Second Republican Debate Transcript: Tim Scott
Interview
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America can do for anyone what she's done for me.
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Obviously the president of the United States cannot fire anybody in the private sector. However, we should look back at the first bill in Congress under Joe Biden. The first bill had $86 billion for the union pensions because they continue to over-promise yet under-deliver. One of the challenges that we have with the current negotiations is that they want four-day French workweeks, but more money. They want more benefits working fewer hours.
That is simply not going to stand. I sat in a Finance Committee hearing when a widow came before the committee whose promised pensions from the unions, $4,000 a month. Unfortunately it had been cut to $1,000 a month. We must make sure that we honor the commitments that we make. And one of the ways we do that, do not over-promise and then under-deliver and leave the taxpayers on the hook.
I'll say this, Joe Biden should not be on the picket line. He should be on the southern border working to close our southern border.
Because it is unsafe, wide open, and insecure, leading to the deaths of 70,000 Americans in the last 12 months because of fentanyl. It is devastating. Every county in America is now a border county because fentanyl has devastated Americans in every single state.
I will also say 6 million illegal crossings since Joe Biden has taken office. And he eliminated Title 42.
The one thing he should do is finish the wall, reinstate Title 42, and get the job done.
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There's no doubt that Joe Biden needs to be fired. That's why I'm running for president. I look forward to being the next President of the United States. I will also say, I know America can do for anyone what she's done, for me. It's why we're focusing on restoring hope, creating opportunities, and protecting the America, we all love.
Growing up in a single-parent household, I wondered if the American Dream would work for a kid, in the inner city. I've got good news. For every single child, whether you're in the inner cities of Chicago, or the rural parts of Iowa, America and the Dream, it is alive, it is well, and it is healthy.
God bless these United States of America.
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Certainly, one of the things I did as a member of the Congress was to make sure that we protected the Head Start programs around the country, giving people the opportunity to pick and choose the place that they send their children. The challenges that we see today under the Biden administration is that the cost for daycare has gone over $15,000 per child.
And the Build Back Broker plan -- he called it a Build Back Better plan -- it was going up to $29,000. The way we fix that problem is to make sure that we actually cut taxes and give more Americans their money back.
When I helped write the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, we actually lowered a single mother's taxes by 70 percent on the federal level, for dual-income households by 60 percent. Then we went a step further. We doubled the child tax credit and made it refundable.
By doing that, more parents had more resources to make the decisions how to take care of their family. The one thing we should do is let the American people keep their money. When that happens, the greatest opportunities rise from the ashes.
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There is not -- there is not a redeeming quality in slavery. He and Kamala should have just taken the one sentence out. America has suffered because of slavery, but we've overcome that. We are the greatest nation on Earth because we faced our demons in the mirror and made a decision. So often we think that all the issues -- you talked about crime and education, and healthcare, we always think that those issues go back to slavery.
Here's the challenge though. Black families survived slavery. We survived poll taxes and literacy tests. We survived discrimination being woven into the laws of our country. What was hard to survive was Johnson's Great Society where they decided to put money where they decided to take the black father out of the household to get a check in the mail. And you can now measure that in unemployment, in crime, in devastation. If you want to restore hope, you've got to restore the family, restored capitalism and put Americans back at work together as one American family.
Our nation continues to go in the right direction. It's why I can say I have been discriminated against. But America is not a racist country. Never ever doubt who we are. We are the greatest country on God's green earth. And frankly, the city on the hill needs a brand-new leader. And I'm asking for your vote.
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And 90 percent of the resources that we send over that Ukraine is guaranteed as a loan. It is not 90 percent of the money that we send over there is loan. We could talk about this. But at the end of the day, 90 percent of the money that we send over there is actually --
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It's not actually going to be paid by Ukraine. It's paid by the NATO, our NATO allies. Number one. Number two --
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I think it's a really good topic, too. I will say, let's debate the fact that our national vital interests is in degrading the Russian military. By degrading the Russian military, we actually keep our homeland safer, we keep our troops at home, and we all understand Article Five of NATO. When in fact --
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I thought you said something about waiting until your turn to talk. So. So at the end of the day --
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I look forward to this one right now. So at the end of the day, when you think about the fact, if you want to keep American troops at home, the attack on NATO territory would bring us and our troops in. By degrading the Russian military, we reduce if not eliminate --
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Well, one of the things I've had the good fortune of doing is serving on committees in the United States Senate like the Senate Armed Services Committee. I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I'm also on the Finance Committee and the Banking Committee.
You talk about addressing the issue of Fentanyl. I've written the legislation, passed it through the Banking Committee and the Senate that would freeze the assets and sanction the accounts of the Mexican cartels. There are weapons that we have within the arsenal that I was able to get passed, 23-0, in the polarizing Senate, as it is.
I've also understood without question the fact that, if you look at the details before 9/11, there was information and intelligence that was available that suggested an attack was coming. Having the right intelligence partners with us is key to making sure that we prevent the next 9/11 from ever happening. Having that experience for the last 10 years is really important in getting the job done.
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Certainly. One of the things I'd say is if you look at our national debt of $33 trillion, I would love to have an opportunity to have this country pass a balanced budget amendment. That would constrain the spending in Washington in the same fashion that it does at every state in our nation, number one.
Number two, if you want to actually reduce our national debt, you have to grow our economy. In order to grow our economy, you need to create about 10 million jobs to grow our economy at 5 percent.
You can do that in three specific sectors. Number one, the energy sector. We could create between 3 and 3-1/2 million jobs if we unleashed all of our energy resources. America is the most -- we're the richest country if you combine coal, gases and oil. Why not unleash all of our resources?
Number two, we've lost 100,000 factories, 100,000 factories in the last 25 years. If we continue with my Made in America plan, we could bring jobs back to America in a similar fashion that we did when I wrote the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
We actually lowered the corporate tax from 35 percent to 21 percent. Reshore or repatraited $1.7 trillion. We brought the unemployment rates for African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians to the lowest level in the history of the country.
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Tax Cuts and jobs Act, the biggest of all the tax cuts in the history --
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Yes. There's no doubt that if you lead by example, it's the best way to get the job done. If you look at my office in the Senate, my chief of staff is the only Hispanic female chief of staff in the Senate. I hired her because she was the best highest qualified person we have. What we need are leaders who lead by example.
And I will simply say, I would love to finish my conversation with Nikki as it relates to the job that needs to get done.
Nikki offered a 10 percent -- 10 cent gas tax increase in South Carolina. Talk about someone who has never seen a federal dollar she doesn't like, 10 cents on this gallon in South Carolina. As the U.N. ambassador, you literally
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