CNN "State of the Union" - TRANSCRIPT Interview With Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX); Interview With Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA); Interview With Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX); Interview With Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX); Aired 9-10a ET

Interview

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Congressman Dan Crenshaw joins me now.

Thanks so much for being here. We really appreciate it.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW (R-TX): Thank you.

TAPPER: Let's take a listen to what Speaker McCarthy had to say about the path forward for House Republicans after he was elected early, early, early Saturday morning.

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TAPPER: Is...

(LAUGHTER)

TAPPER: Was that your takeaway...

(LAUGHTER)

TAPPER: ... that it really built a trust with one another and learned how to work together?

CRENSHAW: I actually do agree with that more than I disagree with it.

TAPPER: You do?

CRENSHAW: You opened up with all terrorists comments. I do have to address that, right?

TAPPER: Please.

CRENSHAW: Look, things get heated and things get said.

Obviously, to people who took offense by that, it's pretty obvious that it's meant as a turn of phrase in the...

TAPPER: It's a metaphor. You're not...

CRENSHAW: It's in the context of intransigent negotiations. I -- look, I have got pretty thick skin. I'm called awful, vile things

by the -- kind of the very same wing of the party that I'm fighting, I was fighting at that moment. So I was a little taken aback by the...

TAPPER: Sensitivity?

CRENSHAW: Yes, by the sensitivity of it.

But to the extent that I have colleagues that were offended by it, I sincerely apologize to them. I don't want them to think I actually believe they're terrorists. It's clearly a turn of phrase that you use in what is an intransigent negotiation.

It's important to note the reason that the 200 were so upset was because we felt we'd already come to the agreement that we have now. This was not new. We had this stuff. And early on in that week, before we had taken a single vote in a conference with everyone there, Kevin McCarthy had asked one of the leaders of this group, what else do you want? Let's make this work. What else do you want?

And they couldn't answer in that moment. And that was a real turning point for a lot of people. That was what created all of that animosity throughout the week, because it's not as if we were fighting over something.

[09:20:03]

It wasn't as if we were trying to stop them from getting something that they wanted. It's that we didn't know what they wanted. So that's the only thing that Chip Roy and I will disagree on. There's going to be different narratives on whose fault that was at the negotiation table.

But I agree with everything Chip just said. I have just listened to that whole interview. Chip and I are good friends. And I absolutely agree that the new rules and the new way of doing business is good, for all the reasons that he just said.

TAPPER: So he said he didn't have those -- they didn't have those -- that deal set until they voted on Friday morning, that -- I mean, you saw -- on Thursday, we all thought that the negotiations had ended, and we had three more votes where McCarthy lost.

So, I mean, they -- he says, no, that's not right. We didn't have this deal until Friday morning.

CRENSHAW: And I don't -- and I believe him when he says he was trying to make that deal throughout the week, but he's one of the few.

There was no reason for us to keep voting, keep voting, keep -- keep -- keep allowing these speeches that just degraded and diminished and insulted Kevin McCarthy. We didn't have to keep doing that. We could have just adjourned for the whole week and just kept negotiating.

TAPPER: Yes.
CRENSHAW: So that's where the heartburn is. And that's what I want people to know that. This deal was easy. That wasn't the hard part, right?

There's not as much disagreement as everyone thinks on how that rules package went by and what some of the new changes needed to be. The only thing I will disagree with this group on is that it could have been done earlier. And so that's what justifies the animosity that occurred all week.

TAPPER: Sure.

CRENSHAW: And it seemed very, very pointless.

TAPPER: The -- one of the concessions that got made is that -- and you heard Chip Roy just acknowledge this -- is that the deal will cap domestic spending 2022 levels for fiscal year 2024, which would result in tens of billions of dollars not going to the Pentagon, not going for defense.

Are you OK with that?

CRENSHAW: No, I think it's more complicated than that.

TAPPER: OK.

CRENSHAW: The deal that I understand is, you got to balance the budget in a 10-year window. So that that's the deal. And that baseline for that balancing is at 2022 levels.

That does not necessarily mean there's automatic cuts to the defense budget. That's going to get worked out in the appropriations process. And I think Chip would agree with this and all of them would agree with this. The big thing they're trying to push -- and they're totally right to push for this -- is regular order, regular order, where we actually set budget limits and we actually push 12 appropriations bills and we do our best...

