NASHVILLE, TN—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) today joined Varney & Co. on Fox Business to discuss the Democrats’ reckless big-government socialism package as well as historic inflation that their policies have caused.
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Partial Transcript
Hagerty on crippling inflation: “I think Vice President Harris is being very optimistic, Stuart. This spending bill is coming at exactly the wrong time for the Democrats. You were just talking about inflation—it’s raging across America. They’re talking about passing a bill that’s going to essentially put an end to the fossil fuel industry. What that’s going to do is further increase prices for gas at the pump. As Americans look at Thanksgiving, turning into Christmas, they’re having a harder time putting food on the table and finding what they want to put under the Christmas tree. Their travel costs have gone up. This inflation is going to be murderous to any attempt to come back and spend trillions of dollars more. Whatever budget gimmickry they may use to try to adjust the total dollar figure downward, you’ve got to look at the programs inside the bill. These programs are more government dependence, less incentives to work, they’re taxation on job creators—it’s going to be devastating to our economy. I think that the American public is far too wise to buy into this argument.”
Hagerty on the real cost of Democrats’ big-government socialism: “The Congressional Budget Office is supposed to be scoring the bill right now. It’s a massive bill, it keeps moving all over the place. It may take them until Thanksgiving or even beyond that, and if the same thing occurs that happened with the so-called infrastructure bill, they’re going to miss it by a country mile. They’re talking about numbers that are below $2 trillion. I wouldn’t be surprised to see another massive miss, just like they did with the so-called infrastructure bill that missed by quarter of a trillion dollars. So we’ll see what happens there, but the Democrats—the more moderate Democrats—that actually want to see something paid for, I think will be paying close attention to this, and it’s going to be hard for them to get there. The other aspect of paying for this, as well, is looking at what’s in the programs because government dependency programs, once they’re turned on, are very, very difficult to turn off. So if they just reduce the number of years by which they score it, that’s just a budget gimmick. We all know that this is going to land on the shoulders of our children and our grandchildren.”
Hagerty on why he opposes the so-called Build Back Better bill: “It would be very hard to go through this and find something that would make me move in a direction that would support this bill. No matter what particular aspect of it would be in there, it’s going to be overall so inherently inflationary, and so incredibly moving us toward socialism and these massive government dependency programs, and so devastating to job creators and the companies that are trying to be more competitive—not less. I can’t see anything that can move me in that direction.”
Hagerty on Americans’ frustrations: “I’m hearing from [voters] every day. I think that if you look at what’s happened, we’ve had a massive crisis at our Southern border all precipitated by this Administration. We’ve had an embarrassment in Afghanistan that’s beyond any proportion. You’ve got Americans looking at the situation here and saying, this Administration is incompetent. We don’t want to turn over more responsibility, more control to this Administration with these dependency programs. And if they look at what’s happening in the economy, the inflation is being felt every day. The energy prices have gone through the roof. Wait for a hard, cold winter here. The American public is going to feel this at every level and the Biden Administration policies have caused every bit of this.”