\nThe New York Times<\/span><\/p>\n
![\"Republican](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/25cong-web-master675.jpg\")
<\/a>Republican of Texas, at a Judiciary Committee hearing this week. Credit Doug Mills\/The New York Times<\/p><\/div>\n
Cruz, the sometimes-incendiary Texan running for the Republican presidential nomination, took to the Senate floor Friday to call his party\u2019s majority leader a liar in an extraordinary public airing of grievance.<\/p>\n
Mr. Cruz, an ardent opponent of the federal Export-Import Bank, reacted in remarkably personal terms after the leader, Senator Mitch McConnell<\/a> of Kentucky, allowed a vote pressed by a large, bipartisan group of senators to resurrect the government\u2019s export credit agency.<\/p>\n \u201cI cannot believe he would tell a flat-out lie,\u201d Mr. Cruz said of Mr. McConnell, who he said had promised him there was no deal to bring Ex-Im up for a vote.<\/p>\n Mr. Cruz said allowing that vote on the measure \u2013 which almost certainly will pass \u2013 was \u201can absolute demonstration that not only what he told every Republican senator but what he told the press over and over and over again was a simple lie.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Cruz has been a controversial figure since his arrival in the Senate in 2013. He helped shut down the government that year in a vain effort to defund the Affordable Care Act, and pressed to shut down the Department of Homeland Security this year over President Obama\u2019s executive orders on immigration.<\/p>\n The senator has challenged Democrats at every turn. But he has largely held back on attacking fellow Republicans.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my time in the Senate I haven\u2019t impugned the character of Republicans or Democrats and I don\u2019t intend to start today,\u201d he said earlier this month, when pressed to condemn a fellow Republican White House hopeful, Donald Trump, who had questioned Senator John McCain\u2019s wartime heroism.<\/p>\n On Friday, Mr. Cruz held nothing back. He detailed what he said was a closed-door confrontation he had with Mr. McConnell in May, after supporters of the Export-Import Bank tried to derail a trade bill unless they were promised a vote to keep the bank open.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a direct question I asked the majority leader in front of Republican senators,\u201d he said. He said that Mr. McConnell had been \u201cvisibly angry\u201d and that like St. Peter, the majority leader had offered a denial three times: \u201cThere is no deal, there is no deal, there is no deal.\u201d<\/p>\n On June 30, the authorization ran out on Ex-Im<\/a>, which offers loan guarantees and other assistance to the foreign customers of American exporters. Businesses large and small \u2013 but powered by some of the nations\u2019s biggest corporations \u2014 Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar \u2014 have been pressing to reopen it ever since, arguing vociferously that the conservative war on Ex-Im is costing American jobs in the service of a purely ideological fight.<\/p>\n Mr. McConnell, in allowing a vote to reopen the bank as early as Sunday, was careful to say he personally opposed it. At the same time, he offered conservatives a compromise in the form of a separate amendment to the highway bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n Mr. Cruz called that \u201can empty show vote\u201d and a \u201cgood way of distracting what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Republican leader is behaving like the senior senator from Nevada,\u201d Mr. Cruz said, accusing Mr. McConnell of running the Senate the same way Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, operated when he was the Senate majority leader.<\/p>\n In a test vote last month, 65 senators \u2013 Republican and Democrat \u2013 showed they would vote for the Ex-Im Bank\u2019s reauthorization. A similar majority exists in the House, although it is not clear whether Speaker John A. Boehner will accept the Senate\u2019s Ex-Im push.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ted Cruz Accuses Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Lying By JONATHAN WEISMAN The New York Times Cruz, the sometimes-incendiary Texan running for the Republican presidential nomination, took to the Senate floor Friday to call his party\u2019s majority leader a liar … Continue reading