| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
America. | |
| President George W. Bush in 2001. | ||
| And this is my solemn pledge. | ||
| I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And President Barack Obama in 2009. | |
| The challenges we face are real. | ||
| They are serious and they are many. | ||
| They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. | ||
| But know this, America. | ||
| They will be met. | ||
| Watch historic inaugural speeches Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
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| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Coming out, freshman Senator John Curtis discusses what he expects President-elect Trump to accomplish during his first 100 days in office. | ||
| Senator Curtis also talks about the character of the president-elect's political appointees. | ||
| This was hosted by Politico Playbook. | ||
| Well, thanks for sticking around for the overtime session. | ||
| I know what you're thinking. | ||
| Yes, it was me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was just out here. | |
| Well, listen, you've touched on a number of the important topics of the new administration already, and the event is about the first 100 days of a new president. | ||
| I want to take a couple minutes, though, to talk about the outgoing president. | ||
| And I'm curious, your experience of the Biden administration. | ||
| How engaged has the president been with you? | ||
| Like, have you heard from him? | ||
| Have you met with him? | ||
| No. | ||
| I think as a Republican in the House, I didn't expect to. | ||
| But we had, as a Republican in the House, I would say it was close to zero interaction. | ||
| I was invited down to the White House, I think, for one bill signing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What was the bill, do you remember? | |
| It was early on in administration. | ||
| I don't. | ||
| I'll just brag. | ||
| We passed 27 bills in that time, and so we were pretty active. | ||
| But there was not a lot of interaction. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But you've never spoken to President Biden? | |
| Oh, only in a very formal setting where there were lots of other people. | ||
| Does that make sense? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it makes, I mean, I understand what you're describing. | |
| I'm not sure it makes sense to me, right? | ||
| And I understand that you're a House Republican. | ||
| There's an awfully tight majority, right? | ||
| And you have expressed interest in, you have a record of working on a bipartisan basis on a number of issues that are of some significance to this administration. | ||
| So did you truly have zero expectation that there would be a phone call? | ||
| Zero. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| No, I think a lot of it comes from, look, in the House, there's 435 of you. | ||
| As a Republican, you know, you're not on the first part of his call list to begin with. | ||
| And I don't know, but I would assume most of my colleagues don't wake up in the morning thinking the president's going to call me today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You are the only one that founded the Conservative Climate Caucus, though, right? | |
| Yes. | ||
| And do you feel like there would have been an opportunity to work together if there had been that reason? | ||
| And I will tell you, John Kerry was amazing. | ||
| So John Kerry was very, very in tune with the work that I was doing. | ||
| He met with us, he talked with us. | ||
| Secretary Granholm was very engaged. | ||
| So to be fair, while the president wasn't himself, there were several people on his team who We're really watching what we were doing and wanting us to be successful. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And what do you think the role is for that group of Republicans in this administration? | |
| So, just in case everybody's not totally familiar with that, maybe I can just do a top line. | ||
| A number of years ago, I was a little concerned that Republicans weren't engaging in the climate conversation. | ||
| So, I did what everybody suggested I shouldn't do, and I jumped in with both feet. | ||
| I founded the Conservative Climate Caucus to get Republicans engaged. | ||
| People kind of patted me on the back and said, you'll get five Republicans that will join. | ||
| And I'm just here to tell you that today there's 87 House Republicans that are part of the Conservative Climate Caucus. | ||
| Now, to answer your question, the role is incredibly important. | ||
| And the reason why is if you have a conversation as something as significant as policy, and I don't think you can separate climate policy from energy policy. | ||
| And in the last conversation we just had about energy is so critical. | ||
| If you just say one half of Congress is going to show up to that conversation, you're not going to get the best answers. | ||
| So if Republicans aren't showing up for that conversation, if we're not showing up for the climate conversation, we're not showing up for the energy conversation. | ||
| And I think it's incredible to get the best policy, that Republicans are there and we're articulating our solutions and we're debating their solutions and we're coming to the best conclusions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you think President Trump, do you think you could persuade? | |
| I have a feeling I don't know where this is going. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, when you say if you're not showing up for the climate conversation, you're not really showing up for the energy conversation. | |
| Correct. | ||
|
unidentified
