Ted Cruz Discusses The Good And The Bad Coming Out Of D.C.

Ted Cruz Discusses The Good And The Bad Coming Out Of D.C.:Â Ted Cruz is with us to talk about his thoughts on the good and the bad things going on in D.C right now. We discuss things like the Trump Administration nominees, what invoking cloture is, how to respond to gun control ideologies, how to use NAFTA regulations, and more! Tune in or read below to learn more!

Air Date:Â 04/02/2018

Guest: Ted Cruz

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note: Â As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith And The Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live! Where we talk about the day”s hottest topics on policy, faith, and the culture. We”re always looking at those things from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

Today we”re with David Barton, America’s premier historian and the founder of WallBuilders. Also, Tim Barton, national speaker, pastor, and president of WallBuilders. My name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas state legislator, national speaker, and author. Â

You can find out more about us and the program at WallBuildersLive.com. That’s also a great resource for past programs, so you can get some of the archives of the last couple of months right there WallBuildersLive.com. And then also WallBuilders.com, our main website, where you can get all kinds of tools for yourself and your family and maybe your church Sunday school class, or a local school, local homeschool co-op, whoever you would like to supply with some great information and tools that will help equip them to be better citizens and engage in the culture.

David, Tim, later in the program we”ve got Senator Ted Cruz with us going to talk about kind of an update on what’s happening in the Senate with a lot of the nominees that President Trump has put forward. So, far, what are we? About 15 months into this thing and we’ve had some great nominees come through but there’s a lot of them being blocked right now.

Senate Nominees and the Cloture Rule

David:

Well, we’ve got over 165 that are open seats for judicial nominations. We have, I think, 17 total filled at this point. So, 15 months in and you’re talking about nine or 10-11 percent that’s been filled. So, 90 percent still are not filled and that’s not because Trump has not nominated folks for that position. He has. You just can’t get the Senate to move on it.

More specifically, you can’t get the Senate to get rid of the cloture rule and the cloture rule is something that probably most folks don’t really get a grasp of. They think that’s kind of a filibuster and that’s not the case. But over in the Senate, unlike the House, in the Senate you can have unlimited debate on whatever you can. You can say, “We want this debate to go for however long.” and the only way to cut that off is by cloture.

And cloture says, “Okay, we’re going to vote there we’re only going to have 30 hours more of debate. That’s all we’re going to have – 30 hours more.” But to vote to cut off the debate it takes 60 votes. Which means you’ve got to get, essentially, nine Democrats to vote with all the Republicans that we’re going to stop talking about this, and really, they don’t talk about it. Nobody does the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington anymore in the way of filibuster. They just say, “Hey, we’re going to keep extended debate on this.” And that’s why–

Rick:

So, they don’t actually get up and do the long speeches very often.

David:

That”s right.

Rick:

They Â just put in, basically, a piece of paper saying, “Hey Senate majority leader, here’s what I’m going to do if you don’t do that.” and it delays it for a little bit.

David:

That’s right. So, it can go for days, and days, and days, and days. And they have a cloture vote that says, well, if you can get 60 votes to shut this debate down – which it’s not even a debate, it’s just a paper debate and paper debate, as you said, it’s a paper notification if you can’t get 60 votes you can’t shut that paper notification down.

Democrats Are Using That

David:

So, Democrats are using that to stop every nominee coming through. I’ve talked to several folks who are friends now who are ambassadors overseas – their nomination to little simple innocuous countries that nobody can hardly talk about and we’ve never had a conflict with. It took them over a year to get those nominations confirmed because they keep using this cloture tool. So, it’s unprecedented the way the Democrats are using cloture right now to keep things from happening.

Tim:

And so, really, it’s, from what I’m hearing and understanding, right, it’s much more of a protest than anything else. The Democrats are just not wanting there to be progress, not wanting Trump to get his agenda done. Which, certainly, from different political parties you can understand that one party doesn’t want the other party necessarily to succeed, and necessarily getting things done. So, I understand on some level you’re wanting to do this. But when you’re in a place where Republicans have the majority and with the majority they still can’t get their agenda done number one.

