WASHINGTON—Today, United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, joined Balance of Power on BloombergTV to discuss the budget reconciliation package, along with the GENIUS Act.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the budget reconciliation package: “I’m from a no-tax state in Tennessee. There are real concerns about [State and Local Tax], but I realize that President [Donald] Trump broadened the tent to bring people together. So, I think we’re going to be negotiating on that and a number of other points. But one thing I’m going to be very clear about doing is not to try to get ahead of the people that are responsible for the negotiations here in the Senate. We met yesterday with Speaker [Mike] Johnson. He was very clear that he wants to work with us. I think we’ll have a good positive working relationship and try to find a way to make certain that we’re doing the absolute best we can for the American people, given the constraints that we have right now, and given the implementation challenges that the Executive Branch faces. But let’s say this: we’re all moving in the same direction. And importantly, I think we’re taking the message that we’ve got to move quickly. We need this done for the sake of the markets. We need this done for the sake of certainty. We need to see more capital investment commitments take place. That will beget more jobs, more economic activity, but it needs to happen soon. So, that sense of urgency is very real up here.”
Hagerty on the urgency to pass the budget reconciliation package: “There are a number of elements at play. One of them has to do with this tax package and extending that, again, that’ll create a much more certain environment for commitments, capital commitments that will, again, beget more economic activity. That’s going to be positive. There’s also a focus on cutting spending. We’ve got to do that. But there’s another aspect of this that gets far too little play. And it’s not just cutting spending, it’s cutting the massive overhead that we have here that comes from regulation. And if you think about what happened in the prior four years into the Biden administration, the estimates are that the incremental cost of the Biden regulations amounts to $1.4 trillion a year of extra compliance cost on American businesses. We’re working very hard to trim those back to streamline regulations. And that impact is going to be very real as well. It’ll come to the bottom line. It will be reinvested in the economy. It will yield greater after-tax returns. All of this is going to be very positive. We just need to see it happen. And I think speed and timing are of the essence here.”
Hagerty on opposition to the GENIUS Act: “[Senator Elizabeth Warren is] absolutely wrong. And what she’s doing is using a political argument to stir up controversy because she’s been focused on the Central Bank Digital Currency by its nature. This is decentralized. She’s been opposed to this from the beginning. She fought this in the Banking Committee, and after close to four hours of debate in the Banking Committee, she was able to hold four Democrats on her side. But five came over with me and voted for us to put this out of the committee. I see a lot of Democrats that see the benefit of this. And if you think about where we are today, the United States is relying on a payment system that was designed in the seventies and eighties. This is an opportunity to modernize our payment system, take us into the 21st century. We trade securities on an instantaneous basis. This would allow us to move currencies and payments at the same rate. It would be based on the U.S. dollar that will extend dollar dominance around the world. It will actually stimulate demand for U.S. treasuries, which given where we are right now, would be a very positive thing in the marketplace. It’s going to protect consumers. These ethics concerns that Senator Warren is raising are dealt with in the Constitution. I think this is just a red herring. It’s a distraction; she needs to focus on the core of this. And the fact is, I think she just doesn’t like the decentralized nature of it, which is exactly why it’s so powerful, and that’s why so many in the American public want to see this happen and bring the United States payment system into the 21st century.”
Hagerty on potential amendments to the GENIUS Act: “This is a major piece of legislation that’s moving onto the floor. We have a large number of amendments to sort through, and my goal is to make certain that the stablecoin legislation passes and that we avoid a situation where it gets cluttered up or bogged down with a number of amendments that could be unrelated to this. So, we’re going through the process right now to evaluate all of this. Again, we probably have well over a hundred amendments to evaluate, but we will narrow this down and get through it. And I’m appreciative of the fact that Leader [John] Thune is navigating an open process here that’s going to bring us, I hope, to a very successful resolution. But we have had months to work on this bill. We’ve incorporated input from both sides of the aisle and a lot of input from the industry and from the Executive Branch. I feel very good about where we are. We’ve got a great work product right now, and I think we’re very close to seeing it come to final closure.”
###