Fox News "Fox News Sunday" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Lindsey Graham

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

And joining us now from South Carolina, GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, who is working with Democrats in at least one area.

Senator, welcome back to "FOX News Sunday".

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Thank you.

WALLACE: You're a member of the so-called bipartisan Group of 21, which is

10 Democratic senators and 11 Republican senators, who've come up with a roughly $1 trillion package on infrastructure.

A couple of questions. First of all, how close are you to a deal with the White House? And what's the effective deadline for reaching an agreement?

GRAHAM: Well, I think -- I'm the newest member so I got a call from Rob Portman, would you like to join the group? And I said, yes, because I'd like to get something done.

I think the difference between this negotiation and the earlier negotiation is that we're willing to add more new money to infrastructure in this package and I am hopeful if the White House and Joe Biden stay involved, we can get there.

I would just say this: President Biden, if you want an infrastructure deal of a trillion dollars, it's there for the taking. You just need to get involved and lead.

WALLACE: Democrats on the left say -- again, on the left say that the only way they'll agree to this bipartisan infrastructure package is if there's another, separate, much bigger, maybe even $6 trillion --

GRAHAM: Right.

WALLACE: -- spending and tax package --

GRAHAM: Right.

WALLACE: -- that would be passed on a straight party line vote through the Senate. Take a look.

GRAHAM: Right.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): I think it would be very difficult to find the votes for that in the House unless there was a simultaneous movement and agreement of the full reconciliation package with 50 votes in the Senate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Question, Senator: would you support -- will you support and infrastructure compromise with Democrats if you understand that at the same time, they may pass a separate $6 trillion spending and big tax package on a straight party line vote in the Senate?

GRAHAM: That could be very problematic. I'm going to sit down and talk with my colleagues.

But $6 trillion being spent through reconciliation is more money than we spent two win World War II. Infrastructure to me is roads and bridges and ports -- and electrical vehicles are fine. I don't want to raise taxes to pay for it.

But the gas tax hasn't been adjusted for inflation, the federal gas tax, since the 1990s. I would be willing to do that. An infrastructure bank is on the table, using unspent COVID money.

So I would just say to President Biden, you've got a party that's divided.

You've got a Republican Party that's willing to meet you in the middle for a trillion dollars of infrastructure that could fundamentally change the way America does business in roads, ports, and bridges and accelerate electrical vehicles. You've got to decide what kind of president you are and what kind of presidency you want.

So, if you want to work with Republicans to spend a trillion dollars of -- on infrastructure, it's available to you. If you don't want to go that route and you pick a $6 trillion reconciliation package, I think you'll get a lot of pushback from every Republican.

WALLACE: So just to button this up, you're saying that you could not vote for the compromise in one area if there's this other big spending and tax package in another?

GRAHAM: That would be a problem for me. I'll have to talk to the rest of my colleagues but that is a -- that will be a very big sticking point because $6 trillion is more than we spent on World War II. And what they're calling infrastructure, the liberal left, to me, is not remotely related to what's traditionally been called infrastructure. It's just -- it's just a power grab by the Democratic Party in every area of our lives.

WALLACE: So let me move on to another area because Senator Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, is going to bring up a voting rights bill this week and the centrist moderate, always, maybe the most powerful man in the Senate, Joe Manchin, is going to offer --

GRAHAM: Right, right.

WALLACE: -- his stripped-down version of that bill this week.

And I want to put up the main elements of the Manchin proposal.

Make election to a holiday. Mandate at least 15 days of early voting. Ban partisan gerrymandering, and use computer models and require a voter ID.

Now, Senator, Manchin took out a lot of the basic Senate plans, S-1, the For the People Act, like --

GRAHAM: Yeah.

WALLACE: -- public financing of congressional elections. Can you go along with the Manchin stripped-down version? And if not, why not?

GRAHAM: Well, one, I like Joe Manchin a lot, but we had the largest turnout in the history of the United States and states are in charge of voting in America.

So I don't like the idea of taking the power to redistrict away from state legislators. You're having people move from red -- blue states to red states. Under this proposal, you would have some kind of commission, redraw the new districts, and I don't like that. I want states where people are moving to have control over how to allocate new congressional seats.

So, as much as I like Joe Manchin, the answer would be no.

In my view, SR-1 is the biggest power grab in the history of the country.

It mandates ballot harvesting, no voter ID. It does away with the states being able to redistrict when you have population shifts. And it's just a bad idea and it's a problem that most Republicans are not going to sign -- they're trying to fix a problem most Republicans have a different view of.