Number two, they’re not even able to get on to other business because they’re spending so much time debating nominations that should be a no brainer. Why does it matter who an ambassador is to a certain nation when there’s– we’re not at war with that nation, so it’s not a border issue. Â Â I can get some nations we might be concerned about and certainly our ambassador to Israel, or ambassador to some of these significant nations where there’s conflict things happening, that makes sense. But when you can’t do basic business in the Senate, at this point not only am I frustrated with the Democrats for this cloture issue, I’m frustrated with the Republican leadership for allowing the nonsense to happen.

David:

Yeah, and that is a problem because at this point business is not getting done.

They Did Not Get a Single One Through

David:

For example, federal law requires that all 12 appropriation bills be voted on and go through. The House did all 12 appropriation bills. The Senate said, “No, we’re doing cloture on every one of those.” They did not get a single one through which is why we had this massive omnibus bill. And so many of our guys voted to give funding to the military, but along with that there was 500 million going to Planned Parenthood. And that’s a bad deal, but that’s because the Senate will not follow the law of doing an individual bill as they”re supposed to.

Tim:

Well, and I”ll even point out with this, when this omnibus bill came out of the House, the House had a measure in for a balanced budget amendment. So, coming out of the House there was actually some very positive things in there. And it went to the Senate and the Senate said, “Well, you know what? We really don’t like those positive things. Let’s change it.” And this, by the way, is with a Republican controlled Senate. So, there’s a lot of problems happening in the Senate – cloture being one of them.

Rick:

Well, in fact, one of the guys right there trying to change that and get this fixed so we can get the nominees through and get the business of the country being done is Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. He’s going to be with us when we come back from the break. So, stay with us. Ted Cruz here on WallBuilders Live.

Front Sight Handgun Training and Constitution Crash Course

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It’s going to be a great weekend a fun, fellowship, learning, and sending a lot of lead downrange. And that one thousand dollar course registration, again, completely waived for the first 100 WallBuilders Live listeners to register. You”ve got to pay for your own travel and ammo, but we’re giving you the course for free as a gift to our listeners. I look forward to seeing you on the range April 13th. For all the details visit RickGreen.com today.

Rick:

Welcome back! Thanks for staying with us here on WallBuilders Live. Senator Ted Cruz with us once again! Always good to have you, sir!

Senator Ted Cruz:

Rick, terrific to be with you. How are you doing today?

Thoughts on Judicial Nominees

Rick:

Very well. Appreciate your time and appreciate you keeping up the great work. I”ve got to ask you as we jump into these Senate confirmations, and not so much confirmation sometimes, on Trump’s nominees. What have you thought of the one so far, especially on the judicial side of things? I’ve enjoyed watching you especially with some of our mutual friends like Justice Don Willett and others in the confirmation hearings. Are you pleased with the ones we’ve been able to get through so far?

Senator Ted Cruz:

I’m very, very pleased. I think that’s one of the biggest legacies of the first 15 months of the Trump administration and Republican majorities in both Houses, is that we have seen very, very, strong judicial nominations and confirmations.

We obviously have Neil Gorsuch on the U.S. Supreme Court. I think Justice Gorsuch has been an absolute homerun. Not only that, we’ve been seeing very strong constitutionalists on the federal courts of appeals and the district courts.

Indeed, last year in 2017, the Senate confirmed a total of 12 federal court of appeals judges which is the most confirmed in the first year of a president’s term in history.

Rick:

Wow.

Senator Ted Cruz:

Obama had four in his first year, we confirmed 12. I think that is having a real and lasting legacy in terms of defending our constitutional rights, the Bill of Rights, and all of the freedoms that you, and I, and Texans, value so much of free speech, religious liberty, the Second Amendment, and all of the fundamental rights of every American.

