An opinion writer at The Hill.com made a great case for choosing as 2013 Person of the Year, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. This is the same Ted Cruz that lots of Republicans tried to distance themselves from after the autumn budget vote that could have defunded ObamaCare, which they claim to oppose. Yet, Rick Manning at TheHill says that these “handwringers in the Republican Party will be the beneficiaries of Cruz’s determination, intelligence, and guts.”
The Hill is a popular online publication that addresses all things congressional. In one of his final editorials of the year, Rick Manning wrote that those budget votes in the House amounted to “a national last-ditch effort to defund ObamaCare before the law went into effect fully.” The House stood strong that any budget it passed would not fund the Affordable Care Act. Even the fact that the Administration made good on its threat to shut down parts of government did not deter them.
An agreement between House and Senate was made. The budget ultimately passed without the defund provision. But, in the ensuing weeks, the president has had to delay or revise just about every piece of ObamaCare. Senator Cruz and Senator Mike Lee’s strategy is proving to be brilliant. Manning asks readers to, “Imagine how many Senate Democrats wish right now that they had heeded Cruz’s entreaties and agreed to delaying or defunding it for one year. Now they are stuck with the law and all its consequences.”
The budget vote made it crystal clear who in Congress was opposing ObamaCare and who was not. The disaster of a launch proved part of Cruz’s point. And the millions of notices of lost coverage and the sticker shock proved the rest of it.
Senator Cruz appeared at the Values Voter Summit right in the thick of the government shutdown that resulted from the Administration’s initial refusal to delay or alter the implementation ObamaCare.
He said, we’re at a turning point:
“Each of you is called to be here. Much like Esther, you are called for such a time as this. For hundreds of years every generation of Americans has given to their kids and grandkids greater opportunity, greater prosperity, a greater future. If we keep going down this road, we will become the first generation not to do that. “
The media captured all the interruptions of Cruz’s speech by Organizing for America protesters. But the real news was that message.
As 2014 begins, we’re seeing the photo ops: people visiting the doctor for the first time in years because of ObamaCare, or buying a medication they could never afford before. People with chronic illnesses having an easier time of it
OK great. But this cosmic redistribution and widespread sticker shock is not the answer. We could craft a reform to help cover the poor and those with pre-existing conditions.
It will take leaders with guts, like Senator Cruz, to accomplish this.