WASHINGTON, D.C.— House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox Business Network’s Mornings with Maria Bartiromo this morning to discuss how American families and workers are already winning as over 100 companies announce bonuses and increased wages, hiring, and investments a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, less than two weeks after it has been signed into law.

Click here or on the image above to see his full interview.

 

On the economic wins of tax reform:

“It really is unbelievable to see just how many companies have stepped up. They’re paying their workers more, giving bonuses, and it’s a lot of big companies. We keep a a list of them now on my website, majoritywhip.gov/TaxReformWorks where you can literally see this list that’s growing daily. But it’s small businesses too. In fact today I’m touring some small businesses in my district who, using the tax cut bill, are increasing pay, are hiring more workers – this is the kind of economic boost we’ve needed for a long time. We worked really hard to get it done, but it’s great to see it working for families [and] for taxpayers who have been wanting this for so long.” 

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“Look, President Trump said when he was running that we’re going to win so much we’re going to get tired of winning. I never get tired of winning. But it’s great to see jobs being created, it’s great to see this economic – just the confidence that is out there, not only by companies talking about hiring more workers and expanding in America, but now you’re starting to see families make additional investments. And if they get that pay raise in their paychecks come February, many people are going to be able to make that decision to go on a family vacation or even to buy their first home, so that’s what you want to see, give people more money, they’re actually going to do a lot more better things with it than government will.”

On the importance of reaching a spending deal:

“If you go back to September the House passed a bill to fully fund government using the conservative priorities that we have. It never went anywhere in the Senate but, at the same time, I really do think you are seeing movement on getting a two-year budget agreement. And why that is important is especially for our men and women in uniform. You know, you look at our Department of Defense, you look at the just the tools that our war fighters need that are out there protecting our freedoms, and they haven’t gotten the tools they need. We need to make sure that we properly fund the men and women in uniform that are serving in our military to protect our country. That’s at the heart of getting a two-year budget agreement, and then you can move from there to do the things you need to do to continue to rein in agencies. Look, President Trump has done a great job on regulatory relief, and Maria, I think you know that’s one of the reasons we’re seeing so much economic growth. I would like to see as us lock a lot of those regulatory reforms in so there’s not that uncertainty that eight years from now, [at] some later time things might change again.”

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“I think, Maria, it’s critical that it takes place. You know, obviously we have been working very hard and Speaker Ryan has been leading the effort from the House side to get that budget agreement and you saw just a few weeks ago the Democrats walked away from table. That was in the middle of a lot of these discussions we were having on moving this tax cut bill through so I think they wanted to try to disrupt that. They weren’t successful, we passed the tax cut bill so now that’s beyond us, so let’s actually focus on getting a real agreement so that we don’t leave our Defense Department hanging out there, you don’t see all these planes as you mentioned are literally – for every five planes, there’s one sitting on the tarmac being harvested for parts because they can’t get parts for the other four.”

On the need for appropriating funds for a border wall:

“I think we will. I think we need to. This is a commitment President Trump made, but the country had a say in this. When they elected Donald Trump as President, one of the forefront issues was making sure that we build the wall and I think it is important that Congress follow through on that. That’s surely part of the discussions that we’re having on a budget agreement. And as you are talking about DACA – look, I’m not for amnesty, but I do think there are a lot of other things short of amnesty that you can do to make our legal system of immigration work even better. Again, we are the most generous nation in the world – we let a million people into our country legally every year – let’s make that system work better while we secure our border and start to build that wall and do the other things you need to do to make sure that we have a secure border like so many other countries have.” 

 

On mandatory spending reforms:

“[Social security and Medicare reform] are a real priority. In the budget we passed in the House we actually tackle the potential bankruptcy of Medicare, we have a plan to save Medicare from bankruptcy, we passed it in the House time and time again. Every Democrat, unfortunately, votes against it, but we still passed it because it’s responsible for seniors and for younger people to know that there’s going to be a program in place that works. As it relates to other spending programs, the mandatory spending is place you’ve really got to go to solve and balance the federal budget. President Trump has made it clear, and we in the House have made it clear that we want to go into some of these mandatory programs like welfare. As you see more people looking for workers -there’s going to be a need for workers in 2018 and beyond, Maria, and so what we need to do is – all these people that we are paying over $30,000 a year not to work, there are a lot of able-bodied people that are capable of getting into the workforce. We need to reform these welfare programs and put work requirements in place that will actually save hundreds of billions of dollars and get more people in the workforce. And let’s go reform the Medicaid program, which, by the way, is the broken most broken form of health care. There are a lot of innovate ideas you can do giving states more flexibility that will actually save a lot of money and increase health outcomes. Let’s work on that too this year.”