to be in for a big surprise.
Sen. Cruz, Republicans, and the mainstream media are behind the curve on this story. The truth is that the website has been performing better for weeks. More people are signing up every day. Republicans are behind the eight ball. The number of cancelation notices is not going to keep increasing, but the number of people who are signing up will.
Cruz imploded when asked how he would fix or replace the ACA, and fell back on his old inaccurate Obamacare talking points, but the Texas senator better get used to answering the question that Chris Cuomo posed.
The American people aren’t going to let Republicans walk in and take their health insurance away. Voters rejected the Republican “alternative” when John McCain tried to sell it in 2008, and Romney dug it up from the grave in 2012.
Republicans are trying to beat something with nothing on the ACA, and Ted Cruz’s latest implosion revealed that they are well on their war to losing the healthcare war.
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
