Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) ended his 21-hour-plus marathon protest against ObamaCare with a plea to his Senate GOP colleagues to "unite" in a bid to prevent Democrats in the upper chamber from funding the healthcare law in a bill to keep the federal government running. 
 
 "I would call on all 46 Republicans to unite, to stand together and vote against cloture on the bill," Cruz said, spurring applause. 
 
 "Because otherwise, if we vote with the Senate leader and Democrats, we will be voting to allow the majority leader to strip defunding ObamaCare from the measure." 
 
 Cruz yielded the floor at noon, even though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a floor discussion with him that he could go until 1 p.m. if he wanted. Cruz said he was under a different impression and would yield at noon. 
 
 Cruz suggested he be allowed to speak later in the day, saying that he pledged to talk until he can't stand anymore and that he still had some energy left. 
 
 "Although I am weary, there is still at least strength in my legs to stand a little longer," he said. 
 
 The Texas senator, whose tactics have infuriated Democrats and annoyed fellow Republicans, said he believes voters are on his side, demanding their elected representatives take a stand to fix bad laws. 
 
 "The frustration [that Congress] doesn't listen to people is deafening," Cruz said. 
 
 Cruz had been speaking, mostly uninterrupted, since Tuesday afternoon. He was hoping the effort would encourage colleagues not to allow a government funding bill that includes spending for ObamaCare. 
 
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 Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) had previously held the speaking record for current senators, after filibustering President Obama's nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency in March to protest of the administration's drone policy. 
 
 Paul spoke for more than 12 hours and 50 minutes in a floor speech. 
 
 Cruz's marathon talkfest came just days after he vowed to do anything possible to maintain language in a House continuing resolution that would defund ObamaCare. 
 
 Cruz is one of several Republicans who oppose a Democratic plan to advance the resolution with GOP support and then get a simple majority to take out the ObamaCare language later in the process. 
 
 Cruz began speaking Tuesday afternoon at 2:41 p.m. and, by 11:41 a.m. Wednesday, he surpassed 21 hours of talking, aided on occasion by fellow conservatives Paul, and Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah). 
 
 The sheer length of Cruz's speech forced him to dig deep for analogies to criticize the Affordable Care Act. At one point early Wednesday, he questioned which horror movie villain ObamaCare is more similar to, Freddy or Jason. 
 
 “Is ObamaCare more like Jason or Freddy?” Cruz said. “The only way we stop Jason and/or Freddy is if the American people step up, and we listen.” 
 
 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is expected to advance H.J.Res. 59 with an amendment to remove the House language that defunds ObamaCare. A vote to end debate on the motion to proceed is expected Wednesday, and Cruz's actions could not stop that from happening. 
 
 The government will shut down Oct. 1 if Congress doesn't approve some form of government funding measure. 
 
 Despite the fanfare that surrounded Cruz's bid to keep the defunding provisions in the House-passed spending bill, Democrats said the entire effort was a prenegotiated stunt. 
 
 Reid's spokesman said Tuesday that Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) filibuster was fake. 
 
 "Fun fact: Senator Cruz pre-negotiated the terms of his #fakefilibuster with Senator Reid yesterday. Not exactly a Mr. Smith moment," Adam Jentleson, the communications director for Reid tweeted more than two hours after Cruz took to the Senate floor. 
 
 Cruz sometimes veered far from strict discussions of the healthcare law as a way to fill time. 
 
 At one point Tuesday night, Cruz read aloud from Dr. Seuss's classic Green Eggs and Ham, saying he wanted to read a book to his daughters before bedtime. 
 
 "Green Eggs and Ham is applicable to ObamaCare debate … because Obama and Democrats told Americans to just try ObamaCare," Cruz said. "They did not like ObamaCare, they did not like it in a House, they did not like it with a mouse." 
 
 Cruz later appeared to be inspired by being called a “wack-o-bird” by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — who was referring to Tea Party extremists within his own party. 
 
