shutdown of 2013 Cruz had a leading role in the 2013 United States federal government shutdown. Cruz gave a 21-hour Senate speech in an effort to hold up a federal budget bill and thereby defund the Affordable Care Act. Cruz persuaded the House of Representatives and House Speaker John Boehner to include an ACA defunding provision in the bill. In the U.S. Senate, former Majority Leader Harry Reid blocked the filibuster attempt because only 18 Republican senators supported the filibuster. During the filibuster he read Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. To supporters, the move "signaled the depth of Cruz's commitment to rein in government". This move was extremely popular among Cruz supporters, with Rick Manning of Americans for Limited Government naming Cruz "2013 Person of the Year" in an op-ed in The Hill, primarily for his filibuster against the Affordable Care Act. Cruz was also named "2013 Man of the Year" by conservative publications TheBlaze, and The American Spectator, "2013 Conservative of the Year" by Townhall, and "2013 Statesman of the Year" by the Republican Party of Sarasota County, Florida. He was a finalist for Time magazine's "Person of the Year" in 2013. To critics, including some Republican colleagues such as Senator Lindsey Graham, the move was ineffective. Cruz has consistently denied any involvement in the 2013 government shutdown, even though he cast several votes to prolong it and was blamed by many within his own party for prompting it. S. 2195 On April 1, 2014, Cruz introduced S. 2195, a bill that would allow the president of the United States to deny visas to any ambassador to the United Nations who has been found to have been engaged in espionage or terrorist activity against the United States or its allies and may pose a threat to U.S. national security interests. The bill was written in response to Iran's choice of Hamid Aboutalebi as its ambassador to the UN. Aboutalebi was involved in the Iran hostage crisis, in which of a number of American diplomats from the Embassy of the United States, Tehran were held captive in 1979. Under the headline "A bipartisan message to Iran", Cruz thanked President Barack Obama for signing S. 2195 into law. The letter, published in the magazine Politico on April 18, 2014, starts with "Thanks to President Obama for joining a unanimous Congress and signing S. 2195 into law". Cruz also thanked