Cruz Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: CRUZ: What we see today is another manifestation of the Washington Cartel

HOUSTON, Texas — Today, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, joined the Mark Levin Show to discuss his vote against TPA as a result of the latest manifestation of the Washington Cartel.

Excerpts appear below:

I voted against TPA today and I wrote a long op-ed in Breitbart this morning explaining why. And as you know, I support free trade — I'm a longtime supporter of free trade. I campaigned on free trade in the state of Texas. However, there were really two things that drove me to oppose TPA today.

The first was something that came out after the first vote on TPA, which is Wikileaks released the text of a portion of the Trade in Services Agreement which explicitly purports to change immigration laws of the signatory countries. Now at the time TPA came up for a vote initially, Jeff Sessions introduced an amendment and I introduced an amendment to add to TPA to make explicit that no trade deal can impact immigration law and that any one that attempted to impact immigration law wouldn't be subject to Fast Track. We didn't get a vote on those amendments.

And based on the subsequent leak of the text of a trade agreement attempting to do just that, I informed leadership that if they wanted my vote on TPA, they needed to pass the Cruz-Sessions amendment to take immigration off the table forever on trade agreements.

The second aspect that led me to vote no was the corrupt deals we've seen that leadership pursued in order to get TPA passed. And in particular is a deal that by all appearances they cut to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank.

Now as you know, Mark, the Export-Import Bank is a classic example of corporate welfare, it is hundreds of billions of dollars of loan guarantees that taxpayers give that benefit primarily a handful of giant corporations. Now, it's scheduled to expire on June 30th. And would be a tremendous victory — it should be a tremendous victory — for Republicans to show we're not about cronyism, we're not about picking winners and losers, to defend the free market.

Unfortunately, it now appears that Republican leadership cut a deal in order to get TPA through where they agreed to tee up a vote and allow the Export-Import Bank, that corporate welfare, as well. And at the end of the day it was too much so I announced I would vote no and I did vote no today.

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I informed leadership that if they publicly, number one, committed to allowing the Export-Import Bank to expire and stay expired — to end that corrupt Washington cronyism deal making — and number two, if Congress would pass the Cruz and Sessions amendment taking immigration off the table forever in trade agreements that I would support it, but leadership did not accept my offer.

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And unfortunately what we see today is another manifestation of what I call the "Washington Cartel." It is a corruption. It is a cartel of career politicians in both parties in union with the lobbyists on K Street. And it's the reason why six of the ten wealthiest counties in America surround Washington, DC. Because this town is all about more and more power and money in Washington, and the working men and women, their lives being made harder and harder. And what we saw today is another example of government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, and for the lobbyists, and that's not what Republicans were elected to Congress to do.