Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio helped Texas Senator Ted Cruz hold up the Senate floor for twenty one hours. The two are a part of a group of conservatives trying to defund so-called Obamacare.
Ted Cruz needed allies in order to hold the Senate floor all day, night and into the morning. Senator Rubio was one of them. He took to the floor to give his friend a break but also to argue the GOP needs to use this spending battle to defund the Affordable Care Act.
Rubio says the health law is pinching businesses. He points to Florida’s famed Sea World which recently announced its cutting part time workers from 32 to 28 hours in order to skirt the law’s insurance requirement.“That’s not just a statistic. These are people that are losing four hours worth of pay a week", Rubio said. "The very people that this bill is supposed to be helping. The working class. The middle class. The people that are trying to get ahead. And that’s just one example. There are multiple.”
If Rubio and the others hold out and delay the vote as long as possible it will leave their House counterparts little time to act, so non-essential government workers may be told to stay home for at least a couple of days next week, possibly even longer unless a compromise can be reached.