WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Banking Committees, today joined guest host David Asman on Cavuto: Coast to Coast to discuss sanctioning Russia, his recently-passed semiconductor legislation, and his new legislation to stop the Internal Revenue Service from snooping on Americans.
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Partial Transcript
Hagerty on Biden’s energy policies funding Russian aggression: “I think it’s a real concern in terms of where Germany lies in all of this. Their resolve has not been demonstrated in this case. They’ve got an economic dependency that they want to get lower energy prices because of the bad decisions Germany’s made along the way to make themselves less competitive as a nation. So, they’re looking at this Nord Stream 2 pipeline as a way to level the playing field with the United States. Why the United States is going along with this is beyond me. This is a congressionally-mandated sanction that the Biden Administration has waived. Again, ever since Biden came into office, Vladimir Putin has been dealt face cards by this Administration. You know, the war that Biden waged on the oil and gas industry right here has caused oil prices to go up around the world. Those increased oil prices, that energy inflation that Biden has caused has basically funded the Russian aggression right here because Russia is the second-largest producer of oil and gas in the world.”
Hagerty on demonstrating American resolve using sanctions: “It’s a real question in my mind, and I think in many others. What we ought to have done is put sanctions in place already. We need to demonstrate resolve—no more tough talk, no more just words. We need to actually demonstrate our resolve by doing deeds and imposing sanctions now. Imposing sanctions a couple of months ago would’ve made a lot more sense because Vladimir Putin needs to get a taste of what’s to come.”
Hagerty on his recently-passed semiconductor legislation: “I think it’s a real problem. I think what we ought to do is look at the legislation I put forward just recently. It doesn’t require any budgetary expenditures on our part, but what it does is it makes us more competitive against China for semiconductors. It collapses the permitting timeline from five years to more like 18 months. That’s the type of smart legislation we need to be focused on, rather than more pork programs and things like this to get loaded up like a Christmas Tree.”
Hagerty on his new legislation, the SNOOP Act: “Listen, Americans do not want the type of snooping that we’re seeing coming from the [Internal Revenue Service] and the proposals that are coming from the Biden Administration. What we found is in the COVID-19 relief act, the so-called American Rescue Plan, that they backdoor a new power, a new authority for the IRS to require reporting for every transaction above $600 that third-party vendors like Venmo or PayPal might transact. That’s going to require small businesses around the country to take on much more overhead, much more reporting. And the IRS is going to have far more data on Americans and our lives. I mean, we know we can’t trust the IRS to take care of that data. You saw what happened with the Biden Administration’s release of data, the leaking of private individuals’ tax data to ProPublica last year. I questioned Treasury Secretary [Janet] Yellen about this directly. No one has been held to account for this. Americans don’t want to see this.”
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