United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, today joined Squawk Box on CNBC to discuss his endorsement of Senator Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader, along with Congress’ role in working with the Trump Administration to implement President Donald Trump’s economic agenda.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on endorsing Senator Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader: “I campaigned with President Trump throughout the past six weeks—I was on the trail with potential Senate candidates—what I could feel is very real. There’s a palpable desire for change here in America. And what I’ve told each of the candidates is that it’s absolutely critical that they work arm-in-arm and hand-in-hand with President Trump as he effects the agenda that the American public overwhelmingly voted for, an agenda that they’ve supported, and that we’ve seen absolute support that we haven’t seen in decades. [It’s been] thirty-six years since we’ve seen a landslide like this; that is a sea change. And I came out after the election and said, I’m going to endorse Rick Scott, because his stated positions are most aligned with the Trump agenda. I’ve seen many more Senators come along and say that they’re going to vote for Rick Scott too—we’ll find out later this morning—but that would be my expectation right now. We’re going to see a major change here in the Senate.”
Hagerty on carrying out the Trump agenda: “I think given the magnitude of the landslide that President Trump won with, if we don’t step up and address the agenda that he ran on, that’s where we run the risk of losing our majority. I think we’ve got to step up and deliver on the promises that were made. That’s our objective right now, and President Trump is putting [highly qualified people] in place. Look at the government efficiency department that he’s putting in place with Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, two extraordinarily talented individuals that will look at, what I see, as the most ineffective bureaucracy that I’ve ever dealt with. There’s a huge opportunity to reduce costs there. You think about the deregulatory thrust that President Trump will put in place, he’s going to put us back into the oil and gas business again. Every one of these activities will lower inflation. That’s going to have a dampening effect on inflation; it seems that most of the analysts are looking at the tax package that’ll come through. Again, the Treasury Secretary, whomever that is, needs to be one hundred and twenty percent focused on bringing together a tax package early next year that incentivizes more capital investment in America. We’re not talking about the cuts; we’re talking about incentives that will create more opportunity here in a faster growing economy. That’s the focus here. And if we can deliver that, I think the American public are going to resoundingly support us.”
Hagerty on Congress’ role in working with the Department of Government Efficiency: “I think we’ll have to look at what they come up with and decide what can be done rapidly through Executive Orders [and] what we can put into legislative product here. And again, that’s why I think it’s critical that we have a leader that’s fully aligned with the program. That’s what we’re going to need; that’s what the American public expects. And it’ll be a mix of outcomes, but we’re ready to work in the Senate and the House of Representatives, I’m sure as well, to align ourselves and make certain that we deliver a more efficient and a more effective economy for the American people so that their lives can get better again […] I think we can find near-term opportunities, low hanging fruit that we should go after with Gusto. At the same time, I hope President Trump does challenge them to come up with an overarching framework that we can use, both legislatively and through Executive Orders, to come in and make major change that will improve the efficiency of what is the world’s largest bureaucracy. It’s got to be addressed—it needs a hard look—and I can’t imagine two more talented people to lead that effort than Elon and Vivek.”
Hagerty on a Trump tax package: “If you think about, again, what the Treasury Secretary’s charge is—getting a tax package through early in this coming year—that will incentivize investment, that will help lay the groundwork for high growth here in America, [which is] is going to be absolutely critical. The two things together will create an expanding economy [and] at the same time, a more efficient government. That’s a great way to get at the deficit problem that we’re facing.”
Hagerty on the necessity of reciprocity in tariffs: “There are multiple vectors here that we’ve got to work on. But if you think about tariffs, there’s been a lot of angst over this. But look back in history. After World War II, the United States put in place very favorable trade terms with [certain] countries…whose economies have been devastated. We should have time limited that. We should have put some sort of limitation because these are fully developed economies now. We were worried back at that time that they would turn toward communism and socialism. That’s not the case; they’re fully developed economies. Yet, they have much more favorable trade terms than we do. We do not have reciprocal arrangements there. That needs to be fixed. As we do that, I think what we’re going to see is more manufacturing move back on shore; I just saw that Steve Madden is going to bring more shoe operations here. That’s good for America re-building our manufacturing base is critical for our national security. At the same time, let’s incentivize more investment. Let’s make it easier to invest here, and let’s get regulators back to the point of regulating markets as they should, rather than trying to implement social policy that creates all types of added confusion and, certainly, extra cost. Let’s make this market as strong as possible, and I think we’ll see America thriving like never before. We saw it in the first Trump Administration.”
