WASHINGTON, D.C.—House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo yesterday to discuss a path forward on immigration that implements President Trump’s priorities of securing the border and ending the visa lottery program. Additionally, they discussed how Republican tax cuts and regulatory relief have led to the economic boom we are seeing in our country right now.
Click here or on the image above to watch the interview.
On a path forward on immigration and revisiting the farm bill:
“The farm bill we brought to the floor that actually had the strong support of the President. He tweeted out in support of it the night before. We want to get it done. We’re going to come back to it and get it done. It has real work requirements and I think this is something most Americans can strongly agree with. If you want to be on welfare it should be a safety net. If you are able to work you shouldn’t be on welfare and we should put work requirements in place. The farm bill does it. We’re going to come back to that. This was about immigration and ultimately the timing of when we bring an immigration bill to the floor. We are going to bring the Goodlatte-McCaul bill to the floor. I think that’s the right answer. It deals with wall funding. It secures the border. It also solves the DACA program in a way that we are in sync with the President. Unfortunately, the votes aren’t there yet to pass it. We are working on some other alternatives with President Trump so that we can be in sync.”
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“We are also working with the President to see if there’s some third alternative. I don’t want to see the DREAM Act come to the floor, which is pure amnesty with no border protection, no wall. That is not the answer. Amnesty is not the answer. But we need to find an alternative path because right now the votes are not there to do what I think is the right approach. There are no Democrats that support building the wall with a fair approach to DACA that allows people to become citizens just by getting in line like everybody else and no path to amnesty. That’s the divide right now, but we’re working with the president to get this done.”
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“I think [the Freedom Caucus] wanted to see the Goodlatte-McCaul bill brought up before the farm bill. This is a tactic issue. We all want the same thing. We all want to get to the same end result. We are working with the Freedom Caucus and we’re not that far apart. They just didn’t want to vote on the farm bill on Friday. They want to vote on it soon with us to get it passed. We are working on the timing and we’re working with President Trump because I think it’s important that we’re all on the same page on how to address DACA and fund the wall and secure the border.”
On Republicans’ focus on the economy and the importance of getting people back into the workforce:
“Chairman Kevin Brady of the Ways and Means Committee wants to do a phase two of the tax cut bill. I think you still see the great economic news. People are seeing more money in their pockets and they are seeing companies hiring. These are all great signs. We need to get work requirements in welfare because now companies are looking to hire people. Why should people that are able-bodied be sitting at home getting taxpayer money when they could be out in the workforce and become part of the American dream? That’s going to be the next phase. Again, I think we need to get back to the farm bill. We’ll get that done. We need to bring an immigration bill to the floor. At least President Trump wants to solve this problem. Barack Obama created the DACA problem without ever trying to solve it. Nancy Pelosi, when she was in charge, she never tried to solve this problem until she lost the speakership. This is about politics. We want to solve problems.”
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“We were able to get at least a down payment on the wall to get over 100 new miles of border wall funded. We all want to get the rest done too. We want to work with President Trump to get that. Obviously, Democrats are blocking it. I think Democrats are making a big mistake to double down on being against tax cuts and being against border security. However you feel about DACA and how to solve that problem, which we want to solve, they are standing in the way of actually securing our border, which most Americans agree should be a top priority. We want to work with President Trump to get that done.”
On priorities for the rest of the Congress:
“Well the battle for keeping the House, number one focuses on staying on track on getting the economy moving again, which we’ve started to do with the tax cut bill. Most Americans, their main focus is still the economy and we’ve been laser focused on getting the economy moving again, working with the President who gets it, who understands that. Getting rid of regulations and cutting taxes is really a recipe for getting the economy moving again and it’s worked. Nancy Pelosi, if she were Speaker, has already said she would raise taxes on all of those hard-working families who are finally seeing some more money in their pocket. She also wants to bring that regulatory state back, when you had regulations that were out of control. We’re not going to let that happen… We’re going to continue to focus on the things that matter for families: getting the economy moving again, securing our border and making sure that we have a military that’s properly funded and we’re taking care of our men and women in uniform. That’s going to be our main focus, working with the President who wants to get that done as well.”
On the FBI Investigation:
“I’m real concerned again when you see all of the leaks. You just saw Chairman Nunes talk about the problems that he’s experiencing. They can’t get the right documents from the FBI. Yet every conversation they have is leaked out like a sieve. The FBI needs to get their house back in order. They need to stop running around on witch hunts and focus on their main objectives and that’s helping keep this country safe.”
On the Santa Fe High School shooting:
“It’s another horrible tragedy. it’s so sad to see what happened. Unfortunately, there’s something going on with our young kids that we’ve got to focus on and find out what the real problem is. Here was a case where it wasn’t the kid that everybody thought like at Parkland, half the kids thought that kid would be a school shooter. Here that wasn’t as much the case, yet something went horribly wrong. There were guns around for decades and you didn’t have these kinds of school shootings. This is something that we have to figure out what’s going on in the culture with our young kids that would cause somebody to flip like this and go do something so horrible.”