 Cruz proceeded to quote the popular TV show “Duck Dynasty,” which is a reality show about a family that invented and sells duck calls. 
 
 “’Duck Dynasty is one of the most popular shows right now,” Cruz said. “Here are words of wisdom from that show. … ‘You put five rednecks on a mower, it’s going to be epic.’ … ‘Most things can be fixed with duct tape and an extension cord.’ … ‘Faith, family and facial hair.’” 
 
 Cruz said that was the kind of “home spun wisdom” the United States was built on. 
 
 “It’s something to chuckle on, but it’s also a lot of common sense.” 
 
 Cruz has angered some of his Republican colleagues in the House and Senate with his tactics, and he acknowledged the divisions over how best to fight ObamaCare. 
 
 "I believe every Republican should be unified; right now, we're not," he said. "Right now, there are divisions in the Republican caucus." 
 
 — Sheldon Alberts contributed 
 
 — This story was originally posted at 7:01 a.m. and last updated at 10:55 a.m. ||||| Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Tex.) marathon speech, modeled on an old-fashioned filibuster, against Obamacare touches on green eggs and ham, Ashton Kutcher, poker, and several other topics. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) 
 
 Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Tex.) marathon speech, modeled on an old-fashioned filibuster, against Obamacare touches on green eggs and ham, Ashton Kutcher, poker, and several other topics. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) 
 
 The Senate moved Wednesday to take up a House-passed temporary spending bill that defunds President Obama’s health-care law, despite Sen. Ted Cruz’s more than 21-hour attempt to delay the legislation. 
 
 Shortly after 1 p.m., the funding bill passed its first procedural hurdle in the Senate, which voted unanimously to start debating the House version of a goverment funding measure. The Senate now has 30 hours of debate time scheduled on the House bill. 
 
 The vote followed a marathon attack by Cruz (R-Texas) on the Affordable Care Act, in which Cruz commanded teh Senate floor for more than 21 hours — from Tuesday afternoon to noon on Wednesday. 
 
 [Read a transcript of Cruz’s marathon remarks on Tuesday.] 
 
 After Cruz ended his talkathon, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) blasted the freshman senator from Texas for suggesting during his speech that Republican lawmakers had not fought hard enough to stop the health-care law before Congress passed it in March 2010. McCain said he “campaigned all over America” last year to “repeal and replace Obamacare.” But “much to my dismay,” he said, “the people spoke . . . and they reelected the president of the United States,” who had campaigned on going ahead with the law. 
 
 View Graphic Here's what some agencies have said about their specific plans in case of a government shutdown. 
 
 McCain also vigorously objected to Cruz’s comparison of “pundits” who say that Obamacare cannot be defunded to politicians who appeased Nazi Germany before World War II. 
 
 “I resoundingly reject that allegation,” McCain said. He said Cruz had told him that he was not comparing U.S. legislators to Nazi appeasers, but McCain called that “a difference without a distinction” and said he still objects to Cruz’s language. 
 
 Cruz took the floor at 2:41 p.m. Tuesday, promising to speak “until I am no longer able to stand.” He proceeded to talk away, holding forth with occasional assistance from a handful of Republican colleagues, who gave him breaks from speaking by asking lengthy questions, although Cruz was still required to remain on his feet on the Senate floor, with no food or bathroom breaks. 
 
 The end of the speech-making, a filibuster in all but name, followed an exchange late Wednesday morning in which Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) informed Cruz that under Senate rules, he could continue speaking until 1 p.m. But Cruz opted to yield the floor at noon, when the Senate formally began a new legislative day with a prayer. 
 
 After the procedural vote, the senators launched a debate that centered on their competing visions of the health-care law, with Republicans demanding its repeal and Democrats defending its accomplishments to day. 
 
 “Obamacare is just as bad as many of us said it would be, and it’s about to get a lot worse,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said. “The train is picking up speed, and there’s a bridge out ahead. . . . Basically this law is a complete mess.” 
 
