Washington—Today, United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations, Appropriations, and Banking Committees, joined Mornings With Maria on FOX Business to discuss the president’s interim memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran, the CLARITY Act and Reconciliation 3.0.
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Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the U.S.-Iran MOU: I just want to be clear: we are talking about a memorandum of understanding. This is not a treaty that is ready for congressional approval at this point. But I’m certain we are all waiting to see the exact details on Friday. I have spoken with the White House about what’s in the [MOU]. I’m confident that there certainly are going to be zero taxpayer dollars that are going to go to the Iranians, and frankly, even the Iranians’ own money is not going to be made free and available to them until they perform specific, verifiable steps to move toward denuclearization… President Obama and the JCPOA basically bribed and paid off the Iranian regime to foment terrorism. That is exactly what they did with the money. President Trump is making the Iranian regime pay for the fact that they’ve been conducting terrorism. This is a fundamentally different deal, and they are in a fundamentally different place. Their nuclear program is at the bottom of a mountain. Their navy is at the bottom of the sea. Their air cover is gone. They are in a very different and much weaker place, and the Strait of Hormuz is going to be open. In fact, it already started, and I think it is going to be open toll-free very soon… Whatever we do in terms of allowing investment into Iran has got to be verifiable and clear… The investment community is not going to go into Iran until it becomes an investible nation. That is going to require rule of law. That is going to require clarity and certainty that does not exist today. That is market pressure that would be exerted on Iran before there is any type of economic development that would be undertaken. I think there is interest in the region to see Iran move into an economy that’s much more market based. But this regime is going to have to perform. And I think everything that I’m hearing—and what we’ll see on Friday, our details of this MOU—will demonstrate performance targets and, as those targets are met, more opportunities will be made available to Iran.
Hagerty on the CLARITY Act: [The CLARITY Act] is creating the type of certainty that is necessary to bring the entire digital asset framework into full-blown opportunity here in America. The GENIUS Act that I authored brought America into the digital payments arena. We now are in a position where America will continue to lead as the reserve currency of the world because we now have a reserve digital dollar that is backed dollar-for-dollar by short-term U.S. Treasury securities. As we move more broadly into the arena. Digital assets have a much more varied use. We have dealt with it to a large extent… It is important to get it done; it is critical to maintain America’s innovation edge… This is something that will be more a matter of focus after the 4th of July recess period, but I certainly hope to see it done before the end of July.
Hagerty on Recon 3.0: [Senate Democrats] have been entirely reckless… They were willing to shut down [the Department of Homeland Security]. Thank God the FBI was able to break up the activity around the [Ultimate Fighting Championship] event on Sunday, or we would have had another horrendous event because of the recklessness of the Democrats and their unwillingness to fund Homeland Security at a time when we were having major operations in the Middle East. And the Biden administration allowed over 700 Iranian nationals that they identified and released into the country… We have major homeland threats that we need to be addressing. The Democrats have demonstrated they have no interest in producing anything other than chaos… The only procedural tool we have available to us that we can do without Democrat support—because we are not going to get it—is another reconciliation bill. If we want to deal with the defense needs, that I’m sure are very real—even taking components of the SAVE America Act and budgeting those in a way that we can put that into the reconciliation bill—a number of items that we need to get done, the Democrats will not support. I am all in favor of proceeding along these lines.
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