The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | Here's What Grade Rep. Elise Stefanik Gives Biden After 2 Years as President

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

President Joe Biden on Tuesday night will deliver his second official State of the Union address since being sworn into office Jan. 20, 2021.  Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., the No. 3 House Republican, says the president doesn't have anything to brag about in the speech to a joint session of Congress at the midpoint of his four-year term. "I think the president has caused significant crises in this country, whether you look at the border crisis, the economic crisis, the inflation crisis, or the constitutional crisis," Stefanik, chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, says.  "What House Republicans are focused on is our commitment to America, our legislative agenda that we have already hit the ground running to pass on behalf of the American people, standing up for an economy that's strong, a nation that's safe, a future that's built upon freedom, and a government that's accountable," Stefanik says. "So, I hope to hear a lot from the president, but I think he's going to double down on the far-Left, failed policies that have been really hurting hardworking American families." Stefanik joins this episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss how she would grade Biden's first two years in office, what to expect from congressional Republicans and GOP leadership in oversight of the Biden administration, and what she views as the biggest threat from the Chinese Communist Party.  Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., also joins the podcast to discuss what she thinks Biden has to brag about during his State of the Union address, Biden's self-inflicted immigration crisis, and whether House Republicans will impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the situation at the southern border.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Sinal podcast for Tuesday, February 7th. I'm Virginia Allen. Tonight, President Joe Biden will deliver his State of the Union address at 9 p.m. Eastern. How is the president going to address the situation at the southern border? Or the recent sky balloon that was shot down in the Atlantic Ocean belonging to China? Samantha, Charris and I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Congresswoman Elise Stefaniac of New York and Congresswoman Harriet Hagman of Wyoming. to ask them what we can expect from the president tonight and what grade they would give Biden on his first two years in office. Stay tuned for Samantha's conversation with Representative Stefonic after this.

We get it. With big media bias, it's hard to find accurate, honest news. That's why we've put together the Morning Bell newsletter, a compilation of the top stories and conservative commentary. To subscribe, just head todailysignal.com slash morning bell subscription or visitdailycingle.com and click on the connect button at the top of the page. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Now, tomorrow is President Biden's State of the Union address. Does the president have anything to brag about tomorrow night? I think the president has caused significant crisis in this country, whether you look at the border crisis, the economic crisis, the inflation crisis, or the constitutional crisis. What House Republicans are focused on is our commitment to America, our legislative agenda that we have already hit the ground running to pass on behalf of the American people, standing up for an economy that's strong, a nation that's safe, a future that's built upon freedom and a government that's accountable.

So I hope to hear a lot from the president, but I think he's going to double down on the far-left failed policies that have been really hurting hardworking American families. How would you grade President Biden's first two years in office? I would grade him with an F, and he deserves that F. On every metric, he has failed. People are worse off than they were under President Trump, where people were doing very well. Families were doing very well economically in terms of our safety. Law enforcement was supported. Our southern border was secure. We have seen that unravel so quickly. And I want to highlight one issue that's a particular crisis is this unsustainable debt. Over $31 trillion is our current debt. That is saddling future generations. with an unsustainable bill to pay. And yet, I believe tomorrow President Biden's going to double down on his refusal to negotiate and saying we need a clean debt ceiling. That's a non-starter for the American people. That's a non-starter for House Republicans, which is why we're so supportive of the fact that

Speaker McCarthy had that meeting with President Biden to demand that we're going to have negotiations to stand up for the American people and bring our budget back towards balance. Now, you just brought up the national debt. But what other things would you consider to be President Biden's greatest failure over the last two years? The border, the weaponization of federal agencies to go against his political opponents, whether it's targeting parents standing up at school board meetings, having his Department of Justice designate them as domestic terrorists, or whether it's the FBI targeting his top political opponent, Donald Trump,

with the raid at Mar-a-Lago. And it's unacceptable that the mainstream media has treated, Joe Biden's mishandling of classified documents and have tried to brush it under the rug. The American people deserve to know the truth, the whole truth about his very concerning and illegal storage of classified documents. And let's talk a little bit more about classified documents and the Oversight Committee, and what can we expect from Republicans in terms of, and from Republican leadership in terms of oversight?