 He urged Democrats to “get on the same page with the American people,” who he claimed “overwhelmingly oppose this law.” 
 
 Democrats countered that elections are the ultimate polls and that voters faced a clear choice last year between presidential candidates on opposite sides of the issue. Voters rejected the one — GOP candidate Mitt Romney — who had campaigned on acting to repeal Obamacare as his first order of business, Democrats said. 
 
 Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.) noted that in his own Senate race in Virginia, he had defeated a candidate who favored repeal. 
 
 Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) charged that Republicans were risking a government shutdown to indulge their “obsession” with the health-care law. “The good news is that obsessive-compulsive disorder is covered under Obamacare,” he said. 
 
 With Senate passage all but certain on a bill that will include funding for the health-care law, Cruz’s controversial talkathon had the effect of giving House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and his colleagues only a few hours to respond with a different version of the legislation. 
 
 Both houses of Congress must reach agreement on funding legislation by Monday night to prevent most federal agencies from closing on Tuesday. Meanwhile, a similarly contentious debate is simmering over raising the federal debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned Wednesday that the nation will exhaust its emergency borrowing capacity no later than Oct. 17. 
 
 The Cruz talkathon was the latest example of the increasingly stark division among Republicans, both on Capitol Hill and nationally. The Texas newcomer, just 42 and nine months into his first term in office, is carrying the banner for conservatives who urge a take-no-prisoners approach in confronting the president, even if it means shuttering the government. 
 
 But the move angered senior Republicans, who complained that Cruz and the other junior senators pushing this strategy did not understand the wounds the GOP suffered during the mid-1990s shutdown battles with President Bill Clinton. Back then, the party controlled both the House and Senate, a luxury compared with its tenuous majority in the House today. 
 
 William Branigin, Rosalind Helderman and Jeff Simon contributed to this report. ||||| Ted Cruz finally released his grip on the Senate floor after more than 21 hours of speaking about the need to defund Obamacare. 
 
 The Texas Republican seized control of the Senate floor on Tuesday about 2:42 p.m. vowing to “speak in support of defunding Obamacare until I am no longer able to stand.” Cruz could have spoken all the way up to a 1 p.m. procedural vote on moving spending bill forward, but he relented at noon. 
 
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 “It is my it intention to accept the end of this at noon,” Cruz said. 
 
 After his 20th hour holding the floor, Cruz asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to come to the floor to listen to a pair of requests that sparked a bizarre exchange. Cruz asked to waive Wednesday’s vote and move a high-stakes procedural vote to Friday rather than Saturday to allow more people to watch. 
 
 “I think it is better for this country that this vote is visible,” Cruz said. “Sticking it on Saturday in the middle in the middle of football games would disserve that objective.” 
 
 Reid ignored Cruz’s requests and asked for far more time to be yielded back to allow the House more time to consider what the Senate will send back. 
 
 “There’s a possibility that they may not accept what we send them and they may want to send us something back,” Reid said. 
 
 Cruz cut off Reid, accusing him of “making a speech” rather than asking Cruz a question. 
 
 Despite his Ironman stand on the floor of the upper chamber, Cruz could not stop a Senate already in motion from eventually returning a clean continuing resolution to the House scant days before a government shutdown is scheduled to take effect on Oct. 1. Under Senate rules, the latest the upper chamber could take the first procedural vote on a House spending bill that defunds Obamacare is 1 p.m. on Wednesday — a reality Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) broadcast to the world Tuesday morning when he opened the Senate and again on Wednesday. 
 
 (PHOTOS: Longest filibusters in history) 
 
 “This is not a filibuster. This is an agreement that he and I made that he could talk,” Reid said Wednesday. 
 
 In other words, from the beginning it was all over save for the theatrics. But Cruz offered plenty Tuesday by holding the Senate floor for hours about why Obamacare should cease to exist. He was flanked at times by Republican Sens. David Vitter of Louisiana, Mike Lee of Utah, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Pat Roberts of Kansas, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Jim Risch of Idaho, Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who recommended Cruz wear comfortable shoes and not eat food on national television. 
 
