Democrat ridicules ‘crocodile tears’ from Sen. Ted Cruz – News – Austin American-Statesman – Austin, TX

Thursday

During an otherwise perfunctory U.S. Senate debate Thursday over two bills to reopen the federal government, U.S. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, caught an earful from a Democrat from Colorado.

Speaking from the floor, Cruz called on Democrats to withdraw their objections to a Republican bill, saying its passage would pay “the salaries of every man and woman in the Coast Guard.”

Sen. Michael Bennet followed, noting that while he rarely speaks to contradict other senators of the opposing party, “these crocodile tears that the senator from Texas is crying for first responders are too hard for me to take.”

With his voice rising to a shout in a C-SPAN video clip that went viral online, Bennet hearkened back to Cruz’s role in a congressional impasse that led to a government shutdown in 2013.

“My state was flooded, it was under water, people were killed. People’s houses were destroyed, their small businesses were ruined forever. And because of the senator from Texas, this government was shut down for politics,” Bennet said.

Cruz’s stunt, Bennet continued, may have helped him surge to a second-place finish in the Iowa presidential caucuses, but it was “no help to the first responders, to the teachers, to the students whose schools were closed.”

The Colorado Democrat added that it was Cruz’s business whether or not to support President Donald Trump’s efforts to erect a “medieval barrier on the border of Texas” with the possible use of eminent domain.

“I can assure you that in Colorado, if a president said he was going to use eminent domain to erect a barrier across the state of Colorado, across the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, he was going to steal the property of our farmers and ranchers to build his medieval wall, there wouldn’t be an elected leader from our state who would support that idea,” he said.