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It doesn't seem that that's the way President Trump sees it himself. | |
| You know, it's hard to know, but I will tell you: if you look at his appointees, we're going to have some real serious energy/slash climate conversations. | ||
| And I'm just here to tell you the narrative has been that to be clean, you have to give up affordability, you have to give up reliability, you have to give up energy dominance. | ||
| And I think this is where the Republican voice is important: wait a minute, you don't. | ||
| You can be clean, you can hang on to affordability, you can hang on to reliability, and you can be energy dominant and clean at the same time. | ||
| And while you may not hear the president say that, I think if you look at his appointees, that resonates. | ||
| And by the way, as they're all, I mean, whether they're related to energy or not, as they come to me and my Senate role, I'm having this conversation with all of them about my work on the climate and how I'm hoping they can help me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who do you see among those people who you've met with or among the broader cast of characters in this administration as in tune with the clean part of that conversation? | |
| Energy dominance, all, right? | ||
| Yeah, well, you know, I just came from the House. | ||
| I was on the Energy and Commerce Committee. | ||
| And when I showed up seven years ago, if climate came up in a hearing, it was a debate about the science. | ||
| By the time I left, if climate came up, it was now a debate about methods and how do we get affordable, reliable, clean. | ||
| That was the conversation. | ||
| And I think you're going to hear that more and more from Republicans. | ||
| I think you're going to see that. | ||
| And maybe to be more specific with your question, everybody that comes in, whether it's Lee Zeldon with EPA, obviously a lot of connection there, but even Pete Hegseth on DOD, I'm talking to him about that role and the role of energy and all of those things. | ||
| And it's hard to find one topic that spans every part of the administration as much as energy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tell me a little bit more about your conversation with Pete Heckseth. | |
| Oh, sure. | ||
| I shouldn't have brought that up. | ||
| Listen, to me, I take very seriously the role that the Senate has in the Constitution for advice and consent. | ||
| And so when Mr. Hegseth came to see me, I had done quite a bit of research on him, but not enough. | ||
| And so I asked him, I said, give me four or five names of people that you want me to talk to who can tell me who the real Pete is. | ||
| And I'm very well aware, as an elected official, that what's out there in the news may or may not be accurate. | ||
| And I wanted to know exactly what was accurate. | ||
| And so he gave me four or five names. | ||
| I've called them all and have called some additional people that he didn't give me because I want to know who he really is. | ||
| I smiled at him and I said, You've written a number of books. | ||
| I'm going to read your book, but you tell me which one you want me to read. | ||
| And I've done that. | ||
| And so for me, I can't make a good decision whether it's somebody as controversial as Pete Hegseth or non-controversial as Marco Arubio if I don't look at the entire sheet of music. | ||
| And part of that will be hearings, FBI, right? | ||
| Like I don't even yet have all these pieces together. | ||
| And I hope all of my colleagues take that same seriousness in our constitutional responsibility. | ||
| And the reason I think that's important is that's not going against the president. | ||
| In my view, that's actually helping the president. | ||
| I tend to view my role as if you think of a board of directors, who would hire a board of directors and say, I want you to say yes to everything I propose. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A lot of people, actually. | |
| Well, that's not a good way to run a business, though, right? | ||
| Like you want your trusted people around you to tell you what they're seeing. | ||
| And I think it's not only consent, it's advice. | ||
| Well, I can't give the president advice if I've not thoroughly investigated and understood every moving part to this nominee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How important, not just with Pete Heggseth, but with nominees generally, how important to you is personal character? | |
| It's huge. | ||
| I try to live my life. | ||
| You know, if I, going back to my constituents, I would put that out first and foremost. | ||
| And so it is a big deal. | ||
| Now, we're all flawed. | ||
| And the question is, at what point do you cross that line, right? | ||
| Because none of us are perfect, and I'm the first to tell you, you know, that I have things in my past that if I were a nominee would be coming up. | ||
| And so that's the burden, I think, on us is to decide where that line is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But if you were to be reviewing a nominee who had superb professional credentials, a track record of good judgment on policy, but some profound personal character issue, that would still give you pause. | |
| So, yes, because you have to balance, like all of those things that you laid out there could be in degrees, right, as far as degrees of qualifications and degrees of flaws. | ||
| And that's the burden is trying to decide where those were. | ||
| You know, there was a nominee, you all know who I'm referring to, that didn't make it. | ||
| And I think universally it was felt that that equation was way out of whack, right? | ||
| Didn't even get off the ground. | ||
