Steve Scalise Previews Next Steps After GOP Budget Resolution Barely Passes The House

2 days ago

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) speaks to reporters after the GOP budget reconciliation bill passes the House.

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Transcript

00:00Here. Yeah. Look at y'all. Y'all been waiting feverishly. A lot of people didn't think this

00:06could get done. But like a lot of other big challenges, we came to this new Congress with

00:12President Trump, the Republican Senate and House committed to fight for the American people and

00:18fix the problems that we inherited. To go and solve so many of the problems that American

00:23families have been struggling with. We've got to lower inflation. We've got to lower interest rates.

00:27We've got to get the economy moving again. And all of that happens with this one big,

00:31beautiful bill. And of course, none of it starts until we pass the budget, which is why today's

00:36vote was so important, which means now the real work begins in the committees. We have

00:4011 committees in the House ready to go to work now. Over the next two weeks, as members are

00:46in their districts during Easter, the committees will be working and leadership will be meeting

00:50between the House and Senate, working with President Trump on the details to start that

00:54process. The day we get back so that we can deliver real wins for the American people on

01:00a bill that makes sure no taxes go up. We produce more energy in America. We can deliver the border

01:05security that President Trump has already been implementing. But as Tom Holman would tell you,

01:10they need more funding. We need to strengthen our military to compete with China, put more regulations

01:15and get more regulatory control and relief so that we can have fair rulemaking that don't

01:20add cost, that doesn't add cost to taxpayers. All of that's going to be done in this bill.

01:24Mr. Leader, can you explain and characterize why this was so tough at the last minute?

01:29Every step of this process is going to be tough. We've said this from the very beginning. In fact,

01:35when there was a debate between one bill and two bills, I had some conversations with President

01:40Trump with his Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson. They said, why one bill? I said, go back and look

01:44at 2017. I was the majority whip when we passed the first Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The budget for that

01:50bill, we lost 22 Republicans. We still got the bill passed, barely, but we lost 22 Republicans. Well,

01:56this time around, we couldn't lose two on the first round. Today, we could lose three. And as you saw,

02:02we lost two. And then we were able to pass the bill. But we have tight margins. And so anytime you

02:07have tight margins, we have a lot of members with a lot of very divergent opinions on how to get to the

02:11goals we've set out to achieve. And everybody has been in the room at different stages. You know,

02:18some members had more questions than others. And every member knows, and I've been very candid,

02:23there's still a lot of work left to do. But we are including all of our members from the most

02:28conservatives to those in the most swing districts in all of these conversations because it's going to

02:33take all of us to get it done. Is this probably the easiest vote that you have to take? None of these

02:37votes are easy. And then the next votes won't be easy. But they're all significantly important for

02:42the American people. And I think if you just keep sight of what the goal is, our goal from the very

02:49beginning is to provide relief to families who have been struggling to get our economy back on track

02:53and deliver on the promises that President Trump and House and Senate Republicans ran on during the

02:59campaign. And we're elected and given a mandate to deliver. We're now working on those next steps. And we're

03:04going to get this passed because failure is not an option. Where are you going to find the savings, sir?

03:07Where are you going to find the savings, sir? And can you save $1.5 trillion without touching Medicaid?

03:13You can find $1.5 trillion and more. And obviously, you saw the press conference this morning.

03:19Without cutting Medicaid. Without cutting Medicaid.

03:20Well, first of all, if you look, bless you, if you look at just waste, fraud, and abuse in all federal

03:25programs, that's on the table. And I think most Americans would tell you, please go root out waste,

03:29fraud, and abuse. So if any program is stealing money from taxpayers in a way that's not intended,

03:35not even talking about changing eligibility, all of those things are going to be looked at to make

03:39the programs work better. Some of these programs do not work well for the people on it. I'll give

03:44you an example. You know, because a lot of lies have been told about disabled people. Medicaid does

03:49not work well enough for disabled people. We can make it work better. And part of that is by

03:55taking away some of the siphoning off of the program by people that shouldn't be on it.

03:59There are illegals in the hundreds of thousands at a minimum on Medicaid taking billions of dollars

04:05out of that program, hurting disabled people. So we need to strengthen those programs. And we're

04:10going to be working on that too. But if you look at some of the other things, spectrum sales,

04:15nobody talks about that. Everybody talks about $880 billion in energy and commerce as if it's all

04:20healthcare, there's probably $200 billion in non-healthcare related programs before you even

04:26start talking about more savings and reforms. Things like spectrum sales. You know, how do you

04:32go from 5G networks to 6G? It's not just some clouds in the sky that you're dealing with. It's

04:39spectrum, which is a federal asset that we auction off every few years. What's been too long? Any of

04:45these companies that spend billions of dollars building on networks will tell you we need more

04:49spectrum made available, which means the federal government owns all of that and we offer it up

04:54for sale every few years. And we generate tens of billions, if not close to $100 billion for the

05:00taxpayers. And that yields, by the way, billions more private investment. That's why you get economic

05:06growth when you lock in tax rates and make a more sane, common sense regulatory structure because then

05:12you see private investment. I've heard these numbers and you can talk to people in any walk of life

05:18in the private sector, in any industry. They will tell you there's trillions, four, five trillion

05:24dollars of money sitting on the sideline, not being invested in America now until they see what the tax

05:29code looks like. Everybody's talking about tariffs right now. Most businesses are waiting to see what

05:34the tax code will look like before they make major investments. And they will tell you if we just

05:40prevent a tax hike, which by the way, every Democrat voted today to raise taxes. And they've said they

05:45want the tax rates to go up. We do not. And if we flatline and say no tax increases on

05:51American families, that alone will spur trillions of dollars more investment in our economy. And

05:56you could see 3 percent GDP growth, which would be not only great for the economy, more money in your

06:02pockets when you go to the grocery store, when you go to the gas station. But it also gives us the federal

06:07treasury more money coming in to lower the deficit.

06:09The timeline to get this done is as quick as we can get it done. We've said, you know, by the end of May, we want

06:17a bill through the House to the Senate on the president's desk. And we're talking to the Senate every step of

06:23the way. Again, you saw Speaker Johnson with Majority Leader Thune in the Senate today, given a press conference,

06:29agreeing that there is no daylight between our two sides. We're going to be talking about the details of what our committees do.

06:33They don't have the exact same committees. They don't have an energy and commerce committee. They have a commerce

06:39committee, finance committee in the Senate will do a lot of the components on Medicaid that the energy and commerce

06:45committee would do. But at the end of the day, all of those policies will come together. And we are talking about those

06:51things now. Over the next two weeks, our committees will be talking together, House and Senate, so that when we send the bill over to the

06:57Senate after we continue to do the work and we've done a lot of it already, it's not going to be the first time they've seen it.

07:03So we want to process it moves quickly. President Trump, as you know, he's not somebody that wants to wait around for months.

07:10He wants to see the kind of economic growth and success so that families can get the benefits of what we do now, not have to wait till the

07:18end of the year. That's why we want to get it done by this summer. I'd love to see that bill on the president's desk by the end of May. And it can be.

07:24We want to get it done by the end of May. And it can be.

Steve Scalise Previews Next Steps After GOP Budget Resolution Barely Passes The House

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