Posted on 06/24/2015 7:57:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In a Wednesday talk at the Heritage Foundation, the Texas senator sharpened anti-corporatist critique.
Ted Cruz just raised the bar for Republican presidential hopefuls angling for the fiery populist mantle.
In a 40-minute stemwinder delivered to a friendly crowd at the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday, the junior senator from Texas inveighed against a corrupt alignment of corporate and political power that he shorthanded as the “Washington Cartel.” That’s apparently new coinage, and you can expect to hear a lot more of it as Cruz tries to elbow his way out of the GOP presidential primary’s second tier and into serious contention for the nomination.
His speech was short on policy prescriptions, and he’s already struck on the anti-establishment theme that organized it. But the acidity of his vitriol tipped the rhetorical pH scale. “Lobbyists and career politicians today make up what I call the Washington Cartel,” he said. “And it operates very much like other cartels. It operates like OPEC. I don’t know, like sheikhs, if they actually wear robes. But they nonetheless on a daily basis are conspiring against the American people.” In Cruz’s formulation, every moneyed interest and every leading pol, Republicans included, are in on it: Big banks, “GM and Chrysler and its suppliers,” “union bosses,” “rich yuppies” buying Teslas, “fat cat insurers,” Enron, Solyndra, Air India and the other beneficiaries of the Ex-Im bank, corn growers, wind energy purveyors, sugar producers, Big Box retailers, and their giant online brethren.
As he spoke, the Senate was preparing to take the last step in handing President Obama fast track authority to wrap work on the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Cruz had been an early and important ally for the White House in its bid to secure that negotiating wiggle room. Back in April, he joined House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) in penning a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling the authority essential to “send a signal to the world. America’s trading partners will know that the U.S. is trustworthy and then put their best offers on the table.”
The Obama administration viewed Cruz’s endorsement as a major coup. Heading into the thick of the debate, the White House worried over keeping other Tea Party-affiliated Republicans on board with its trade agenda, since the whole project needed near-uniform GOP support. Cruz’s position made it safe for wary House Republicans to climb aboard.
But on Tuesday, as the White House’s push for fast track faced its final significant challenge in the Senate, Cruz defected. The problem, he suggested without evidence, was that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) had thrown a deal with Democrats to save the Export Import bank into the bargain. And that federal agency, which exists to help finance American exports, has become a bête noire for the anti-corporatist right that Cruz seeks to champion. “There’s too much corporate welfare, too much cronyism and corrupt dealmaking, by the Washington cartel,” he wrote in the op-ed explaining why he soured on fast track that slyly previewed his Wednesday line. So an uncharitable view of Cruz’s flip on fast track might note its timing a day before the Heritage talk and the fact that it brought his position on the issue of the day neatly into line with his theme.
Obama’s trade push — a defining priority he shares with the big business lobby — cleared the Tuesday hurdle, with no votes to spare, mostly on the backs of Senate Republicans. As Cruz lit out in a different direction, his Wednesday address laid a new marker for those of his presidential rivals who likewise hope an attack on the system they seek to lead will prove a winning formula.
> “ Had he not supported TPA on its first vote in the Senate, it might have been stopped in the House.”
False and worth repeating for the umpteenth time why such statements are false.
> “ It was only in the face of total repudiation by his base that he triangulated to this current position.”
Not true. The TPA he first supported was a good bill. There was nothing in it that would give Obama power to harm America.
> “As always, a bill that does real damage passes by a few votes, and our so-called conservative representatives explain that they did all they could.”
It was democrats that defeated the bill with the help of justifiably angry conservatives from the House Freedom Caucus.
Here’s the proof:
http://elizabethwarren.com/blog/heres-what-this-fight-is-all-about
And it was the democrats with the aiding and abetting of Boehner that passed it after they were promised all they wanted and after conservatives were maltreated by Boehner.
Cruz is not the problem, Obama/Boehner/McConnell and the Beltway Cartel are the problem.
Ted Cruz’ base is growing wildly and they are not stupid because they ask him direct upfront at town halls what he is thinking of TPA, TPP, TISA, etc.
Here’s the proof (time 52:00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sznh5AjageI
Every word Ted Cruz says in the above link is true.
not on youtube yet
Donald Trump just payoffs and corruption are the price of doing business....
go Ted!
The first TPA the second TPA the seventeenth.TPA was not a good bill
Like I told you before,it was dog SHIT on the sidewalk ,and he stepped in it,rather than around it.It was going to pass without his vote,he didn’t need to step in shit.With TPA, TPP and all the other crap is going to be BAD for America.This crap will be passed within 9months tops.
I asked on a different thread,(after I listed all the ails of America facing us)why was this bill the defining moment of our time?With everything wrong in this country,why do we need to be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic???
This is not the time to be negotiating trade deals with the EFF’N scumbags that reside in our government,right and left,they suck.What are you unable to understand about that???These scumbags are mother EFf’N traitors,you don’t give them more power.The GOPe& demonrats are only beholden to themselves,banksters&multinationals.This ain’t 1947, wake the F up.
That’s one of the best posts I’ve seen on the H1B issue in a long time. Hope you’re planning to stay (and vote).
> “Like I told you before,it was dog SHIT on the sidewalk ,and he stepped in it,rather than around it.I”
That’s not the level of discourse needed for political discussions.
Please take it some neanderthal barroom where you can join with like-minded persons to express whatever the hell you’re expressing.
Prevailing wage doesn’t work. I would rather give H1Bs to people with 100k job offers if the prevailing wage is 150k than 60k job offers if prevailing wage is 50k. It doesn’t matter about prevailing wage anyway because employers, if I remember the process correctly, need to show that there are no Americans available to do the job. That is extremely easy for HR departments to do, even if you don’t like their methods.
Thank you for the very detailed and reasoned reply. Yes, it is in our best interests to bring in some of the best and brightest from around the world. But the truth is that only a small number of those coming in on the H1B program are the “best and brightest”. The vast majority are filling regular tech jobs at lower salaries than would be paid our own workers.
If Senator Cruz were truly interested in reforming the program, he would not be calling for the importation of hundreds of thousands more foreign workers. That will only exasperate the situation for our own STEM workers. It is far more likely that Cruz is beholden to the companies that benefit from the program.
Exactly - H=1B is a con job.
Cruz hasn't seen much less raised this populist policy: "the next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages".
It ain't helping this American.
im a pimp is an h-1B “success” story. Without his skills America would have been doomed. He is a hero just ask him.
Bu!!Sh!t
The main flaw is in the H1-B visa scheme is that it’s corporate welfare in disguise. The government is using policies to artificially lower wages in science and technology fields and lying about it.
How is that? By displacing highly paid and skilled I.T. workers for example, with workers from India at a fraction of the cost while holding up their green-card and forcing them to work long hours?
you might want to learn to get past the political talking points before you post on this topic again.
Has Cruz said he'll reorient the H1B program with strict directives and criteria for who is eligible?
I just wrote to Cruz on the issue of H1-B Visas. I had not paid much attention to the issue since it is not a big factor where I live, but even one American job lost is too many.
I have found Cruz to be a most reasonable person. I believe if those concerned about this issue will contact him, he will listen.
Yup - and by many reports they're semicompetent drones.
Those scientists were made full citizens, something that the guest worker programs week to prevent. All came for a desire to be a part of the United States, none came for a wish to undermine it’s citizens.
On the other hand, the guest workers are far from top talent. If one has to train the replacement under threat of severance/unemployment status, that provides proof that citizens have superior qualifications.
Such programs need to die, since they do not deliver as described. It is regulation that is un-American in every way - unless fraud is an American value.
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