NASHVILLE, TN—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) today joined guest host Charles Payne on Cavuto Live to discuss the Senate infrastructure bill, Democrats’ reckless tax-and-spend spree, and rising inflation.
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Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the Senate infrastructure bill: “It’s like Groundhog’s Day, Charles. I mean, they keep saying, they’ve got a deal, I’ve been hearing this for weeks. You get right to the finish line and then they don’t have one again. I do think they’re close, but this has been extraordinarily frustrating and is extraordinarily damaging for the economy for what they’re talking about.”
Hagerty on Democrats using the infrastructure deal as a bait-and-switch: “Well I don’t know what Chuck Schumer’s ultimate goal is, but they’ve been pretty clear: They’re going to push through this $3.5 trillion completely partisan package. It’s a tax-and-spending spree. And as you say, it’s the Green New Deal repackaged. And they’re going to try to put it alongside this so-called bipartisan package, which really is just a shield for them, and it’s actually a ploy to say that they’ve got bipartisanship, when indeed what they’re really shoving through is everything that people worked hard to negotiate out of the bipartisan deal. It’s not good faith. It’s not compromised. And I don’t see much bipartisanship in this at all.”
Hagerty on Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reckless tax-and-spend spree: “I think Nancy Pelosi has been very clear. She said, she’s not going to even look at the so-called bipartisan bill until she’s got the $3.5 trillion package right in front of her. Again, I’ve been a business person all my life, Charles, you know how you spend more time sometimes negotiating out of a deal. You focus on what isn’t in the deal, may be sometimes more important than what is in it. And here we have all of the things that were negotiated out—the Green New Deal, raising death taxes, crippling taxes on corporations, killing the fossil fuel industry. That’s what we’re going to see in the $3.5 trillion package. It’s going to be devastating to America.”
Hagerty on rising inflation: “Well, I think that if you look at the inflation that’s already embedded in the economy, Charles, just go to the gas pump here in Tennessee. Gasoline prices are up 60 or 70 percent since Biden took office. Every good that we buy has to be transported. That’s inflationary. Look at home prices here in Nashville. They’re up 15, 20 percent. That means rents are up. All of this is feeding inflation, and it’s not temporary. Then you talk about the March so-called COVID relief package that was $1.9 trillion. You add to this, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan package, the $3.5 trillion that Nancy Pelosi’s talking about not doing until she gets it all put together. We’re looking at perhaps three to four times the size of our normal GDP when this all gets scored, dumped into our economy in one year. That is inherently inflationary.”
Hagerty on extending federal unemployment benefits: “I’ve heard about it, but I’ll tell you what I’m hearing from employers, Charles. We’ve got far more job openings here in Tennessee than we have people that are unemployed. We need to get people back to work and what the federal government is doing is dis-incentivizing work. Our employers are competing against the federal government. It’s devastating for the economy. It’s hard on people too. People need the pride of work. And I think it’s really unfortunate when you’ve got the federal government cutting the other direction.”