Los Angeles Times: The list of better things for the U.S. Senate to do than listen to Ted Cruz read “Green Eggs and Ham” has to be endless.
Even if there were a reasonable point behind the freshman Texas Republican monopolizing the Senate floor for more than 21 hours, the list of better things to do is long. To name a few:
If the subject must be the Affordable Care Act, how about some serious solutions? It’s not like Republicans have no ideas. The Republican Study Committee has called for the American Health Care Reform Act that fully repeals the Obamacare. It would give tax deductions of $7,500 for individuals or $20,000 for families to buy their own health insurance.
If the subject must be government spending, which the Senate finally took up after Cruz sat down, how about using 21 hours to talk about a long-term budget process that legitimately does away with the across-the-board, automatic cuts called sequestration? Thoughtless sequestration is the very picture of government without a plan.
Each minute that Cruz talked was a minute the Senate didn’t use to reach a resolution on the question of the government debt and the borrowing limit expected to be reached later this month.
Do these elected leaders really want to bring down that debt, or would they rather hear “Green Eggs and Ham” and continue to complain about the national debt being too high?
Once they handled the debt, maybe they could even pass a farm bill this year.