Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said in a speech to conservative activists at the Americans for Prosperity (AFP) Defending the American Dream Summit in Dallas, Texas, this weekend that stopping amnesty is the most important issue of the 2014 midterm election season.
As he addressed AFP, founded with the support of the Koch brothers, Cruz highlighted the current border crisis, President Obama’s inept handling of the situation, and the danger amnesty poses.
“We are 66 days out from the November elections,” Cruz said, adding:
Sixty-six days from now, just over 1,500 hours, we’re going to retake the United States Senate, and we’re going to retire Harry Reid. So I’m here to say “thank you,” but this summit is also a call to action. Every man, woman and child who is here, we got 66 days and we got a job to do. I’m going to tell you four key issues that are going to be front and center come election day. Number one, no amnesty.
Cruz then launched into a nearly ten-minute-long segment of his less than thirty-minute speech bashing President Obama and the Senate Democrats over amnesty.
“President Obama has made a decision to make this election in 2014 a national referendum on amnesty,” Cruz said. He continued:
If you support amnesty, vote Democrat. If you oppose amnesty, throw Harry Reid out. In the state of Texas, border security is not some abstract theory to us. It is something we live with each and every day. One of the things I enjoy sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee is listening to senators like Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin lecture John Cornyn and me on border security. Now I understand that Manhattan is very concerned about their security with the Bronx. But it’s a little bit different on 2,000 miles of the Rio Grande. You know, the President is right about one thing that’s happening on the border right now: it’s a ‘humanitarian crisis.’ But it’s a crisis of his own creation. It is the direct consequence of President Obama’s lawlessness.
Cruz mentioned how President Obama visited Texas a couple months ago, but refused to visit the border–then came up with a plan to get Obama back down to Texas and to visit the border this time.
“A few months ago, President Obama to the state of Texas,” Cruz said. “He had time to come to a couple of Democratic Party fundraisers, to swill some chardonnay with fat cats in the Democratic Party, and he didn’t have a minute to head down to the border and see the crisis he has caused.” Cruz then said, “I gotta tell you, we tried to help him out; we actually tweeted to the President a Mapquest of driving from here to the border. That didn’t work, so I’ve got a different plan.”
Cruz’s new plan to get Obama to visit the border is to invite him to a golf course right on the border:
Tonight I am officially extending an invitation to President Barack Obama to come join me at the border in Texas. And I figured out the only way there is a chance in Heaven he might come is I’m inviting him to come to a golf course. There actually is, if you go to Big Bend, there’s a wonderful resort called Lajitas with a golf course right on the border. In fact, the eleventh hole is pretty amazing–the eleventh hole’s pin is on the other side of the Rio Grande. So you can only go for a hole-in-one because you can’t cross the river and putt. I’m expecting to get a call back from the President any day now accepting this invitation.
Cruz next walked through how President Obama is responsible for causing the border crisis.
“You want to understand what’s happening at the border. A simple example of the numbers illustrates everything,” Cruz stated. Elaborating, he said:
Three years ago, there were roughly 6,000 unaccompanied children trying to enter this country illegally in 2011. Then in 2012, the President illegally granted amnesty to some 800,000 people who had entered as kids. Now the foreseeable result of that, the predictable result of that, if you grant amnesty to people who come as kids, it creates a huge incentive for more and more and more children to come. So we saw the numbers grow from just 6,000 three years ago to 90,000 this year–and next year it’s expected to be 145,000. These are little boys and little girls that are being physically assaulted, that are being sexually assaulted.
Cruz praised the House of Representatives for passing two separate border crisis bills–one that would block the President’s planned efforts to continue or expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive amnesty and a companion bill that would deal with asylum and funding issues for the border crisis–before breaking for August recess, and bashed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for not passing anything to deal with the border crisis.
“I’m proud to tell you we have seen some leadership in Washington; the House of Representatives has stood up and led,” Cruz said. The Senator added:
I introduced two pieces of legislation. One, to make absolutely clear in law that the President of the United States has no authority prospectively to grant amnesty to anyone here illegally. And number two legislation providing that the federal government will reimburse the states for calling up the National Guard like our Gov. Rick Perry has done. Let me speak in praise of Republicans in the House of Representatives because Republicans in the House of Representatives stood together and said this is a crisis on the border, this is national security, we have terrorists coming across the border, let’s come together. And they passed both pieces of legislation I had introduced in the Senate. On the other side of the Capitol, Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats said we won’t even allow a vote on anything to secure the border. We won’t allow a vote on anything to block amnesty. Instead, Harry Reid said I’m sending the senators home. It’s the month of August, and Martha’s Vineyard beckons. Republicans in Washington are standing up and leading. Harry Reid and the Democrats, the do-nothing Senate, are ignoring the national security priorities of the country.
Cruz warned that President Obama is threatening a new executive amnesty, and that if he carries through with it, the consequences will be brought to bear on Democratic senators up for re-election this year.
“In the next 66 days, the President has said there is a good chance he is going to try it again,” Cruz said. Furthermore, Cruz stated:
President Obama is going to try and grant amnesty to millions more. Let me be clear, doing that is utterly lawless. And every Democrat in the Senate who stood with Harry Reid blocking legislation to stop this amnesty, every Democrat in the Senate bears responsibility for that amnesty. So for the folks here from Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, Alaska, there are some Democratic senators we need to introduce to the private sector, there are some Democratic senators who bear the responsibility for President Obama’s amnesty, and there are some Democratic senators who sorely need to lose their exemption from Obamacare.
Cruz noted that the second-most important issue of the year is Obamacare. He went on to detail how adopting smarter foreign policy and defending Americans’ constitutional rights are a close third and fourth.
WATCH TED CRUZ’S FULL SPEECH:
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