| And it was just too easy of a decision that the gap was too far. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Could you give us any insight into how you're thinking about Tulsi Gabbard as a nominee? | |
| Yeah, so Tulsi is the biggest problem for me is she's been so low profile. | ||
| The others have come to my office. | ||
| And so if you go back to that analogy of a sheet of music, her sheet's pretty blank for me. | ||
| And I need more information to start filling that in. | ||
| And look, if I can't fill that in, I can't vote for her. | ||
| So I've got to find a way of getting that information to make that decision. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And what's your assessment of the notes that are already on the page? | |
| Well, all I have is what's out there in comments. | ||
| And like I said before, as an elected official, I'm the first to understand, like, you can't really, you've got to be careful with what you're hearing about somebody. | ||
| And so I want to do the research. | ||
| I will do the research and put the energy in before I cast that vote to make sure I fully understand what the package is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In the past, you have introduced legislation to limit the president's ability to, not any particular president, but limit the presidential power to issue tariffs for national security reasons. | |
| I wonder, as you're looking at the way tariffs have been used by President Trump in his first term, by President Biden in his term, looking ahead to the first 100 days of this term, how much are you concerned about the president just having unchecked authority in national security? | ||
| Yeah, and let me say, you know, I want to be agnostic to a Republican or Democrat president. | ||
| And just as a general rule, executive orders are a terrible way to run a country. | ||
| And we'll see in a very few days a rapid swinging of policy as executive orders are put into place, just as we saw a rapid swinging of policy four years ago. | ||
| Well, that's a terrible way to run a country. | ||
| And so the problem is when we don't do our job in Congress, it makes it more tempting for the administration to do those things. | ||
| And I think it's incumbent on us to do our job and take away that temptation from a president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How do you do that in the trade space? | |
| Well, I've got a bill. | ||
| It's called the Prove It Act. | ||
| And it's amazing how simple it is. | ||
| It's simply asking for a study on carbon intensity, a study. | ||
| And it's a tiny little swing, and it's a heavy lift, right, to get it done. | ||
| And here again, this is why I think the president often goes to executive orders, because by nature, the way the founders set it up, it's really hard for us to get things done. | ||
| I think that I wouldn't change that, but it is hard. | ||
| But at the same time, I'm working on months just to get a simple study done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Someone who's talked a lot about using executive authority is Elon Musk. | |
| We're going to transform government, make it more efficient, cut $2 trillion, and we're going to do it heavily using executive authority. | ||
| How plausible is that to you? | ||
| When I became mayor of Provo, I was one of my favorite positions ever was the mayor of Provo. | ||
| And we need more mayors in Congress, by the way. | ||
| I inherited a budget that because of the crisis, the financial crisis back in 2007, I had to cut the budget. | ||
| And we did so very carefully, but we cut a substantial part of our city budget and increased employee morale and increased quality of services delivered to our residents. | ||
| And I bring that up because whether it's business or government, there's always waste. | ||
| There's always, particularly when you go decades without going back and analyzing it. | ||
| So I welcome the evaluation of that waste. | ||
| And I welcome the evaluation of programs that are no longer needed. | ||
| And if we do it correctly, we'll come out the other side with increased morale among federal employees and better services delivered to our constituents. | ||
| If we do it wrong, we'll destroy morale, we'll destroy the quality of services that we're delivering. | ||
| And so to the extent I have any influence in that process, I want to make sure that we do it right. | ||
| And I think, quite frankly, this is one of the things the American people are saying, please go do this, right? | ||
| Like people can see that there's waste. | ||
| People can see the debt is too high. | ||
| And so I think there's broad consensus something needs to be done, and let's go do it right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And what does doing it right look like in the context of Doge? | |
| So I can just tell you for me and my experience is if you come in and say we're going to cut, let's just say hypothetically, every program of the federal government by 20 percent, then you cut the good programs and you don't cut the bad programs as much as you should. | ||
| So to answer your question, how do you do that right? | ||
| You have to get into the weeds on everything we do and say, could it be done better Or should it not be done at all? | ||
| Right now, I'll give you just a real glaring example: the number of empty office buildings around Washington, D.C. with federal workers not coming to work begs the question: should they be coming into the work into work? | ||
| And if not, why do we have the buildings? | ||
| So, one of those two needs, does that make sense? | ||
| One of those two needs an Elon Musk to blow it up because it's gone for years in the state that it has, and it'll just continue. | ||
