U.S. Senator Steve Daines today joined Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria to discuss confirming President Trump’s nominees as quicky as possible, strength on the world stage and the need for reduced spending in Washington.
Watch Daines’ interview HERE.
Daines on Confirming Trump Nominees:
We’re off to the best start in a decade in terms of moving quickly in the U.S. Senate. That’s thanks to the new majority leader, John Thune, who’s got the Senate working now seven days a week. And because of that, we’re ten years ahead of where we were, literally, back in the days of Obama trying to put nominees through. And again, the most important thing we can do in the Senate is move President Trump’s nominees through, get them confirmed, get them on the job, because as somebody who spent most of his life in the private sector, people equals policy. Who you hire makes all the difference in running great organizations. And I could not be happier with these nominees. They’re fantastic. But our heads are down, working fast as we can to get these nominees across the finish line and serving. The Democrats are doing all they can to throw sand in the gears to obstruct. It’s the Resist Movement. We saw that back in ‘17 with President Trump. They’re doing the same thing because the most important currency on the floor of the U.S. Senate is time. If they can slow us down, that’s how they slow President Trump down. We’re not going to let it happen.
Daines on Strengthening Military, Presence Abroad:
First and foremost, I am so relieved and thankful that we have a President that has moral clarity on the issue of Israel. Look at the people he’s putting in place: Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, Elise Stefanik as the new Ambassador to the United Nations. You’re going to have Mike Huckabee as the Ambassador to Israel. These individuals, these leaders, understand the importance of Israel and standing up and protecting Israel, allowing Israel to protect herself. And what he’s doing right now with these Patriot missiles and so forth is he’s allowing the Ukrainians to be negotiating from a position of strength. This will be a negotiated settlement at some point between Putin and Zelensky. But it’s important, with President Trump’s leadership, you get better outcomes from a position of strength. It’s exactly what President Trump is doing.
If America were a stock, we’ve had a great eight days of our stock rising among the American people and around the world. It reminds me a lot of when Ronald Reagan took office back in 1981. It’s morning in America again. It’s peace through strength. Look, crossings on the southern border have decreased 60 percent already in the first eight days under President Trump’s leadership. But this is an important moment. That’s why Pete Hegseth, as our new Secretary of Defense, is so important. It’s not only spending and investing more in our military, but it’s how we spend those dollars with the modern warfighter today, getting the woke culture out of the U.S. military… We need to be the most fierce fighting force in the world. That’s how you keep America safe and keep the world safe.
Daines on Cutting Government Waste:
We need to have…passion for keeping taxes low. We need to have a similar passion for reducing spending. They are both threats to our long-term prosperity in America. Look what happened just last night. It’s an underreported story where the Trump administration is offering buyouts now to all federal employees. In other words, that would be a significant savings. That’s how you reduce the bloated bureaucracies in the federal government, just like if you came in to a turnaround in a company. If you’re bloated, you have too many people. You need to reduce costs. You start with buyouts of employees. It’s a genius move. And again, when you put people like President Trump, Elon Musk, Howard Lutnick, others in charge of government, I’ll tell you what, they start running it like a business. You start seeing reduced costs. I’m very proud of the early steps already being taken here. We’ll be working with the President, with DOGE, with Elon and the team here to find ways to literally find trillions of dollars’ worth of cost reductions.
We’ve got to do it. It’s one of the greatest threats we have long-term, certainly to the United States. There will be a mandatory spending analysis that has to happen over the long haul. There’s some low hanging fruit. Let’s start with three million federal employees, the bloated bureaucracies. That is a liability right now that the taxpayer of America has to support. It also drives ways for the federal government to think about being more efficient. That’s one of the challenges in government. When you’re in the private sector, you’re the force of competition to drive efficiency and better value. You don’t have that in government, but what they’re doing right now in downsizing government is a great first step.