Cruz filibustering health law in Senate

WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. Ted Cruz seized the Senate floor to oppose President Barack Obama’s health-care law as Democrats shortened by a month their proposal to fund the government, complicating efforts to avoid a shutdown in a week.

The proposal Tuesday backed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., would fund through Nov. 15 a stopgap spending plan. The Republican-led House passed a measure to finance the government through Dec. 15.

Democrats said the move would give lawmakers time to resolve appropriations for fiscal 2014 that contain automatic reductions known as sequestration.

Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said the House measure was “loaded with political ideology.” Without passage of a funding measure, parts of the government would be shut down Oct. 1.

“What we have here is a manufactured crisis with histrionic theatrical politics to try to bring us to the brink of a shutdown,” Mikulski of Maryland said on the Senate floor. “It’s shutdown, slamdown politics.”

Congress hasn’t passed a budget for the year that starts Oct. 1.

The House’s stopgap spending plan also would end discretionary and mandatory spending on the healthcare law. Reid said Tuesday that the Senate will not pass a spending measure that defunds the health law.

Cruz, a Texas Republican who said he’s willing to use a filibuster to block Senate efforts to pass a spending bill that doesn’t defund the health law, took to the floor shortly before 2 p.m. CDT Tuesday.

“I intend to speak in support of defunding Obamacare until I am no longer able to stand, to do everything that I can to help Americans stand together and recognize this grand experiment 3½ years ago is quite simply not working,” Cruz said on the Senate floor.

To fill time in the largely empty chamber, he talked about the Revolutionary War, the Washington ruling class and his Cuban-born father who worked as a cook. He even recited Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham.

Late Tuesday night, he was showing no signs of stopping the filibuster.

Under the Senate’s rules, opponents of the health-care law could use procedures to drag out a final vote until Sunday, giving the House of Representatives just one full workday to act before spending authority expires.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the GOP’s No. 2, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, opposed Cruz’s tactic, and numerous Republicans stood with their leadership rather than Cruz.

McConnell and other top Republicans, including Bob Corker of Tennessee, are now advocating accelerated passage of the Senate spending bill.

Their goal is to gain enough time for House Republicans to add provisions - other than defunding the health-care law - that could gain backing in the Senate. Republicans would seek to hamper the health law without defunding it.

The Senate can accelerate when the final vote is taken under what’s known as unanimous consent, a procedure that requires all senators to agree to an expedited calendar.

“It would be to the advantage of our colleagues in the House or in the majority to shorten the process,” McConnell said Tuesday. “If the majority leader were to ask us to shorten the process, I would not object.”

“If the House doesn’t get what we send over there until Monday, they’re in a pretty tough spot,” he said.

Corker said the Senate should cut the time for debate to let the Republican-led House alter it and attach measures that have bipartisan backing in the Senate.

Repealing a medical-device tax is one of the proposals that Corker cited. House Republican leaders are weighing their options for the stopgap measure once it returns from the Senate. The repeal of the medical-device tax is among them.

Also Tuesday, House leaders said they were working with their Senate counterparts toward a new five-year farm bill, just days after the House pushed through a bill that would slash billions of dollars from the food stamp program.

Last year, Congress voted to extend the most current farm bill, which was passed in 2008. Although the bill expires Monday, most farm programs will continue until the end of the year because such programs extend through the crop year.

The farm bill, a 1,000-page measure that sets the nation’s food and nutrition policy, was formerly a bipartisan piece of legislation. But it has been mired in partisan gridlock for nearly two years. Most of the acrimony has been over cuts to the food-stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.

House Republicans, led by the majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, have pushed for nearly $40 billion in cuts to the program, a move opposed by Obama and congressional Democrats.

Information for this article was contributed by Kathleen Hunter, Roxana Tiron, Richard Rubin and James Rowley of Bloomberg News; by Donna Cassata,Andrew Taylor,Alan Fram, David Espo and Laurie Kellman of The Associated Press; and by Ron Nixon of The New York Times.