WASHINGTON, Sept 25: It was precisely eight o’clock last night and the Senate chamber was nearly empty when Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz started reading “Green Eggs and Ham,” aloud.
Sure, it was a filibuster, sort of. And the Princeton and Harvard Law School graduate had been talking for five hours, with many more promised as part of an effort to block funding for President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
But it was his kids’ bedtime, Cruz explained. They were watching him on TV and needed their bedtime story.
Hopefully, they weren’t counting on it too much. Less than two stanzas into the famed Dr. Seuss rhyme – just about where “Sam I am” declares “I do not like green eggs and ham” – Cruz changed the subject to Obamacare.
“Green eggs and ham,” Cruz explained, “has some applicability to the Obamacare bill.”
Just how it applied to Obamacare was never made very clear.
But clarity fades in a filibuster, and the talker has to keep on talking or reading.
Strom Thurmond, the late Senator from South Carolina, had read the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and President George Washington’s Farewell address during his fabled 1957 filibuster to block civil rights legislation. That one lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes, still the record.
Alfonse D’Amato, then Senator from New York, resorted to the phone book during his filibuster, an attempt to delay a 1986 military spending bill.
(AGENCIES)
Follow our WhatsApp channel