GOP Congressional Leader on Tariffs, DOGE and the “Big Beautiful Bill”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: It’s one step forward, one step back for President Trump’s agenda. A court has blocked his controversial tariffs, while his massive budget package that he’s dubbed the big, beautiful bill has passed. It passed the House last week. Blake Moore, a Republican representative from Utah, was a key figure in shaping that legislation. And he’s joining Walter Isaacson to talk about its priorities and the critics who say it favors the wealthy and expands the deficit. And a note that the two spoke just before the court’s decision on tariffs, and also, just before Elon Musk’s exit from the federal government to attend, he says, to his ailing Tesla company.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, Congressman Blake Moore. Welcome to the show.

REP. BLAKE MOORE (R-UT): Thank you. Glad to be here.

ISAACSON: Congress just passed this past week or so a big, beautiful bill, as Trump called it. But now, it’s getting a lot of criticism and even Elon Musk has come out against it, Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican in the Senate, saying it will greatly increase the deficit. Is that true? Would this bill greatly increase the deficit?

MOORE: There was one major stipulation. I’m a member of the Budget Committee and the Ways and Means Committee, so I’ve been very busy the last six months and even longer than that. The criticism that will increase the deficit is the fact that we already have large deficits. This particular bill is actually deficit neutral and we required that from the Budget Committee with whatever sort of competitive tax rates that we allow for there’s a cost to that, but we’ve offset that completely with a very conservative estimate on economic growth as well as spending cuts to offset the two. I wish we were solving our deficit problems. That’s a longer-term fix. That has to be almost a bipartisan approach. But this particular bill is deficit neutral and the way that it’s been written. To say otherwise isn’t actually looking at the specifics of your assumed growth rate. We think that this economy will do very well with tax, competitive tax rates that are made permanent, and we will see sustained economic growth, at least the 2.5, 2.6 percent, and we think we can actually exceed that.

ISAACSON: The Congressional Budget Office said it would add about 2 trillion. Tell me what’s wrong with their calculations.

MOORE: So, we’ve seen actually from 2017 when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act took place, the CBO didn’t necessarily, within a dynamic scoring — if you look at a dynamic scoring opportunity, you see economic growth swallow any particular potential of deficits that created. Our revenues have not decreased significantly in any way since we did major tax reform in 2017. This bill, we want to actually make a lot of that permanent because it’s been very good for American families and businesses. And what — any numbers that they’re talking about there is just they are not going to assume an economic growth factor into this where we think over time, we’ve proven that’d be the case.

ISAACSON: One of the provisions in the bill is something that you push, which is sometimes called the Trump accounts, but it’s basically a credit for children, bonds for children. Tell me why that’s in the bill and what that would do.

MOORE: Yes, this is not a new concept. This has actually been a bipartisan discussion for many years. And an organization has named this something called Invest America. So, you can see it already existing in a lot of spaces named that. This became part of this bill because we want to make sure we’re investing in America’s youth and we want them to be able to take advantage of compounding interest. Any business savvy individual knows that if you invest early, you’re going to get a better yield later on. It’s very similar to like my — like a 529 account just for education, but we’re expanding it out so they can use it for later in their life as well. It’s a very simple investment into each child born for the course of the next four years, a thousand dollars. They’re going to get an account that’s associated with let’s call it the S&P or other types of investment opportunities. And they’re going to watch that grow. They can add to it, family members can add to it. Companies are going to be able to say, hey, we want to help contribute to this account that you have and we’ll see it grow over time. We have real — I have real concerns with, you know, the — within the next decade the Social Security having some significant issues with the trust fund that’s associated with it. We want there to be an investment earlier in folks’ lives to be able to take advantage of that later when they definitely need that.

ISAACSON: As you say, this is a bipartisan idea, these baby bonds. I think Senator Cory Booker pushing at one point. Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, has also been pushing it. It’s not something that’s traditionally been part of the Republican Party lexicon. Do you think there’s a shift in the Republican party now to things like this?

MOORE: I think this bears out that there — that’s proof the case that we’re thinking more about the next generation. So, I wouldn’t say it’s a significant shift. We always believe in, you know, investing early and watching it grow over time. And I’m — I love that we have a catalyst right now. Look, this is, like I mentioned, a bipartisan concept. The — getting included into a largely Republican reconciliation bill, I don’t expect any Democrats to vote for this bill just because that’s the way Washington works. We didn’t — you know, Republicans don’t vote for Democrat reconciliation bills and vice versa, but the fact that we can get it enacted and build on the bipartisan support that this has had I think shows that it has a really strong future.

