(Prezography photo)
From Press Release
Republican presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz participated in the Center Seat panel on Special Report with Bret Baier on Wednesday, taking questions from Baier and panelists George Will, Mara Liasson, and Jonah Goldberg. They covered several issues including Trade Promotion Authority, the upcoming Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, what must be done to defeat ISIS, and why Americans should vote for Ted Cruz for President.
Regarding Trade Promotion Authority:
“Two things have changed since that first vote. Number one, WikiLeaks released the text of a portion of the Trade in Services Agreement that explicitly contemplates changing immigration laws of member countries. Over and over again, we’d been assured there were no changes in immigration laws. That leak was one material change. And then a second material change was the backroom Washington deals that were cut on the Export-Import Bank. The Export-Import Bank is a classic example of corporate welfare, and it appears now that leadership cut a deal to reauthorize this cronyism. Hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars on the lien to help giant corporations as the price for TPA. And the two together were too much, so I voted no.”
Regarding the upcoming Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare:
“Under no circumstances should Republicans in Congress extend Obamacare. If the Supreme Court rules, as many observers expect, it will conclude that the Obama IRS violated federal law and illegally imposed billions of dollars of taxes on millions of Americans – millions of young people who are working. Right now, the Obama IRS is extracting taxes from them. And if the Supreme Court includes that Obama violated the law, the last thing Republicans in Congress should step up and do is codify his lawlessness and extend the subsidies.
“What I say is we should use this opportunity to address the real problem, which is that Obamacare has driven health insurance premiums through the roof. In fact, President Obama promised that the average family’s health insurance premium would drop $2,500 under Obamacare. In actuality, the average family’s premiums have risen $3,000.”
“What we should do instead is allow states to opt out. Opt out of the individual mandate, opt out of the taxes, opt out of the employer mandate, opt out of all the mandatory coverage, which is driving up premiums for a lot more than six million people. You’re talking about hundreds of millions of people who are seeing their premiums go up for Obamacare.”
“What you replace it with is something that expands competition and empowers consumers and disempowers government from getting between patients and their doctors in three specific reforms. One, you let people purchase health insurance across state lines. That creates a 50 state marketplace that lowers cost and gives you more choices, which expands access. Number two, you expand health savings accounts, so that people can save in a tax advantage way for routine healthcare. And number three, you work to delink health insurance from employment, so health insurance is portable.
“If you or I lose our jobs we don’t lose our life insurance, our car insurance, or our house insurance, there’s no reason we should lose our health insurance, and that’s what causes much of the problem of preexisting conditions. We should be empowering patients, not putting government bureaucrats between us and our doctors.”
Regarding defeating ISIS:
“What is plausible is number one, air power, when used aggressively can have a dramatic impact. Right now we got such restrictive rules of engagement that it is more a pinprick strike – it is a bomb here it’s a missile there. I’ve characterized it as photo op foreign policy rather than using concerted overwhelming airpower to take out ISIS.
“Secondly, you’re right, the Kurds can’t solve everything, but they’re right now fighting and winning on the ground, and it is a miracle they are because ISIS is using U.S. military equipment they’ve seized in Iraq. The Kurds’ equipment is hopelessly outclassed and yet they’re fighting.
“This administration is obsessed with seeking conciliation with the Sunnis and Shias and uniting Iraq. It sends weapons to Baghdad that doesn’t get passed along to the Kurds. That doesn’t make any sense at all, we ought to use the Kurds as boots on the ground along with overwhelming air power.
“Now that could likely involve embedding in more special forces to target that airpower but I think our principle boots on the ground can be the Kurds and we should be giving them the tools they need to defeat ISIS.”
Regarding why Americans should vote for Ted Cruz for President:
“You know Albert Einstein famously said, ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.’ Over and over again the Washington world of consultants says we’ve got to run a moderate, an establishment moderate and every time we do it, we lose.
“If you compare 2004 the last race Republicans won to ’08 and ’12 by far the biggest difference is the millions of conservatives who showed up in ’04, who stayed home in ’08, who stayed home in bigger numbers in ’12. They fall into two groups. Number one evangelical Christians, number two so-called Reagan Democrats, largely blue collar Catholics up and down the Midwest and into New England.
“Heidi and I we spent months thinking about and praying about whether to run for President our daughters our four and seven you don’t lightly throw a young family into the maelstrom of a Presidential race. The reason we decided to go forward is because I look at the rest of field there are a lot of people who are talented, who I like who I respect. But, I don’t see a lot of candidates who I think are likely to energize and mobilize and bring back to the polls those Conservatives.
“I think based on the record I’ve built of standing and fighting for Conservative principles over and over again that I am in the best position to energize and bring back those Conservatives and at the same time to bring back together that old Reagan coalition of Conservatives, and libertarians and evangelicals and young people and Hispanics and women and Reagan Democrats. That’s what we’ve got to do to win.”
CLICK HERE to see the entire interview.
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