“If you look back when Kevin [McCarthy] was a majority leader, the same situation happened as what we have now. The Democrats just don't want to do their job in the Senate. Chuck Schumer hasn't processed any of the appropriations bills. We passed over 70% in the House, and so we're at an impasse. And look, if we just gave Chuck Schumer everything that he wanted and ended it this year, as Kevin [McCarthy] is suggesting, then Chuck Schumer would get about an extra $80 billion in new spending. President Trump, by the way, does not want that. And so in an ideal world, we'd get a final negotiation, and we'd all be in agreement and we'd spend less money. You don't have that with a Democrat-run Senate and Joe Biden in the White House. So all of that changes next year when President Trump comes in, and we get a Republican Senate. We're having talks on a regular basis with President Trump. He's well aware of this dynamic, by the way, Maria. And ultimately, what Speaker Johnson negotiates is going to be done in conjunction with President Trump. And we'll be walking and chewing gum at the same time.
“In January, unlike back in 2017, this time around, we are in sync with President Trump on the agenda starting day one in January. We're going to be working on border security, on energy security, getting a big budget resolution, moving quickly. We're having discussions. Will tax be in that package or not? That's an ongoing negotiation. But ultimately, we're going to do tax, we're going to do energy, we're going to do border security and rules and regulations all in the first 100 days to get this economy back on track working with President Trump. So we're going to be able to get those things done. We've been working on those, by the way, Maria, for months. I went and sat down with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago eight months ago to talk about what the first 100 days would look like if we won everything, House, Senate, and White House. President Trump has been focused on this, too. We had to win in November, and of course, we did with an historic mandate. Now we're going to carry that mandate out, but we're not just going to start doing that in January. We've been working on this for months. Committee chairs have been doing this. And we're talking with President Trump's team on a very regular basis.”
On top priorities in reconciliation:
“Well, we're having that conversation [on reconciliation] now. In fact, I was on another call with Stephen Miller just a few days ago about that very topic. The good news is we're in agreement on all the things we're going to do in the first few months. It's all of those things Stephen [Miller] talked about and more. The question is, do you do it in one bill or two?
“We can discuss and debate the best way to handle that. But ultimately, we're going to do border, we're going to do energy policy, we're going to do tax, and we're going to get it all done. We’ve been hearing numbers are at 100 billion to secure the border and also fund what needs to happen to deport the criminals. We need to get our border secure, to build the wall, to give drone capabilities, some other high technology capabilities to our border agents. That will all be in that package. We're talking with the administration about all of it.
“You don't want to shortchange this. It's too important to the country.”
On standing up against cybersecurity breaches from China:
“Yeah, and look, we're having a classified briefing today, Maria, on Salt Typhoon. It's a major concern, along with others. I mean, you saw us be very aggressive to Huawei, ZTE, some of the other companies. But it's been hard to get this administration to stand up against China. You've seen that at every step. Our Chinese Task Force has done a lot of good bipartisan work to ultimately push back against the threat China poses. But Joe Biden has not been aggressive like you're going to see Donald Trump be. We weren't able to get all the things we wanted in this NDAA, but it's a really good start. At least it acknowledges the threat that drones pose that are made in China. But we're going to finish, as you alluded to, the $3 billion we're putting in this bill to rip and replace, as it's called, to rip out Huawei and all of that other bad Chinese equipment and replace it with better technology that's not a threat to our national security. We're going to do that. When President Trump comes in, I think you're going to be able to see we can go a lot further, and we're ready to do that.
“We're going to finish it when President Trump comes in.”
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