Ted Cruz fires back at Dick Durbin for calling him a liar

mr president senator for texas ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated without objection mr president in a moment i'm going to propound a unanimous consent request but before i do so i want to make some brief remarks as my colleagues know and as several fact checkers have confirmed over the past week the democrats partisan reconciliation bill that became law last week will provide many illegal aliens with 1400 rebate checks paid for by the american taxpayer by several estimates millions of illegal immigrants will get these rebates i offered an amendment two weeks ago to the democrats bill to close this loophole during debate on my amendment one democratic senator spoke against my amendment saying that no illegal aliens have social security numbers and therefore the premise of my amendment and my speech was he said quote not true in fact here are the senators full remarks from the floor two weeks ago mr president the statement from the senator from texas is just plain false let me be clear undocumented immigrants do not have social security numbers and they do not qualify for stimulus relief checks period and just in case you didn't notice they didn't qualify in december when 92 of us voted for that measure and they don't qualify under the american rescue plan nothing has changed and for you to stand up there and say the opposite is just to rile people up over something that's not true it is not true we know what's going on here they want to be able to give speeches to say that the checks go to undocumented people in the circumstance where there is a parent and at that point the senator's time expired following that debate the senator in question took to twitter to double down so it was not after an all night of no sleep a moment of erroneous comment but rather on twitter that same senator tweeted quote senator cruz's claim is only meant to rile people up over something that is not true you cannot receive a stimulus check without a social security number that's a fact instead of discriminating against mixed status families let's prioritize getting more relief to those families a second tweet from the same senator we simply cannot stand by and allow outright falsehoods to be propagated on the senate floor it's time for gop senators like ted cruz to stop trying to rile people up over misinformation well as john adams famously said facts are stubborn things and it turns out the comments from the democratic senator were categorically false and my comments that this bill would send checks to millions of illegal aliens were categorically true numerous fact checkers began looking at the claims newsweek initially fact checked it and as is the want with a fair number of media fact checkers took the word of the democrats for it and concluded my statement was mostly false following that my staff got on the phone with newsweek and presented them with uncontrovertible facts uncontrovertible facts that of the roughly 12 million estimated illegal aliens who are here roughly 60 percent of them are visa overstays people who came legally and then overstay their visa and a significant percentage of visa overstays half social security numbers and will release will receive checks indeed that is why my amendment was scored at saving the federal government over 600 million dollars because of the checks that would not go to illegal immigrants if my amendment had been passed when newsweek heard these facts they did something really quite impressive admirable they admitted they were wrong they revised their fact check and they changed their fact check from mostly false to true true period no caveats true i want to commend newsweek for demonstrating journalistic integrity correcting that fact check i'm sure was not an easy decision for them to make but it was the right decision for them to make and so mr president i would ask unanimous consent that we enter this fact check into the record without objection it is clear and indisputable that a significant number of illegal immigrants will receive checks and are receiving checks right now all 100 members of this body were misinformed by the democratic senator that no illegal aliens would receive fact checks or would receive rather checks under the stimulus checks so i want to give my colleagues a chance to adopt the amendment now with the correct information with the true information with the factual information and i would notice well in these deeply partisan times it's easy for republicans to throw insults at democrats it's easy for democrats to throw insults at republicans far too much of that occurs the senator from illinois who is a friend who i've served with for nine years the talented senator i am not here suggesting that when he stood up and spoke on the senate floor and said things that were absolutely false that he did so knowingly and maliciously i would certainly give the senator from illinois the benefit of the doubt that he was an error rather than deliberately misstating facts but the facts are now clear we have a rule in this body rule 19 to reprimand any senator who imputes the character integrity of another senator i'm not going to seek refuge in that rule although i think there's an argument that i could but i will say this that once the facts have been made clear i hope my friend from illinois will show the same principle newsweek showed to apologize to say he was wrong and he's sorry for calling me a liar on the senate floor and then going to twitter to do so twice that would be the right thing to do to acknowledge an error when it occurred senator from illinois statement that no illegal immigrants will receive checks under this bill is categorically false for that reason as if in legislative session i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to immediate