A Dramatic Shift

Rick:

It’s very good news and, like you said, most people don’t even know about how good it is and how many good ones have gotten through. But then there’s also the downside of the Democrats really being obstructionist, and calling for these cloture votes, and not allowing not only a lot of the judicial nominees, but others to come through.

How is that looking? It looked to me like it was, from what I heard you saying, fairly unprecedented how often they’re calling for these cloture votes. If you could explain that for our listeners exactly why a majority in the Senate is not able to get these nominees through.

Senator Ted Cruz:

What we’re seeing from the Democrats is we’re seeing, essentially, across the board obstruction. We’re saying on the legislative front where they are filibustering virtually every piece of substantive legislation. We’re also seeing it on nominations.

Now, the Democrats can no longer filibuster a nomination because, as you’ll recall, Harry Reid did what’s called the nuclear option and he lowered the threshold for judicial confirmations from 60 down to 50.

So, with a majority of 51 Republicans in the Senate we can get our judges through. But what the Democrats are doing is burning time. They”re Â burning 30 hours per nominee and they’re requiring the majority to do what’s called, “invoking cloture.” Invoking cloture is just the procedural method to force a vote, but it burns up time. You eat up practically a week on each nominee.

To give you a sense of just how dramatic the shift is, in the last four administrations combined, four administrations, the Senate held 17 cloture votes of presidential nominees. In the first 14 months of the Trump administration the Senate has had to have 79 cloture votes. That’s four times as many as the four previous administrations combined.

What that is doing is essentially eating time to prevent more nominees from being confirmed. And I and a number of other conservatives believe that the Senate needs to change the rules so that the Democrats can’t just eat up time with meaningless and partisan obstructionism.

Is There Any Chance of the Rules Being Changed?

Rick:

It seems like it goes against the very idea of majority rule. And in this case simply getting a nominee through to make it this complicated, this difficult. Just to make sure people understand the numbers you just gave, the last four administrations – not the last four years, not the last president, last four administrations is equal to what they’ve done in just these 15 months. You think there’s any chance of the rules actually being changed to start streamlining this?

Senator Ted Cruz:

I do think there is a chance. We have been discussing it. I’ve been advocating and a number of other conservatives have been advocating it. We almost changed the rules and shortened the time when Neil Gorsuch was up for confirmation and we had a fairly extensive debate internally within the Republican conference. We didn’t do it at the time because there were a handful of Republicans who weren’t ready to do that, weren’t ready to pull the trigger.

Essentially, what they argued is, “Well, let’s wait and see if the Democrats actually do engage in obstructionism. Let’s give them a chance to demonstrate good faith.” I wasn’t persuaded of that then, but we didn’t have the votes. I think now we’ve seen 15 months into it, they are demonstrating unprecedented obstructionism. I’m hopeful that we’ll see the votes, we”ve got to hold 50 Republicans – it will take 50 out of 51 Republicans standing together.

The only impediment is really a handful of what I call the “old bulls” – some of the Republicans who have been there a long, long, time decades even, that tend to be hesitant to use the powers of the majority to change things. But I think when you see the Democrats abusing a procedural rule the only responsible thing to do is respond and use the tools we have to make sure that we can implement the agenda we were elected to implement – the conservative agenda that I think the American people expect us to be implementing.

We Need To See More of This

Rick:

Yeah, absolutely. I want to ask you about your letter to the president on NAFTA. First, I want to compliment you on an interview I saw with Scarbro where you were defending the Second Amendment and essentially schooling him on how the Supreme Court actually works even. It was great and so needed right now with all the hysteria over the gun control thing and just the emotional arguments instead of logic. And you just– you laid it out. I remember a few years ago you did the same thing to Dianne Feinstein and there’s just very few people right now that are really good at defending the Second Amendment, and defending that history, and we need to see that more and so thank you for doing that.

