Enlarge image i Sen. Ted Cruz's anti-Obamacare strategy seemed to fall flat Tuesday with many of his fellow Senate Republicans. They urged him to back down out of concern over a possible government shutdown next week.
Tea Party conservative Ted Cruz is delivering a long speech in the Senate right now over President Barack Obama's health care law. He began just after 2:40 p.m. ET Tuesday and, with some help from a few other senators, was still going as dawn neared Wednesday.
C-Span2 is broadcasting the speech live.
During his marathon talking session, Cruz is being joined by other Republicans including Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
Cruz has yielded to them for questions but he is still controlling the debate, which began early Tuesday afternoon. We posted some video of the "bedtime stories" he read to his two daughters — Green Eggs And Ham. Over at The Washington Post's The Fix blog, there are some more highlights.
While Cruz's talkathon has been described as a filibuster, Frank James of NPR's It's All Politics blog explains that term isn't quite exact:
"Cruz wanted Senate Republicans to filibuster the House bill — to stop it in its tracks — unless Senate Democrats agreed to weaken their ability to strip out the unfunding measure. 'I intend to speak until I cannot stand,' he said Tuesday on the Senate floor.
"But it was mostly for show. Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said Cruz's extended Senate floor speech wasn't really a filibuster because the vote to end debate and bring up the House bill would go on as scheduled."
A test vote on the Federal Spending and Health Care Law is scheduled for Wednesday.
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