Former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn slammed what he called "the Cruz effect" — saying Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz's rhetoric and the Texas senator's inability to follow through on his promises have caused great disenchantment among Americans toward Congress.
"I call it 'the Cruz effect,'" Coburn, a Republican who retired last year after 20 years in the Senate, told Sirius XM host Pete Dominick on Thursday. The interview was reported by
BuzzFeed News.
"When you tell people you can accomplish something that you can't — for example, shutting down the government over the Affordable Care Act," Coburn said.
"When, in fact, you promise people in your speeches and your talk that we can do this, and — by dinghy — we're gonna get rid of the Affordable Care Act, and all we have to do is shut down the government."
"Well, that's one thing to tell 'em that," Coburn continued. "It's a whole other thing to be able to accomplish that, and build a coalition that once you shut it, that it doesn't get opened up till you win."
In 2013, Cruz spoke for 21 hours and 19 minutes against Obamacare during a Senate floor debate and the skirmish over extending the nation's debt ceiling. The impasse led to a 16-day partial federal government shutdown that October that cost taxpayers $1.4 billion.
Coburn told Dominick that Cruz's actions in the Obamacare fight created "a false hope" among those living "in the hinterlands."
"So what happens to that is, once you've told people that, and you've put your finger — 'everybody that doesn't believe exactly like I believe, you're not a patriot, you don't care about the country' — what you do is you create greater disappointment in the hinterlands, because you gave them a false hope, knowing that you couldn't accomplish it, but it was about yelling, and screaming, and waving the flag," he said.
"And, so what happens is, there becomes less confidence in the Congress and its ability to do its job."
The retired senator noted his ability to work across the aisle during his tenure on Capitol Hill.
"I came out of the Senate with one of the most conservative ratings ever in the history of the Senate," Coburn said. "It was like 98.8 percent in terms of conservative.
"And yet, I compromised all the time to accomplish things that were good for the country."
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