The Republican in-fighting continues: Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Wednesday that he doesn't trust either Democrats or Republicans when it comes to budget negotiations. "The senior senator from Arizona urged this body to trust the Republicans. Let me be clear, I don't trust the Republicans," Cruz said, according to TPM. "And I don't trust the Democrats."
Cruz was responding to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who harshly criticized conservative Republicans who are holding up the Senate's ability to pass a budget. "What are we on my side of the aisle doing? We don't want a budget unless we put requirements on the conferees that are absolutely out of line and unprecedented?" McCain said on the Senate floor on Tuesday.
Ezra Klein of the Washington Post explains:
The quick background here is that congressional Republicans have spent years calling for a return to “regular order” in which the House writes a budget, the Senate writes a budget, and the two chambers move to a conference committee to hash out their differences. This year, for the first time since 2009, Senate Democrats wrote and passed a full budget, shepherding it to passage through an open amendment process. Now various Senate Republicans are blocking the move towards conference — blocking, in other words, the move towards the regular order they demanded.
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