 Cruz touched on a wide variety of subjects during his marathon, from Dr. Seuss to college kids’ inability to find White Castle burgers during the wee hours because of Obamacare. He read tweets from constituents and related stories from a “lost generation” of young people plagued by the Affordable Care Act. 
 
 (PHOTOS: Key quotes from Ted Cruz) 
 
 He also read bedtime stories to his children, who he said were at home watching him on C-SPAN. One was the Seuss tale “Green Eggs and Ham.” 
 
 Cruz was even joined by Democrats, including Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, who pointedly questioned Cruz both Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Kaine sparred with Cruz for 30 minutes and argued some voters had sent people to Washington to preserve Obamacare. Kaine won his Senate seat in 2012 by besting former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), who had staked his election on repeal. 
 
 Durbin on Tuesday explained why he voted for the health care law and argued the law made it easier for one of his constituents to qualify for Medicaid. Durbin asked if — given Cruz’s Ivy League education — he knew he did not have the votes to defund Obamacare in the Senate. 
 
 (WATCH: Cruz’s speech: 10 colorful quotes) 
 
 “Certainly the senator realizes that it takes 60 votes,” Durbin told Cruz. 
 
 “I would note that I’m quite familiar with what is necessary to defund Obamacare,” Cruz shot back. 
 
 Cruz bashed his colleagues in Washington for accepting that stopping Obamacare is impossible and charged that the outcome of the drama in the Senate this week is predetermined, comparing it to professional wrestling. 
 
 He also dinged anonymous staffers and Republican lawmakers for criticizing him in the press, yet also divulged a conversation between Lee and an anonymous House member. According to Cruz, that lawmaker told Lee of the House sending over its defund bill: “You guys should be grateful. We gave you your vote.” 
 
 (QUIZ: Do you know Ted Cruz?) 
 
 “Why should we feel gratitude for a vote that’s destined to lose?” Cruz asked of other Republicans, referring to Reid’s procedural upper-hand. “Symbolic votes are great for getting elected.” 
 
 A potential 2016 presidential candidate, Cruz is playing to the GOP base as much as he is bashing business as usual inside the Capitol. He said some lawmakers are too concerned with hitting the D.C. cocktail circuit, taking show votes and giving speeches to change the way Washington works, asking at one point: “Where is the outrage?” 
 
 “A lot of members of this body have — at least so far — not showed up to battle,” Cruz said, repeatedly referring to the empty chairs in the Senate chamber while he talked. “The chattering class is quick to discipline anyone who doesn’t fall in line.” 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Hillary Clinton defends Obamacare, slams defunding efforts) 
 
 Cruz said his speech was meant to “celebrate” the American democratic system and that if senators listened to their constituents back home, he and his conservative allies truly could win. 
 
 “The vote would be 100-0 to defund Obamacare,” he said
– Ted Cruz managed to keep up his anti-ObamaCare crusade on the Senate floor for nearly a full day, but he finally relented about noon today, reports Politico. Cruz began speaking at 2:41pm Eastern yesterday and got some breaks from peers including Rand Paul and Mike Lee. But Cruz had a deadline of sorts—he had to stop by 1pm today so a scheduled procedural vote on the House's controversial spending bill, the one that would defund ObamaCare, could take place. "The only path … is to stand together," Cruz said shortly before relinquishing the floor, reports the Hill. As expected, that procedural vote passed easily—in fact, by a unanimous vote of 100-0, reports the Washington Post. It simply opens up debate in the Senate on the House measure—and paves the way for Harry Reid and Democrats to restore ObamaCare funding. At that point, the legislation gets sent back to the House, where John Boehner is expected to have a big decision to make right on the deadline for a government shutdown. For the record, the Post puts Cruz's filibuster-that-wasn't-technically-a-filibuster at 21 hours, 19 minutes.