State of the Union: Interview With Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC)
Interview
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And good morning, Kaitlan. Thank you for having me on this morning.
And I see this in two parts. I think both sides are really struggling looking at the nomination process. You have got some on the left that don't want Biden to run. You have got those on the right that don't want the former president to run. A lot of folks on both sides keep bringing up January 6, and it's keeping us from moving our country forward.
I was very vocal about January 6 myself. I'm one of the only Republicans in the House who defeated the former president in a primary last year, went on to win my general election in a purple district resoundingly.
We have got to unite behind a candidate in '24 who can win the White House if we're serious about it. There's a lot at stake right now.
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Well, he's one of the only candidates in right now. And I imagine, by June and July this summer, we will see more than two or three candidates in that race.
The Iowa caucuses aren't for another 330 days. And that's the start of it. I'm proud of my home state of South Carolina. We will be the first-in-the-South presidential primary next year. We have a long way to go for additional candidates to jump in and see how the field lays out.
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I'm not joining them, but I will say this.
I have done a lot of civil rights work over the years as a state lawmaker and as a member of Congress. In fact, the very first bill I ever filed or helped work on in my freshman year was with Hakeem Jeffries on a civil rights piece of legislation.
I would tell you, anyone who's sitting in solitary confinement or sitting in jail, regardless of their political affiliation, if they feel like their civil rights have been violated, then we, as members of Congress, should help them. And this is something that I have worked on a lot over the years and something that I respect.
I was the ranking member on the Civil Rights Committee on oversight with Jamie Raskin last year. That's something that we should all care about, the constitutional rights of citizens of the of this country.
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I said early on last month that the release of the footage was important, that it should be released to every outlet, including CNN, every media outlet, every defense attorney, so that the public can see for itself.
And there is -- there was violence on that day. You cannot deny that. And it was a dark day in our history. But so too were -- was the summer of 2020. We saw very few arrests when there were attacks by an organization, members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. I had my house spray-painted two summers ago, and no one's been held to account for that.
And so we have got to make sure, if there's going to be political violence in this country, no matter your political affiliation, everybody is treated and should be treated the same way.
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I would like to know that as well. There's been a lot of discussion internally about what that might look like. The Freedom Caucus has put theirs out. We're still having that discussion.
I will tell you, and the comments by the director of OMB on this program a few minutes ago were disturbing to me, just not even as a member of Congress, but as an American, that this is nonnegotiable. The administration is talking about a $5 trillion tax hike.
That is not tenable for individuals and businesses, given the inflation that we're facing right now, given the possible recession that we're heading into. We should be negotiating on this issue. This shouldn't be one-sided, because both sides, Republicans and Democrats alike, have caused the inflation that we're in today.
They have caused the $31 trillion of debt that we're facing right now. Both sides should be sitting at the table and coming up with a reasonable plan, let's just say over 10 years, to tackle spending, to tackle taxes, to tackle inflation, so that we can get on with this and grow the economy in a way that can tackle the $31 trillion deficit that we have, let's just say over 10 years.
I don't think that's a lot to ask.
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I haven't read it in detail, so I don't want to make a comment on it if I don't know the specifics of the plan. The president's plan just came out. I did read some media reports that said it would not reduce the deficit.
And so I want to look at it with an open mind and look at it from the economists from both sides of the aisle to figure out what it is. But what I did read was a $5 trillion tax hike on individuals and businesses. And if you're going to be serious about inflation, for example, there are a number of things that we have to do.
You have to tackle spending. You have got to look at how we're spending taxpayer dollars. You have to look at lowering taxes. You have to also grow the economy exponentially in a way so that it can -- it can take over the inflation and the deficit issues that we have right now.
That's what you got to do.
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You can't do it by raising taxes.
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It's still -- it's still very early to see or say what the ramifications are going to be. That was a unique bank that mostly served start-ups in Silicon Valley.
And those customers have been hit by inflation. They have been hit by interest rates. They're low on cash. There was also, it sounds like, a panic run by some of their larger companies last week. The CEO sold himself millions of dollars of stock and gave his employees, I read this morning, bonuses right before the government took over the bank.
We cannot keep bailing out private companies, because there's no consequences to their actions. People, when they make mistakes or break the law, have to be held accountable in this country.
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Not at this time.
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I would -- it's still very early. Again, it's, I don't even think, been 48 hours. But, at this time, I would not support a bailout.
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I think that's something that has to be on the table we have to look at.
I'm 45 years old. I'm assuming that Social Security will be insolvent, that I won't have retirement funds from what I put into in my adult life, my working life. We do have to look at Social Security. We have got to look at our spending in this country, mandatory and discretionary.
If we're going to take on fixing the Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, you name it, we have got to get serious about it.
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As long -- as long as it's not anybody that's heading into retirement right now.
We do not want to take away those that are in retirement or those that are heading into retirement. But if we're talking about younger generations, my kids, for example, if they know what the -- what the retirement will look like 40 years from now, 50 years from now, then that should be on the table, and can be.
We have to both. Republicans and Democrats have screwed this thing up, and they have got to fix it.
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Thank you.
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