WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) today joined Varney & Co. to discuss today’s procedural vote in the Senate on the infrastructure bill, and his new legislation to ultimately end the White House’s collusion with Big Tech to censor Americans.
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Partial Transcript
Hagerty on today’s procedural vote on infrastructure: “We haven’t seen the text. They’re going to put forward something called a shell bill, which has no text in it, it hasn’t been scored, there’s no detail of how it would be paid for. I don’t think the American people sent us here to Congress to vote for things that we don’t even understand. It feels eerily reminiscent of about a decade ago when Nancy Pelosi told the American public you’ve got to pass the bill to see what’s in it. We don’t need another Obamacare 2.0 right now. So we’ll find out what’s in this bill to begin to vote on it.”
Hagerty on his Big Tech censorship legislation: “What it is doing is picking up on the fact that the White House has actually acknowledged that they are leveraging Big Tech, that they’re going to determine what they believe is inaccurate or unhelpful information. And the White House is using Big Tech to do what the White House itself cannot do. It’s a blatant violation of the First Amendment. The White House seems to have forgotten that the government works for the people. It’s not the other way around. Yet, what the White House is trying to do is use Big Tech companies like Facebook to do an end-run around our First Amendment to censor and squelch our opinion, our thought. This is wholly unacceptable. And what we’re going to do is force them to disclose it when it happens.”
Hagerty on the need for Big Tech transparency: “The American public needs to know when the White House reaches out and tries to influence public opinion in this way, by using Big Tech to censor us. Again, the White House has lost touch with reality. The government works for the people. We do not work for the government.”
Hagerty on treating Big Tech like common carriers: “I’ve introduced legislation that will essentially treat the Big Tech companies like common carriers. It will force them to provide non-discriminatory access to all players. And what it will also do is force them to take away the Section 230 protection, and make very clear the criteria that they’re using to quote moderate content. Today what they do under Section 230 is they have an excuse, an opening, you’d call it a loophole, for anything that they find [otherwise objectionable]. That’s something that’s very ill-defined. They don’t make their criteria clear and they use it as an excuse to essentially censor conservative voices. That’s got to come to an end. My legislation would do just that.”