ISAACSON: The major cuts in this big bill that just passed the House we’re in Medicaid and SNAP, you know, food stamps, food security. Are you worried that the bill looks like, and in fact, does put a whole lot of the burden on the poor in making these cuts?

MOORE: No. What we’re doing with respect to Medicaid in these programs is, you know, we don’t often get a chance to vote on improving these types of programs, right? These are — this fall into what you call the mandatory spending budget side and those don’t have an annual bill that you vote on this every year. This is an opportunity to be able to say, hey, we want to make some reforms to Medicaid, to make sure that it’s a stronger program, especially for those that are among the traditional population. Those that are in — those are children in poverty, single mothers, disabled folks, elderly folks that are in a certain lower income level, like that’s the traditional population we want to preserve. And what we’re doing with this bill is simply saying, hey, we want to make sure we’re cleaning up the roles. So, illegal immigrants are not able to take advantage of this because this is a program designed for U.S. citizens. And second, we want to establish the expectation to have a work requirement or a volunteer requirement as a part of this benefit. And you know, what I’m hearing from folks is, hey, there’s going to be some concerns because there’s some paperwork burden and there is an administrative burden, but that’s an administrative burden problem. That’s not necessarily the policy idea to say, hey, we need to — folks to be able to work less than 20 hours a week, show how they’re doing that and then, they have access to this program. We hope that very, very few people will lose their Medicaid coverage from this legislation. And we just want to make sure that we’re doing it in a way that’s responsible, that adds work requirements there. That that is the concept that is very popular and we just want to make sure that the administrative and paperwork process is such that we could get through this OK. But it is not some massive cut that is going in this bill. This a way to strengthen the program for those that need it most.

ISAACSON: President Trump has said that this could be improved in the Senate and he takes some things, and one of the things he’s talked about is that you actually could help with the deficit issue by raising taxes a little bit more on the rich. This his own formulation. I think what he said was — this on May 9th, he said, I would love to do it, frankly. What you’re doing is you’re giving up something on top in order to make people in the middle-income and lower-income bracket save more. Do you think on things like carried interest credit for people in private equity, things like that, there are tweaks that could be done to raise taxes more on the wealthy?

MOORE: So, you bring up carried interest. The big concern with reducing or addressing carried interest, there was — we made changes to it in 2017. I thought have had survivability. The more you do it, the more opportunity to take away for investment, more invest. Let — if you have less investment, you have that less economic growth. And it goes down this whole road. Ultimately, I’ve never been able to have a Democrat colleague of mine tell me what is their fair share. They always say, oh, the wealthy aren’t paying their fair share. No one’s been able to explain that to me. What is the —

ISAACSON: No, but I’m actually talking about Trump’s proposal that whether you want to do it on carried interest, which he said he might be willing to, or Steve Bannon on his podcast just saying there are things that could be raised.

MOORE: Yes, there’s always going to be opportunities, the things that can be raised. Look, we’ve actually gotten criticized a lot from some of the wealthier individuals in our economy because of what we’ve done in this tax bill. Like I said, we prioritize middle and lower-income Americans already, with most of the provisions. You can continue to go down that road, but I’ve never heard anybody be able to say, what is the fair share? Like top 10 percent of earners pay over approximately 70 percent of the entire tax bill. I mean —

ISAACSON: Well, wait. How would you answer that question?

MOORE: At what point is the fair share? There’s already a significantly progressive tax code that the wealthy pay and a very large amount of our taxes. So, you can always increase it, but at what point will you actually decrease investment and more economic growth? That’s an important consideration.

ISAACSON: Well, what’s your answer to that question?

MOORE: My answer is we found a really good approach to what we’ve passed out of Ways and Means Committee right now. And I hope that we can keep largely this intact for — going forward.

ISAACSON: What is your feeling about Moody’s downgrading the credit rating and the sense that maybe the deficit could be keeping interest rates high and hurting our credit rate?

