Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has drifted to the middle of the pack of Republican presidential contenders, is girding for his next battle with GOP leaders: reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank.
The firebrand conservative on Wednesday challenged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to block any vote on reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank next month.
{mosads}Pro-trade Democrats say McConnell promised them a vote on the reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank in exchange for their support of a trade package last month.
“Leadership in both chambers has said there is no deal. Excellent. Prove it. If there is no deal, we should let Ex-Im expire and let it stay expired,” Cruz said at a speech at the Heritage Foundation titled “The People v. The Washington Cartel.”
Cruz argues the majority of the bank’s benefits have gone to only 10 companies and that its financing efforts have helped foreign corporations, such as Air India, at the expense of American jobs.
He said the bank has a “terrible record of subsidizing unfriendly regimes with problematic human rights records,” citing $35 million in assistance to Venezuela, $335 million to Argentina, $1 billion to Russia and $2.7 billion to China.
“If leadership as it says this week there is no deal on Ex-Im, then simply do nothing, let it expire and end the gravy train for Washington lobbyists on the Export-Import Bank,” he said.
Cruz voted against fast-track trade legislation Tuesday after voting for it a month ago, explaining in an op-ed for Breitbart.com it had “become enmeshed in corrupt Washington backroom dealmaking.”
He alleged that Boehner had promised House Democrats a vote on the Ex-Im Bank during negotiations over trade legislation.
“A group of House conservatives went to Speaker Boehner and said they could support [fast-track] if Boehner agreed not to cut a deal with Democrats on Ex-Im, and just let the bank expire,” he wrote. “Boehner declined. Instead, it appears he made the deal with Democrats, presumably tossing in the Ex-Im Bank and also increasing tax penalties on businesses.”
Cruz’s latest salvo comes after weeks of declining poll numbers in the 2016 race. Senate GOP leadership aides say he is simply trying to get attention by picking a fight over the Ex-Im Bank.
An average of polling data compiled by RealClear Politics shows that Cruz’s support nationwide peaked at 11.3 percent in April after his campaign kickoff at Liberty University won rave reviews. That average has since slumped to 6.5 percent.
Cruz, who is beloved by Tea Party conservatives but detested by some Senate colleagues, delivered his challenge to GOP leaders as part of a broader critique of his own party.
He accused his leadership and many Republican colleagues of having a cozy relationship with rich corporate interests and K Street lobbyists and of doing little to push for real fiscal reform.
“The only people voting in Washington are the lobbyists with bags of cash and the lawmakers in both parties eager to get that cash,” he said, calling it “the Washington cartel.”
Making a veiled reference to his rival, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is running ahead of him in the GOP presidential primary, Cruz warned conservatives not to expect politicians who fail to take on the establishment to change their stripes once in the Oval Office.
“If you’ve never taken on the Washington cartel, you’re not magically going to start in a new office,” Cruz said.
Rubio voted for fast-track this week.
At Heritage on Wednesday, Cruz called on GOP leaders to phase out renewable energy subsidies and agricultural price supports and to oppose taxing Internet sales.
“Over the years it has been proven there is a demand for ethanol in the market but ethanol should stand on its own, not atop the footstool of the government,” he said.
He noted he was the only GOP presidential hopeful at the Iowa Ag Summit in March who did not embrace the ethanol mandate.
“There are tax credits for almost every form of energy, each designed to give one industry a leg up over the other,” he said, pointing to credits for producing oil and gas from marginal wells, nuclear power generation and clean-coal technology investment.
“A two-year extension of wind credits alone costs taxpayers more than $13 billion, which is enough to pay the monthly electricity bills for 124 million Americans,” he said.
Cruz said McConnell and GOP colleagues have tried to vilify him for standing up for conservative principles.
Colleagues were furious at Cruz in the fall of 2013, he recalled, because he refused to allow the Senate to approve a clean increase of the federal debt ceiling with a simple majority, which would have spared Republicans from voting for it.
“It never occurred to me their starting point would be complete and abject surrender, simply agree with [Senate Democratic Leader] Harry Reid [Nev.] and Barrack Obama,” he said.
“In the entire time I’ve been in the Senate there’s been nothing that I have done that has engendered more hatred, animosity and vitriol than that simple objection,” he added.
“For the remainder of the week at each of the Senate lunches, Senate Republicans screamed and yelled. At one point one of them said, ‘Ted, why are you trying to throw five Republicans under the bus,’ because if we didn’t change the rules then five Republicans had to vote with Democrats to take up the debt ceiling.”
Cruz recalled that on a Sunday talk show after the pivotal Senate vote to increase the debt ceiling, the journalist Bob Woodward reported that McConnell told him “Ted Cruz is the most selfish politician in all of Washington.”
“Listening to it I was struck by the strange upside-down rules of Washington,” Cruz said. “If I’m selfish, then I must be a blithering idiot because who selfishly would welcome the derision, the abuse, your fundraising shutoff from this town, nasty press stories written one after the other after the other, all planted by Republicans.”
He said the more selfish course would be to “vote with the crowd” and “don’t rock the boat.”
“There is a direct correlation between those who stand up for conservative principles and those who are vilified in Washington,” he said.