Ted Cruz took to the Senate floor Friday and charged that Mitch McConnell told a “lie,” escalating his campaign against GOP leaders and challenging the traditions of the usually decorous chamber.Cruz claims that McConnell swore to him that he had not entered into a deal to revive the Ex-Im Bank with Washington state's dynamic duette Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, and South Carolina's Lindsey Graham (all of whom have Boeing plants in their states).
In a scathing floor speech, the Texas firebrand accused the Senate majority leader of breaking his word to him and the rest of the GOP conference over McConnell’s plans for the controversial Export-Import Bank, the country’s chief export credit agency.
“Like St. Peter,” Cruz said, “he repeated it three times.President-to-be(?) Cruz is trying to establish his free market bona fides with Tea Party types, of course. And in this case Cruz is on solid economic grounds. If Boeing needs to provide financing for the sales of its airplanes to foreign buyers, it should do so using the abundant sources out there in the financial services industry...at market interest rates. Not expecting the taxpayer--the average one makes less money than the average Boeing worker--to subsidize those sales.
Which reminds us of one of the jokes in The Official Economics Movie of HSIB (I'm All Right, Jack); 'Export or die.' The situation depicted in the movie being the precursor (by two decades) to the ascent to power of Maggie Thatcher in 1979. Largely by her appeal to the kinds of characters ('five Cheltenham ladies living on fixed incomes') near the end of the film; Britain's housewives who were fed up with the inefficiencies and high prices of their economy, and the politicians who were complicit in creating that situation.
Whether there enough Cheltenham ladies to boost Senator Cruz to the Republican nomination, is a question to which we haven't the answer.
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