‘How Is This Different?’ Jake Tapper Confronts GOP Sen On Trump Agenda After He Complained About Dems ‘Ramming’
CNN anchor Jake Tapper confronted Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) for supporting passing President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda with a simple majority after he complained when Democrats similarly “rammed” bills under President Joe Biden.
Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) plan to enact much of the Trump agenda by passing “one big, beautiful bill” using a process called budget reconciliation, which avoids the 60-vote threshold to overcome a Senate filibuster.
On Sunday morning’s edition of CNN’s State of the Union, Tapper confronted Banks with his past criticism of Democrats ramming “a partisan spending bill down the throats of the American people,” asking how that differs from the GOP’s plan for Trump:
TAPPER: So, in the past, you have been critical a bit of the reconciliation process, which is — requires only 51 votes in the Senate, instead of the 60-vote threshold.
You have said that — you have criticized Democrats for passing legislation — quote — “on entirely partisan lines” — unquote — and trying to — quote — “ram a partisan spending bill down the throats of the American people.”
Not talking about the substance of the bills, but the process. How is this different?
BANKS: Well, it’s very different.
If you go back to what the Democrats did with the inflation control act, which actually increased inflation, the American Rescue Plan, which was the Green New Deal on steroids, the biggest expansion of the federal government since LBJ that happened through the reconciliation process, Jake, I actually expect that there will be Democrats who will come on board to support these efforts to secure the border, to make the Trump tax cuts on working-class families permanent, which is what we’re talking about in the reconciliation bill.
I expect, after this last election, a historic mandate for President Trump, winning the popular vote, working-class voters like my dad, a retired union factory worker that used to vote Democrat, who’s now a Trump Republican, the Democrats lost voters like my dad because they’re not focused on the issues that Donald Trump is.
I expect there could be a number of Democrats who come on board with the reconciliation process and help pass it, because the American — that’s what the American people want us to do. And if the Democrats ever want to be competitive again, I expect they will focus on those issues.
TAPPER: You talk about the Trump tax cuts on working-class Americans, but you’re not — the Trump tax cuts are not only for working-class Americans. They’re for everybody, right, anybody who pays taxes, including people in higher income brackets, like you or me, theoretically, right?
So, is it — you’re not only talking about having the ones for working-class people in that bill. It’s all of them, right? BANKS: You have got to remember. Go back to 2017. I was a freshman member of the House, and we passed the Trump tax cuts, making the corporate rates permanent, but not the rates on working-class families…
TAPPER: Right.
BANKS: … on individual — on the individual rates, the pass-through rates, small businesses.
TAPPER: But that’s all incomes — levels.
BANKS: Small businesses.
That’s what the reconciliation package has to include to make those tax cuts permanent.
TAPPER: OK.
BANKS: Otherwise, working-class families are going to take a massive hit, a tax — they’re going to have their taxes raised if we don’t make those tax cuts permanent.
TAPPER: I’m not advocating one way or the other. I’m just trying to…
(CROSSTALK)
BANKS: But I can’t — but it’s an important point, because I can’t imagine that Democrats would vote against that.
TAPPER: Well, I’m just — my only point is that it’s all of the income tax cuts, not just the ones for working-class people.
BANKS: I don’t think Democrats want to vote against making tax cuts permanent on working-class families.
TAPPER: OK. You take my point.
BANKS: But I get your point.
TAPPER: OK.
Watch above via CNN’s State of the Union.
