Just a few days after the end of the partial government shutdown, Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz addressed the Texas Medical Association at its fall conference in Austin on Saturday.
He vowed to continue his effort against Obamacare. "My job is to fight for 26 million Texans," Cruz said, "and the reason I have been fighting this fight is anywhere you go in the state of Texas...the answer is the same: Obamacare is the biggest job killer in the country."
Cruz chided fellow Senate Republicans who didn’t support House Republicans in their opposition to funding Obamacare.
"You don’t win a fight when your own team is firing cannons at the people who were standing up and leading, which were the House Republicans," he said. Many in the audience gave Cruz a standing ovation after his speech.
Cruz said the standoff ended Wednesday with a "lousy deal" that didn’t cut funding for the Affordable Care Act. Still, Cruz said he’s encouraged to keep fighting, motivated by grassroots efforts against it.
"This is an ongoing process but I am encouraged because if we continue down the path of energizing and mobilizing the grassroots across the country, to hold our officials accountable, that is the path to making Washington listen to the people," he said.
Cruz didn’t specify how precisely he plans to stop Obamacare.
Afterwards, Dr. Clifford Moy, speaker of the Texas Medical Association's House of Delegates, said the TMA is grateful Cruz came to speak. He said the TMA wants to "keep what's good, fix what's broken and get the things in that are missing" about the Affordable Care Act.
Moy said it's good that the Affordable Care Act gets rid of the pre-existing conditions clause, but said the bill's length -- over 2,000 pages -- is broken. "The bureaucracy of this very complex program is very problematic for us. The bill costs everyone time, resources and money to understand what everyone's responsibilities are," he added.