Ted Cruz's "Extended Speech" Against Obamacare Still Going, Joined by Rand Paul and Others
Ted Cruz's "extended speech" against Obamacare is still going after starting yesterday afternoon around 2.30pm ET yesterday.
Since starting as a one-man show featuring solicited questions from a variety of senators, including fellow "Wacko Birds" Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Marco Rubio (who all participated in Paul's epic drone filibuster in March), and others including Jeff Sessions and Mike Enzi. Now others are joining in to speak at length. As of this writing, Sen. Rand Paul, an opthamalogist, is invoking Bastiat's "What is Seen and Unseen" in discussing health-care reform. "At is core, says Paul, Obamacare is about "freedom versus coercion."
While Cruz's theatrical gesture isn't going to stop the Senate from voting on the House bill with its defunding provision stripped out, he's certainly covered a lot of ground, often in entertaining and informative fashion. From the Wash Post:
As he outlined his opposition to the health-care law, Cruz's hours of oratory against the law touched a broad mix of subjects and sources, including lyrics from a song by country music star Toby Keith; excerpts from the book "Atlas Shrugged," a favorite of libertarians; quotations from the popular reality television show "Duck Dynasty;" the unemployment rate among African American teenagers; how his father, Rafael Cruz, used to make green eggs and ham for breakfast; a recent acceptance speech by actor Ashton Kutcher at an awards show; and the restaurants Denny's, Benihana and White Castle.
And here's a livestream of the ongoing talk: