WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today joined Mornings with Maria on Fox Business to discuss his resolution of disapproval against the D.C. Council’s crime bill, his questioning this week of Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell, and President Biden’s upcoming budget request.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on his DC crime bill resolution of disapproval: “It’s amazing to think that the D.C. Council, after two years of work on reforming their crime bill, has come up with a situation where they can actually lower the penalties for major crimes in the district. The District of Columbia has turned into basically a wave of crime right now, Maria. Carjackings have tripled over the past three years. Homicides [have exceeded] 200 per year over the past two years. The D.C. government’s response to this right now is to hand out car locks [and] wheel locks to people who are worried about getting their car stolen. This is ridiculous at a time [that] we’re seeing a crime wave. This is the Federal District of Columbia. I’ve got constituents coming to visit me every day. My staff lives there. I’m there working every week. The district needs to be a safe place, not an embarrassment to the nation. When the D.C. Council passes a law like this, in fact, the mayor even vetoed it, saying, ‘It’s not making the district safer.’ I’m not going to allow it to stand. I have responsibility on the Appropriations Committee for the D.C. government. I’m going to take that responsibility seriously, and we’re going to push back and overturn this.”
Hagerty on Democrats’ reaction to President Biden saying he will not veto his resolution: “It certainly upset the far left, Maria. They love the soft-on-crime policies. It didn’t work very well, I think, for the Democrats, though, in the last election. If you poll people in the District of Columbia, 72 percent of them agree with me. The D.C. Police Union agrees with me. The Fraternal Order of Police agrees with me. They support the posture I’m taking. We need to push back on crime [and] get serious about dealing with crime rather than encourage it. The D.C. Council simply wants to encourage it. It’s, again, making the District of Columbia, our nation’s capital, into a laughingstock across the nation and across the world. We need to stop this.”
Hagerty on his upcoming questioning of Chair Powell: “I think that [Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell] has been dealt a very tough set of cards here, Maria. He’s trying to bring inflation down. That’s his charter, but he’s trying to do that in the face of massive spending that [President] Joe Biden and the Democrats have put into the system. This has been going on for two years. They’ve overheated the system with all this massive stimulus spending. I’m very interested to see his perspective on what might be done in terms of the stimulus spending that’s still in the pipeline [and] is yet to be spent because that’s more inflation ahead that he’s got to fight. Is there anything that we can do to the federal spending problem that’s making it so difficult for him? I very deeply worry that he’s going to have to put the private economy into a recession just to accommodate this massive federal spending that’s been underway.”
Hagerty on his commitment to stop Democrats’ reckless spending: “The House [of Representatives] can count on me. The House has control. We do not have control in the Senate. But as a member of the Appropriations Committee, the House can count on me to support them every step of the way. We’re looking at $350, $400 billion worth of student loan forgiveness funds. That should come right back to the federal government. There are ways to cut this budget right now that will address the deficit. We don’t have to put the full faith and credit of the United States government on the table. We can go back and take some of these reckless programs, defund them, and begin to make real progress in terms of turning our deficit back around and reducing our debt…I would expect that Joe Biden proposes [higher taxes] in the budget that comes forward. That seems to be the only knee-jerk reaction they have. They can’t seem to cut spending whatsoever. So yeah, my expectation is more taxes, more crippling impact on the economy at a time when we do not need it.”
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