Official portrait of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).

Official portrait of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).

Ted Cruz, a Senator from Texas who said “the moon might be as intimidating as Obamacare,” is currently trying to “#makeDClisten” by speaking in opposition to the Affordable Care Act, planning to go until he can “no longer stand.” While I’m not familiar with Cruz’s leg strength, he’ll only be able to speak until tomorrow when the Senate will vote on a “bill passed by the House that funds the government through Dec. 15 but defunds the Affordable Care Act,” Politico reported.

It could take until Sunday for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to do it, but in the end it appears he has the votes to strip out the health care provision. That means the Senate is on course to send a clean spending bill back to the House — where conservatives are itching to kill Obamacare — possibly with less than 48 hours on the clock before a government shutdown.

Meanwhile, the people who live in D.C. are looking down a partial government shutdown that could stop trash pickup, close libraries, shut down the baby panda cam and bring other city operations to a standstill. Cruz’s very long speech just days before D.C. will be put, once again, in a shutdown situation is not sitting well with some D.C. Councilmembers.

As DCist noted earlier, several Councilmembers are in favor of ignoring the federal government and not shutting down, or passing a bill that would declare all city workers “essential.”

“The services that the DC government provides are a necessity for the safety and health of every resident, employee, and visitor,” Councilmember Anita Bonds (D-At Large) said in a release. “The District of Columbia is exceptional in that it performs the functions of a municipality, a county, and a state—and all of these services are interrelated and codependent.”

Also on board is Councilmember David Grosso (I-At Large), who doesn’t think Chariman Phil Mendelson and Mayor Vincent Gray should send a plan to the Office of Management and Budget.

“A shutdown, imposed by the federal government, with no pay for D.C. workers, will make it impossible for many D.C. employees to pay their bills and feed their families,” Grosso said in a release. “It is offensive that the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is telling the D.C. government how to spend the money we raised through taxing D.C. residents and businesses. D.C. is the only local jurisdiction impacted in this manner and one thing is true, if D.C. were San Antonio, there would be a battle at the Alamo over this.”

Mendelson will introduce emergency legislation next Tuesday to make all city workers essential personnel. The trash will already be piling up.

Filed Under: breaking the law, congress, shutdown, ted cruz,