Cruz: Obamacare exec order was 'exactly the right thing to do'

Late Thursday night, President Donald Trump’s administration announced a plan to end the illegal cost-sharing Obamacare subsidies instituted under the Obama administration without a Congressional appropriation. Speaking on Fox News Friday morning, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, praised Trump’s action.

“It was exactly the right thing to do, these are massive bailouts to insurance companies,” Senator Cruz said. “The Democrats love that.”

Cruz highlighted how under Obamacare, insurance company profits have doubled. (Funny how that happens when people are forced by law to buy your product.) He said the insurance companies don’t need to be subsidized and that those subsidies were illegal in the first place.

“What the Obama administration was doing, writing billions of dollars of checks, was illegal. Congress hadn’t appropriated the funds. So, the president is doing the right thing, but it underscores the need in the Senate that we’ve got to step up and deliver on our promise to repeal Obamacare,” Cruz said.

“I think we’re close,” he added, noting that he won’t give up on fighting for full repeal.

Towards the end of the interview, Shannon Bream asked Sen. Cruz to respond to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s efforts to challenge every Republican incumbent in primary elections, except for Sen. Cruz. Cruz declined to comment on incumbent primaries, noting that is his habit since joining the Senate.

However, he did explain why Americans are so furious with incumbent Republicans.

“The reason people are so unhappy, they’re ticked off — we’ve got Republican control of every branch of government, and we’re not delivering,” Cruz said.

“If senators don’t want to see those kind of [primary] challenges, there’s an easy solution to that: let’s do what we said we would do, let’s deliver on tax cuts and repealing Obamacare.”

.@tedcruz: "We've got to step and deliver on our promise to repeal ObamaCare." pic.twitter.com/WERjRNWAti

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 13, 2017

Cruz warned that failing to repeal Obamacare and pass tax reform could lead to a “bloodbath” for Republicans in 2018.

Want to keep up with what's going on in Washington without the liberal media slant, establishment spin, and politician-ese?

Sign up to get CRTV’s Capitol Hill Brief in your inbox every evening! It’s free!