In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Q: Very few Americans know how close the country came to catastrophe this week. 
  
 The final tally shows that the Senate voted by a wide margin Wednesday, 67 to 31, to break Sen. Ted Cruz’s filibuster of an increase in the debt limit, thus avoiding a default on the United States’ full faith and credit. 
  
 But 15 minutes after the voting should have ended, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had apparently secured only two of the five Republican votes he needed to join all 55 members of the Democratic caucus to pass the measure. He raised three fingers in the air and worked his way among his members but was met with folded arms and shakes of the head. Looking queasy, he patted his thigh nervously and drummed his fingers. In the hubbub, Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) knocked a full glass of water and coaster from McConnell’s desk to the floor. 
  
 Democrats, watching the spectacle, took the extraordinary step of ordering the Senate clerk not to read aloud the ongoing vote tally to avoid setting off a market panic; because the House had already left on a two-week recess, a failure of this vote would have left little chance of avoiding default on Feb. 27, when the Treasury was to run out of funds. 
  
 Watching the chaos from the side of the chamber was the man who caused it: Cruz, his hands in his pants pockets and a satisfied grin on his face. The Texas Republican strolled to the clerk’s table to check on the vote count and was met with a look of disgust from Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). And the feeling was widespread: Moments after Cruz walked into the Republican cloakroom, four senators emerged from it and changed their votes to “aye.” 
  
 1 of 11 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × 10 myths about Obama (that people actually believe) View Photos We’ve all heard them: Misinformation about President Obama has a penchant for spreading like wildfire. The Post’s Swati Sharma attempts to set a few matters straight. Caption We’ve all heard them: Misinformation about President Obama has a penchant for spreading like wildfire. The Post’s Swati Sharma attempts to set a few matters straight. We’ve all heard them: Misinformation about President Obama has a penchant for spreading like wildfire. Dana Milbank offers a few answers for the reasons, as he characterizes it , that the Kenyan born Muslim raised in a madrassa president somehow attracts lies and rumors that are far from the truth. As for the rumors themselves, we have compiled a list that aren't the most outrageous but have a surprising base of believers. Win McNamee/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
  
 Cruz reemerged from the cloakroom, chewing gum, his hands again in his pockets. He smirked as his colleagues finally overcame his filibuster after a ­59-minute struggle. 
  
 Cruz’s ego trip had come at a high cost. He had forced McConnell, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and other Republicans to cast votes that could cause them to lose primaries to weaker general-election candidates, and he had risked getting his party blamed for a default. 
  
 The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page dubbed Cruz “the Minority Maker” for making his GOP colleagues “walk the plank” on a “meaningless debt ceiling vote.” 
  
 But Cruz doesn’t care about all that. Leaving the chamber, he told reporters McConnell’s fate would be “ultimately a decision . . . for the voters in Kentucky.” 
  
 His actions suggest Cruz has put himself before his party and even the nation’s solvency. And in this sense his actions are typical of the 2016 GOP presidential field. Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Rand Paul are mucking up the gears of government in ways that will earn them favorable attention in the primaries. 
  
 Rubio, of Florida, is pushing legislation that would undo Obamacare in such a way that would cause chaos in the insurance market and likely leave tens of millions of people without health coverage and cost the government billions. 
  
 Vying with Cruz to be the most reckless of the 2016 aspirants is Paul, of Kentucky, who in recent days has injected the 1990s Monica Lewinsky scandal into the national debate as a means of discrediting Hillary Clinton. He also claimed her failure to send “reinforcements” to diplomats in Benghazi before they were attacked “should limit Hillary Clinton from ever holding high office.” Multiple investigations have confirmed that secretaries of state do not make decisions about security at each diplomatic post. 
  
 Now, Paul has politicized his court challenge to the NSA surveillance program. It would have been an important legal case, but Paul pushed aside the constitutional lawyer who had drafted the legislation and abandoned efforts to get a Democratic senator to be a co-plaintiff; instead, he added President Obama’s name to the list of defendants, brought in the tea party group FreedomWorks as a plaintiff and hired failed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, another tea party politician, to be his lead lawyer. 
  
