WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today joined Squawk Box on CNBC to discuss his proposed amendment to the Omnibus bill to reverse the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) $600 threshold for third-party payment reporting, and Democrats’ refusal to help fix the crisis at the southern border.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on his 1099-K amendment not being included in the Omnibus spending bill: “We just had this dumped on us a day and a half ago. I’ve been reading through it. My staff’s been reading through it. It’s more than 4,000 pages, Joe. What’s not in there, though, is the fix that I’ve been working on for months, and that’s to address this 1099-K problem for people that use Venmo [and] PayPal for small transactions. We’re talking [about] anyone that has transactions that go north of $600. If this goes through without the amendment that I’ve been working on, we’re going to see roughly [30] million 1099-Ks issued by the PayPals and Venmos of this world. It’s going to flood the IRS and put a huge burden on the American public. But as of today, this is being held hostage in a broader negotiation as Senator [Chuck] Schumer tries to cram this massive package through.”
Hagerty on the broken procedural process in Washington: “Joe, you’re describing the Washington Kabuki Theater, and that’s exactly what happened last night. We were supposed to vote on this and finish it up in the wee hours of this morning. They negotiated everything except they found out one thing: that is that there’s actually bipartisan support to keep Title 42 in place. There’s an amendment there that would’ve actually passed last night, and that would’ve been a huge problem for Chuck Schumer and the radical left. So, what they’re working on right now is another Washington trick that will create a process, if you will, that will allow those Democrats that do support Title 42 and maintaining some sense of border at the border, allow them to vote for that, actually allow them to vote for funding the border wall, even voting for more funds to protect our border. They’ll be able to vote for that and then turn around and vote against it. So, it will fail, and then we’ll go right back to what you described, Joe. And again, I think this is sickening to the American public. They’re tired of seeing this come out of Washington, but I think this is exactly what this morning is setting up for, and we’ll probably be here into the night again.”
Hagerty on Democrats’ funding for so-called border protection not actually helping the southern border crisis: “If you think about what’s happening at the border… what you’ll see is a different set of messaging points. One side will say, gee, we’ve plused up another almost $2 billion to go to the Customs and Border [Protection]. But if you look at the fine lines—this is on page 753 of this massive bill—it says that those funds can’t be used for border security—for border protection. They can only be used to accelerate [the] processing of people across the border and transporting people deep into the United States. They’re transporting people into my home state of Tennessee. They won’t tell us how many. They won’t tell us what the burden might be on our schools and our hospitals and our social services. That’s what those funds are going to be used for. That’s not protecting and securing the border. That’s just accelerating the process and ensuring more people come flooding across the border. What it does is it helps protect against the political problem of the camera angles, seeing people lined up at the border. It’s just to accelerate the processing. So, again, this is Washington’s spin on something that I don’t think the American public is supportive of.”
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