Oversight is a huge part of our commitment to America, and it's something that Democrats refuse to do. It's our constitutional duty representing the American. American people to have oversight over these agencies, because these agencies work for the American people, not the other way around. And too often these agencies have been targeting the American people, hardworking, law-abiding citizens. And I use parents as probably one of the most egregious examples, the fact that the Department

of Justice was targeting parents, parents who cared deeply about their child safety and the quality of education they were getting in the classroom. So that's going to be one part of our oversight agenda. But as a member of House leadership, all of our committees will be conducting oversight. I sit on the House Armed Services Committee. We're going to go after the misuse of federal dollars when it comes to the Department of Defense with their woke policies, implementing critical race theory as part of their teachings within the DoD. That's unacceptable, and we will go after that.

That's part of oversight. Now, I want to talk a little bit about China and what you see as the biggest threat from the Chinese Communist Party. I believe that our greatest 21st century threat is the Chinese Communist Party, and I've been part of the China Task Force, which Republicans, put together in the last Congress, putting forth what solutions are. We need to make sure that we're protecting our intellectual property. We need to make sure that we're protecting our agricultural land, our ag businesses. I've introduced legislation to do that. And we need to make sure that we're making investments in our nation's military, not in these woke policies, but

making sure that we have the strongest, most capable, most lethal military in the world, because communist China is doubling down on those investments. It's one of the reasons why House Republicans led the creation of the China Select Committee, which we actually earned over 100 Democrats vote for. So this shouldn't be a partisan issue. Unfortunately, Joe Biden has shown weakness when it comes to the communist Chinese, particularly in his mishandling of the balloon this past weekend. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about the balloon and, you know, more about President Biden's handling of it. Do you think that over the last two years, President Biden has effectively countered the threat of Chinese, sorry,

the Chinese Communist Party, and what more do you hope to see from him? Well, we need to see strength, and we're not seeing this with our current commander-in-chief. I will tell you, under President Trump, our adversaries feared us, and our allies knew that they could count on us, and it's the exact opposite under President Joe Biden. And China was watching that botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. He was watching that catastrophic commander-in-chief lack of leadership, and she and the communist Chinese are continuing to flex their muscle, whether it was the balloon or whether it's their continued theft of intellectual property and our technology in the United States.

So this is a very serious threat. House Republicans are leading on this issue, and we intend to make it a big part of our national security priorities and also economic security priorities to make sure that we continue to be the global leader economically and from a national security perspective. I just have one final question for you. The Daily Signal reported this morning that the Biden administration and Department of Education, it doesn't seem like they are enforcing Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which requires colleges and universities to report contracts with or foreign funding from foreign entities of $250,000 or more.

From your perspective and as a leader of the Republican Party, what can we expect from you moving forward to hold these colleges and universities accountable? It is a great question, and I also serve on the House Education Workforce Committee. So I've actually introduced legislation to tamp down on any foreign investment from adversaries into our higher education system. We saw this, unfortunately, with Confucius Institutes funded by the Communist Chinese Party, and we need to put a stop to it because it's brainwashing our kids, and it's allowing infiltration. So that will be an oversight agenda for us on the House Education Committee, and certainly a priority for the China Select Committee as well. But I've been very passionate about this issue, and we need to make sure we're doing everything we can to protect our future leaders in our education system.

And stay tuned because now we're going to hear from Representative Higman about her thoughts regarding Biden's border crisis and whether Republicans plan to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It is my pleasure today to be joined by Congresswoman Hageman. Thank you so much for being here today. We really appreciate your time. Thank you for having me. So as we look towards President Joe Biden's State of the Union Address, what does Biden have to brag about Tuesday night? Well, I would say nothing good. The increased gas prices, the food insecurity and the food prices we're seeing, the problems with the supply chain, the catastrophic failures of our airline industry over a couple of very important periods of time, including right before Christmas.

