Senator Eric Schmitt
speaker
478 appearances
21 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Jun 2025
Senator Eric Schmitt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
We're going to be in a spending fight and a debt ceiling fight with the Democrats at the end. And if we haven't had any points on the board, it's just going to feel like I want to deliver early. And we're going to have leverage to get those tax cuts extended and make them permanent because they expire. So we have our own leverage on that to get that done. So my feeling is...
Let's not empower Chuck Schumer to have any more leverage than we need to. Let's get this stuff done before March when we have that CR and debt ceiling fight and then continue to work on a second reconciliation package in the summer. Because worst case scenario, I just don't want to be in July and August not having got a lot of the stuff done that President Trump ran on.
Yeah, that's right. The House, at least right now, or what Speaker Johnson has articulated, although I'm not sure that's a uniform position in the House, but look, I'm sympathetic that it's not an easy task with a one to three vote majority over there on this stuff. But the argument for them is, hey, we won't get a second bite of the apple.
We got to make sure we have everything in one so it'll provide maximum leverage to make sure everybody's getting what they want in one big bill. I will say, though, that I think the Senate, Senate Republicans are unified in our belief. And I'm not sure there's a dissenting opinion that we ought to break this up and let's get some early wins.
And so, look, ultimately, this is President Trump's call. And I think we're we are all committed to getting this done and, you know, securing those wins. This is just a, you know, a strategic move. It's an ongoing discussion if it's one bill or two. We're all on the same team. And like I said, President Trump's the quarterback. He's ultimately going to make the call.
But I think objectively the best strategy here is to get one border package done early and then let's deal with the other stuff later in the year.
Absolutely. Now, look, I came in in the 2022 cycle. I think one of the things that's also true is you have a younger group of members that have come in since 2018, really, that, you know, when Trump has been on the stage, I think it's transformed our conference in many ways to sort of America first. But Trump is, you know, it's not disputed at all that he's the leader of our party.
And by the way, the reason we have 53 votes in the Senate and why we have a House majority and why we are the party of American workers now is We are a broad based party with great opportunities ahead. Now, one of the things that you guys did really well at Turning Point was that means with that broader base, we have more lower propensity voters. So we've got to make sure people show up and vote.
But this is the path moving forward. And I do think in that room. Everybody understood the role that President Trump played for us to be in this very unique historical position where we have the House and the Senate and the White House to get this stuff done and deliver. So I don't think there's any disputing that at all. And I'm very much at home in this party, Charlie.
I grew up in a working class blue collar neighborhood in the St. Louis area. And so to have our party now representing the people who do that hard work every day is exactly where we ought to be.
All right, brother. See you.
The Charlie Kirk Show · How the UnitedHealth CEO Killer Was Caught... In a McDonald's · 10 Dec 2024
podcast
I think he's got a great chance. And I think the vibes are strong. I met with him last week. I'm on the Armed Services Committee. Pete's a great pick. And you look at the sort of the electrical cord that runs across all of these picks, Charlie, you've talked about it a bunch, is that They're all disruptors. They're all reformers. President Trump ran on this.
He talked about it for well over a year. He held rallies all across the country. He talked about disrupting the status quo in Washington. And that's exactly what he's doing with these picks. Our conversation centered around reforms within the Pentagon. We've got to be nimbler. We've got to be...
One of the big advantages we've always had against our adversaries like China is that we're innovators and China copies. Well, if you have a Pentagon that's completely, you know, this bureaucratic mess, we're not going to innovate very well moving forward. He talked about that, eliminating DEI once and for all in the Pentagon. We've got some wins.
I've sponsored a hiring freeze, but you really need somebody at the top. to lead that cultural kind of change to get back to war fighting. And instead of all these social experiments, this racist DEI. So he's a smart guy. He's going to do a great job. And I think he's going to get through. I think, honestly, I think they're all going to get through because senators, I think, appreciate it.
I hope they do. It's certainly something I talk about. President Trump won with that mandate. He won the popular vote. He swept the battleground states. It's unprecedented. It's the greatest political comeback in American history, and he deserves to have a team around him that wants to execute on his vision.
Yeah, so the NDAA is the National Defense Authorization Act. It's passed every year and essentially authorizes how we allocate resources to protect our country, right? So, you know, what do you want to spend money on? Do you, you know, are you spending money on, you know, the Air Force for this or are you spending money for the Navy for that? We have real challenges right now.
I'll tell you, China has a bigger Navy than we have. It's not a better Navy, but it's a bigger Navy. We've got supply chain issues. We got production problems. And so the NDAA is sort of a statement on the things That we care about as relates to our national defense. It's about $800 billion a year. That's what it is this year. And so it's something we do.
I think there's a lot of big wins in this NDAA as relates to DEI getting rid of some of this censorship enterprise that was embedded. uh, by the Biden administration. Um, but we're going to know they're going to crack at this next year. And my hope is that, um, we have an administration and we will, that's very much reform minded.
Um, but the NDA is something that every year we sort of put our stamp on what are the, our priorities that relates to the national defense. And, and I did talk to Pete about that. Um, I think he's coming in and what I would say is, and you know, this to be true, I'm into the audience is, um, We'll know this to be true.
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