Fox News "The Ingraham Angle" - Washington's real March Madness

Interview

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INGRAHAM: But as of tonight, it looks like the stuff that should be funded by the Republican majority won't be touched at all. Planned Parenthood, sanctuary cities, Obama's executive amnesties, and this is my favorite, almost a billion dollars for a tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey.

It is a disguised earmark for Chuck Schumer. Nice going, Chuck and two of the most liberal states in America benefit. And that is the short list. It passes for a law, this Freddy Krueger-like omnibus bill will include over a trillion dollars in spending, $1.3 trillion.

And it will pass with scant debate or scrutiny. My friends, this is just sheer madness. It is time to stand on principle without fear of a government shutdown. It is time to educate the public about how both parties god off-board.

Yes, you have to compromise if necessary, but with full transparency, and, if possible, not on the core issues. You are the majority, after all. Start really helping President Trump drain the swamp. Don't add to it. You'll do the country good and you just might surprise all experts in November. And that's the'ANGLE.'

Joining a number reaction from Washington, D.C., is the majority whip for the House, Congressman Steve Scalise, a Republican who represents, of course, the brave state of Louisiana. Congressman Scalise, it's great to see you. A pretty harsh assessment by yours truly on the big hulking omnibus spending bill. Your reaction to what I say?

REPRESENTATIVE STEVE SCALISE (R), MAJORITY WHIP: Laura, first, it's great to be back with you. If you look at a number of the things that are President Trump's priorities, they are going to be in this bill. You start with our nation's defense.

The biggest piece of this bill by far, is going to be the funding of our nation's defense, which actually restores the ability for our country to provide for our men and women in uniform and restore a lot of the damage that Barack Obama did.

We work closely with President Trump and Secretary Mattis to give him the tools that they need. Look, we saw two more planes fall out of the sky last week. We finally restoring air superiority in this bill. Given our troops a pay raise in this bill. There are tremendous President Trump Republican priorities in this bill.

INGRAHAM: But Congressman, I've got to get in on this sequester cap, which I know was considered a very harsh measure. When those sequester caps were in, they didn't decrease spending, they decreased the rate of increase in spending, crazy Washington speak. There were cutbacks, but the cutbacks are across-the-board.

And the budget deficit under Obama, and for a few years, did begin to go down. Now Republicans are in charge, like, well, the military needs another 300 billion and this project needs a couple $20 billion here and
$30 billion here, and we turn around, and the Republicans are the party of big spending, Congressman.

So how do we, as conservatives, hold up that mantle of fiscal responsibility if, indeed, we're blowing the budget again? Because we are going to more money on the military?

SCALISE: One of our basic functions as a government is to fund and provide for our national defense. We shouldn't hit fiscal discipline against providing for our nation's defense.

INGRAHAM: At $700 billion? That's a lot of dough, right?

SCALISE: It's a lot, but, again, when you talk about restoring the cuts that Barack Obama made, this is not being done on the backs of -- if you look at what is driving our debt, we know what is driving our national debt, that is mandatory spending. We have addressed that in the House.

But also, if you look at some of the problems in terms of what the CBO score say is creating the trillion-dollar deficits, they say our tax cut bill is what blew a trillion-dollar deficit hole in our budget. I don't agree with them, Laura, because we are seeing economic growth.

We are actually seeing not only companies giving bonuses and pay raise to workers, but we are seeing more people get out of the unemployment --

INGRAHAM: I couldn't agree with you more.

SCALISE: We are going to get more money in Washington because of the tax cut bill.

INGRAHAM: You're absolutely right. No doubt about that. But this is an opportunity, Congressman, to defund sanctuary cities and to get the real money for the wall that the president campaigned on and he won the election on that. Defund Planned Parenthood, you heard the sound bite about half a billion dollars to Planned Parenthood. Republicans are in charge and they punched it. That is mind-boggling.

SCALISE: I share your frustration there. But if you look at this bill, President Trump will have the ability to defund sanctuary cities in this bill, and I support the president and saying we not only going to go after sanctuary cities but sanctuary states.

There is a big fight going on, and I'm glad that President Trump said, we will confront this. He has that ability. Funding of the wall, that is something we are negotiating in these final stages right now that hasn't been completely released yet, but I think we'll have the ability for the president to start building the wall with this bill.

We've got wins for the president, but you want to talk about what's driving our debt, number one, I don't think tax cuts are going to blow a trillion- dollar hole in the budget and you're already seeing economic growth is actually happening, and we are going to ultimately have less than a trillion-dollar deficit. Saving Medicare from bankruptcy --

INGRAHAM: I got that, but Congressman, we've got to be honest with the American people. You know I adore you, but we have to be honest with the American people. Planned Parenthood will be fully funded in this bill, correct?

SCALISE: Not fully funded. Look, they've been getting funded for a long time. We are trying to roll that back. Our health care bill, which passed the House and failed in the Senate by one vote, would have fully defunded Planned Parenthood. We've got to continue that fight. I'm not dumb of that fight. I have worked very closely with all the pro-life groups. We are going to be rolling back some of the money that they are getting. We've got to continue to battle to get that done.

INGRAHAM: This sanctuary city was such a winner politically; it has to be defunded.

SCALISE: The president will pursue that, the big gateway project you were talking about, the boondoggle. Hopefully, we will be able to defund that in this bill, take a look when the final ink is dry, a lot of these projects are talking about, I agree completely on. Once this bill is done, I think you will have that ability while restoring our nation's defense to the superiority it deserves and restoring a lot of the cuts Barack Obama made. President Trump wants this bill.

INGRAHAM: Let's go to special counsel. Both you, now, you have joined Kevin McCarthy, other leaders in the House and the Senate, all believing it is time for a second special counsel to examine the Russian probe and the Hillary email probe given what we have learned about the FBI. Why a second special counsel with endless budget and almost no accountability? How is that the right answer?

SCALISE: Laura, right now I think we don't have the accountability we deserve. We have seen serious questions raised from the house's investigation into what is going on with the special counsel. It's not just the special counsel. It goes far beyond that.

You see the abuses, potentially, of the FISA process, which is a really important process. If FBI agents were abusing that, and I think mostly this is coming from some of the top-level FBI agents going back to the Obama regime.

The FBI does great work at the local level. Frankly, at some of their credibility has been called into question. You have these reports that have come out. I think a second special counsel to look into some of these abuses that we have seen, and the serious questions that are raised, I think it is well in order to restore the confidence in the FBI that is desperately need.

INGRAHAM: Are you surprised, Congressman Scalise, that after we learned that the FBI blew two chances to intervene against Nikolas Cruz, both on that YouTube video posting and in the tip line when he basically told he was going to blow up the school, that we never -- as far as I could tell, we never have seen Christopher Wray, the FBI director, address how this happened, how we are going to prevent this from happening again. Does that concern you in the wake of the Parkland shooting?

SCALISE: It absolutely does, Laura. I know you and I have talked about this before. One of the passions I have is to find out exactly who had his file. Cruz said, I'm going to be a professional school shooter. He told people he was going to do that.

INGRAHAM: Where is Wray? Why hasn't he come out?

SCALISE: We need to have true accountability and I want to know the names of everybody in the FBI who handled that filing made the decision to not pursue him, and ultimately that led to him going out and massacring 17 people. It should have never happened. The FBI dropped the ball.

You saw some problems with local law enforcement as well that angered me too. But in terms of oversight, we have oversight over the FBI, and I think we deserve and the public deserves to know just by the FBI dropped the ball in this critically important case.

INGRAHAM: Congressman Steve Scalise, always great having one. Thank you so much, sir.

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