Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) plans to vote against the government-funding proposal and President Obama’s plan to arm Syrian rebels as a counterweight to the Islamic State and dictator Bashar Assad.
Cruz dislikes the government-funding measure because it sets up a lame-duck session of Congress.
“I intend to vote no on any continuing resolution that expires in December,” Cruz told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday. “I think setting the expiration date for December is designed to ensure a lame-duck session, and lame-duck sessions historically have presented opportunities for Congress to pass terrible legislation, because in a lame duck you have members of Congress who were just defeated at the polls casting their final votes free from any accountability to the voters. And it is in lame-duck sessions that Congresses are much more likely to raise taxes, are much more likely to consider and pass things like amnesty, and are much more likely to hand out corporate welfare. In my view, substantive policy decisions should be made by elected members of Congress who are accountable to the voters and we should not have a lame-duck session for anything but true emergency legislation.”
Cruz also panned the president’s plan to arm Syrian rebels. “I do not support arming the rebels in Syria, because the administration has presented no coherent plan for distinguishing the good guys from the bad guys,” he said, noting that the Islamic State is a rebel group itself. “Every time I have pressed the administration in both open hearings and classified hearings, as to how they would distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, the administration has failed to have an answer that makes any sense.”