Senator Ted Cruz:

Well, Rick, thank you. As you know, it’s tremendously important. Whenever when we see one of these horrific crimes, a mass murder, inevitably we see Democrats in the media go into hysteria. And their solution is always, always, always, try to undermine the Second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens. There are many problems with that. One of which is it’s unconstitutional – the Second Amendment doesn’t allow them to do that. But another fundamental problem is it doesn’t work.

Rick:

That’s right.

Senator Ted Cruz:

If you want to stop a violent crime, disarming law abiding citizens, disarming you and me, doesn’t stop violent crime. And in fact, if you look at the jurisdictions with the toughest gun control laws – places like Chicago and Washington D.C. – they almost inevitably have among the highest crime rates, among the highest murder rates. Because when you disarm the law abiding citizenry, it’s the criminals who keep all the guns.

If you want to stop crime, and you and I both want to stop crime, stop murderers, the way to do it is to focus on the bad guys, focus on the felons, and fugitives, the murderers, and criminals, and there’s a lot we can do going after criminals if you want to stop these crimes. But undermining Second Amendment rights – it doesn’t work to stop crimes. But it’s nonetheless the agenda of an awful lot of liberal Democrats.

Actually Using Common

Rick:

Well, there’s your problem, Senator. Just too much logic in that to make sense to some of those folks. You”re actually using common sense. And actually, if you take away the rights of the law abiding citizens, you’re also, when that crazy person gets through whatever laws you’ve created to try to stop them, you’ve taken away the ability of the good guys to be able to stop the bad guy as well. So, everything you’re saying makes perfect sense. I hope some of that logic will spill over and we can defeat some of these efforts to negatively impact the Second Amendment.

Senator Ted Cruz:

Well, and Rick, that’s exactly right and I would know. In 2018, in November, I’m up for re-election, my Democratic opponent Congressman Beto O’Rourke from El Paso is running to the far, far, left as a liberal for open borders and for undermining our Second Amendment rights. He recently tweeted out that he was very proud that he had an F rating from the NRA for consistently opposing the Second Amendment. Not D minus, not a D, not a C, an F rating and that’s what he’s campaigning on.

Rick:

Wow.

Senator Ted Cruz:

And I promptly, Rick, I tweeted him. I said, “You know what? Elections are about choices and if Texans want a gun grabbing open border liberal, well, the Democrats have given them one. Or if instead they want a conservative who will fight to defend your rights, well, we got that option on the ballot as well.”

Rick:

No doubt. So, wait a minute, this is someone running in Texas proud of an F with the NRA. I’m really concerned about his logic as well and how well he knows the Texas populace because I can’t imagine that helping him. But nonetheless the left is loving it and embracing him in and appreciate you sharing that with us because I didn’t even know that he had that he had done that.

So, and by the way, congrats on your tremendous victory in the primary. It was a landslide by far and we hope to see the same thing in November.

Let”s Talk About NAFTA

Rick:

Let’s talk about the NAFTA real quick. You and Senator Gardner and Senator Daines sent a letter to the president about the NAFTA negotiations that are that are going on and the competitiveness issue. Tell us a little bit about this.

Senator Ted Cruz:

Well, what I have encouraged the president do is use NAFTA renegotiations to reduce federal regulations and to advance regulatory reform. The two real keys if you want to see economic growth in Texas and across the country are tax reform and reg reform. We saw, in December of last year, a massive historic tax cut that’s already having enormous positive benefits in Texas and across the country.

Regulatory reform is the second major lever. And what I’ve encouraged the president to do is use NAFTA renegotiation to pass into law the regulatory reform that the Democrats would block otherwise. And in particular, what I’ve suggested is negotiating a new or adding a new competitiveness chapter to NAFTA. Now, it doesn’t even have to be agreed to by Mexico or Canada, the United States can attach it unilaterally as an annex and codifying something like the REINS Act.