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: And anybody can introduce an amendment at the time for the appropriation -- legislative process?

CRENSHAW: Right. Now, it makes it messy. It makes it time-consuming. But it does make members feel like they actually have a voice.

And the other -- the other thing we have to work together as a team on now is the leverage of the Senate to do the same thing, because they're the ones who never do this process.

TAPPER: Yes.

CRENSHAW: So, again, there's just -- there's not a lot of heartburn over what the asks were. Our heartburn was just that this could have been done without all the drama.

TAPPER: If this ends up in tens of billions of dollars being cut from the Pentagon budget, will that bother you?

CRENSHAW: It could, right?

I want to do what's right for the Pentagon. I also want them to spend their money better,OK? I think we can -- I think we can use the money at the Pentagon, make it go a lot further. I think we need to be investing in what are probably very expensive new weapons systems, new technologies that help us compete with China.

So -- but there's not a lot of disagreements on that in the conference. We have got to be doing what's right. The government has spent a lot of money, added a lot of extra programs, budget items to agencies that probably didn't need them. The EPA never needed tens of billions of new dollars going towards it over these last couple of years. It has.

There's probably going to be plenty of places to cut. And so I think we're going to be OK. Every budget process is messy. The more that you actually have everyone involved in it, the less likely it is that it gets blown up at the end, which is why I told you I actually do agree with what Kevin said in the beginning, that clip you played.

It is important to get some of this out, to get some of these grievances out at a time like this, because it does shock people a little bit. And it does get you into this phase where, you know what? We do need to bring everybody in on some of these issues much earlier.

TAPPER: You agree with Kevin McCarthy when he said that no one should doubt Trump's influence, that that was a big part of his victory?

CRENSHAW: I don't know because I just wasn't inside that circle.

We all saw the phone calls happening at the last minute. There's different accounts of why that last group of holdouts flipped present. I don't know. Honestly, I think they saw what was happening, and I think they collectively said, enough is enough.

TAPPER: Yes.

CRENSHAW: We're still not going to vote for McCarthy, but a present vote, we can do.

TAPPER: President Biden is heading to the Southern border today to your home state of Texas after announcing some sweeping new changes to his border policy.

He is going to make it easier to turn away migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti at the border. You're from Texas. You have criticized President Biden and his administration repeatedly for the border.

[09:25:05]

Do you give him credit for going to the border or for any of these changes? What's your view?

CRENSHAW: OK, so the changes -- our skepticism of the changes are simply this.

You're just changing how the migrants get into the country. Now, the other thing they have said is that it'll be capped at 30,000. To be clear, I want to see total numbers go down, but I'm adding that 30,000 in there, because you're just -- you're just reprocessing them in a different way, and doing so in a way that we believe still oversteps your actual legal authority, this parole authority that Congress grants in extreme circumstances to people -- to illegal immigrants.

They have been overstepping that wildly over the last couple of years. The state of Florida is suing them. That court case is ongoing. And so our concern is that is a bit of virtue, signaling, a bit of just going to shift around the cups and putting -- making you guess where the ball is going to be.

But if it increase -- if it decreases total numbers, that's a good thing. They should expand this policy to all countries. There's no reason it should only used to be on these particular countries. They started this as Venezuelans. We said, why not expand it? OK, it took them three months to expand it.

They're doing it as we are about to take gavels and start holding them accountable. So I also, cynically, a little bit believe that this is just meant to create counterarguments to, when we start to go after them and look at oversight over what they have been doing.

TAPPER: Yes.

CRENSHAW: Look, I will work with Democrats on securing the border, make no mistake. And there are some Democrats who want to secure the border.

But we will not be tricked into thinking either that certain policies that make it seem more streamlined, that make it seem less chaotic equals securing the border. That wouldn't be true, because these people would still be cutting in front of the line of millions of those around the world who do have valid asylum claims and have been waiting on their visas.

And that's immoral, in and of itself, as well.

TAPPER: Are you going to be the next chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee?

CRENSHAW: Not up to me. It's up to the Steering Committee, but I will find out very soon, tomorrow, in fact.

TAPPER: All right, you will come back maybe after your potential victory.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate it.

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