ABC "This Week" - Transcript: Interview with Rodger Wicker

Interview

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SEN. ROGER WICKER (R-MI): Well, listen, we're willing to negotiate a much smaller package, but I thought Jonathan Karl's lead-in piece was -- made a very good point.

Americans voted for a pragmatic moderate that they thought Joe Biden was. Where is that centrist candidate they thought they were voting for back in November of last year?

I mean, you've got -- you've got a proposal here of the $2.3 trillion, 70 percent of which cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called infrastructure. That's on top of $1.9 trillion a few weeks ago, most of which was not COVID-related. We're told another $2 trillion is on the way, and that's on top of this $1.5 trillion skinny federal budget that the president rolled out just this past week.

Where does the spending end?

And this is a massive social welfare spending program combined with a massive tax increase on small business job creators. I can't think of a worse thing to do that Senator -- Secretary Granholm was talking about bringing us out of this recession caused by COVID. I can't think of a worse tax to put on the American people than -- than to raise taxes on small business job creators which is what this bill would do.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, the corporate tax would still be well below the level it was before President Trump's tax cuts went into effect. And the evidence that those tax cuts actually increase any kind of investment is minimal.

WICKER: Well, I totally disagree. Back in February of 2020, before the COVID recession hit us, unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, an unheard of low amount. A lot of people re-entering the workforce, including minority work participation, veteran work participation, female job participation. It was up, and we had 3.5 percent unemployment.

I think -- I think the tax package of 2017 really was our signature accomplishment, and it ushered in and was about to usher in before the pandemic took over, it was about to usher in even greater economic growth.

So I would just say to this -- I'm meeting with the president tomorrow at 1:30 if my plane gets into Washington on time. We are willing to negotiate with him on an infrastructure package, and this trillion dollar number is way too high for me, I'll just tell you. But negotiation has to be something different from what we had on the rescue plan.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But, Senator --

WICKER: The president offered $1.9 trillion. Republicans came back with $600 billion, and the president said, that's not good enough. Make me another offer.

Now, that's -- that is normally not the way negotiations go. The president should have come back with a counteroffer, and if he will do that with the Republicans that are meeting with him in the White House tomorrow, I think we can get somewhere and have a much bigger infrastructure package than we were able to do under the last administration.

I'm in favor of that, and I think the majority of Republicans are, and we can get a lot of Democrats to help us on that, and then we'll talk about these social welfare programs that make up 70 percent of this new package that the president's calling infrastructure.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Wicker, thanks for your time this morning.

WICKER: Thank you.

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