Sen. Cruz: It Would Be a Terrible Mistake to Bailout Insurance Companies and Impose an Internet Sales Tax in the Omnibus

WASHINGTON, March 21 -- The office of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, issued the following news release:

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today joined KTSA San Antonio's Trey Ware and 660 AM The Answer's Mark Davis to discuss the death of the Austin bombing suspect early this morning, and the upcoming omnibus spending bill.

"This has been a horrific, harrowing time for Texans as we've seen terrorism striking Texas, bombs throughout Austin and in San Antonio as well," Sen. Cruz said to KTSA's Trey Ware. "Americans across the country have been lifting up in prayer the residents in Austin. I know there's been a lot of fear. There also has been an incredible coordinated law enforcement effort. I spoke to the Mayor of Austin, I spoke to the Chief of Police in Austin, and they had all their resources focusing on catching this individual. And on the federal side, there were over 500 federal agents that were assisting in the effort, and so it really was a strong and effective law enforcement operation to stop this madman."

Sen. Cruz also discussed the broken process of drafting the omnibus spending bill, and his efforts to block Obamacare expansions and a multi-billion dollar bailout for insurance companies with The Answer's Mark Davis.

"I have been leaning in very hard on a couple of fronts," Sen. Cruz told Mark Davis. "Number one, I think it would be a terrible, terrible mistake if they tried to insert billions of dollars of bailout for insurance companies. There are a lot of folks in Washington pushing for multi-billion dollar bailouts. In my view, Obamacare remains a disaster. It remains the biggest unfinished promise we have. We need to be addressing the millions of Texans, the millions of Americans who have seen their premiums skyrocket. The average family's premiums have gone up over $5,000 a year. And the answer is to address the problems of working men and women and lower those premiums through more competition, more choice, lower prices, rather than the corporate welfare of giving billions of dollars to insurance companies. We need to instead honor our promise: repeal Obamacare. And I continue working very hard to try to bring together 50 Republicans to do that."

He also discussed his opposition to including an Internet sales tax in the omnibus.

"There's been a hard push in Washington to include in the omnibus an Internet sales tax, a tax that would apply to virtually every transaction on the Internet. I think that would be catastrophically foolish. We should be keeping the Internet free of taxes, free of regulations, not imposing billions of dollars of taxes, subjecting small mom and pop online retailers to the taxing authority of over 9,600 taxing jurisdictions across the country. That would be a bad mistake. A lot of lobbyists in Washington are pushing for it, but I'm hopeful that the grassroots will keep that off of the omnibus."

When Trey Ware asked about the national debt, Sen. Cruz discussed the steps taken in the last year to address the $21 trillion debt, including major tax cuts and regulatory reform, which has significantly increased economic growth.

"We have taken important steps to addressing the debt already in the first year. The most powerful tool for turning around the national debt is economic growth. Last year, Republican majorities in Congress worked together with the president doing two very important things. Number one, a major tax cut that benefits small business, farmers, ranchers, job producers, benefits working families. And then two, regulatory reform. Just about every federal agency has been reducing the burdens of regulations on small businesses and job creators. We're already seeing significantly increased economic growth, which in turn results in substantially more federal revenue to pay down the debt."

Listen to Sen. Cruz's radio interviews at:

https://youtu.be/akEIXWWpEuA

https://youtu.be/lvfj8kV7_V0