WASHINGTON – United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) today joined America Reports with John Roberts to talk the Biden Border Crisis and H.R. 1.
Partial Transcript Below:
Hagerty on the Biden Border Crisis: “What we’ve got at the border is a crisis, yet President Biden has gone 50 days without having a news conference. He should hold a news conference right now and call this what it is: this is a crisis at the border. It’s a crisis of his Administration’s own doing. I sent a letter to White House, to President Biden, asking them about the [M]igrant Protection Protocols, the so-called Stay in Mexico protocols, that would have made a tremendous difference if we held those in place. It dramatically decreased illegal immigration by 75 percent after it was implemented. And what we are seeing right now is a complete crisis that’s taking place at the border. I think he should come to the American people and talk about in the near term… what’s going to happen here.”
Hagerty on Democrats Incentivizing the Influx at the Border: “The message has been sent loud and clear. They’ve halted all construction on the border wall; they [Democrats] are creating new incentives for illegal immigrants to come across the border. They haven’t given us any answers. Certainly, when I reached out to the White House in a letter to ask them what their plan was: are they going to give these people work permits? Are they going to test them for COVID? Are they going to vaccinate them before they vaccinate Americans? There are so many unanswered questions, but there are a lot of incentives that are creating this. They’re driving this crisis from the White House— it’s a crisis of their own doing.
Hagerty on H.R.1: “If you like the way the Democrats are handling border security, just wait until they get their hands on election security. This so-called ‘For the People’ Act is another typically misnamed act here in Washington. It should be called ‘For the Politicians’ [Act] because what it does is it allows the Democrats, if it were to pass, to federalize our election system. The Constitution is very clear in Article II Section 1: state legislatures have the sole responsibility for setting the election laws. Those state legislatures are directly responsible to their state’s voters. What happens in this bill, they want to take all of that away. They want to incentivize, again, a lot of dangerous behavior: internet registration, no photo ID required, automatic felon voting. One of the things that concerns me the most is the ability for people to ballot harvest— in fact, paid ballot harvesters will have unlimited bounties to go out and harvest ballots. It’s going to create a lot more concern about the election at a time when we need to be creating more confidence in our elections.”