On Breitbart News Sunday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said a GOP-led Congress must champion blue-collar American workers, which includes stopping President Barack Obama’s illegal amnesty. Cruz said Obama made the midterms a referendum on amnesty, and voters are intent on rejecting it.
Referencing his USA Today op-ed in which he laid out his agenda, Cruz said Republicans must have a “big, bold positive agenda” that “focuses on three critical issues: jobs, liberty, security.”
“It includes securing the border and stopping illegal amnesty,” Cruz told host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon while campaigning for GOP Senate candidate Dan Sullivan in Alaska. “President Barack Obama has decided to make this election on amnesty, and I think the American people recognize that’s not the right solution.”
Illegal immigration hurts blue-collar American workers, and Cruz said his American Energy Renaissance Act would also help enable Republicans to be “champions of working men and women” who want or have “blue-collar jobs with dignity to provide for their families.” Cruz said those jobs, including union jobs in red, blue, and purple states, are under assault by an Obama administration–with its regulations–that prevents private energy firms from creating high-paying jobs.
Cruz also stated that Republicans have to support an agenda to help unleash the “American energy renaissance,” which includes building the Keystone XL Pipeline, stopping the Environmental Protection Agency’s assault on coal, and keeping the federal government from killing high-paying jobs with burdensome regulations.
Regarding his American Energy Renaissance Act, Cruz said there is a geopolitical shift that is “strengthening America and weakening our enemies” and producing millions of high-paying jobs. After saying that it is “incredible to see the economic growth that is coming from the energy industry,” Cruz added, “The one thing that can screw it up is the federal government.” He mentioned that Obama has “declared that his objective was to bankrupt every coal plant in America, and there are working men and women across American whose livelihood depend on coal who are right now facing a war on coal from the federal government.” Cruz also said “outmoded export controls on liquid natural gas and crude oil” should be repealed so “America can have leverage” against nations whose interests are antagonistic to America’s.
He blasted Obama for blocking the Keystone Pipeline, asserting Obama is “single-handedly responsible for shutting that project down and preventing tens of thousands of high-paying jobs from being created.” Cruz said rules must be reformed to prevent the federal government from putting “meaningless obstacles” in front of the private sector and going after hydraulic fracking and the expansion of energy production.
It is “incumbent on Republicans to lead” in Congress “if and when we take the majority,” said Cruz, because the GOP did not do so when they had the majority the last decade. Voters threw out Republicans in 2006 because of the crony capitalism and pay-to-play scandals that were rampant in the halls of Congress as Republicans who presumably came to Washington to change it dove into the D.C. cesspool they now saw as a jacuzzi. Many of the establishment Republicans left over from that period have shown nothing but disdain for Cruz, who has vowed to clean up the crony capitalism racket.
Cruz also said Republicans need to implement “serious oversight to hold government accountable.” He said the GOP must rein in judicial activism and “stop the culture of corruption and crony capitalism that both parties are guilty of,” while combating the Obama administration’s lawlessness and abuse of power. He called for a lifetime ban on members of Congress becoming lobbyists and a constitutional amendment requiring term limits. He also said Republicans should push for tax reform and a flat tax that allows Americans to fill out their taxes on a post card, the abolishment of the IRS, auditing the Federal Reserve, and a strong balanced budget amendment.
In addition, Cruz said Common Core and Obamacare must be repealed and America’s military must be rebuilt to achieve peace through strength. He blasted the “fire sale that President Obama, Harry Reid, and the Obama Democrats have been pushing through on our military” during a time in which “we need to deal seriously with threats to this country” like ISIS and a nuclear Iran.
Cruz said it was imperative for Americans who want such an agenda in the next Congress to vote on Tuesday to boot Harry Reid from his Majority Leader post.