| And that's where the American people can see, oh, something needs to be done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you think Democrats are ready to deal? | |
| So, I'm really happy with the tone in Washington, D.C. right now. | ||
| Eight years ago, it was as a stereotype more, we're not going to work with the president, he's not my president, we're going to stop, you know, we're going to do what we can to stop him. | ||
| That is not the tone right now. | ||
| The tone right now is: there are things the American people expect us to get done, and they're not all partisan. | ||
| The American people do expect to fix at the border. | ||
| The American people expect inflation to come down. | ||
| And I think I just sense from my Democratic colleagues, many of them want to be part of the solution. | ||
| That's a good place. | ||
| I just feel like, look, it's never perfect, right, Republican, Democrat, but like we have the potential to really find some synergy here and do some things that the American people are expecting us to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And because it strikes me that in the past couple administrations, there have been meaningful bipartisan accomplishments. | |
| They haven't necessarily been on issues that are top of the mind for the average voter, right? | ||
| Like, say what you will about the CHIPS Act, I don't think that on Main Street and Provo, there are a lot of people like revved up about semiconductors. | ||
| Maybe I'm underestimating your constituents. | ||
| But on something like inflation, on something like immigration, what's your optimism level that you can put together something that's going to get not 51 votes in some cute reconciliation deal, but like, yeah, 70 votes, generational accomplishment? | ||
| I think if we're talking about border-specific and not overall immigration, very, very high. | ||
| I think if we're talking about bringing peace and stability overseas, very, very high. | ||
| And, you know, if you kind of go back to the campaign and find those issues where I think the American people were just frustrated, I think you'll find a lot of my Democrat colleagues willing to say, let's find a path forward. | ||
| And I think it's incumbent on both Republicans and Democrats to find those places, agree to disagree on some. | ||
| Like, and if you go to immigration, you know, if you start with, okay, here's the border right here, and here's mass deportation of 20 million people, like somewhere between there, you're not going to agree. | ||
| That's not hard to see. | ||
| But what about over here, right? | ||
| Like, let's go focus on this, and then we'll deal with this later. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And would your advice to President Trump be to keep it closer to that? | |
| Well, he's going to do what he's going to do, right? | ||
| But I think my advice to Congress, right, to the Senate and to the House would be, like, because that's our job, right? | ||
| Let's go find those places. | ||
| Let's work together. | ||
| I think my biggest frustration is that those in the House and in the Senate who are willing and who like to work together with other people, I tend to call us boring. | ||
| We don't make the headlines, right? | ||
| And we've got to find a better way to show the American people that there are more of those than not, and we are getting things done. | ||
| And when we get things done, doing a better job of bragging about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much for your time. | |
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Great to be with you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| My sex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wednesday on C-SPAN. | |
| The House is back at 10 a.m. Eastern to work on legislation that would authorize the president to negotiate a U.S.-Taiwan tax agreement that would end double taxation on residents of Taiwan. | ||
| Then, at 8 p.m., President Biden will deliver his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office. | ||
| The President's expected to speak about the accomplishments of his administration and the future of the U.S. on C-SPAN 2 at 9:30. | ||
| Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on her nomination to become U.S. Attorney General. | ||
| Then, at noon, Senate lawmakers will resume work on legislation requiring the Department of Homeland Security to detain migrants for theft-related crimes known as the Lake and Riley Act. | ||
| Over on C-SPAN 3 at 10 a.m. Eastern, Senator Marco Rubio, President-elect Trump's Secretary of State nominee, will appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a confirmation hearing. | ||
| You can also watch all of our live coverage on the C-SPAN Now video app or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| With the presidential inauguration set for January 20th, watch the conclusion of the American History TV series Historic Inaugural Speeches. | ||
| Listen to inaugural speeches from Franklin Roosevelt through Barack Obama. | ||
| On Saturday, hear inaugural speeches by President Bill Clinton in 1993. | ||
| There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. | ||
| President George W. Bush in 2001. | ||
| And this is my solemn pledge. | ||
| I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And President Barack Obama in 2009. | |
| The challenges we face are real. | ||
| They are serious and they are many. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. | |
| But know this, America, they will be met. | ||
| Watch Historic Inaugural Speeches Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Coming up, Pete Hagzeth testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on his nomination for Defense Secretary. |