Commerce, Justice, Science; Energy and Water Development; and Interior and Environment Appropriations Act, 2026

Floor Speech

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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I will get to the primary reason that I asked for time on the floor today. I did want to say that, if it was within the rules and I would be able to acknowledge people in the Gallery who happen to be my great staff who have done extraordinary casework for years and years, and they are visiting here--if it was within the rules for me to recognize them--I would. I understand the rules, and I will not. But I do welcome them, nevertheless.

I am here because yesterday, the President had a tour up in Michigan, I believe, and a reporter asked him a question about me in particular. He said: How do you feel about Senator Tillis saying that the potential indictment of the Fed Chair seems a bit excessive?

I didn't use those words, but that was how the question was postured.

The response to that was the President said: That is why Thom is not running for office anymore.

He went on to say very nice things, that he likes me and we work together. I like the President. As a matter of fact, I know many people would be shocked to hear this, but I never had a cross word with the President. We never had an elevated discussion in either direction. I suppose if it came from one direction, it would have ended up that way, but it never has.

As a matter of fact, the President has a quality to him that I find really endearing. When I called him out of the blue because my mom was talking about him--she is a big fan of the President. So I called him out of the blue on a Saturday afternoon, and he picked up the phone, and I said: Mr. President, would you speak to my mom? She loves you.

He got on the phone and graciously spoke to her for about 5 minutes.

A few months later, I was down in Florida. I had an aunt and uncle-- the same thing. I called him up--the same thing. He can be a gracious person.

The President, though, got it wrong. He was right in saying that I am not running anymore. But the reason that I made the decision not to run again--and I decided it was just easier to do it here versus answer the callous questions out in the hallway--is because in the moment where he and I had a disagreement, I had to make a decision about how I could be most helpful to him.

If I ran for reelection, I would necessarily always have to think about what boundaries I should have in expressing my concern, and that created complications for my campaign. There are redlines. There are just certain things I would disagree with and would have to take the heat in a campaign.

But I thought, in the moment, I would be far better equipped to give the President my advice on policy matters. So I removed any doubt, whatsoever, that my decisions would be based upon the consequences of either getting his support or not having his support in a campaign.

When I did my announcement and said I was wanting to put myself in a position where I could call balls and strikes, it was so that I could do something that I believe some people in the White House are not particularly concerned about.

The night that I told the President he should find a replacement--the press has gotten this wrong. The President did not ask for people to replace me, and then I decided to retire. The President and I were having a dialogue that night. I told the President that I thought it was time for him to look for a replacement; that I had decided not to run for reelection.

My last communication that night with the President--this is not verbatim, but pretty close--I said: Mr. President, if I prove anything else to you in the next year and a half, I hope that I can prove to you that I care about your legacy, and you have people around you who don't.

There are people who are surfing his wave until they go to the next one. They are young people who have never served in office and don't understand the consequences of looking around corners and protecting this President. There are people that are more concerned with their next job and the next Presidential campaign they may be able to get on than making sure this President is as successful as possible.

So I decided, by just making the decision not to run for reelection, I can speak truth to a President that, I hope, goes down in history as the most successful Republican President in the history of this country. He has that potential, if he starts to recognize advice that he is getting that I think is bad advice and won't age well.

I will get to a few. I am going to keep my temperature down. I told everybody, this isn't cranky Thom; this is Thom trying to explain a very serious subject.

Ladies and gentlemen, the thought of the United States taking the position that we would take Greenland, an independent territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, is absurd. Somebody needs to tell the President that the people of Greenland, up until these current times, were actually very, very pro-American and very, very pro-American presence. We had as many as 17 military installations in Greenland at our height.

Frankly, I bet that once we get through this tension we have today, they would be willing to accept us. We have the power to project some capability in Greenland, and we haven't necessarily put a 75-year alliance in NATO and dissolving it in the mix. That is the smart, sustainable way to achieve the President's goal of securing the Arctic.

The not smart, unachievable way is whoever told the President that this was a viable path. It doesn't make sense.

I will give you another example. Over the weekend, the President--the question yesterday had to do with Chair Powell. I made the statement that I felt like now that the Fed Chair is potentially under indictment, I will not support any vote for any Fed Board member until this matter is decided. Why? Well, because the whole argument about Fed independence comes into question, right? If all of a sudden, the Justice Department, apparently--according to the President, unknown to him--he reported it was a surprise to him. Since then, he has been briefed. He is standing by the Justice Department on this indictment.

Ladies and gentlemen, unless there is a really compelling reason, unless the prosecution succeeds--and I think it is unlikely, virtually impossible, that Chair Powell will be found guilty of anything. This is all about the testimony in a Banking Committee hearing. That is all it is. If they succeed, then they have created a device that really will put the Fed's independence in question and can cause serious problems for us in the future.

I think one of the reasons why the financial markets did not react precipitously in a negative way with the revelation of Chair Powell is because many people stood up in Congress and said this seems to be crossing a line.

I believe, if the financial markets thought it was almost certain that Jay Powell was going to resign or be prosecuted, I believe we would have a very different reaction.

This is another example of where--Jay Powell, I think, has made decisions that I disagreed with, similar to decisions that have been made by conservative Justices that I disagreed with, but I think they did it for the right reasons. It is just another example of where--in this case, according to the President's public comments, he was surprised about the indictment. It is another example of who in there thought this was a good idea?

Now, because it is a current investigation, we will just have to wait and figure it out after they either proceed with an indictment or they decide to dismiss it.

Then the final thing is, I am in a position now, without question, to say that anyone who thinks that President Trump adopting Elizabeth Warren's idea on capping credit card interest rates--it is literally what the President said over the past week. They are not the conservatives that I thought they were. Anybody that thinks this is a good idea will not speak truth to this President to say: You can't do that. If you want to unbank or underbank people, then not allow interest rates to be set based on the risk, and you will see what will happen.

I told Senator Warren on the floor yesterday: Good on you.

Senator Warren and I have a good relationship. We don't hardly ever vote on the same stuff, but I said: Good on you. You convinced the President of the United States to actually embrace something you have been pitching for as long as I have been here.

She said: Are you going to set the policy?

I said: No, I will work hard to kill it. I like good execution, even when it is not policy I like. And that was good execution. You convinced the President to embrace your policy.

Then, finally, there is the Credit Card Competition Act, which is another example, ladies and gentlemen, that other countries have tried, and it has failed. The industry is trying to come up with a compromise that works, but once again, somebody in the President's orbit thought capping interest rates was a good idea and told him. I don't expect him to be an expert in the consequences of that. Somebody thought to do the Credit Card Competition Act after it was unsuccessful here because Republicans thought it was a good idea, but it is still a bad idea.

So, to the President: Mr. President, I am going to live up to my promise. I am going to do everything I can to point out advice that you are being given by people who are not thinking about your legacy, who are not thinking about good policy, and from time to time, they are fading far out of the realm of what I consider to be good, conservative, free-market ideology.

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