NEW YORK CITY—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today joined Mornings With Maria on Fox Business to discuss Democrats blocking his amendment barring illegal immigrants from being counted in the census and influencing the allocation of congressional seats and electoral votes, and President Joe Biden’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget proposal.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on every Senate Democrat voting to include illegal immigrants in allocation of congressional seats: “I think most Americans are shocked to find out that today illegal migrants are used in the calculation of the number of people in a given state to allocate congressional districts and electoral college votes to that state. Lara [Trump]’s exactly right; Democrats are basically harvesting electoral power on the backs of these illegal migrants. It shouldn’t be happening, and when I put a simple vote forward that only citizens can be counted for the purposes of allocating congressional districts and electoral votes, the Democrats just went nuts. [Senator] Chuck Schumer threatened to shut the government down; we ground it down to the very last hour. Finally—I think they had an important event that they needed to attend—they agreed to put it to the floor for a vote. And as you said, every single Democrat voted to not allow just citizens alone to be counted, but to also include the counting of illegal migrants. Now, think about where people are fleeing in this nation. Citizens are leaving New York. They’re leaving Illinois. They’re leaving California, where the sanctuary city [is] located. New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, they’re actually creating these magnets so they can backfill and create more ‘bodies’ to count so that they can get more electoral votes. And we got one of the U.S. [Congresswomen] from Brooklyn, Yvette Clark, said the quiet part out loud just the other day. She said, ‘I need these illegal migrants for purposes of redistricting.’ And you know what’s so rich, Maria? Her district, the same one that Chuck Schumer used to have when he served in the Congress, her district, the school, to go home and study [on] Zoom because they needed that schoolhouse to house illegal migrants. That’s what’s happening here in America; that’s the motive behind the crime at our border.”
Hagerty on his concern about illegal immigrants voting in the upcoming elections: “It’s a great concern there that, as Lara mentioned in in the clip earlier, states that don’t require any sort of ID, that type of thing. You know, there was a commission that was put in place back in the nineties led by President Jimmy Carter and by Secretary of State James Baker, two highly respected individuals. They identified several things that led to a deep concern in voter integrity. Some of those are being deployed right now by the Democrats: mail-out ballots, ballot harvesting, no voter ID, all of these subject elections to great concerns regarding voter integrity, and that’s exactly what the Democrats are pushing. And then when you think about the fact that they were able to count illegal migrants in terms of holding onto congressional seats and electoral votes, they win even before they’ve gotten these people to vote. So, though the power of those citizens, if you will, who do vote in states that have a high proportion of illegal migrants, they have more power in states than states like Tennessee, where we don’t have such a high proportion of illegal migrants. That violates the principle of one person, one vote here in America.”
Hagerty on Biden apologizing for calling Laken Riley’s murderer “illegal”: “There could not be a sharper contrast, Maria. You have President [Donald] Trump meeting with Laken Riley’s parents. President Trump actually imposed significant sanctions on the Maduro regime in Venezuela. President Biden has lifted those sanctions. When Venezuelans come to our border, we have no information on them whatsoever. The Biden proposition is waive them in. We’ve seen crimes right here in New York City by Venezuelan gangs, beating up police officers and let go with no bail. Fleeing to California, no consequence. This Venezuelan criminal comes to New York, commits a crime, is, again, released on bail, goes to Georgia and commits the most heinous of crimes at all. And here’s Joe Biden going on air apologizing for calling him illegal insulting Laken’s family. Thank God we’ve got President Trump, and I know that Laken’s family feels appreciated by him even though they were completely disrespected by Joe Biden.”
Hagerty on Democrats’ incentives for encouraging illegal immigration: “I think that this proves the motive behind the crime in our border. They want these illegal migrants in here to create more electoral power for them in their blue states. They’re basically creating sanctuary cities to be a magnet, so these people will disproportionately flow to these blue states. They’re shipping them there as rapidly as they can. Since Joe Biden came into office, the estimates are as high as ten million people that have come in here. That would be 13 extra congressional districts if you allocated them the right way. This is a tremendous amount of power that the Democrats are bringing in. They’re giving their voters, the blue state voters, disproportionately more power than they are giving my voters in Tennessee.”
Hagerty on Biden’s budget proposal: “I think this is just a continuation of that surreal State of the Union address where he’s gone into full-on politics mode. This budget—we just had a preliminary look at it—is nothing but partisan politics. He’s talking about closing the budget up and getting the rich to pay their fair share—the top one percent pay more than they’ve ever paid in history—and Joe Biden still wants to continue to tax away earnings more and more and more. He is going to disincentivize growth and investment here in America is what he’s going to do. He’s going to continue to cripple the economy—it will be more inflationary, I can assure you—and he’s doing nothing to secure our nation and make families like Laken Riley’s feel like they don’t have to worry about their child anymore.”
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