Thune Joins the Hugh Hewitt Show

Click here to listen. WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined The Hugh Hewitt Show. On the Working Families Tax Cuts: “[The Working Families Tax Cuts was] the most consequential thing I’ve done in my time in public life … We got the first entitlement reform we’ve gotten in my entire time in office … getting rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicaid program, SNAP program, were historic in terms of their accomplishments … It included 100 pieces of legislation – school choice; ban on federal funding for Planned Parenthood … newborn accounts for kids; child care tax credit, something the Democrats talk about, but have never done anything about. “And this president, President Trump, working with a Republican Congress, achieved that … I think … as we talk about this out on the campaign trail, we’ve got to home in on the things that are impacting people’s daily lives and remind them about some of the things that we’ve accomplished.” On reconciliation: “We are looking for good ideas: ways to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in government, reform entitlement programs, make them run more efficiently, and obviously, look for tax policies that will allow the American people to keep more money in their pocket and quit sending so much to Washington. The one thing that’s clear in all the time I’ve been here, and that is that when Democrats are in power, they grow government, and it’s very, very hard to unwind that. “But even when they had unified control of the government during the Biden administration, they did two big reconciliation bills which dramatically expanded the size of government, spent $4 trillion and it wasn’t paid for, and created all kinds of crazy policies and Green New Deal policies that we’re now paying a price for and trying to go back and unwind. And that’s why it’s really important that we … keep majorities here in the Congress. “Right now with a Republican president, it’s a historic time. So if there’s another reconciliation bill that we think works and that we can get through both the House and the Senate, where the margins are very narrow, we’ll … take a hard look at it.” On preserving the filibuster: “This is a conversation … that’s gone on for many years, many decades, and through multiple administrations and congresses … The founders, when they designed the country, one of the ways they divided power was they took the Article I branch of the government and made it a bicameral process, in which one of the institutions, the United States Senate, was non-majoritarian. They wanted a counter-majoritarian institution and the Senate represents that. It’s hard … to explain, and not something that we all learn in civics growing up. But there’s a reason why the Senate is the way that it is. It’s designed to slow things down, make it more deliberative, and to give the minority in the country a voice in our government.” […] “Democrats have been the majority in the Senate more years than not, and their agenda is an aggressive, expansive agenda, because they’re all about growing government. And conservatives through the years have been able to use the filibuster to protect against a lot of crazy ideas that Democrats have – like expanding the Supreme Court and, you know, adding D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, and federalizing our elections, and abortion on demand, and … there’s a whole bunch … of crazy left ideas that they would turn to, were it not for the fact that Republicans were able to, because of the legislative filibuster, prevent that from happening.”