WASHINGTON — When Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz finally yielded the floor Wednesday at noon after a 21-hour speech in support of defunding Obamacare, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared Cruz’s efforts a “big waste of time.”
“We all admire the Senator from Texas for his willingness to talk,” Reid said. “With all due respect, I’m not sure we learned anything new. The things he talked about have been talked about before on a number of occasions; in fact, endlessly. But it’s been interesting to watch.”
“But, Mr. President, for lack of a better way of describing this, it has been a big waste of time,” Reid said.
“The government is set to shut down in a matter of hours. In just a few days, the government will close. And it’s a shame we’re standing here having wasted perhaps two days, most of yesterday and a good part of today, when we could pass what we need to pass very quickly and send it back to the House of Representatives,” Reid said.
He said Cruz’s strategy inhibited progress, and criticized him and the tea party for causing more harm than good.
“It seems that in recent years, rather than trying to get things done, we have a mindset, in some people’s minds, to delay and stall and try not to get anything done,” Reid said. “I do believe that what we have here with the so-called tea party is a new effort to strike government however they can, to hurt government. Any day that government is hurt is a good day for them. It’s, as I said before, the new anarchy.”