Meet the Press - May 21, 2023
Interview
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Yeah, it's good to be with you, Chuck.
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Chuck, to be blunt with you, we're not really sure what deal's even on the table. The White House is not serious. They came up with a proposal to spend another $30 billion more than they already wanted to spend. They're not taking a look at the reality of where our country is fiscally. Look, Joe Biden is saying that he's cut $1.7 trillion from the deficit. But everybody's saying that's not true. That's -- what he actually has done is he's $1 trillion over what CBO was projecting spending was going to be because after all of the COVID spending in the last year of President Trump, that Congress wasn't going to extend that, and Joe Biden did. So we're in a situation right now where the only plan in Washington has been passed by the House of Representatives. It's the only plan. Joe Biden's not serious at the negotiating table. I've talked with my colleagues who are in that room. So at this point, really the question is: what's the Senate going to do? Where's Chuck Schumer in all this? Because the Senate has not done any work at all. And Joe Biden has not done any work at all.
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Well, first of all, he also said the other day on a rival network that he said that when he was president, and when they asked why he wasn't saying it now, he said because he's not president. Listen, Donald Trump is always negotiating --
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That is not absurd. He's always negotiating, Chuck.
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Chuck, he's always negotiating. That's what he does. And it's actually one of the reasons why so many deals for our country worked out to our benefit, as compared to his predecessors, both Republican and Democrat, because he's always negotiating.
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That is not a partisan statement.
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Right.
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Well, no, here's the thing. Let's be -- let's be realistic now. When Donald Trump was negotiating debt ceiling with Nancy Pelosi, mind you, they negotiated that.
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When they were --
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When they were, when they were, when they were doing that, our economy was thriving, our debt levels were not where they are right now. We were about $24 trillion, not $32 trillion. We weren't having massive deficits the way we are right now. It was a very different environment. Now, you have $32 trillion on the credit card. And all House Republicans are saying is, "Let's go back to pre-pandemic spending." That's common-sense stuff.
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That -- First of all, that's salacious and you know that. Most Americans, by far, pay their taxes and they do it honorably. What House Republicans, and, frankly, Republican party is concerned about is having IRS agents go after middle-class families and small business owners. When you have that many more agents, it's not to go after the rich. It's to go after the middle class.
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That's what it's for.
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You would make the assumption that IRS audits are up, that they're putting out more liens on the American people. That's not true. That data's not there. All Joe Biden's trying to do is find every possible nickel out of every couch from every American to pay for his radical spending. Why would we do that? Listen, let me contrast for you. When we passed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, CBO said it was going to cost $2 trillion. That's actually not true. What ended up happening was the federal government took in $1 trillion more than CBO actually projected. The economy grew another 1% over projections.
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Chuck --
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Fewer, fewer revenues now?
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That is not true, Chuck. In 2019, we took in more revenue than we ever have in the history of our nation, as bunch of a percentage of our economy than we ever have, as a nation. That was 2019.
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Tax receipts were still up.
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You're going to use --
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But most of it is Covid.
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But most of it was Covid.
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That is not true because we raised more --
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We raised more revenue than CBO projected. If you bring in more money than your projections are, how are you adding to your deficits, Chuck?
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No, Chuck. That is not true. The purpose of tax policy is to raise revenue for the federal government, not to equalize society. After the Trump tax cuts were passed, more tax revenue has come to the federal government than in any other time in the history of our nation. Those are the facts.
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And a percentage of the economy.
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So internally, we're having this discussion about defense. We're looking at trying to see a way to keep defense spending in line because, you know, there are threats all over the globe. We see it in Ukraine. We see what's happening with China's saber-rattling with Taiw -- Taiwan, etcetera. So we want to make sure that our military preparedness is where it needs to be. But at the same time, House Republicans are not looking at just letting the Department of Defense just have massive radical increases as well. We have to control spending everywhere in our government.
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I accept -- I accept the premise, but Joe Biden's got to come up with a deal. He doesn't have one. I would ask him -- you should ask him, if he actually would take your question. You should ask him if he has a plan, if he has a strategy. The only thing he's ever said is, "we should -- it should just be clean." But nobody with an economic mind is saying, "Yeah. Sure. Just give the federal government a blank check."
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No. I'm not comfortable with that. This should have been done 100 days ago. House Republicans have been working on this for three months. I've been in the room. I've been in those meetings. And while we were working on a strategy to raise our nation's debt ceiling, which is something the House of Representatives has passed, Joe Biden was ignoring it and Chuck Schumer was ignoring it. And I think that he has been derelict in his duty.
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Sure.
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Well, first of all, that, that speech was pretty good, Chuck. You've got to acknowledge that. That was good stuff. Anyway, to me, it's not really about Donald Trump versus Ron DeSantis, it's about what America needs. That's where I've been, really, since day once. We -- I talked a little bit about foreign policy in the last block. We have a situation right now where Russia's on the move and China is on the move. We need somebody who can step in, day one, look at Vladimir Putin, look at Xi Jinping, and say, "Okay. Enough. I'm back. We're going to get everything --"
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I think it's going to take them time. I think there's only one person who has that ability right now and it's Donald Trump. And for all the naysayers who would say, "Oh, he's unpredictable. Oh, we don't know what he's going to do," let's be very clear. When he was president of the United States, the world was in a much safer place. Nobody can say that the world is safer now than when it was when he was president.
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Look. I think what happened on January 6th was a terrible day for the country.
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I was on the House --
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I was on the House floor. It was a terrible day for the country. But that also being said, we have a situation where we've got to get the country back on track. I made a comment the other day that as, as bad as January 6th was, the American people aren't consuming January 6th the way the media and Washington is consuming, consuming January 6th. Our country has to get back on track.
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It was. It was. But what's happening to our southern border right now? That's scarring for people who live at the southern border. What's happening for middle-income families when their wages are being eroded by a massive inflation brought to us by Joe Biden? That is the stuff that the American people are concerned about right now.
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You know, honestly, that's something where you have to deal with your legislature on that. You have to look at your legislature. You have to deal with the people in, in your state. And you figure out what that process is going to be.
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Well, they also put -- they also put lot of exceptions into it. But I wasn't in the legislature when they did this. I want to be blunt with you.
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I'm not sure where the, where the governor was and the legislature was on this. What I would tell you is this is a far better place to be than when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land.
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I think he is going to figure out what he thinks is going to be the best thing for the country. He said that already. He's on the record with that. Look, abortion politics is very personal. It's very, very personal. And it's obviously -- we all know it's, it's hyperbolic in our country. People are all over the place.
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Well, I would argue that the Supreme Court already did that. They did that for 50 years. And that's why it was important to return this back to the states because the country's never really had to deal with the politics of abortion. Compare us to the European countries. America's abortion policy is radical compared to the European countries. Most European countries are ten to 12 weeks. That's where they are.
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The Florida law has exceptions, as well.
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Anytime. Thank you.
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