WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Appropriations, Banking, and Foreign Relations Committees and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, today joined Mornings With Maria on Fox Business to discuss the Continuing Resolution under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives as a result of Senate Democrats’ refusal to put appropriations bills on the floor for votes.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the current debate in the House: “There’s been a tremendous amount of motion over in the House. We’re waiting here in the Senate. Certainly, [Senator] Chuck Schumer controls the Senate here. We’re much better off having the Republicans in the House originate the bill. We’ll get a far better result. There’s a great deal of noise right now; I understand that [Vice President-elect] JD Vance and [OMB Director Nominee] Russ Vought are over meeting with the Freedom Caucus as we speak. I hope those conversations are going well.”
Hagerty on Republicans’ plan for reconciliation: “The reconciliation process is right before us. We’ve got great plans of how we’re going to proceed through that as quickly as we possibly can. Whether it’s in two parts or one, I don’t care as much about the timing of it as the fact [that] the magnitude is going to be significant. What we don’t want is the cloud of the debt ceiling hanging over us, like the Sword of Damocles, because Chuck Schumer will use that to extract more spending, use that to frustrate our efforts to make America much more competitive. Again, the DOGE effort is going to be underway, but it’s going to take us some time to get there, and we just need the headroom to do that, meaning we need the debt ceiling lifted right now.”
Hagerty on the debt ceiling: “The simple explanation, though, is this: if the debt ceiling gets to a point where Chuck Schumer can use it to extract more spending, it’s going to achieve, actually, the opposite of the intended [debt-limitation] result. We need to be pragmatic here. We need to put President Trump and his team in a place to get the wins that the American public supported. I’d like to see this behind us. I’d like to see us get it done right now.”
Hagerty on Democrats preferring a government shutdown: “Yesterday, what we saw was the vast majority of Republicans voting for the bill to not shut the government down. Every Democrat voted against it, with the exception of two. Clearly, we’re not going to get Democrat support here. They prefer a shutdown. It’s going to be something that we’ve got to continue to focus on today, make our case very clearly. I think President Trump and JD Vance, particularly having JD and Russ Vought here today, they’re going to make the case, in a very strong manner, what this means from a pragmatic standpoint, because what we’re trying to do is put President Trump and his team in a place to absolutely deliver on the promises that were made, what people voted for, on November the fifth.”
Hagerty on the need to address the debt ceiling now: “Anything’s possible, but the debt limit issue is one that we need to address at this point, too. I hope that’s not an attempt just to kick it down the road, because the debt limit actually expires January 1st. They can use what they call extraordinary measures to push it a certain number of months, but it’s going to be right in the middle of our efforts to try to get through the reconciliation process, and to try to implement the very beginnings of the cost-cutting efforts that I’m looking forward to working with President Trump and with Elon [Musk] and with Vivek [Ramaswamy] to make happen here. The timing of this would be very poor. We have an opportunity to deal with it right now, have a clean slate as we start the new year. In my mind, that’s what we should do.”
Hagerty on the Biden-Harris Admin selling off border wall parts: “Well, it’s another case in point of how tone deaf the Biden Administration is, and the arrogance of this move at this point. The American public, 75 percent, feel we are on the wrong track. The vast majority of Americans want to see our border secure. And on the way out the door, the Biden-Harris Administration are slapping the American taxpayer in the face, selling off these assets that they know we need, and that we’re going to purchase, selling those assets off at five cents on the dollar, for what they were bought, worth probably double right now, given the inflation that Biden has induced. We bought these assets much cheaper back in the time when President Trump was building the wall. So, this is a massive financial hit to the American public. The Biden-Harris administration [is] so tone deaf, they don’t care. They just want to scorch the earth on the way out the door. It’s going to be another disgraceful capstone to what I think is going to be the worst presidency in our lifetimes.”
Hagerty on the broken appropriations process: “That absolutely was inappropriate. I don’t know how it got in there, or what the circumstances were, because I wasn’t involved in the negotiations that were taking place. But that is precisely the thing that the American public sees, and it’s a disgrace. When people look at these Christmas trees [of unrelated legislation] that come together, right before Christmas, under extreme pressure, they hand the text over just within hours of having to vote on it. And we dig into it and find things like this that have been jammed in. It’s something that I think President Trump was right to call out. What he and Elon and his team worked on was something much more narrow, seemed to be much more palatable, would’ve taken care of the continued resolution, would’ve taken care of disaster relief, and it would’ve gotten us to a place where we could have addressed the debt ceiling issue. So, he would have the runway necessary—he meaning President Trump and his team—to actually begin to deliver on the successes that the American public are expecting.”
Hagerty on the Biden-Harris Admin driving up the debt: “It’s only fair that he doesn’t, because the debt ceiling has been reached thanks to the massive spending, the tremendous inflation that Joe Biden has created. I mean, the deficits that we’re running are astronomical, and Joe Biden hasn’t backed off a bit. If you look at it, trillions above where we were before the pandemic, and Joe Biden just keeps on spending. The Democrats just keep on spending. The implications of this are we need to knock the debt ceiling negotiations way down the pike, even eliminate them if need be. But we need to give President Trump, and we were talking about a two-year extension, that would certainly give the opportunity for the DOGE team to get in, to really get their arms around the many, many problems here, and begin to implement real cost-cutting measures. That way, the debt ceiling may not become an issue because we’ll be able to drive the deficit down. That’s the plan, but we need enough time to do it.”
Hagerty on regaining a competitive advantage in business relations with Europe: “The context is important here, Maria, because our trading terms with Europe have gotten much worse under Joe Biden. You know, they’ve imposed a new border carbon tax on us that hurts American companies. New disclosure requirements, based on climate and DEI. They’re much more onerous, much more compliance cost, if American companies want to do business in Europe. Again, it’s all about making American companies less competitive in their markets, giving them an unfair competitive advantage. They also have been buying Russian energy. In doing so, they’ve been funding the war in Ukraine. They’re speaking out of both sides of their mouth; President Trump is shooting right at the point. This is an easy fix that addresses not only the trade imbalance, but also it begins to address Russia’s activity in Ukraine, because it begins to take away the resources that Europe has been providing them. This makes a tremendous amount of sense. Europe will probably clutch its pearls and scream and cry, but this is something that they need to step up and address. In fact, the [European Union] came out right after President Trump was elected, and made the statement that perhaps they should consider buying U.S. LNG and supplanting Russian LNG. I think they know this is coming, and if it doesn’t come, President Trump has imposed tariffs before. I worked in the Administration, and last time, when he did it, he means business. And I think Europe needs to wake up and see this as a call to bring back reciprocal relations, and stop funding Russia as they are fighting Ukraine.”
Hagerty on the impacts of a possible government shutdown: “I certainly want Republicans to stand on principle, but here’s the added consequence of a shutdown: while Joe Biden is in office, Joe Biden will determine what are essential and what are non-essential employees. What he’ll do at Christmas is he’ll shut down the passport offices, he’ll shut down the national parks, he’ll inflict maximum pain on the American public. When President Trump dealt with the shutdown, he really did look for what are non-essential activities that put the least amount of damage on the American public. Joe Biden’s going to go absolutely the other way. Look for headline opportunities. They’ll make Christmas painful for America. That’s what we know will happen. That’s a practicality of the way Democrats will deal with this, and I think that’s the extra pain they’ll try to extract.”
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