Cheyenne, WY – Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) sat down with Valeria Fugate of “Wyoming News Now,” and Will Silverstein of “Good Morning Wyoming” in-studio yesterday to discuss the Democrats’ dangerous spending proposals and how they will be detrimental to Wyoming.
See below for video of the interviews, along with their transcripts:
Rep. Liz Cheney Joins Wyoming News Now | October 5, 2021
VALERIA FUGATE:Wyoming News Now would like to welcome Congresswoman Liz Cheney to our studios. Welcome, and thank you for coming.
REP. LIZ CHENEY:It’s great to be with you.
FUGATE:There’s so much currently in the news regarding the debt ceiling and reconciliation — what can you tell us about that, and what happens if we don’t meet or move that deadline by October 18th?
REP. CHENEY:We’re in a position now where we have this $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, then there’s another about $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill, and all of that is new spending and it is all spending — there’s some things in the infrastructure bill that are good, that could have broad bipartisan support, but, unfortunately, there’s an awful lot in there that would impose new regulations on Wyoming businesses, it would hurt our energy industry, our ag industry, so I don’t support the infrastructure bill or the reconciliation bill. In the Senate, what the Republican Leader has said is that basically, the Democrats have got to do that on their own. Back in August, I think almost every Republican Senator signed a letter to the president saying, “Look, we’re not going to raise the debt ceiling. We’re alerting you to that now, so if you need to do that, you need to think about mechanisms to do it.” So if, in fact, we’re going to have this kind of very irresponsible spending at these levels, you know, they’re the ones who have got to raise the debt ceiling. So, we’ll see what happens. My, you know — we have to raise it. It’s very important that, you know, we honor the full faith in credit of the United States so that means something. The spending that we’re seeing is so significant and so huge and comes at a moment where it will fundamentally restructure our economy, fundamentally restructure the relationship between the government and individuals in a way that’s very negative. It also, we’re seeing the inflationary pressures this new spending is causing, so I think that the Democrats will ultimately use reconciliation to raise it. I would hope that it would cause some reflection for people to say, “We can’t afford this level of spending.” And it’s not good for the country, and it’s not good for our freedoms. It’s not good for our constitutional rights to have the federal government play such an expansive role in terms of this massive overreach that these bills will entail.
Rep. Liz Cheney Sits Down With Good Morning Wyoming | October 5, 2021
REP. LIZ CHENEY: Great, good to be with you. Thanks for having me.
SILVERSTEIN: It’s great to be with you in person. Yeah, after all the time on Zoom.
REP. CHENEY: Yeah, exactly.
SILVERSTEIN: Great to see you. So, I’d like to talk with you about the infrastructure bill. Currently, it seems like it always goes back and forth. What’s the current status of the bill?
REP. CHENEY: So, there are several big moving pieces to it. First of all, there are some pieces of infrastructure spending that have bipartisan support, and it’s really too bad that the Democrats weren’t willing to sort of pull those out. I think they could have easily passed those. Unfortunately, what’s happening now is, you’ve got an infrastructure package that some of the moderate Democrats want to see passed on its own. It’s not something that I could support. I know, Senators Barrasso and Lummis didn’t support it over in the Senate, because it’s just got too much wasteful spending in it, too many things that are harmful to our energy industry, for example, and others. So, there’s a debate going on now inside the Democratic Caucus — their far left folks don’t want to move the infrastructure bill without also moving the even bigger spending bill, their $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. And because the Democratic margin in the House is so small, they really can’t afford to lose any votes. So they were, you know — Speaker Pelosi said she was gonna put it up for a vote a couple of times last week, they had to pull it off the floor, both times — they didn’t have the votes. I think, ultimately, they’ll cobble something together, and, unfortunately, though, it really is going to be full of wasteful spending, bad tax policy, new regulations, a whole range of things that are not going to be good for us here in Wyoming.
SILVERSTEIN: I guess the unfortunate part too, is, I guess, you can see it from a long way away that it’s going to be a long time to eventually get to where you have to go. What can we expect in Wyoming from this bill?
REP. CHENEY: Yeah, it depends, obviously, on what’s ultimately in it. But I think that, you know, you’re certainly going to see tax increases, you certainly could see stepped up basis, and new policies that really affect things like estate tax, the death tax that is so devastating for our family-owned, family-operated ranches, for example. You’re going to see provisions that really are focused on trying to phase out fossil fuels, that are very Green New Deal focused, which again, bad for Wyoming, bad for the country. And so I think, you know, you’ll see a real expansion of the role of the government in our lives. And you couple all of this — I mean, where we are today, as you and I are talking, is that the Democrats have proposed these massive new spending programs, and now they also have to raise the debt limit. And so, I think the debt limit’s got to be raised within the next two weeks in order to be able to borrow the money they need to fund all these new spending programs, and it’s really just an irresponsible way to do business and really bad policy as well.
SILVERSTEIN: Right. I think when most people think of infrastructure, they think of, you know, roads and bridges and not necessarily the Green New Deal policies. Did you — is that something that you see them trying to force other people to adopt, of course, for states like Wyoming?
REP. CHENEY: Yeah, and they’re very open about it, especially the the far left folks in their caucus say that they view this as sort of a once in a lifetime, some of them will say, once in a lifetime opportunity to impose fundamental restructuring, reordering of the society and the economy, and I think we should take them for their word, or take them at their word when they say that’s what they’re doing. And it’s really bad policy and would be really bad for Wyoming and for the country.
Original source can be found here.
