WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) today joined America’s Newsroom on Fox News.
On pro-growth policies:
“[E]verybody’s going to come to different conclusions about this [bill], but a lot of people are making evaluations of this bill based upon a static scoring model used by Washington, D.C., scorekeepers that missed the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act economic growth by 5.4 percent, underestimated revenue by $1.5 trillion, missed the energy subsidies in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act by 400 percent. I mean, these people don’t have a really good track record when it comes to scorekeeping.
“What we know is this: When you reduce taxes on the American people and on small businesses, there is an incentive to invest more. When you invest more … there’re better-paying jobs created, people are making money, they’re taking realizations, and they’re paying more in taxes. That means tax revenue goes up. So there are just a lot of analysis around this bill that isn’t accurately reflecting what will happen when all these policies are put into place. And by the way, it will be the biggest spending reduction in history. There’s just no question about that. It’s going to have huge savings in it, and we’re hoping to enhance that here in the Senate.”
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“I think that the debt is unsustainably high, and that’s why we have to do something to get it down, Dana. And the way you do that is you get growth in the economy through pro-growth policies – the things I just mentioned – generates more government revenue, and you restrain the growth in government spending, and pretty soon things start coming into balance.
“But you can’t do something about the debt limit … unless you’re actually passing bills like what we’re talking about here, which has the largest spending reduction in history included as part of it. So … you’ve got to start somewhere, and I think what this bill does is it makes an important down payment on ensuring that in the future, those deficits and … that debt starts going downwards instead of continuing upwards like it is today.”
On enacting President Trump’s agenda:
“[A]s you know, the president is the closer, and ultimately it will be up to him to help bring some of these votes home. But we’ve been working closely with the White House. The president’s priorities in this have been very clear: It’s energy dominance, it’s modernizing the military, it’s securing the border, it’s preventing a $4.5 trillion tax increase at the end of this year, and it’s achieving historic savings when it comes to federal spending.
“So those are all priorities that are addressed in here, and we’re working with him and his team to refine what the House did, strengthen it, improve upon it, and make it the best bill possible. But at the end of the day, we’re going to achieve those objectives, and we need to stay focused on that. And yes, we have different people who have different opinions here in the Senate about what’s the best way to do that, but at the end of the day, everybody is rowing in the same direction, and everybody knows we can’t afford to allow a $4.5 trillion tax increase at the end of this year – and that’s what the Democrats are advocating for.”
On Republicans’ unity in Washington:
“At the end of the day, we have a job to do. We’ve got to take the long view. We want to … succeed on behalf of the American people. And President Trump ran on an agenda. We are going to do everything we can here in the Senate and the House to get that agenda across the finish line.
“[T]here are going to be people out there, and there’re going to be detractors and different points of view and opinions, and that’s all fine and good. But in the Senate it’s 51 votes, in the House it’s 218, to get a bill we can put on the president’s desk that will transform this country, and you will see economic growth unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.
“Working families will get a huge amount of tax relief. We will avoid that $4.5 trillion tax increase at the end of the year and restore America’s energy dominance. These are all things that are a part of this agenda, what the president ran on. We are committed to making sure that he succeeds and that we succeed in delivering for the American people.”
