A Tale of Two Senators

Look, I know you are all probably sick of hearing about voting records and continuing resolutions and funding this or that.  Deal with it.  It's going to get worse.

So, I wrote a little blog, titled Versions of the Truth, in which I document the tale of two stories, one in which it was reported that Congressman Culberson had in fact voted to fund Obamacare, and the other, in which he had not.  Guess who told the version that he had not voted to fund Obamacare?  If you guessed his office, you guessed correctly.

Fast forward about a week or so.  The same CR came up for a vote in the Senate.  Now, mind you, the line item for the Health and Human Services is listed in the summary of the bill and the story I got from Culberson's office was that therein was the confusion.  The line item only funded WIC and not Obamacare.  Via Redstate.com, I read that Senator Cornyn had voted FOR the continuing resolution and that Senator Cruz voted AGAINST the continuing resolution.  Wow.

So, I thought a call to Cornyn's office was in order to find out what really happened.  According to Claire, Senator Cornyn does oppose Obamacare.  He just didn't want to see a government shut down, and I told her I thought it might be a good thing to have a shut down.  She didn't agree.  It gets more interesting than that, because unbeknownst to me, Big Jolly was writing a blog the same time I was, he just got his out first.  Ha!  According to Big Jolly aka David Jennings and a press release from Senator Cornyn's office, Cornyn was able to accomplish the following:

• The Continuing Resolution denies President Obama the nearly $1 billion dollars in additional funding he requested for implementing the health insurance exchanges;
• It lowers spending levels, something that has not been done in years; and
• Keeps the sequester cuts in place

Now, I'm becoming more of a skeptic these days and I don't always believe what I'm told.  When it refers to spending cuts, I'll borrow a question from one of my good friends Felicia Cravens and ask, "What government agency is getting less funding this year than last?" I am also not sure where he saw the information about denying the President the $1 billion in additional funding. 

Not being well-versed in policy and how it's written coupled with being a skeptic I decided I wanted to compare notes with Senator Cruz's office.  I called Senator Cruz's office to find out why he didn't vote for the resolution.  Guys, I gotta tell ya, you could have knocked me over with a feather when these words came across my phone and I'm paraphrasing, of course: "Because it had Obamacare funding in it.  The Senator voted on principle.  He came to Washington to represent the will of the people of Texas and he's not going to vote to spend money on Obamacare."  Wow.

The staffer whose name I failed to get, then went on to say that Senator Cruz is not afraid of a government shut down.  That if the government did shut down, it was only the non-essentials that wouldn't get funded.  He also recalled the result of the government shut down of 1995; say it with me, a BALANCED BUDGET!  He went on to say that what's going to cause a shut down is if we keep spending money the way we are because we are borrowing $.40 on every dollar.  Wow.

So who are you going to believe?  I'd put my money on Cruz every time.

But wait, there's more.  Oh, yes, just this morning, I received a post on my Facebook wall about this very vote that still has folks disputing via Redstate, so of course I felt the need to finish up this blog and share my knowledge.  Erick Erickson stands by his original story, that yes, John Cornyn did in fact vote to fund Obamacare, and now by saying he didn't, he's simply lying.  All we want as constituents is the truth.  Is that too much to ask?