The REINS Act is legislation I’ve sponsored that says any federal regulation that would impose economic costs of 100 million dollars or more can’t go into effect without an affirmative up down vote of Congress. You attach it to NAFTA, it goes to Congress. So, that presents an opportunity for the Trump administration to have a huge victory for jobs and economic growth. And it also, I hope, will focus their energies in a positive way rather than in the direction that some voices in the Trump administration are pushing – which is a more protectionist direction of erecting tariffs.

I think tariffs would be very harmful to Texas. I want to see Texas jobs growing and wages going up. And I think reducing regulations and reducing taxes are the way to do that.

Where President Reagan Did Not Succeed

Rick:

And this is actually– this is where President Reagan did not succeed. He succeeded in the tax cuts, but not in reducing the regulations. So, what you’re proposing is a way to get rid of the stranglehold on business that prevents that exponential growth. And if not– prevent the bureaucrats, in other words, like you said. Because so much of this happens behind the scenes. It’s not a vote by you guys in Congress where it should be coming from. It’s coming from these bureaucrats that are unaccountable. So, you’re creating a way here to get Congress back into the picture.

Senator Ted Cruz:

That’s exactly right. It’s also designed– So, we’re seeing some significant economic growth because of regulatory reform within the Trump administration. The Trump cabinet members are pulling back job killing regulations – that’s fabulous. But sadly there is going to come a time when we have another Democratic president. I hope it’s not for a long, long, time. But we’re a closely divided country and we can’t count on always having a Republican president.

If, God forbid, we have a president Elizabeth Warren or a president Bernie Sanders, or some other left wing explicit socialist, then we will see wave upon wave of job killing regulations coming down just as we did under Barack Obama. Doing this now, passing it into law, serves to tie the hands of the next left wing Democrat before they get in power to protect Texas jobs.

Rick:

I love it. Brilliant strategy. I hope the president listens on this one. It could really have huge impact on the economy as well. Senator, we really appreciate your time, appreciate your great work, keep it up. And, man, let’s go get some more victories.

Senator Ted Cruz:

We’ll do it. Thank you my friend. Let me encourage everyone listening – come to our website TedCruz.org, TedCruz.org, TedCruz.org, we need your support, we need your help. We’re standing together and leading the fight in Texas.

A Very Important Time for Texans to Be Engaged

Rick:

Hey, and by the way, Senator, actually, let”s do say to the folks in Texas right now this is a very important time for people to pay attention and be engaged.

Senator Ted Cruz:

That’s exactly right. And we saw the primary elections earlier this month. We saw Democratic turnout in Texas increase one hundred percent. It increased from five hundred thousand four years ago to a million. That’s because the hard left, they’re angry, they’re energized, they hate the president.

My liberal Democratic opponent right now is outraising my campaign because you’re getting thousands and thousands of left wing Bernie Sanders activists that are contributing to his campaign and we’re going to face millions of dollars of attack ads going into November. So, we need to make sure conservatives in Texas and across the country are mobilized to defend freedom, to defend the Constitution. And that’s why I so appreciate folks going to TedCruz.org and supporting our effort to defend freedom.

Rick:

TedCruz.org, visit there today, folks, and help out. Senator, thanks again for your time. Look forward to having you back again soon.

Senator Ted Cruz:

Take care. God bless.

Rick:

Alright, we’re back now with David and Tim Barton. Thanks to Senator Cruz for joining us today. David, Tim, so they’re trying to get this changed so that you have more of a majority rule situation in the Senate. We’ve always talked on the program about how we don’t like the fact that a small group of people can put a cog in the wheel and literally stop the majority from doing what they’ve been elected to do.

The Will of the Majority

David:

Well, you had founding fathers from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington who said the same thing. They said the fundamental principle of the Constitution requires the will of the majority shall prevail.

So, the silly cloture rule, which, by the way, was added under President Woodrow Wilson, imagine that. A very anti constitutional guy gets this cloture rule and so no longer does the majority prevail. But I was really struck by a couple of things Ted said. He said they’re filibustering every piece of legislation. Which, I knew they were doing that, and I knew they were opposing all of these ambassadorships. But I didn’t realize that each time they invoke closure it eats up a week. So, every time they invoke this artificial procedure they’re cutting a week out of the ability to act on legislation.

