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First Thoughts: Cruz Puts Fellow Republicans on the Hot Seat

BY CHUCK TODD, MARK MURRAY AND DOMENICO MONTANARO

GOP filibuster drama -- courtesy of Ted Cruz… The good health-care news for the White House -- enrollment is no longer a problem… The bad news -- HealthCare.Gov is going to be down on National Youth Enrollment Day… Keeping an eye on Syria… Going down the rabbit hole of New Jersey politics… Not a good headline for Rand Paul… And gay GOP congressional candidate airs campaign video featuring his partner.

GOP filibuster drama -- courtesy of Ted Cruz

It’s a snow day in Washington, but politics goes on. And the story that’s buzzing is the behind-the-scenes drama from yesterday’s Senate approval of the “clean” debt-ceiling increase. That drama? Thanks to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)’s filibuster of the legislation, several Republicans -- including the top-two GOP leaders (both of whom are facing primary challenges) -- were forced to vote for the debt-ceiling hike. Politico: “The [GOP] leaders had wanted to allow the toxic measure to pass with just 51 votes so all 45 Republicans could vote against it. But Cruz, the Texas tea party freshman, demanded approval by a 60-vote threshold. So McConnell and Cornyn tried to persuade more than five Republicans in safe seats to support the effort, but they were met with stiff resistance. No Republican wanted to be vote No. 60 to advance a bill to raise the debt ceiling without spending cuts, forcing the GOP leaders to secure a comfortable margin of victory or risk being blamed for a historic debt default.” 

The Senate Republicans who voted for cloture: Mitch McConnell (who’s facing a GOP primary challenge), John Cornyn (ditto), Orrin Hatch John Thune, John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins. Ted Cruz has said he will not work against GOP incumbents facing Tea Party primary challenges this year. But by waging a filibuster, he sure gave Matt Bevin (who’s challenging McConnell) and Steve Stockman (running against Cornyn) some ammunition to use.

The 2014 Senate GOPers who had to take tough votes, and those who didn’t

While McConnell and Cornyn voted for cloture, the other Senate Republicans facing primary challenges -- Thad Cochran (R-MS), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), and Pat Roberts (R-KS) -- still voted against it. But bottom line: Cruz yesterday forced his fellow Republicans to take tough votes they didn’t have to.

The good health-care news for the White House -- enrollment is no longer a problem

Here’s the conclusion you can reach from the new health-care numbers the Obama administration released on Wednesday: Months after the all the website woes, the health law no longer has an overall enrollment problem. According to the stats, 3.3 million have now signed up for health-care coverage through Feb. 1 (1.4 million in state marketplaces, 1.9 million in the federal one), and 1.1 million signed up in January alone. Yes, that overall number is still below what was expected before the website problem, but enrollment is growing, and it’s fairly easy to see how the number gets to at least 6 million -- and maybe higher -- by the March 31 deadline. But if overall enrollment is pretty much fixed, the administration still faces other potential problems with the health law. Will the exchanges have enough young and healthy people? (Per the stats, just 25% of enrollees are between 18-34, down from the expected 40%.) Are the insurance companies getting the correct information and payments from its new customers? (We don’t know the answer yet.) And what will next year’s premiums be? (That could be the law’s next big hurdle.) But the good news for the administration is that enrollment is no longer the chief problem.