consideration of s-842 introduced earlier today i further asked that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be be considered made and laid upon the table is there objection preserving the right to object the senator from illinois mr president the exchange which took place between myself and the junior senator from texas has been analyzed from many different directions the conclusion of cnn based on what he said on the floor and i responded to is as follows cruz said quote every illegal alien in america closed quote would get a fourteen hundred dollar check durbin responded that cruz's statement is quote just plain false close quote because he said quote undocumented immigrants do not have social security numbers and they do not qualify for stimulus relief checks period end of quote according to cnn they were both wrong cruz was inaccurate when he said every undocumented immigrant will get a 1400 relief check and then they go on to say there are people a discreet class of people who might have a social security number be undocumented and receive a check and because of that clarification in my own investigation afterwards i will concede their point i overstated my case and here's what it boils down to in this situation people have applied for a work visa not a tourist or student visa a work visa to come to the united states and with that work visa they also received a social security number then they overstayed their visas and still could continue could possibly continue to be on the rolls with their social security number and receive a check i might quickly add this was a provision that was included in both of the relief bills for kova 19 signed into law by president trump one of which the senator from texas voted for one of which he did not and so i've asked how many people are we talking about ten a hundred a thousand ten thousand i can't find out they can't give me the number because there isn't a calculation so here's the situation you had to apply for a work visa be granted the work visa and come to the united states get a social security number overstay your visa and then continue to file income tax returns because that's the only way you could qualify for help through these relief packages i don't know if that group is 10 or 100 or a thousand but i have carefully read the provisions that are offered by the senator from texas today and i'll tell you he basically says to the american government when it comes to cash payments stop the presses stop the presses i want to know who these people are and i don't want you to send them a check i don't believe that's reasonable we've send out 90 million checks another 60 million on the way to deny to these people the cash while we go through this element of debate and division as i think unfair i don't want these checks to go to these people any more than he does but i'm not going to stop the issuance of checks to people living in texas or illinois in the meantime i object objection is heard mr president senator from texas i would note several things number one a senator from illinois said he didn't know if the number of illegal immigrants getting checks from the democrat stimulus bill was in the tens or the hundreds or the thousands with all due respect he does know that it's not in the tens it's not in the hundreds it's not in the thousands jct the joint committee on taxation which is a non-partisan organization that that reports to this senate in this congress scored my amendment as roughly 482 000 illegal immigrants are getting checks under the democrats proposal two outside organizations have scored it as millions of illegal immigrants and i would note what newsweek said when they corrected their fact check and i'm going to read a quote the ruling true cruz's claim that millions of illegal immigrants would receive stimulus payments is true given that the amount of people who have overstayed their visas over the year once they overstay they are technically considered illegal nowhere in the senator from illinois's remarks was a word of apology for falsely calling me a liar on the floor of this senate and on twitter that is unfortunate what the senator from illinois said right now is also incorrect the senator from illinois said this amendment would halt the payments that are going out this amendment doesn't do anything of the sort this amendment restricts sending payments to people who are here illegally when the senator from illinois said he would love to do that with all due respect that doesn't withstand even the slightest bit of scrutiny because if he would love to do that all he had to do was not object and the american citizens the people who were here legally would all get their fourteen hundred dollar checks would get it on the exact same time frame but those here illegally would not today's democratic party supports sending checks to millions of illegal immigrants they have justified it as the senator from illinois did by falsely claiming none of them are getting checks those are not the facts as the newsweek fact check makes clear and i would note that a bill that democratic senators are trying to push denominated hr1 what many are calling the corrupt politicians act would compound that by allowing millions of illegal immigrants to be registered to vote and no doubt to cast votes this is a political decision that is far outside the mainstream it is unfortunate but sadly it reflects where today's democratic party is i yield the floor the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture cloture motion we the undersigned senators in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate to hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 2,089,151

Keywords: Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Dick Durbin, illegal immigrants

Id: T8mCT1iYuu0

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021