 To nobody’s surprise, Paul and Rubio sided with Cruz in Wednesday’s debt-ceiling filibuster. Had they prevailed, and had 12 of their GOP colleagues not been more responsible, the likely default would have added far more to the national debt than the legislation did. It also would have caused markets to crash, the economy to swoon and American standing to decline. 
  
 But for Messrs. Paul, Rubio and Cruz, those aren’t the top considerations. 
  
 Twitter: @Milbank 
  
 Read more from Dana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. ||||| Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 12, 2014. 
  
 Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 12, 2014. 
  
 Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 12, 2014. Close 
  
 A growing group of Ted Cruz’s Republican Senate colleagues are infuriated with his tactics. 
  
 So frustrated was Arizona Senator John McCain with the latest, forcing fellow Republicans to take a politically risky vote on lifting the debt ceiling, that yesterday he tweeted a Wall Street Journal editorial accusing the Texas lawmaker of instigating “needless drama that helps to explain why Republicans remain a minority.” 
  
 Yet there’s not much McCain, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell or other Republicans can do to change Cruz’s behavior. 
  
 “In this day and age, there are no tools available to a leader to punish a member like Senator Cruz, especially because Senator Cruz doesn’t care what either the leader or the rest of his caucus thinks,” said Jim Manley, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. 
  
 Related: 
  
 Cruz’s insistence Feb. 12 on a 60-vote threshold to advance legislation lifting the nation’s borrowing cap foiled his party leadership’s plan to let the measure move forward with only Democratic votes. He led the October fight to defund the 2010 health care law, resulting in a partial government shutdown and the party’s cratering in public opinion polls. 
  
 The Republican Party’s favorability was at a record low of 28 percent in a Gallup Poll conducted Oct. 3-6, during the shutdown. That was down 10 percentage points from the previous month and 15 points below Democrats. 
  
 Old Tools 
  
 In decades past, leaders could rein in such behavior by threatening to take away coveted committee assignments, withdrawing financial support, or shunning lawmakers. None of those tactics are effective in a political era in which campaign cash flows freely from outside the party machinery and cable outlets offer many ways to grab attention and influence. 
  
 In addition, the potential 2016 presidential aspirant who is aligned with the small-government Tea Party movement has demonstrated scant interest in cultivating Senate allies or building legislative coalitions, making him even more impervious to pressure from his colleagues. 
  
 The risk for Republicans is that Cruz will press similar votes and undermine the party’s ability to win the net six seats needed to gain control of the Senate. Republican infighting has twice, in 2010 and again in 2012, blown up its strategy for retaking the chamber. 
  
 McConnell had to vote “yes” on advancing the debt bill to bring along enough fellow Republicans -- immediately providing fodder for his Republican opponent in the state’s May 20 primary, Louisville businessman Matt Bevin. 
  
 Punishment Backfire 
  
 House Speaker John Boehner in 2012 retaliated against four Republicans who went against him on budget and spending issues, by kicking them off the Budget and Financial Services committees. The move only liberated them to speak more boldly against the leadership. 
  
 House Republican leaders this week removed Louisiana Representative Bill Cassidy from their whip team after he joined Democrats to press for a vote on legislation to prevent an increase in federal flood insurance premiums, said a Republican aide who sought anonymity. Cassidy is running against Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. 
  
 There’s no sign that McConnell will seek to punish Cruz, whose committee assignments include Armed Services, Judiciary and Commerce, Science and Transportation, by bumping him from those panels. 
  
 Campaign Committee 
  
 Nor are there discussions of stripping Cruz of his leadership role at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, where he’s serving as vice chairman for “grassroots outreach,” said NRSC spokeswoman Brook Hougesen. 
  
 Cruz “has has been a powerful voice warning about the dangers of Obamacare and the lawlessness of the Obama administration,” Hougesen said. 
  
 The Texan hasn’t endorsed any Republican candidates in contested primaries, including those that involve incumbents, and has said he has no plans to do so. 
  
 Cruz has maintained close ties to the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee founded by former South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint that has helped elect Tea Party-backed senators since 2010 and is targeting McConnell. 
  
 “We appreciate the support that he has given to our organization, and we look forward to working with him in the future,” said Matt Hoskins, executive director of the group, which helped Cruz upset Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the 2012 Republican primary and win his Senate seat. 
  
