07.24.25

Thune Joins the Ruthless Podcast

“[The One Big Beautiful Bill Act] was an incredibly comprehensive piece of legislation, and [the] most comprehensive and consequential legislation I’ve dealt with in my time in either the House or the Senate.”

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WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined the Ruthless podcast.

On the Big Beautiful Bill:

“It was an incredibly comprehensive piece of legislation, and [the] most comprehensive and consequential legislation I’ve dealt with in my time in either the House or the Senate. It really was generational. I mean, you talk about a piece of legislation that encompasses national security; border security; energy dominance; tax relief made permanent in a lot of cases; and frankly, the first entitlement reform, really, since I’ve been here.

“Then a whole bunch of other things that were accomplished in there, things that’ve been on our agenda for a long time, like school choice … And the fact that we were able to wrap it up by July 4 … And so it was an incredibly time consuming and exhausting process, but great to get across the finish line. And frankly … in all the time I’ve been here, if I don’t do anything else, this was, to me, … why you do this job.”

[…]

“Not only did we avoid the $4 trillion tax increase at the end of the year, but there were other pieces added to it: no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, increased deduction for seniors on Social Security … in the business space, a lot of what we did is we made it, made this stuff permanent.

“One of the reactions you’re seeing in the market right now is in response to the fact that there is now economic certainty around the tax code, instead of having to come back and do this in six or eight years … Bonus depreciation or interest deductibility, or R&D expensing, or the 199A deduction that small businesses take advantage of, and then there’s an additional expensing thing in there now for small businesses.”

On tax permanence:

“I think the certainty around the tax code, which is something that we fought really hard for … most of those provisions in the House-passed version of it expired in four or five years, and [the Senate] made all of that permanent, in addition to … all the individual stuff, with some exceptions, but mostly made permanent.

“I think those are huge features of our tax code that we haven’t had in a long time. Because, generally speaking, you have an expiration date and you’ve got to come back and start all over again … For the first time in a long time, we actually did something to bend the spending curve down … not only in the entitlement side, the mandatory side, but last week with the rescissions bill, the discretionary side.

“I think it’s sending a message to the markets, ‘Okay, we get it. Yes, we’ve got a problem.’ We’re $36, $37 trillion in debt, and we want pro-growth policies in the economy to get the economy growing and expanding, creating better-paying jobs, higher wages, all that. But … we’ve got to start bending that spending curve down. And I think the markets, hopefully at least, are reacting to that, and hope there’s more to come.”

On Democrats’ historic obstruction:

“The coin of the realm in the Senate is floor time. There’s a finite amount of it. The Dems know that. They’re going to burn as much as they can on noms … we’re about twice where the president was in 2017 in terms of noms across the finish line, but with zero Democrat cooperation.

“They are blocking and obstructing and delaying at every turn. The Trump Derangement Syndrome is at an all-time high right now in the Senate. But what that means is it’s just harder and harder – you have to file culture on every nom, then you’ve got to invoke cloture by having a vote. Then you’ve got intervening time periods on all this before you get to a final vote – and these are for bipartisan noms that’re noncontroversial.

“[Democrats are] doing it on everything. And I remind people that Trump is the first president in history that hasn’t had one of his noms by this point of his presidency confirmed either by unanimous consent or voice.”

[…]

“These [Democrats] are taking this to a whole new level … particularly when you’re talking about sensitive positions … that’re national security oriented.”

[…]

“Elizabeth Warren was holding up the chairman of the Joint Chiefs … somebody who came out of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I want to say, 24-3 or something like that, and she decides to block it on the floor… And here you’re going into a period where Congress isn’t going to be in session, and you’ve got a vacancy in the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and somebody nominated for that who came out of the committee with a huge bipartisan margin, and then they were willing to … shut the Senate down over that.”

On Democrats’ willingness to shut down the government:

“[Democrats] didn’t fund the government last year, so … it bled into this year, and we had that … April 14 deadline. And what I tried to do at the time was … get the House to move on a bill, and then have all Republican senators on board with it, have the president endorsing it, and basically put the Senate Democrats … you know, if the government’s going to shut down, it’s going to be on them.

“Now, [Republicans] typically … don’t win government shutdown fights, but I really felt like in that circumstance … we’d done everything we could to keep the government open, and then it was going to be up to Schumer. So Schumer, you know, they find the requisite number of votes to keep the government up and running, and he got just blown up for it … by his base.

“I think [Democrats are] going to be under an enormous amount of pressure come fall, which is why … we need to do everything we can – House Republicans, Senate Republicans, President Trump and his team – to … set it up for success, to keep the government up and funded.

“And then … Chuck Schumer … what’s he going to do? Is he going to bow to the Democrat base, or do the responsible thing and keep the government open? That’s the decision.”