Thune Joins Guy Benson on Fox News Radio

“We want this to actually start bending the curve of spending down, bending the deficits in the right direction, and with pro-growth policies and getting more, generating more revenue from the growth of the economy, you can start seeing this thing come into balance.”

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WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) joined Guy Benson on Fox News Radio.

On providing resources to secure the southern border:

“[Y]ou can’t get around what's happening within L.A. today and what’s happened at the border for the last four years. I mean, they are inextricably linked. And it’s created this environment of lawlessness … we are a nation of laws and … I think that’s what this conversation has been about.

“The president ran on this, he’s worked very hard since he became president to make sure that we’ve got a secure border, and I think with incredibly positive effects … I think … some of the elements that you see in the sanctuary cities, sanctuary states today are a result of very lax enforcement of laws in the past, starting with our border.

“So the intergenerational investment that’s being made in the border will hire more ICE and CBP agents, it will finish the wall, and ensure the president is able to complete his agenda when it comes to cleaning up what I think was the … Biden border crisis. It was created by President Biden. I mean, you had four years of just an open border and 20 million people coming into the country illegally. So these issues are linked.

“What we need in this country is law and order, we don’t need chaos … I’m hoping that … cooler heads will prevail, and that some of these leaders in these states and communities will recognize that their constituents are looking to them to ensure that they have a safe and secure place in which to live and raise their families.”

On restoring fiscal sanity:

“[T]here are lots of other folks out there who have run models that suggest that the growth generated by the pro-growth aspects of this tax policy, energy policy, and some of the other things, will generate more growth in the economy, way more than what the CBO projects. The CBO uses what we call kind of a static scoring model. In other words, they assume everything’s going to stay the same, maybe we get a little bit uptick in growth in the economy.

“The kinds of changes that we’re making, we believe, are going to have a dramatic effect on the economy, and a lot of the scorekeeping models out there reflect that. And so as you put pro-growth policies in place, you get more growth, coupled with the … $1.5 to $2 trillion in spending reductions included in here, and you combine those, and you end up not increasing the deficit but reducing it, and reducing it fairly significantly.

“That’s our goal in the Senate. We want this to actually start bending the curve of spending down, bending the deficits in the right direction, and with pro-growth policies and getting more, generating more revenue from the growth of the economy, you can start seeing this thing come into balance.”

On Republicans’ priorities in budget reconciliation:

“[W]e want to make sure that we’re addressing the needs of the American people and the campaign commitments the president made when he ran, and a lot of our folks who ran this last time, too. The issues really were the border, so it’s about securing the border, making an intergenerational investment there, and making sure the president has the infrastructure in place for long-term security.

“Obviously, modernizing our military. It makes historic investments in military defense capabilities to keep, you know, Americans safe and to deter conflicts around the world.

“Keep taxes low. If we don’t take action, there will be a $4 trillion tax increase at the end of this year, 2.6 trillion, of which would fall on those making under $400,000 a year.

“Unleashing American energy dominance … producing American energy that will help fight inflation and also provide the power and the juice that our job creators in this country need…

“A return to fiscal sanity. We’ve got the largest reduction of mandatory government spending in history included in this bill that came over from the House, and we’re trying to improve upon it, strengthen it … tweak it in ways that we think makes it a stronger bill in the end…

“The magic is getting to 51 and 218 and then being able to put a bill on the president’s desk. So as we work through it, we’re hearing from everybody. We’re hearing from all spectrums of our conference and lots of different points of view about … what we ought to be doing to put the Senate print on it, but at the end of the day, we’re going to get this done.”