WASHINGTON—Yesterday, United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking and Appropriations Committees and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, joined Mornings with Maria on Fox Business to discuss Senate action on the rescissions package, his stablecoin legislation to strengthen digital asset regulation, and President Donald Trump’s strategy to end the war in Ukraine through tough secondary sanctions on Russia’s trading partners.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the rescissions package and fiscal responsibility: “It’s amazing what we found when we looked into it, and the amount of this rescissions package is just a start. I think your interview with the Speaker [of the House Mike Johnson] was absolutely wonderful in terms of laying out the fact that we’re on a progression to bring fiscal responsibility back to America. It’s going to take several steps, but this rescissions package that’s coming before us this week is an incredibly important first step. What we’re going to see is a cutback on programs that have been wildly mismanaged. If you think about the way these programs have been allowed to grow– I mean, we’re funding lesbian programs in Canada. That’s absolutely ridiculous that U.S. taxpayers should be on the hook for these types of boondoggles. This is a major first step. I’m looking forward to getting it passed this week and continuing down the path of fiscal responsibility.”
Hagerty on digital asset legislation and American innovation: “The most important thing to understand is the fact that the United States is turning the tide. The Biden administration did everything it could to wage war on the crypto industry in America, to shove that sort of innovation offshore. We’ve taken major steps with this legislation to bring it back, to create a regulatory framework that actually works here in America. I’m the author of the stablecoin legislation. I’ve had great assistance from our chairman Sen. Tim Scott, from Sen. Cynthia Lummis, and members of the Banking Committee. [Representative] French Hill and his team in the House have been absolutely wonderful to work with. And we’ve put together something on stablecoins that the president will be ready to sign at the end of this week. Stablecoins are a new payment system. It puts us into the digital asset arena, and it takes us off of a system that was designed in the 1970s and 80s– very clunky, sometimes taking five to 10 days to clear– and moves it onto the blockchain. It’s far more efficient, far more secure, and it sets the groundwork for the entire crypto industry to thrive here in America. That’s what the Clarity Act is about. That’s what the Anti-Central Bank Digital Currency Act is about. It’s moving this technology forward here in America and making certain we own this innovation going forward.”
Hagerty on reinforcing the U.S. dollar and countering surveillance: “It [The GENIUS Act] will make it easier to move dollars, which again reinforces the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency. Each of these digital dollars is going to be backed one-for-one by U.S. Treasury securities. That’s going to stimulate demand for U.S. Treasurys, and the increased demand will bring rates down, which will be very positive for our borrowing cost right now at a time when we need it. There are many reasons to love this bill– the working capital it brings back into the system, the immediate access for small and mid-sized businesses. But importantly, we’re going to see this technology thrive here in America. There is a large number of my colleagues here in the Senate, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the leader of this group, who are proponents of central bank digital currencies, meaning they’d like to be able to surveil every transaction Americans make. I don’t think Americans want that at all. They’ve seen Operation Choke Point take many different forms. We do not want to empower the federal government to do that yet again.”
Hagerty on President Trump’s Russia-Ukraine strategy: “I think it’s a very positive development. President Trump has gotten to the end of his rope dealing with Vladimir Putin and [Volodymyr] Zelensky, trying to resolve this conflict in Ukraine. And what he’s done is taken a major step forward, demonstrating his resolve, but he’s done it in a way that takes the American taxpayer off the hook. He’s putting the Europeans on the front line. He’s going to be depleting their stockpiles, not America’s, and they’re going to be paying for it. That moves us in the direction he’s been articulating for some time.”
Hagerty on the 50-day deadline for Russia: “He’s issued a 50-day timeline. Just ask the Iranians– when President Trump issues a timeline, he expects it to be followed. And if it’s not, the consequences can be serious when he talks about sanctions at this level. I worked on imposing secondary sanctions in the first Trump administration. My job was to work on the Iranian regime and to stop countries around the world from buying Iranian crude oil. I got that done in Japan. It happened around the world. We brought Iran to its knees. And had it not been for voices like John Kerry pleading with them to wait until after the election to see if Joe Biden might win, we’d have had a very different situation in the Middle East. We’re coming back to that strategy now. President Trump has more than three years ahead of him to impose these sanctions, and they’re going to be crippling. The Russians understand this, and most importantly, they know President Trump means business.”
Hagerty on restoring U.S. sanctions enforcement: “I can’t underscore this enough: Putin knows, and President Trump has demonstrated, that 50 days means 50 days. And if he violates that timeline, the consequences will be severe. Now, under [Treasury] Secretary Scott Bessent, we finally have the capacity to enforce our sanctions. Under Joe Biden, sanctions enforcement went away. That’s sad, because we had capable people at the U.S. Treasury who were responsible for doing this, and they were told to stand down. Now, Secretary Bessent is bringing in a team that understands exactly how to do this. We’re going to see real results.”
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