Happening now: http://www.c-span.org/...
Cruz is bringing up all the House partial funding bills. Schumer steps up to the floor and tells everyone that Cruz is standing on his own, without a single Republican member standing on his side.
Once a clip is completed, I'll embed. Apologies for brevity.
Update:
OK, transcript and video:
Cruz: Mr. President, I know promulgate my third unanimous consent request. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of HJ Res 70, making continuous appropriations for national park service operations which was received from the House. (more procedure)
Senator Schumer: Reserving the right to object. Mr. President, uh, and I will object. But let me just say a couple of things here. First, in reference to a colliquey (sp?) we had, the Senator from Texas had with my good friend from Washington state, he said, he notes that the Senator from Washington talks about leaving no man or no woman behind. She does indeed, and that is why, that is one of the reasons so many of oppose this piecemeal approach. It's leaving lots of people behind. The bottom line is the Junior Senator from Texas has advocated shutting down the government. And now he comes before us and says, "Well why don't you pass the parts of the government that I want to open?" No one would want to do that. It makes no sense. "Let's shut down the government, and then I'll come to the floor and be magnanimous and offer a few places where the government opens."
I'd note that that no other colleagues are standing here on the floor with him. I'd note that at least according to press reports, most of the many conservative colleagues in this body reject this approach. And I would note that it would make no sense to shut down the government and pick a few groups. Who wants to shut the government down? In my view, Mr. President, it is the Tea Party. They've said it all along. They've advocated for it. There are countless instances, where even in 2010, where Tea Party candidates said let's shut it down. And then, it is said, after the government shut down, President Obama, or this side, or the Senator from Illinois caused it? When we had a bipartisan resolution with a majority on this side, there was an opportunity, and I believe the Junior Senator from Texas urged his colleagues to vote against it. But 25 of them did not. And that kept the government open here in the Senate though everyone on the other side opposes Obamacare. But the majority didn't want to use a bludgeon, and say, "Unless you reject Obamacare we're going to shut the government down or not raise the debt ceiling." We are not, Mr. President, in an Alice and Wonderland kind of world, where those that advocate shutting the government down then accuse others of shutting the government down. That isn't washing with the American people, and it won't wash in this body with the vast majority of members of both sides of the aisle.
And so I would say to my colleague, if you wish to have a debate on what parts of the government should be funded and at what level, it is wrong in my opinion to say "shut the government down and then we'll decide piece by piece which we'll open." That's Alice in Wonderland in my opinion. It makes much more sense to have the government open and then have a debate in the proper place, a conference committee, to decide who gets funding and what level of funding, if any, any part of the government should get. (clipped there because it's hard to transcribe it all)
Ah, clip not embeddable. Link:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/... starts from 12:57, and I went through about 18:30
Edit: not yet embeddable. CSPAN should be fixing that soon. Whole thing shorted to pertinent clip: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/...