Watch Ted Cruz Vow to Cut the Same Department Twice

During the comparatively staid 2012 Republican primary contest, brief front-runner and Texas Gov. Rick Perry famously made a similar misstep where he attempted to cite three agencies he would do away with. Ted Cruz, had one of his own.

Ted Cruz trod familiar ground when he listed a number of federal agencies he would cut as president to ensure the solvency of his ambitious tax reforms.

Discussing the five agencies and departments he would gut during the Fox Business-sponsored debate in Milwaukee, Cruz accidentally listed the Department of Commerce twice.

Cruz told host Megyn Kelly that the fifth agency he would eliminate is the Department of Education. Marco Rubio – especially after taking a hardline against undocumented immigrants in the early part of the debate.

The Texas lawmaker said Republicans will lose the presidential race if they offer “amnesty” to undocumented immigrants.

“We have done it before and with leadership we can do it again”, he said. “Five hundred billion in specific cuts”, Cruz said. “And we can embrace legal immigration while believing in the rule of law”. “Or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press”. Cruz’s flub may not cost him as much as it did Perry, but it did come at a time when he can ill afford to make any missteps as he tries to rally from behind in the polls to overtake Senator Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, and Ben Carson.