John Thune

I mean, we've processed the president's noms, and we've done 24 now what we call continuing resolution—I should say congressional review, resolutions of disapproval, which undoes a lot of the Biden damage by—

repealing a lot of the burdensome Biden regulations and freeze up energy production in this country and a whole range of other things.

And we've had some bipartisan accomplishments too.

So it's been busy, you know, just in terms of volume of votes and time and in session and all that too.

But I think also I would argue very productive, but doing it all in one big, a lot of that one big package does, yeah, then it gets the peanut gallery going like, why don't you guys do anything this week, you know?

Well, I think first off, and I would say, because I think the first job we have, and I always tell people, if you don't get national security right, the rest is conversation.

So, we really made up for the Biden years when they weren't funding the military.

We put money in there to build the wall at the border and to close the border, which the president has effectively and successfully done.

But, you know, we needed to make sure that we had not only border wall money, but we had personnel for border patrol agents.

detention facilities, all the things that we needed to do that were backed up.

And so I kind of put it in the category of making the country safer and more secure.

And so I would say that was the first and foremost thing.

And then it's about making the country more prosperous.

And I think the tax policy will be really key to that.

I would argue that not only extending the policies from 2017, which included lower rates for families and doubling of the child tax credit and near doubling of the standard deduction.

And there's a 199A deduction for small businesses in there.

But

We also did no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, reduced taxes for seniors on Social Security.

So I think the tax policy in and of itself is going to be enormously stimulative to the economy.

You look at bonus depreciation, interest deductibility, R&D expensing.