At an event with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) at the New College of Florida, Border Czar Tom Homan spoke about legislation to improve border security.
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NewsTranscript
00:00We take to the audience questions.
00:02What you're talking about though, governor said that the Congress is feckless.
00:06You said you don't have confidence, because this is my thought is I remember
00:10when the Biden administration took over and I said to my wife, I can't believe it
00:14was like nine months they'd been in charge and how in nine months you could take this
00:18great country and it was just changing rapidly in a negative way, open borders,
00:23lawlessness, no following of the rule of law.
00:26It was just like, how could it happen in nine months?
00:29The same is true, regardless of how successful you guys are.
00:33You're gone and there's another change in administration.
00:35Can it change again in nine months without there being permanent legislation
00:39passed by Congress and yet they're feckless.
00:42I mean, let's not forget under Trump one, Trump 45, he had the House and Senate.
00:48They didn't help him.
00:49And I'm not just talking about Democrats, there's not Republicans on health.
00:53They need to lead too.
00:54Yeah.
00:55So bottom line is now we have both again.
00:57And as Governor Sanchez said, we're not getting what we need.
01:00So they didn't learn a lesson from the first administration.
01:03I was hoping and praying to learn a lesson.
01:04Let's hope they come true.
01:05But you're exactly right.
01:07He had the House and Senate, Trump 45, he's got the House and Senate 47.
01:10What have they done?
01:12Nothing.
01:12So hopefully they wake up or
01:14some Republican senators in Congress need to lead too.
01:16We need to vote them out because they're not doing the right thing.
01:19Well, so much of the modern Congress is just performative.
01:26It's just political theater.
01:28It's not substantive.
01:29They're not engaged in the business of accomplishment.
01:33It's all about putting on a show to be able to get returned to office and
01:37stay there for as long as possible.
01:39It's one of the reasons why I think we need term limits for
01:42members of Congress, which I think would be really good.
01:44But it just needs to be, because it's just like you turn on cable news and
01:52you got these guys jabbing, it's like, what have you done?
01:56I know you like to jab, I know you like to talk, what have you actually done?
02:01You've been in now for, so
02:02President Trump's only been in for 60 days, a little bit more than that.
02:06Congress was in almost two weeks, three weeks before that.
02:09So since January 3rd, what have they done?
02:12How many weeks have they had off for fundraising and junkets and
02:15all this other stuff?
02:17And why aren't they really attuned to what needs to be done to deliver support for
02:22the President's agenda, but just as importantly,
02:26solidifying these changes so that it is actually in law?
02:30And don't say it can't be done.
02:32Biden, they only had 50 senators when he came in.
02:35They had a very narrow majority in the House.
02:37Did that stop them from doing all this stuff?
02:40They did a lot of bad legislation, but they did it, they got it done.
02:45You look in the 90s, Republicans or Congress, I mean, when Clinton was
02:49President, they passed very tough immigration laws back then.
02:53It's popular, and so I don't even see an effort really to push this forward.
02:57And the thing is, is when you have a new president come in,
02:59you have a certain period of time where you have a lot of momentum, right?
03:03Just political physics, naturally, the momentum for
03:06the first 100 days is gonna be greater than the momentum two years later.
03:10That's just the way politics works.
03:13And what I just see is I don't see them really in Congress working
03:18to seize the moment and to understand that this is different,
03:23that we actually have a chance to really make serious changes.
03:27I see the President doing things that are really, really transformative, but
03:31I don't see the same energy from Congress.
03:33And so the answer is,
03:34is almost anything the President is currently doing could be undone.
03:39Now, these guys build the border wall.
03:41That's hard to undo cuz you have to tear.
03:44That's one of the reasons why I support it.
03:46It's easy to stop building it.
03:47When Biden came in, he stopped all the construction.
03:50He left the fence there.
03:51He tried to sell the fence right before he left office, and
03:55that was stopped, thankfully.
03:57But stuff that's done by executive can be done.
04:01And just the flip side is Biden passed things through the Senate with
04:05the so-called reconciliation with 50 votes, Inflation Reduction Act,
04:09all these things, trillions of dollars of waste.
04:13The Congress now, we have 53 Republicans.
04:15We could repeal all of Biden's spending policies in the upcoming
04:20reconciliation, and yet they're not even proposing to do all that.
04:25So look, it is what it is.
04:28And so we just gotta hope that these guys on the administrative side are able to
04:32get as much done as possible.
04:35And maybe that creates enough momentum where no one in the future would
04:39wanna reel it in.
04:40And I do think the Democrats privately admit that Biden's open border was one of
04:44the key factors in them losing the White House.
04:47Because it was just so outrageous and indefensible that a lot of voters who may
04:52have voted Democrat in the past were really disenchanted by that.
04:56But you gotta get this stuff into law, and it's not always easy.
05:00Washington's tough, but I don't even see an attempt to do it.
05:04And I think that should frustrate all of us.
05:06I agree, I say to my wife that if the only two things that happen to
05:10Trump administration, notwithstanding all the great work you guys are doing,
05:15are term limits and a balanced budget amendment,
05:18the country saved for another 200 years.
05:20And it's really what we have-
05:27Well, Florida has done this.
05:28So we at the legislature under Article 5 has done term limits, and
05:33we need enough states to do it.
05:36We've also done a balanced budget amendment.
05:38We now have, I think, 28 or 29 states nationwide.
05:42If you get 34, that triggers to where this amendment would be debated and
05:46potentially sent to the states for ratification.
05:49I'm actually gonna be traveling around to some other states where they're gonna
05:53think about voting on it and urge the legislatures to do it.
05:58Because the reality is, if we'd had a balanced budget amendment in place 25
06:02years ago, the country wouldn't be $36 trillion in debt.
06:06That's just a fact.
06:07If you look at Florida, we have a balanced budget requirement.
06:10And what have we done?
06:11Since I've been governor, we've paid off the state over 180 years,
06:16the debt that Florida racked up.
06:17We've paid off 41% of it just in the last six years.
06:21So we have the lowest debt per capita of any state in the country
06:24that has state debt.
06:25And so it can be done.
06:27And I understand it's more difficult in Washington because of everything.
06:31But left to their own devices, this is another kind of thing.
06:34Even if they get a balanced budget this year, which they're not gonna do, but
06:38even if they did, future congresses can unravel that.
06:42They say they'll do these spending deals where they'll promise to cut spending
06:47ten years from now.
06:49So even if that was something that made fiscal sense,
06:53there's no way to enforce that new congresses get in.
06:55So I agree with what Richard's saying.
06:59You gotta have structural reform to change the behavior of that institution
07:05because it's a failed institution at this point.
07:08And they're not just gonna voluntarily turn it around.