Dr. Seuss made an appearance on the Senate floor on Tuesday, thanks to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Cruz preemptively tried to filibuster a government spending bill which would defund Obamacare with a splendidly dramatic reading of Green Eggs and Ham.
Cruz took the Senate floor just before 3 p.m. ET on Tuesday. After five hours, he picked up a copy of Seuss' classic tale about breakfast food and announced that it was his daughters' bedtime; thus, he felt compelled to fulfill his fatherly duty of reading them a book, even if it was from the Capitol via C-SPAN2.
See also: Hear 'Oh, The Places You'll Go' by Dr. Seuss in 68 Accents
The circumstances surrounding the filibuster added to the hilarity. The Senate's vote on the bill wasn't scheduled to happen until Wednesday; at the time Cruz was speaking, Congress' session was already adjourned. So Cruz's reading of Dr. Seuss reading was mainly a symbolic statement against Obamacare.
But Cruz's speech doesn't even top the list of outlandish appearances on the Senate floor. Other attempts to delay Senate votes have included reading names from phonebooks and songs about the right to filibuster (talk about meta).
Jason Johnson, Cruz's chief strategist, captured Cruz's daughters' reaction to their dad's very public bedtime tale on Twitter.
Pic of @SenTedCruz daughters as he reads them Green Eggs & Ham. #MakeDCListen pic.twitter.com/UXqFg0xrPB
— Jason Johnson (@jasonsjohnson) September 25, 2013
It seems Cruz has strong ties to the Seuss book; in a previous filibuster, Cruz confessed that his father "invented green eggs and ham."
Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images