WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, today joined Mornings with Maria on Fox Business to discuss the Biden Administration’s anti-American energy policies, which are fueling inflation, and his upcoming questioning of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell before the Senate Banking Committee Wednesday.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on Biden pursuing his green energy goals to the detriment of the American people: “[The Biden Administration is] living in an alternate universe. The vehicles aren’t available; the infrastructure’s not available. And what he’s trying to do is make it so painful for us to buy oil and gas here in America that somehow, we’re going to transition over. What he wants to do, I think, is make us more dependent on China, where we’re going to go for the lithium, where we’re going to go for the solar panels. It really is a backwards-looking policy, and he’s blindly pursuing it at the expense of our economy, at the expense of, you know, the wellbeing of every family right here in America.”
Hagerty on his pushback against the SEC’s proposed climate rule: “You’ve got the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], a bureau full of faceless bureaucrats—lawyers, mainly—putting out a 500-page rule on climate change. These aren’t scientists. This is the type of debate that should be happening amongst elected officials who represent the people because there are serious tradeoffs that we’re talking about. Yet, these faceless bureaucrats want to go ahead and make this decision for us. What they’re really trying to do, Maria, is they’re trying to starve capital from industries that are critical to America. And the result of this is going to be more inflation, higher prices, and it’s going to make our nation less competitive as a whole. Farmers are suffering tremendously right now, and this will roll through to food shortages. It’s going to roll through to diesel shortages. It’s going to be devastating to our economy if we’re to allow this to go through.”
Hagerty on his questioning of Chair Powell this week: “Chairman [Jerome] Powell’s got a tremendously difficult job before him, Maria. I mean, we’re looking at unprecedented levels of inflation, and he’s trying to deal with very blunt instruments. The monetary policy tools that he has are limited in what they can affect. He’s got to deal with this inflation but at the same time, not push us over the precipice into a recession. The problem that he’s got—in fact, the very biggest problem that he’s got—is the fact that the Biden Administration wants to use either the tool of more taxpayer spending—you know, spending taxpayer money—or they want to add more regulation, or both, which is constraining supply, which is driving up costs and inflation. And in fact, they’re working against every aspect of the inflationary-fighting tools that Jerome Powell has. So, I think he’s got a very difficult job. We will talk about that tomorrow. This 500-page rule is part-and-parcel, again, of constraining supply of capital, of starving capital from industries that we absolutely need to be flourishing right now, making our nation less competitive and driving inflation again through the roof.”
Hagerty on unspent COVID relief money further fueling inflation: “Absolutely, to the extent that those states are going to release that money into the economy, again, you know, more dollars chasing fewer goods. On the regulatory side, you know, the Biden Administration is choking off supply and then adding more and more stimulus. These states are not going to be inclined to give this money back. The Democrats in Congress are not going to allow that to happen. We’ve already seen that. So, this again is going to have more inflation in the pipeline yet to come.”
###