Meet the Press - June 4, 2023

Interview

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Hey, Chuck. Good to be with you.

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I give everybody credit. I think you said it well. I've been listening to what you've been saying. And I think you hit it -- you just nailed it. Both sides had to come together. I think that I give Kevin McCarthy and his team a tremendous amount of credit for doing what people thought he couldn't do. He got a bill out of the House, sent it over to the Senate, got things started. President Biden did what he must do, and what he does, and can do best is bring people together, use this bipartisanship. And -- but, you know, 90 days ago, we could have started this. But, you know, the extremes on both sides are pushing further -- pushing you further away then basically giving you encouragement to come together. That's what we've got to basically eliminate, Chuck. But I was proud of both of them. I was proud of the House Democrats that -- like Hakeem Jeffries leading and working with Kevin McCarthy and his team to basically get it out of the rules when the rules went to the floor, took the Democrats to move the bill. And then together, they voted and passed it on the House -- on the Senate, Senate side. We had House Republicans and Democrats working together, knowing that we had to avert this crisis. But why do we always come down to this brinkmanship at the end? It's just not right. It's not who we are.

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Well, I sure hope not. We've been able to show that we can do something when we have to. We have to have a permitting process now that basically encumbers everything. We've touched on that in this bill. We have some permitting reforms that were done, but we need an awful lot more. If you're going to have the energy security our country needs, you're going to have to be able to build the infrastructure. Whether it's the pipelines or whether it's the transmission lines, we have to have an all-in policy, but we've got to be energy independent to be secure, Chuck.

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That could be a big win for all of us.

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Well, Chuck, I think that, basically, this system is so toxic anymore that whenever you are an announced candidate for anything, you're absolutely basically cannon fodder for the other side. I mean, everybody wants to -- 51. Politics are basically taking over the control versus the policies and, basically, the responsiveness that we should have. My purpose is, is to have progressive movements to where we're doing something, that helps the economy, that helps the people, helps security. I don't put, I don't put politics in front. A lot of people do. It's about politics. Mine's about policy and basically performing for my country and my state. So I'm not going to be worried about polls and all this other stuff when I have a purpose to perform. I've got to perform.

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Well, it -- what it does, it basically gives West Virginia tremendous opportunity to provide the energy security our nation needs. West Virginia's an energy juggernaut. We've got, we've got fossil fuels. We do it cleaner and better than anywhere in the world. We have -- in the Carolinas, we have people paying ten times more, whenever there's any weather interruptions, they're paying ten times more than we do in West Virginia, and they're right next door. You've got to be able to deliver that energy, Chuck, and that's what we're doing. So this has been a tremendous win for the West Virginia. I've been spearheading this thing from day one. I've taken all the bullets, you know that. I've taken all the spears on this. And the bottom line is we've got it accomplished.

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It doesn't make it harder for me. I understand this is not the most honorable profession. It's a shame to say that. And it's supposed to be the most honorable profession when you can provide services to the people that you represent. But when you have to fight your own colleagues to try to do your job, it makes it pretty tough. When I said people put -- sometimes, people put politics," I think that Mitch is in a position where it's all about, as I've observed, politics first, protecting his caucus. Fifty one votes is what his determination is. And with that, and sometimes policy doesn't get the benefit. Mine is about the policy end of it. If we can do something good, I don't care who takes credit because I can't do it by myself. There's no way we could pass any of this without the help of the other side. So I look at it differently, and then also my oath to the Constitution. So my performance for my state and my oath to the Constitution more than takes care of everything I'm supposed to do versus the politics.

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And I work with 51 on either side.

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Sure.

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Oh, I think that basically the results -- yeah, Chuck, the results that you saw there was Joe Biden working with Kevin McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy taking the lead and pushing it over, so, "okay. Let's sit down and get serious." Should it come to the brinkmanship, the last day or the last few days? No. What the movement of No Labels has done, which I think has been admirable, is basically saying there is a middle. There's more people in the silent majority of the middle that have no voice whatsoever so they're forced to their respective corners, far Left and far Right. They're not comfortable there. They're showing that now, there's a place in the middle. And if the middle can basically show, "you can't go to the Left. You're not going to get elected and you're not going to govern from there." Decisions are made from the middle.

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So that was my friend Joe Lieberman on that.

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Chuck, the bottom line is -- let me just talk about what's going on right now with what happened on the debt ceiling. Don't you think that we should have a risk evaluation of where we are as a country on finances? Don't you think we should have a risk management team the same as banks are supposed to have risk managers? Can't we do something to prevent this on a daily basis, versus a crisis with the last minute? So on that being said, how are we governed? You can't continue to be pushed to the left and pushed to the right. Stay in that middle and pull people back to the middle.

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Well, this, this here, I think Joe Biden, that's his inherent -- who he is. He's been pushed to the far left. And that far left is not, basically, where the country is. And the far right is not where the country is. Coming back to the middle, then, we can continue to bring people to the middle and do our job.

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That's where it's going to be, the decisions will be made.

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Oh. We're still working, Chuck. That's why, that's why I like coming on with you.

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