Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), a member of the Senate Banking and Senate Budget committees, joined Larry Kudlow on Fox Business today to discuss the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package unveiled last night by Senate Democrats and the ongoing negotiations over a bipartisan infrastructure bill. Excerpts and video of the full interview are below.
On Reconciliation and Tax Increases:
“While the pandemic goes away and the economy opens up, the last thing you should do is screw it up with tax increases. I – just for the life of me – can’t see the logic in any of this because Joe Biden is going to go down as the President who did more to a destroy a growing economy than anyone else.”
“I haven’t talked to a small business owner who is saying, ‘please increase my taxes. I would love for you to increase my taxes. By the way, increase taxes for all the people who buy stuff from me and raise the taxes on all the people I buy stuff from in the supply chain.’ Nobody is calling for an increase in taxes that I talk to. Certainly not in the business world.”
On Reconciliation’s Path Forward:
“It only takes one Democrat with a brain and a conscience in the Senate to kill it. I actually think there is as much chance the House upends this thing as the Senate itself because there are an awful lot of, first of all moderate Democrats in the House seeing the political tea leaves, and they feel fortunate to have skated by in the last election. They could lose their majority over this.”
On Climate Change Efforts:
“If the stated goal is to reduce the climate change effects, the best thing to do is invest in American energy and American energy of all types because even fossil fuels in the United States – our friend Joe Manchin describes this for coal better than anybody – if you are going to invest in fossil fuels, at the very least invest in American fossil fuels because we produce it cleaner, we manufacture with it cleaner, we generate electricity with it cleaner. We are always improving, and we have nothing to apologize for. While China builds hundreds of more coal-fired power plants, they’re not meeting our standards. So for the life of me there is no good outcome in what the Biden proposal states. It certainly isn’t going to reach their goal of, you know, a cleaner, greener, environment on climate.”
On Pay-fors:
“The pay-fors, Larry, are more than a small problem. The IRS pay-fors you’re talking about is wrong on every level, and not the least of which because for the last year-and-a-half my staff has been taking all the calls from my constituents who can’t get anybody on the phone from the IRS because they don’t go to work. Now we’ll pay tens of thousands of more people not to go to work at the IRS and somehow think that will generate more money? The IRS is not the problem with our revenue short falls. The problem with revenue shortfalls is the spending side.”