On Monday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) asserted that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is running the House of Representatives when it comes to the budget negotiations.
According to a recent poll, Cruz is viewed as the leader of the Republican Party in Congress. This after he fulfilled his campaign promise to fight against Obamacare by relentlessly vowing to defund Obamacare and speaking on the Senate floor for 21 hours in opposition.
“It’s pretty clear that this whole episode is being driven by the hard-right, extreme, Tea Party elements of the Republican Party, and we’re seeing that play out in the House, where Sen. Cruz is essentially running the show,” Van Hollen said at The Christian Science Monitor breakfast. “If Speaker Boehner doesn’t want to assert his leadership, then he should go ahead and turn the gavel over to Speaker Cruz, because that’s what we’re seeing in the House.”
Cruz repeatedly said the House should not “blink” in the budget negotiations, and Republicans in the House did not, which led to a partial government shutdown on Tuesday when Congress could not agree to a short-term resolution to fund the government. Senate Democrats rejected a last-minute resolution that was passed by the House, which would have funded the government in exchange for a one-year delay in Obamacare’s individual mandate and the elimination of Obamacare subsidies for Congress and the Executive Branch.
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