McCaskill: Cruz Doesn’t Understand The Moral Of ‘Green Eggs And Ham’

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., asks a question of former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama's choice for defense secretary, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013, before the Senate Arme... Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., asks a question of former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama's choice for defense secretary, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013, before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) MORE LESS
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Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) on Wednesday argued that if Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) understood the moral of Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham,” he would wait to see how Obamacare performs before publicly decrying the health care law.

During the sixth hour of his extended remarks against the Affordable Care Act Tuesday night on the Senate floor, Cruz read the Dr. Seuss story in full to his two daughters in Texas watching the live feed of their father via CSPAN. 

“I thought it was interesting that Ted Cruz used ‘Green Eggs and Ham,'” McCaskill said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I went to the University of Missouri, I did not go to Harvard, but my daughter texted me this morning and said ‘Mom, does he not know the point of the story?’ It’s that you can’t knock things until you try it.”

Cruz said after he finished reading the story that the book “has some applicability, as curious as it may sound, to the Obamcare debate,” adding that Americans “did not like green eggs and ham, and they did not like Obamacare either.”

McCaskill thought it was “ironic” for Cruz to read the story during his faux-filibuster, since she said those who read the law know that private insurance companies operate on its health care exchanges. 

“It’s all private insurance companies on these exchanges,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out why we should delay them going into effect when it is a free market solution to accessible health care.”

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Correction: This post has been updated to show that McCaskill made her comments Wednesday.

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