WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) today joined Steve Doocy on Fox & Friendsto discuss his refusal to expedite the Senate infrastructure bill, and the Democrats’ true intentions of ushering in their $3.5 trillion tax-and spend spree.
*Click the photo above or here to watch*
Partial Transcript:
Hagerty on allowing the American people to review the proposal: “It was a 2,700 page bill that was put before us—that’s twice the size of a King James Bible. We had six days to review that, and then on the very eve of discovering the CBO score that showed this was over a quarter of a trillion dollars in the hole, there’s an effort to expedite this in the dark of night. The whole purpose of that I think was to obfuscate. This is a distraction for what I think is really Chuck Schumer’s goal, and that’s to light the fuse on a $3.5 trillion debt bomb that’s right around the corner. I stopped that. This is the world’s greatest deliberative body right here in the Senate. It’s given my 99 other colleagues the opportunity to have a chance to review this, to understand what’s happening, for us to have this conversation this morning, and for the American public to see what’s in it. And what this has done is [it’s] brought sunshine to the process; it’s let the American taxpayer understand it. I’ve also, at this point, had even a member of the bipartisan committee that put this together say, ‘Look, I’m not going to be able to vote for this anymore after reviewing the CBO score.’ I think it’s also putting a lot of pressure on members in the House, who are in swing districts, who are hearing from their constituents the same way I am in Tennessee, that this is far too big, far too monstrous, has not enough hard infrastructure in it, and far too much debt for our children.”
Hagerty compares $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend spree to LBJ’s Great Society Program: “As we move through this package, we understand better what’s in it. I think it’s a chance for American taxpayers to understand exactly what’s going on. There’s a lot of negotiation that takes place here in the Senate, and certainly it will happen in the House too. But what we need to understand is what’s around the corner. Because this sets up a $3.5 trillion package. That is a massive amount of money. This is going to be the biggest social program that’s been set off since the 1960’s with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program. We cannot do this in the middle of the night. And Nancy Pelosi’s made her strategy clear—she wants to get this infrastructure bill so she can hold it hostage until she gets the $3.5 trillion, completely partisan bill that they want to pass through a very different method. It’s a method where they use only 50 votes and they bring [Vice President] Kamala Harris to push it across the finish line. The American people want to see that.”
Hagerty on Democrats linking the infrastructure bill to their $3.5 trillion socialist debt bomb: “I think that Nancy Pelosi has made it as clear as anyone, that she’s not going to take up the ‘small’ one (if you want to call $1.2 trillion a small number), but she’s not going to take up the initial one until she gets the $3.5 trillion socialists debt bomb into her hands. She’s going to bring them together. In fact, President Biden revealed the strategy within two hours of getting a handshake on the bipartisan deal. He said, of course, he’s not going to sign it until the $3.5 trillion packages on his desk. He’s viewing them in tandem. You know, Chuck Schumer calls this a two track process. This is track one, and he’s moving immediately to track two. I can assure you as soon as he gets the infrastructure bill out of the way, he’s moving directly to the $3.5 trillion package. He wants to light that fuse and then leave for vacation.”