WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking and Foreign Relations Committees, today joined Mornings With Maria on Fox Business to discuss the repercussions of Democrats’ reckless tax-and-spending legislation and countering Communist China by addressing the chip shortage in America.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on Democrats using the IRS to snoop on Americans in their tax-and-spending bill: “This is just like the Chinese Communist Party. They want to be able to snoop and look into every aspect of our life, Maria. And that amount of data creates a tremendous amount of reporting overhead. It’s going to increase costs for businesses that have to make all these reports. It’s going to make it next to impossible for small businesses and entrepreneurs to deal with. They don’t care. They’re so out of touch with the economy and out of touch with reality that they’re just going to continue to plow through because this generates fictitious numbers that they use here in the Congress to justify even more massive spending.”
Hagerty on tax increases in Democrats’ spending bill: “They should call this the Income Reduction Act, not the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s absolutely going to cause prices to go up because when you increase prices on manufacturers, those prices are going to have to be—or when you increase cost on manufacturers by increasing their taxes—those costs are going to have to be passed on to consumers. That will be borne by the middle class, the lower class, it’s going to be inherently inflationary, and that’s the most pernicious tax of all. The Biden Administration seems to be more than happy to create [and] precipitate more and more inflation. We’re also going to have something happen that is the last thing you do when you enter a recession. And, you know, you’ve seen [Senator] Joe Manchin say this in the past, you’ve seen [Senator] Chuck Schumer say this in the past: the last thing you do is raise taxes as you go into a recession. What they want to do is increase the tax burden on manufacturers. That will have the impact of reducing capital investment. That means economic growth slows or reverses. That means fewer jobs. Again, the last thing you do as you enter into a recession.”
Hagerty on the CHIPS bill and his semiconductor permitting legislation bolstering America’s national security: “I voted for [CHIPS] because my eye has been on China and the threat that China possesses for the United States. If you think back to what’s happened here in the United States, over the past year and a half with chip shortages right here, we need to get our supply chains back to America, and this bill is aimed at doing just that. It’s got to level the playing field because China and Europe are playing by a different set of rules. That’s the major thrust of this. The plus part of it, those are funds that are authorized, but not yet appropriated. I serve in the Appropriations Committee and I aim to do everything I can to make certain that as those funds are appropriated, they’re done in a manner that’s measurable, that generates a return on investment for taxpayers. I think that’s where we need to be focused, not for short-term political wins or losses, but we’ve got to get—from a national security standpoint—we’ve got to get these supply chains back. We are far too dependent on other nations that don’t have our best interest at heart for critical industries like semiconductor manufacturing. And I’ll add this, Maria, an important piece of legislation came along beside that that I authored, and it makes the investments that we’re talking about actually makes sense. When I called the CEOs of semiconductor manufacturers around the world and asked them, why don’t they make the chips here in America, they had a variety of reasons, but every one of them told me this: It takes five to six years to permit a chip fabrication facility here in America. These are multi-billion dollar plants, a lot of water, a lot of electricity, and many permits—five to six years to permit these facilities. That means that the chips are obsolete by the time they’re ready to be put together and produced. So what this legislation does, that I passed separately, completely compresses that timeline from five to six years down to something closer to 18 months. It forces the bureaucrats to process in parallel rather than in series. This makes sense for America and it will make us competitive again.”
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