Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is urging the Senate to refuse to advance any bills from the House of Representatives due to what he says is a pattern of duplicative legislation.
On the Senate floor last month, Sen. Cruz called out a pattern of the House not taking up Senate-passed bills for a vote. Instead, he said the chamber has been passing nearly identical bills this Congress under the guise of being House messaging bills.
“The House of Representatives currently is refusing to take up Senate-passed bills, and rather is passing almost exclusively House bills,” Sen. Cruz said. “This is an unreasonable position for the House to take.”
Sen. Cruz pointed to one clear example of this with a bill from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), the National STEM Week Act. It passed the Senate unanimously and is now awaiting action in the House.
“Instead, they passed essentially the identical bill, but as a House measure,” he said. “Now, mind you, that was not because they had any substantive objections to Senator Ernst’s bill, but rather it was because they were refusing to do their job as another chamber in this Congress.”
The House version includes several changes to the bill’s language, including differences in its findings, definitions, purposes and reporting requirements.
Sen. Cruz said this pattern is not only slowing the legislative approval process, but he said it is also now jeopardizing essential bipartisan bills like TREY’s Law.
“TREY’s Law is an initiative that has been championed by Trey’s sister Elizabeth [and] numerous states, including my home state of Texas,” Sen. Cruz said.
Sen. Cruz introduced TREY’s Law, named after Texas native Trey Carlock, who was a victim of child sexual abuse and was silenced by a nondisclosure agreement. The bill passed the Senate unanimously in May.
The Senate bill is now sitting in the House chamber awaiting a vote, as is a companion bill introduced by Representative Brandon Gill (R-TX) in April.
“The House is going to take up and do their job and pass Senate bills and the Senate will likewise take up and pass out House bills,” Sen. Cruz said. “But often in Congress, the only way to get a change of action is to exercise leverage, and that is what I am doing now to get the House to take up and pass important bills.”
