On Thursday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Rep. Mike Haridopolos (R-FL) stated that he would not be okay if Democrats ceded as much power to the president as Republicans have to President Donald Trump.
Co-host Amna Nawaz asked, “[A]lmost every major accomplishment we’ve seen from Republicans so far…has been either pushed by executive action or has been something the president has asked for and Republican lawmakers have then seen through, including ceding some of your own constitutional power, the power of the purse. Is this what you envisioned it would be, your time in Congress?”
Haridopolos responded, “Well, I would say this: When we were in a lot of crisis in the Great Depression, FDR changed the dynamic. And he said, we have this agenda. The American public has changed dramatically. The Republican Party is known as the blue-collar party now for the first time in my lifetime, and we really focused the new tax cuts on the middle class. I felt like the President had a mandate. It’s a new Republican Party. He was really focused on the middle class who were hurt by higher grocery prices and gas prices. And I really felt like it was — we’re going to do the kind of the old 100 days of FDR. We took six months. Welcome to modern America. But it’s been an agenda that we believe in, and we think we are going to really show the results when we have low unemployment rates, we have low inflation rates. And we’re also telling countries around the world, treat us as an equal. The reason why the tariffs, I think, are having some positive effect with the revenues coming in, because prices aren’t going up, because America is the number one market in the world. And for too long, they were charging us higher tax rates than we were charging them. Treat us fairly, and we think we can compete quite fine.”
Nawaz followed up, “I guess the question is, would you be okay if Democratic lawmakers did the same with a Democratic president?”
Haridopolos answered, “Of course not. Welcome to partisanship. I’m with you. It’s modern politics, because, unfortunately, I want to see more of the bipartisan operations. I work with a lot of Democrats on issues like cryptocurrency. We just passed a major piece of legislation that they couldn’t get done in years past. I’m a big tent guy, and the more we can work together with Democrats, America is better off. But I believe in tax relief, and I think we really provided that, and, more importantly, backed up our campaign promises, which is not a common thing in Washington, D.C.”
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