Tim:

That explains why they’re so productive in the Senate.

David:

Exactly. Exactly

Tim:

Why they’ve taken up all these bills the House has passed, right, these hundreds that have gone through the House, and we’re going what happened to them? Oh, well, now we know why the Senate’s not taking them up – because of cloture.

David:

Jumping on what you said, 400 bills have gone through the House that the Senate has refused to pick up. And 240 of those bills passed with 400 votes in the House, which means huge bipartisan.

Tim:

There’s only 435–

David:

Right.

Tim:

–Congressmen, Congresswomen as the case might be, in the House. So, if it’s a 400 person vote, or 400 or more, yeah, this isn’t even a contested thing, right. This is a no brainer, but the Senate won’t even get to those because they’re having this cloture debate which didn’t even come around until Woodrow Wilson. So, certainly not the Founding Fathers intended–

It”s the Opposite

David:

Oh no. It”s opposite to what the Constitution intended, opposite of what founding fathers intended.

Tim:

Obviously, with that being said, you can point to Jefferson, Madison, several of these guys, Benjamin Franklin, point out that there’s an amendment process. And so certainly they thought that there will be progressions that can be made to the Constitution, things that we can do to improve it as the people look at it and find the imperfections, and they can work to improve things. And so not that they thought the Constitution should not be changed. But there was a process to change it and certainly even with the idea that–

David:

And Woodrow Wilson was it, I guess. I guess that’s how y0u change it.

Tim:

But even with the idea the will of the majority should prevail, they certainly didn’t think you would change the Constitution to contradict itself. When now, no longer is it “we the people”, no longer is as there are these protections and boundaries. Now– which even that, Woodrow Wilson putting in cloture, the fact that it has not been used to the level it’s been used in the last year and a half.

David:

Let me throw the numbers out. In the last– not counting this president, in the previous 28 years it had been used 17 times in 28 years. So, we’re talking about once every 18 months. This president has said 79 cloture in 15 months. So, we’re talking, essentially, five– we”re talking a cloture every week essentially. And so you’ve got more in this 15 months than you’ve got in the previous four presidents which is seven terms.

Tim:

So, now I’m curious, right, so if it’s 28 years and over those 28 years it was only used 17 times, but it’s been used 79 times in the last roughly year and a half. I wonder if– going back to when Woodrow Wilson put this in, it makes me wonder if, okay, has cloture been used 79 times since it was initiated? Because only 17 in the last 28 years.

David:

Yeah.

Not What the Founding Fathers Intended

Tim:

So, arguably they’re doing something with this. Certainly, even when Wilson puts it in, he never, presumably, he never would have. Yes it would be used to this extent. On this level. And certainly, we would look at it and go, “Man, this is a major abuse of what’s happening.” Certainly not what the founding fathers intended with the Constitution, probably not even what crazy Woodrow Wilson intended when he was initiating this. Certainly, it’s being used out of the context of what even Wilson would have thought. And it’s gumming up the works, keeping productivity, and really business, from happening.

Rick:

Remember how long it took to get the, even the votes changed, as Senator Cruz was talking about what they ended up calling the nuclear option.

David:

Yeah.

Rick:

To get that changed I wonder if it’s going to take as much of an effort to get this change.

David:

Well, one of the best pieces of news I have heard in months is that there’s only a small handful of Republican senators keeping this from being changed. I thought it was gonna be half the Republican caucus and it sounds like it’s only two or three or four of them. And so it’s good news that the others are willing to do it now.

At this point– Tim and I were with a bunch of House members last week and we were telling them, “Guys, if you don’t start hanging the U.S. Senate out you guys are going to lose the House because you’re not pointing out that you’re getting your work done. It’s the Senate that’s not getting done.