A Texas U.S. Senator discussed the government shutdown Wednesday afternoon.

During his weekly teleconference, U.S. Senator John Cornyn said that Democrat leadership wants the shutdown.

“I’ve said on the Senate floor that I am led to the conclusion that the President and Harry Reid actually want this shutdown, and what leads me to that conclusion is that the House has now sent over four separate proposals for breaking the impasse, and the last one of which was perhaps the most telling,” said Cornyn.

Cornyn elaborated, saying:

“House Republicans have sent over a bill which said that if you will eliminate the Congressional carve-out for healthcare from Obamacare and make sure that members of Congress live according to the same rules that apply to everyone else, and if you will afford average Americans the same one-year delay in the individual mandate that you have given to businesses under the employer mandate, then we could do business. But Senator Reid, in an amazing act of plank-walking, has taken Senate Democrats who are up for election in 2014 and persuaded them somehow to vote against their own self-interests to defeat that proposal from the House of Representatives.”

“So far, the President and Senator Reid seem absolutely allergic to compromise and have shut down the government to make their point,” said Cornyn.

At the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday morning, Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz weighed in on the shutdown and the effect on the Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence.

“If, God forbid, we see an attack on the United States because the intelligence community was not adequately funded, every member of the committee would be horrified. So I hope that issues of partisan politics can be set aside and we can all come together and pass right now, by the end of the day, a continuing resolution to fully fund the Department of Defense and the intelligence community,” said Cruz.

Congressional leadership will meet at the White House with President Obama late Wednesday afternoon to further discuss the issue.

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