NASHVILLE, TN—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) today joined Mornings with Maria on Fox Business to discuss the Biden Administration’s inflationary spending and big-government socialism policies, and holding Communist China accountable for their human rights abuses.
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Partial Transcript
Hagerty on Biden’s inflationary spending: “I agree with Kyrsten Sinema, this is not the time to be raising taxes on America. And what the Biden program does is take the most targeted sorts of taxes—taxes that will single out individuals, tiny cuts of taxes that will harm specific sections of the population—but they’re going to have broad based effects because what they’re doing essentially is attacking job creators. They’re going to make it harder to form capital here in America. They’re going to shove more jobs offshore. They’re going to make it less profitable to invest here, which means that companies will make the decision to invest elsewhere. Since 2017, America has been the most ideal place in the world to invest capital. That’s why we’ve seen our GDP growth double—more than double—other GDP growth rates in most major nations. What Biden wants to do is kill that. He wants to make America less competitive, less attractive. That’s what these policies would intend to do. It’s going to be devastating to America in the long run. […] At the same time, we’ve got massive inflation, Maria—inflation that’s raging at levels we haven’t seen since new Coke was introduced back in 1982. That’s a pernicious tax that’s attacking every American. Everyone’s paying this tax right now, and we’ve not seen taxes at this level—we’ve not seen inflation at this level for 39 years.”
Hagerty on Joe Manchin opposing Democrats’ “BBB”: “Joe Manchin has said that they don’t have his vote. It’s a 50-50 Senate. You’ve already got 50 Republicans that are against this bill. 51 now with Joe Manchin. There are 51 Senators that are against this bill, at best. And I’m saying at best Chuck Schumer has 49, I think actually other Democrat Senators that don’t want to see this either. I think what we’re seeing coming from Chuck Schumer right now is two things. One is anger—he’d hoped to get this done, he’d hoped to get it done earlier this year, during the year. He’d promised Joe Biden that he would do it. But what he’s doing is he’s kowtowing to the far-left of his party because Joe Biden himself is worried about being primaried by the far-left in his party. That’s what’s driving this behavior, it’s the far-left that have pulled their party so far off center that they’ve lost track with the American public. When you poll the American public, they don’t want what’s in this bill.”
Hagerty on listening to the voters and stopping Democrats’ socialist policies: “I’ve got to believe that’s what’s causing it, Maria. I think what Joe Manchin did is he listened to the voters of West Virginia who sound very much like the voters of Tennessee. They don’t want this bill. They don’t want more fuel poured on this inflationary fire. They don’t want to see their healthcare, they don’t want to see their childcare socialized. They don’t want to see the fossil fuel industry devastated. They want to see America thrive again. You’ve got AOC and ‘the squad’ who live in small, very discreet areas of the United States trying to push their policies—their left wing policies—onto America. And they’re threatening people like [Chuck] Schumer who are concerned that they might be primaried by her.”
Hagerty on the far-left’s harassment: “When the White House singles Joe Manchin out, it’s like putting a hit on him. We’ve seen the footage, they attack him where he lives. They’re waiting for him when he comes from his home—he lives on the waterfront there in Washington. They’ve blocked his car. They’ve swarmed him. They’ve done the same thing to Kyrsten Sinema. They’ve locked her into her school where she teaches on the weekends. They’ve tracked her into the bathroom. This harassment has gone on and on. It’s physical threats, it’s harassment not only to them, it’s to their families. They’ve gone in and ruined a wedding where Kyrsten was presiding. They will stop at nothing to harass and harangue. And this canceling concept, the way that they will go after people that disagree with their ideas, it’s really unsettling, and I don’t think Joe Manchin’s going to stand for it, not one bit.”
Hagerty on pushing back on CCP human rights abuses: “The Trump Administration in early [January] of this year named the Xinjiang region, named China, as committing genocide in that region against those people. The Biden Administration agreed right early as they came into office, but have done very little about it. But the Congress has taken action, now. I applaud Marco Rubio for his leadership. I was happy to join him in this. We now have bipartisan support. We have passed this legislation. I expect Joe Biden to sign this legislation into law, and to put this into effect. We’re already reaching out to Secretary [Gina] Raimondo at the Commerce Department to put those entities on her entities list. These companies that have actually been misusing this type of labor, violating these rules, and not allow American companies to work with those entities. We’re going to have to take specific action—target action— and we could do that.”
Hagerty on Biden border crisis pouring into Tennessee: “They’ve been doing their best to hide it. Senator Marsha Blackburn and I have been all over this trying to get more clarity out of the Department of Homeland Security—out of DHS. They have been not forthcoming on this, but they continue to move people across the border. And I’ll tell you this, Maria, the incidents of fentanyl overdoses and deaths continue to rise month after month. If that’s not a surrogate, I don’t know what it is, but they are killing our kids here in Tennessee.”