WALLACE: Now, Joe Manchin would say, look, a lot of the stuff that you just objected to is not in my bill.

He --

GRAHAM: Yeah.

WALLACE: -- his is a stripped-down version and he doesn't talk about an independent commission. He just says ban partisan gerrymandering.

GRAHAM: Yeah.

WALLACE: And as you know, the Constitution does provide for federal oversight of state elections.

GRAHAM: Yeah.

WALLACE: Here's the practical question here. If you kill vote -- if Republicans vote, as it appears you're going to, to kill the Manchin version of voting rights, you've already, Republicans voted to kill the bipartisan January 6th commission looking into the insurrection of the Capitol, do you run the risk that Manchin and a couple of other moderate senators will eventually say, look, bipartisanship isn't working and, you know what, we're not going to kill the filibuster but we're going to reduce the number of votes you need to stop a debate from 60 to 55? Do you run that risk?

GRAHAM: I hope not because I was in Joe Manchin's shoes. I like Joe Manchin. I'm willing work with him and infrastructure. We're very close on police reform.

We haven't talked about police reform but I think that we can get there. I think Tim Scott and Cory Booker and the rest of us are very close to a police reform package that would be bipartisan.

But when we had the House and the Senate and the White House under President Trump, I had a bunch of Democrats wanting to sign a letter with me protecting the filibuster. Every one of those Democrats have fled for the Hills.

So I was beat on every day. Why don't you give in and agree with President Trump to change the rules so we can get the Trump agenda through? I said, no, I don't think it would be good for the country.

Never once did I go to Joe Manchin or any other Democrat and say, if you don't do some of the things I want, I'm going to agree with Trump to change the rules.

I'm not going to be extorted here. I'm asking no more of my Democratic colleagues then I ask of myself. It was very unpleasant to be beat on every day by the president of the United States, President Trump, and his allies, to try to change the rules in the Senate to have their way. I said no because it's bad for the Senate.

I hope these Democrats understand it's bad for the Senate to change the rules, and I don't want to be extorted. I've got to give two or three things before they will not change the rules.

I don't like that at all. I didn't do that to them and I wish they would not do this to me.

WALLACE: All right. I've got two questions I want to squeeze in in the next three minutes. So, let's try -- let's try to do that.

GRAHAM: Right, we can do it.

WALLACE: The Supreme Court voted 7-2 -- all right -- the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to uphold Obamacare and two of the justices named by Donald Trump, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, voted along to uphold Obamacare.

Now, were you disappointed in that?

GRAHAM: Right. Well, I was a bit surprised but I accept the outcome.

So much for Amy Coney Barrett being a religious zealot at all the demagoguery attached to her nomination. So I think what the justices did, say that once you zero out the individual mandate or zero tax, the states complaining about it really could show injury.

From a conservative point of view, that decision made sense to me. I'd love to get rid of Obamacare, but the standing issue decided the case and Barrett and Kavanaugh took a very reasoned, conservative approach. So there you go.

(LAUGHTER)

WALLACE: That's right. Listen --

(CROSSTALK)

GRAHAM: -- too (ph) bad, too (ph) bad. And it ain't going to change.

WALLACE: Finally, foreign policy. A hard-liner, Ebrahim Raisi, has been elected the new president of Iran.

The Biden administration reportedly wants to conclude a nuclear deal before Raisi takes office in six weeks.

How do you think his election affects those talks?

GRAHAM: Well, number one, a moderate member -- there are no moderates on the ballot in Iran. The ayatollah is a religious Nazi, he controls the place. Religious zealots run the place. Why in the world do you want to give massive enrichment capability to the most -- the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, I don't know.

There's a better way Iran can have nuclear power. We'll have an international fuel bank. They don't need to make their own fuel. I think the Arabs would agree to that construct.

So the idea of going back into negotiations with the ayatollah and his henchmen is insane. The Israelis hate this, right, center, left. The Arabs are scared to death. They're going to be in the nuclear arms race.

If you go back into this deal with the Iranians, you're going to have a nuclear arms race in the Mideast and you're going to put Israel in a box so they have to use military force.

To my friends on the Biden demonstration, there's a better way. If they want nuclear power, the Iranians, they can have it. If they want a bomb, they're not going to get it. They don't need to enrich to have nuclear power.

WALLACE: Senator Graham, thank you. Thanks for your time this week. And I must say you're in a very good mood.

GRAHAM: Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source