NEW YORK CITY—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking and Appropriations Committees, today joined Cavuto: Coast to Coast on Fox Business to discuss President Joe Biden’s failed economic policies that have precipitated record-high inflation, as well as the Senator’s legislation barring illegal aliens from being counted in the allocation of congressional seats and electoral votes.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on Biden attempting to spin his failed economic policies: “The American public aren’t buying it. I’m certain he’s going to come out and talk right past the public again, but that pain is being felt by every American citizen. You saw that credit card debts have gone up to levels before the pandemic. Every American that I talk with, every middle-class person, is living paycheck to paycheck right now. The pain is enormous that we’re being dealt from this Administration. Inflation is up 20 percent-plus for almost everything since Joe Biden came into office. Yet, he persists the policies that keep energy prices high, the regulatory policies that are sclerotic and overbear on the economy, everything that he does has been inherently inflationary. And you’ve got a [Federal Reserve] and a Treasury [Department] that are trying to deal with this by inverting the yield curve, trying to hold mortgage rates down. They’re taking some very dangerous steps trying to address this from a policy standpoint, and it’s very, very difficult.”
Hagerty on Biden’s new tariffs on China: “In terms of dealing with inflation, one of the first things he could do is stop spending all the money that’s still baked into the system for all of the stimulus that we never needed. These green projects, these green programs, they’re billions of dollars that are still wind up to come into the economy. That’s going to be inherently inflationary, and he’s got a very easy tool to deal with that there—he’s not going to do it. With respect to the tariffs that we’re talking about right now—and there’s been some comparison to President [Donald] Trump’s tariffs—but I’ll tell you: President Trump imposed tariffs for strategic reasons, to protect domestic industries that China was unfairly competing against. What Joe Biden is doing here, what I expect to hear in the Rose Garden, is sort of a deflection, if you will, trying to blame the Chinese for the fact that Joe Biden has gone in and distorted the market for electric vehicles. They’ve used regulatory mandates, subsidies, solar panels—you’ll hear the same thing—but the mandates and the subsidies distorting the domestic market aren’t working. We don’t have the infrastructure to support it. Americans aren’t buying it, but he’s going to try to turn around and deflect by imposing tariffs on China. Again, this is just a bait-and-switch type of activity that we tend to see from the Biden Administration.”
Hagerty on the stark difference between Trump’s and Biden’s policies: “I think if people ask themselves a very basic question: was I better off when President Trump was in office, or President Biden? The answer is very clear. President Trump’s economic policies absolutely worked. The deregulatory effort that he undertook as soon as he came into office, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, that set our economy on a pace of growth that was double the GDP growth rate of any other major economy. Joe Biden has not been able to do that at all. In fact, what Joe Biden has done is unloaded inflation on Americans at every turn, and Americans are feeling the pain. That’s what the polls are reflecting.”
Hagerty on his census legislation passing the House of Representatives: “The House [of Representatives] is in [the] control of Republicans, and we want to see as much as possible happen in that regard. But coming back to the Senate, the Senate is under the control of [Senator] Chuck Schumer. And you talk about disarray and a lack of strategic direction for the United States Senate, it’s been really hard […] I will compliment the House on this: Just last week, they passed a piece of legislation that I put forward, and that legislation is very simple. Most Americans support this, and that is to not count illegal aliens in the census for the purpose of apportioning congressional districts and electoral votes. The Republicans in the House came together; every Democrat voted against it. We’ve got them on record now; they want to count illegal aliens in the census. In the Senate, that’s going to be more challenging. I’ve already put it to the floor once, and every Democrat voted against me. However, they control the Senate right now.”
###