Source: United States Senator for South Carolina Tim Scott
Thursday | March 31, 2022
WASHINGTON – This week, Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) joined the Megyn Kelly Show for a discussion on President Biden’s handling of the economy, policing in America, workers’ rights, and much more.
On policing in America … “Police officers today are literally being shamed in streets, pushed around. They are having more violence against them than in the history of the country. … In big blue cities all across this country, homicide rates are up nearly 50 percent if not higher. … [There has been a] 70 percent increase in officers being shot in the last two years. Put those two statistics together; it’s an ugly reality for people growing up in poverty and in communities living on the margins like the one I grew up [in]. …
“Eighty percent plus [of] African-Americans agree with me on recent polling. They want more policing or the same level of policing in their neighborhoods. You don’t get there by defunding the police, by shaming the police, and by taking away the necessary qualified immunity that keeps them at work and able to defend themselves.”
On the Biden administration’s mishandling of the economy … “Let me just say it simply: The president and his administration fundamentally misunderstand the American economy. They obviously have not spent any time working in the private sector. Fifty years in the government is not good for understanding how the real world works.
“Kitchen table economists — also known as moms around the country — get this better than anybody else. Corporations write the check, but people pay the tax. That’s something we should always remember. So when you take the tax from 21 percent to 28 percent, you’re only increasing … the burden on everyday people who are buying those products [by a third]. … There are countries today that are trying to get into the teens in their corporate tax rate. That means that we’re heading in the wrong direction.
On prioritizing kids above labor unions … “There’s no doubt that the Democrat Party and especially the progressive wing — I’m not sure that there’s actually a difference anymore — has been wed to the labor unions more than they have [been] to the kids. … One of the reasons why we are the party of parents is we want to make sure that parents are much more in charge of the education pathways of their kids. What stands in the way of that? Big labor unions in education. …
“It’s one of the reasons why, Megyn, for the first time — at least in my lifetime — African-American support of school choice is over 70 percent, Hispanics around 77 percent, working class families [is] 80 percent. Something is fundamentally broken in education, and the parents want to be responsible for their kids and hold big labor unions accountable for the misdirection of America’s education system.”
On workers’ rights … “Ninety percent of labor union spending on politics — on elections — [goes] to Democrats. Now, interestingly enough, Megyn, about 40 to 45 percent of the members of unions vote for Republicans. So they literally have no control over how their dues are being spent. It’s one of the reasons why, in my Employee Rights Act, the legislation that I sponsored, we’re trying to make sure that we empower the union members to decide whether or not you can use their dues for elections … We want to make sure that the workers of the future are in charge of the workplace, and what the Democrats want is centralized control of every facet of your life to include your workplace. That’s the wrong direction for America. That’s going backwards, not to our future.”
On President Biden’s failed leadership … “I haven’t seen this number of missteps in a row in my lifetime by a United States president. The American presidency is ultimately the platinum standard of leadership. And now it might be copper because literally we’ve lost a lot of the shine on the leadership posture that we have held in this world for my entire lifetime. It cannot be going much worse for the administration as it relates to their inability to make a decision and stick with it.”
On the crisis in Ukraine and the need for American strength … “Here’s what the Ukrainian people, the liberty-loving, freedom-defending people of Ukraine want. They want the resources to defend their nation. And too often our president has been slow in delivering the resources and the weapons they need to do the work. …
“There’s no question that the Russians continue to look for a reason to talk about escalation. The fact of the matter is, every time President Biden takes a step back, the Russians and Putin take a step forward. There are very, very few things that we can do to stop the escalation. Giving the Ukrainians the resources and the weapons necessary to do so is one of the things I believe that Putin would respond to. He’s a thug. He responds to power. Without that, he doesn’t respond at all. … We need an American strength now more than ever.”
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