NASHVILLE, TN—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today joined CNN’s State of the Union to discuss the broken appropriations process and President Trump’s leadership in highlighting the issue.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the broken appropriations process: “We have had our appropriations bills on the floor of the United States Senate since this past summer. [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer has refused to bring them forward. This is a typical Washington process where we wind up with a work product that the American public can’t possibly understand. They dumped over 1,500 pages on us, and Elon Musk, using the tool of Twitter, brought transparency to the entirety of it. The American public were shocked. We are always shocked when we see these types of monstrosities at the last minute that haven’t been properly vetted. And President Trump was able to bring his weight to the table and say, look, this has got to stop—this has got to be skinnied-down—this has got to change. My overarching goal coming into this was to make certain that the government didn’t shut down because President Trump, over the next 30 days, needs to be able to process his nominees. We need to be able to put [them] in place, to get to work on January the 20th, because three quarters of the American public feel that the United States is on the wrong track right now. So, I appreciate the fact that Elon Musk made this transparent and that we were able to actually improve this. We didn’t get everything we wanted, certainly I didn’t, but we’re in a better place now because we’re going to be in a position to make certain that President Trump is ready to go on day one.”
Hagerty on the debt ceiling: “I’m sure [Speaker] Mike Johnson did everything he could to try to accomplish the elimination of the debt ceiling, or at least to push it out a long way. Because here’s what the debt ceiling has become: it’s a cudgel. It’s a tool that the other side uses to extract pain. And what we’re going to be dealing with is a Democrat minority that’s going to use this as a means, frankly, to raise spending, in order for us to increase the debt ceiling. That’s precisely the opposite of what President Trump wants to do. I think what it does is it puts the onus on us very quickly to get to work on a work product that will actually cut spending. At the same time, it would increase the debt ceiling that would satisfy the Republicans in the House of Representatives, as I understand it. That will be a way that we can move forward and get this addressed. But President Trump has certainly shown the light of day on the difficulties associated with this debt ceiling. But again, I want to see him in office. I want to see his cabinet members in place. That’s got to happen on the 20th of January. That’s the key reason that I supported getting this continuing resolution over the line.”
Hagerty on media’s coverup of Biden’s decline: “I see [President Trump] highlighted the concern about the debt ceiling. I think everybody appreciates that right now, and I think we’re going to be razor-focused on addressing that. There is a means to do this during the reconciliation process, and it puts a great deal of pressure on the Republicans in the House and in the Senate to make certain that we get to work together, and I look forward to doing that. The interesting thing about this entire process though, as President Trump has been extremely involved in it, but where was President Biden? The sitting president was not engaged with us at all in this process. And as it unfolded, the American public must have wondered, where is our president? Then the Wall Street Journal breaks the fact, one of the greatest media malpractice stories of our lifetimes has taken place, the coverup of Joe Biden. I guess we understand now why he hasn’t been around, but this is just amazing that the White House and the President weren’t even engaged with us in this entire process.”
Hagerty on the transparency that Elon Musk has provided with the purchase of Twitter: “Thank God Elon Musk bought Twitter, because that’s the only way we would even know what’s in this bill. Otherwise, the conspiracy between the government and Twitter would’ve continued, and this would’ve all been covered up. But the fact is that Elon Musk exposing this meant that every one of our offices was inundated with calls from our constituents. The American public wanted to see this change. Donald Trump was speaking on behalf of the American public. Again, he’s just the president-elect, [the] current president is AWOL. But Donald Trump stepped up and said, look, this is what needs to happen. And I think all of my constituents were there. The calls, at least that I got in my office, Elon Musk’s transparency helped make that happen.”
Hagerty on Elon Musk’s role in cutting the size of the government-funding bill: “We [were] all struggling to read [the bill], to digest an over 1,500-page bill that we were literally given just hours to comb through. I was working through it. My staff didn’t sleep the night before. It’s extraordinarily frustrating. But I think the added weight of the American public understanding a simple picture that Elon Musk put forward, showing the size of the stack of what we originally presented [had a big impact]. We started out with over 1,500 pages; we got it down to 120 pages. Still, it’s not what I would’ve liked to have seen in terms of a final work product. But it gets the President’s cabinet back in place. It certainly gets much needed aid to the people of East Tennessee, who’ve suffered dramatically from the floods. That should have taken place earlier, but unfortunately, it got attached to this tool. We needed to get this passed. We need to get President Trump’s team in place and in office, and at the end of the day, we had a better product than we started with. And I appreciate that, and Elon Musk role in that was significant.”
Hagerty on the relationship between Trump and Musk: “Anybody that knows the two men—and I know both of them; I’ve been with both of them many times together—I think President Trump is clearly the leader. He’s going to be the leader of the free world in 30 days. In fact, he’s already the leader. If you look at what’s happening with people coming to see him in Mar-a-Lago, the changes that have taken place, the European Union saying maybe they’re going to go ahead now and supplant Russian LNG with U.S. LNG, the UK stepping up its defense budget in advance of President Trump coming into office, he already is the leader of the free world. As you know, Joe Biden is going AWOL […] Media speculation, or what the Democrats might say to try to get under people’s skin, doesn’t bother me a bit. Elon Musk is, again, the richest person in the world. He’s been extraordinarily successful building companies that are unlike any other, and I’m appreciative of the fact that President Trump has that type of talent available to advise him.”
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