Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto
speaker
74 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Oh, Jessica, it's great to join you. Okay, now, I don't want to offend you because this is your show. Okay. Let me just say one thing. It's Nevada, not Nevada. Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. My Nevadans, if I didn't correct you and they were listening to this, they would... They'd turn it... I would never be able to go back.
Nevada, that's it.
Well, I can tell you, it's the economy. It absolutely is about the economy for people in Nevada. I was home just recently. I'm back in D.C. working now, but I was home for two weeks. I was in the northern part of the state, the southern part of the state, our rural communities. It's about the economy.
And people feeling squeezed right now with high prices still, household costs still high, groceries prices still high, including our small businesses who are struggling financially. Right? I had an opportunity to sit down and have several roundtables with some of our small businesses and visit with them. And they're afraid that they won't be able to keep their doors open much longer.
It is a challenge right now, and it's unfortunate because this is a president who said on day one, if you remember, I think he was in Oseman, Montana, when he said, we're going to lower costs. On day one, I'm going to lower costs for families across this country. And that is not what's happening right now. Because of his policies, we're just seeing this economy, really, it's almost in free fall.
And American families and hardworking families and small businesses are suffering because of it right now.
That's right.
Yeah, so let me jump back just because you bring up a great point. Going into this year, the economy was growing, right? We were expanding. Our economy was expanding. We had good unemployment numbers. We're down. People didn't feel great. I mean, we still had to address the household costs and other things, but we focused on some, lowering some health care costs, and the economy looked good.
And you're right. This administration also had to do and take the bones and continue moving forward and be targeted. about how they wanted to address shrinking the government, how they wanted to address maybe addressing some of the waste, fraud, and abuse that is out there, and how they want to impose tariffs. There's a great way to target tariffs. And let me just give you a perfect example.
In Nevada, if you come to Nevada, and I've worked really hard to do this, to make sure that we can lean into this clean energy economy, because it has created jobs in my state, union jobs, which are fantastic. We've leaned into solar, wind, and geothermal. One thing we have leaned into, though, was lithium-ion batteries, manufacturing, recycling, and then storage around batteries.
All of that research, all of the dollars that came into my state when the federal government And the work that we have done from Inflation Reduction Act to Chips and Science Act, all of those laws that we pass, including the bipartisan infrastructure, brought that money in to move us in a direction so we are leading in this country around that technology. It is great, and we should continue.
And all he had to do is step in and continue to move in that direction. But already, because he doesn't like electric vehicles... He is already cutting the funding to some of even the battery manufacturing and the battery storage. And that is the problem, is why aren't we targeted? Because I know in the last administration, working with them, we targeted China so that they couldn't
take advantage of the battery manufacturing in their country, and we could bring it back here to the United States. That's where the tariffs worked. We want to protect our jobs here. We want to bring manufacturing in this space and the new technology. That's how you use targeted tariffs. When you do blanket tariffs,
Too many people suffer, including our small businesses that are suffering right now. And at the end of the day, you know this, a tariff is a tax ultimately on consumers. And as I was talking to my small businesses, because they're seeing the higher costs, they have to make a choice. Can they keep their doors open or do they pass that cost on to the American consumer?
And too many are going to be passing the cost off, quite honestly, because they want to stay open. They are providing an essential service and employing people in the community. It's this cycle where everybody's getting wrapped up into this chaos and uncertainty that this administration is imposing based on the policies that they're implementing right now.
And it's just having a devastating impact in Nevada.
Well, let's talk about its partisan spite and retribution. Don't forget, there's a lot of retribution in this. Certainly with him. Yeah, and as a former attorney general in my state who respects the rule of law and that law should be nonpartisan and not be part of a political retribution, he is doing that now.
So, yes, there is a concern about how he is and his policies in total are going to have a negative impact long term, not just around the economy, around our rule of law, around the essential services that really at the end of the day people are relying on. Here's the fascinating thing, Jessica, and I know in my state, most people don't even know what the federal government does for them.
They really don't until there is a service or essential program that they rely on or benefit that is taken away. Otherwise, they really don't understand how complex it is. Now, I'll be the first to tell you, is there too much bureaucracy? Is there too much regulation? Is there a way that we can streamline it? Absolutely. We have to. And I've seen it.
That's my fight at the federal government is to get rid of some of the bureaucracy and streamline. But there's a smart and targeted way to do it in a thoughtful way that doesn't burn down the entire house and break everything. And so that's what we have right now.
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