 ‘Conservative Principles’ 
  
 Before last year’s shutdown, Hoskins’s group posted a video on Twitter Sept. 26 congratulating Cruz “for standing up for conservative principles.” 
  
 The 90-second video is a montage of media coverage of Cruz’s bid to control the Senate floor for more than 21 hours to protest Obamacare. It opens with a narrator declaring: “Most Republicans promise to fight for conservative principles during the campaign, but then let us down after they’re elected. Ted Cruz is different. Ted Cruz delivers.” 
  
 The group, which has already spent more than $1 million this cycle, has endorsed Bevin in the Kentucky race and this week aired a web ad criticizing McConnell’s past votes in favor of debt-limit increases. 
  
 It’s also backing President Barack Obama’s second cousin, Milton Wolf, in his bid to oust fellow Kansas Republican Pat Roberts as well as Mississippi state senator Chris McDaniel, who is challenging Republican Senator Thad Cochran. 
  
 Top Financiers 
  
 SCF and another Washington-based small-government advocacy group, the Club for Growth, were Cruz’s top 2012 financiers, which makes him immune to any threats from party leaders to restrict the campaign money flow. 
  
 Donors to those groups shipped Cruz $1.7 million of his total $14.5 million haul, according to the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics. The two groups provided another $7.1 million in outside advertising to help him win. 
  
 Cruz, who often begins his answers to reporters’ questions by saying “outside of Washington,” has gone out of his way to portray himself as an outsider willing to challenge the White House and his party’s establishment. 
  
 Asked this week whether McConnell should be replaced as Senate Republican leader, Cruz dodged a chance to buck up his leader and said that was a decision “for the voters of Kentucky to make.” 
  
 Obama, speaking to House Democrats today in Cambridge, Maryland, credited unity among his party’s lawmakers with staving off spending cuts or other conditions some Republicans including Cruz wanted to attach to a debt-limit increase. 
  
 ‘Stick Together’ 
  
 “The fact that we were able to pass a clean debt limit is just one example of why when you guys are unified, you guys stick together, this country is better off,” Obama said. 
  
 For their part, Senate Republicans are “getting used to Senator Cruz’s style of operating, which is to continue to put them in very difficult positions,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean, who was an aide to former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. “He is in it for a variety of reasons, but most likely in it for his future presidential ambitions.” 
  
 To contact the reporter on this story: Kathleen Hunter in Washington at khunter9@bloomberg.net 
  
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jodi Schneider at jschneider50@bloomberg.net ||||| The Senate passed the House debt-limit increase on Wednesday, but not before some needless drama that helps to explain why Republicans remain a minority. 
  
 Democrats had enough votes to pass the increase with a simple majority, which means they would have owned the debt increase. But then Senator Ted Cruz—the same fellow who planned the GOP's shutdown fiasco in October—objected on the floor and insisted on a 60-vote majority. This is exactly what Democratic leader Harry Reid wanted because if the bill failed he would have... |||||
A: 
Ted Cruz has plenty of fervent supporters in the Tea Party movement, but he seems to be emerging as the ultimate villain on Capitol Hill, even among his own party. The latest wave of criticism stems from earlier this week, when Cruz forced a procedural vote on the debt-ceiling hike that required Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, and other Republicans to cast votes that could haunt them in the primaries. (Afterward, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page called out Cruz's stunt as “needless drama that helps to explain why Republicans remain a minority.”) In the Washington Post, Dana Milbank blasts Cruz for an "ego trip" that put his own interests ahead of his party and even the "nation's solvency." Cruz, though, seems to revel in it, writes Milbank, who describes the scene during the Senate vote: "Watching the chaos from the side of the chamber was the man who caused it: Cruz, his hands in his pants pockets and a satisfied grin on his face." His move drew support, of course, from Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, and all three members of this trio "are mucking up the gears of government in ways that will earn them favorable attention in the primaries," writes Milbank. But won't Cruz and company face payback from party leaders? Don't hold your breath, writes Kathleen Hunter at Bloomberg. The old rules and the old modes of punishment—lost committee posts, for example—don't apply anymore, not "in a political era in which campaign cash flows freely from outside the party machinery and cable outlets offer many ways to grab attention and influence."