What happened this week with the balloon from China, the surveillance balloon from China, over 4.5 million illegal aliens crossing the southern border. I'm from Wyoming. My state has over 560,000 people. There are over 10 times the number of people who have crossed that southern border illegally that live in my state. Think about that metric. And the significance of that to some of our smaller schools when these folks come in. in there and need the services for education, for medical care, and those sorts of things. The drugs. I would describe Joe Biden as the largest enabler of the largest human trafficking and drug smuggling operation in U.S. history. It's just really a tragedy. When you hear the stories of the human trafficking, when you know that over 120,000 people have died of fentanyl overdoses in the last year, and you realize the vast majority of that misery is because of his failure

to secure the border. You just realize there's very little that he can brag about tomorrow. But he's going to have to address the border. What do you think he's going to say? I think he's going to continue to gaslight the American public. I think that just like Mayorkas, he's going to try to convince people that, yes, the border is secure. I think he's going to try to convince people that this isn't his problem.

I think he's going to try to convince people that you are. inhumane or you have no compassion if you don't believe in this kind or in this level of a legal immigration. I would argue exactly the opposite. I think this is one of the most inhumane things that I have ever heard of. We had a hearing in the judiciary committee last week on the open border and there was a sheriff who came and testified. I would encourage everyone to go watch that videotape because they could learn some very important things such as the fact that the folks, many of the folks that are coming across that border and being smuggled by the cartels may have to pay as much as $18,000 a person or $21,000 a person or $15,000 a person,

but they don't have that kind of cash. So they are essentially human smugglers or they are put into human trafficking. We've got sex trafficking. We've got all kinds of things. It's an incredibly inhumane situation on the border. So yes, I think that he will address it, but I think he will continue to gaslight us about what's actually happening. When we think about the GOP

and how the Republican Party is moving forward in this new Congress, is the Republican Party going to take steps to impeach Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas? Well, I was just saying a moment ago, impeachment, just like everything else, is on the table. What we have to look at is we have to look at whether they have violated their oath of office

and whether they have committed an impeachable offense. I don't tend to go to that immediately, what I tend to go to is looking at the evidence. Now, I have signed on to an effort, a resolution to bring impeachment proceedings against Majorcas, and I think that that is an appropriate thing to do. We need to do the investigation. We need to do the research, and we need to expose what this administration is doing and why. And then at that point, you can make the decision as to what the next step is. If you were to give President Biden a grade for his first two years in office, which grade would you give him? It's a flat out F. I've never seen.

seeing anybody as destructive of our country as the current administration. I lived through the Jimmy Carter years with 15% interest and 18% inflation. The Jimmy Carter years were a disaster, especially to people in the ag industry and other highly leveraged industries. I grew up on a ranch near Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and he was terrible for our industry. Joe Biden across the board has been the worst president in my lifetime, and I think probably the worst president in U.S. history. By every single metric that you would judge someone like Joe Biden, he has failed. He has failed to keep us safe. He has failed to address the issues that are important to the American public. I just truly believe that there is a special place in hell for people who adopt policies

that are intended to increase the cost of housing, food, and energy, and that's exactly what this administration has done. He has failed the citizens of this country. Congresswoman, thank you for your time. We really appreciate it. Thank you. And that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us today. If you want more State of the Union coverage, then be sure to be following the Daily Signal website tonight, daily signal.com. We're going to have several pieces up in response to the speech and fact-checking President Joe Biden's State of the Union address. And also be sure that you're following DailySiddle across social media platforms. We will have coverage there. and then tomorrow morning on the DailySitnell podcast, we have a special interview,

breaking down the speech and getting some expert analysis on what the president said and what we can expect from the president in the months to come. But thank you again for joining us today on the day with the podcast. Hey, if you have not had a chance already, would you just take five minutes to leave us a rating on review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen? It makes a huge difference to us. And we truly, truly, truly love hearing your feedback. All right, we'll have a wonderful Tuesday, and we'll see you right back here tomorrow morning.

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