Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Steve Scalise (1st District of Louisiana)
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) appeared on Fox Business Network’s Kudlow to discuss the House Republican reconciliation bill heading to committee this week. Leader Scalise highlighted the critical tax cut extensions in the bill as well as the increased work requirements and integrity measures to protect social safety net programs.
Click here or the image above to view Leader Scalise’s full interview.
On promises delivered through the House’s reconciliation bill:“Larry, as you and I have talked about a number of times, you and I are both strong advocates of one big, beautiful bill for a number of reasons. You just had Russ Vought on. Russ is a great friend. Russ, we were actually talking to earlier today about some of this process. But ultimately, if you look at the various bills out there and the Senate’s doing their own thing, there’s only one bill that actually addresses all of the priorities and needs of President Trump and that’s the House bill because it doesn’t just deal with the border. We deal with the whole $175 billion that Russ Vought talked about to build the wall, to get the night vision goggles, the other technology like drones to our border agents, it deals with defense spending that we need to address. But it especially deals with making sure that we renew the Trump tax cuts and add those items like no tax on tips that President Trump talked about at every rally. This is not just a campaign platitude he laid out. He really believes in it because it’s important, and it’s something that a lot of people are counting on.“So we’re going to do all of those things in our bill. It starts with the budget. We’re finalizing the details with the Budget Committee. They’re looking to go on Thursday to actually move the budget out of committee. We still have a couple of final pieces we’re tweaking, but ultimately, Larry, I feel confident we’ll get there. Then we start the process. In the entire month of March – circle your calendar – you will see 11 different committees in the House taking action in the month of March to deliver on all of these promises. On top of that, one I didn’t even mention that will be in this one big, beautiful bill, American energy production, Larry. Finally, opening up from the Gulf of America in my district all the way up to ANWR and Alaska and every point in between. America is ready to produce more energy. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris shut it down. President Trump is going to open it back up again. It’s in our bill.”On the House’s timeline and need to achieve fair tax treatment for small businesses:“[A Thursday vote in the Budget Committee is] the plan right now. One or two little details that are important need to be worked out. We’re having conversations almost by the hour to resolve that. But we had a lot more things that needed to be worked out that we did work out, including last week when President Trump had us over to the White House, and we spent about five hours hammering out most of those details. And look, President Trump is very engaged in this. He cares about this a lot because it’s not just the campaign promises. He knows this is going to help get the economy moving again. And most important, Larry, this will put more money in the pockets of hardworking families.”If you don’t renew those tax cuts, for example, about 80% of all individual rates on American families will go up. The AMT, the alternative minimum tax, comes back and kicks middle-class families in the gut. Something known as 199A, which might not sound familiar to many people. Every small business in America knows what that means. That expires at the end of this year. That is the ability for a small business to get the same fair tax treatment that a large multinational corporation gets. You take that away from small business owners; they see about a doubling in their tax rate when a multinational corporation they compete with keeps a low 21% rate. That would crush many small businesses. We need to keep all those tax rates where they are. What Trump did in 2017 to lower those rates made America competitive, created millions of jobs, and put more money in the pockets of hardworking families. We don’t want that to go away. We want that growth and success to continue.”On stabilizing the economy by implementing work requirements and integrity measures: “You get this economy moving again like we did in 2017, you see economic growth like we’ve never seen before. And you see individual wealth, wealth for families at every income level. If you were lower middle income, you were struggling barely to get by that tax cut plan, put more money in the pockets of families, a lot of them to take a family vacation. Brett Baier asked the President in that clip you just ran, ‘How are you going to pay for it?’ Of course, nobody asked, if taxes go up on people, how do you pay for that? That would crush our economy. It would kick people who are already struggling, low and middle-income families, especially in the gut when they’re already down. Nobody seems to care about them except President Trump, which is why he got elected. But by the way, when you keep these good tax policies in place, you get that growth.”We’re also cutting waste; look at what DOGE is identifying. We’re also identifying similar waste, improper payments to people here illegally who are getting things like social security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, programs that good hard-working Americans paid into, illegals are coming and helping bankrupt. Why don’t we protect those programs by putting those integrity measures in place? That saves real money. Put work requirements on some of these welfare programs. There are a lot of people that are turning down work: 40-year-olds, able-bodied, sitting at home, maybe living in their mom’s basement, and they are turning down work. Why should you and I have to pay them to sit at home? They can sit at home. They shouldn’t be paid by taxpayers to do that when they can work in the real world and help contribute to society. By the way, when they go work, they can get out of their mom’s basement and go get their own place. We’re going to do those things, too. That helps pay for it, plus the economic growth that absolutely will come.”On the Congressional Budget Office:“So far, Congressional Budget Office, which we fight with a lot, but unfortunately, they are the designated ‘referee’ that we have to work with. They will not give you a score right now on what DOGE is doing, even though it could well be a trillion dollars, as Elon pointed out. What you’re seeing happen over on the other side, too. I mean, all of those things will yield significant money. Nobody really knows what the tariffs, reciprocal tariffs, however you want to lay them out, yielding President Trump says, trillions of dollars, even if it’s hundreds of billions of dollars, CBO won’t score it, but it will all go to deficit reduction to actually reduce our deficit, which is good for the overall economy, for the bond markets, and for inflation. Let’s go get it. One big bill, Larry.“They’re not going to write our bill. We are. Look, you’ve got a lot more understanding of what’s going to happen than they do. But ultimately, we’ve got to get moving, and we are. We’re going to deliver for President Trump and the American people.”