MOORE: So we have almost a $2 trillion deficit, and that has grown since the early two thousands over Republican and Democrat administrations. So this bill is a deficit neutral bill. I would love to be able to find ways to cut more from the deficit. And I think that the Trump administration is, is trying to find every area possible to find cuts and potential for economic growth. We can create economic growth that creates more revenue with with tax policy, but you can also do it with regulatory policy as well. And you’ll always see that from a Republican administration.  So yes, we do need to be cutting the deficit more. Last Congress, we had a debt commission that we passed outta the budget committee. Democrats almost, you know, there was, there was a handful of very brave, smart, thoughtful democrats willing to sign on to that legislation. But overall, a bunch of ’em said that, you know, we’re not gonna do this. This is, you know, they, they categorically rejected it when it was like, these have been ideas that have been done before, even in the Clinton administration. Like, we’ve had this before. Why are you rejecting it now? And then you also see other groups that, that oppose it, even from the right. Like it becomes, it becomes tough when you have to actually cut deficits. But if we continue to run $2 trillion deficits year in and year out and after COVID that expanded it significantly. Like, yes, we’re gonna have issues with our bond rate and we need to be, we need to be willing to, to carve it out. What we’re doing in this particular bill is making sure that we have strong economic growth. ’cause if we don’t continue to have strong GDP, then you know, there’s real, there’s really no chance to ever be able to cut and trim our deficits, if we don’t have strong economic growth. If you wanna just go and overly tax, tax, tax tax, tax tax and make a significant burden on companies like we were prior to 2017, then, then we’re ultimately gonna have, you know, economic downturn and we are not gonna be able to cut our deficits because, you know, without economic growth as a major factor, as a part of that equation, and it, it, it doesn’t end, it doesn’t end well.

ISAACSON: One of the things that Elon Musk has criticized this bill for is that it doesn’t do anything to try to enact some of the DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, cuts he tried to make. I understand on a bill like this, it’s not something you can do with, you know, discretionary spending that easily. There’s all sorts of technicalities or rescissions. Bill may have to come down the pike. But are you confident that they’re going to be the cuts that were done by the Department of Government Efficiency or has that all gone by the wayside?

MOORE: Thank you for highlighting that in this particular bill, this reconciliation bill, there’s a lot of rules and things that have to go within a parliamentary procedure and a lot of things within the discretionary side that can’t qualify for it. Things even to Social Security can’t qualify for it. So, there’s limitations on what you can do in this particular bill. But a rescissions package, we’re — you know, we’re very, very hopeful that the White House will work with us on sending us over a rescissions package, because that actually is a simple majority vote. You do not need a 60-vote threshold in the Senate. I think a lot of my Democratic colleagues are just sort of checked out anything associated with the Trump administration, they’re not going to support even if it’s a smart type of reduction in spending. Hopefully, that changes over the next few months. We’ll have to see how that plays out. Most of this work will be done in the appropriations world, and that is what comes next. As soon as we get this bill done, we have an appropriation cycle that we’re already working on. Hopefully, we can find significant change. And even if we don’t rescind those, like pull that money back, you can actually hopefully transfer it to next year’s budget. There’s a savings associated with that. Because a lot of times, you know, government agencies will have extra money towards the fourth quarter and they’ll use it up just because. Now, if you constrain that, you can actually transfer it into a more productive use of that money next — in next fiscal year. So, there’s all sorts of ways to do this. I’m hopeful we will actually see some of rescission package coming up as well.

ISAACSON: You were part of a caucus in Congress called the DOGE Caucus, and I saw that Congressman Jared Moskowitz, who was a Democratic member that just said, Hey we haven’t met in months. It’s been a complete failure. Is it true that y’all haven’t really been meeting?

MOORE: So we were hopeful that the White House, the, the, the, the DOGE from the administration side that was, that was led by – that that team was gonna be more engaging with us, and we didn’t have many opportunities to engage. We met in December and we, we, we had a really good connection, a really strong outlook and potential. They got busy in their silo. And you know, we got busy doing the reconciliation bill. The, the caucus is still formed. There’s still opportunities as it becomes a legislative opportunity. Right now, the administration side, they, they went and did their siloed work. And we have an opportunity as some of those rescissions are, become a potential to actually, you know, enact legislation. That’s where some of the work that we’ll, we’ll we’ll be doing. So it’s fair criticism by Jared, he’s a good friend and I really appreciated his involvement on this. And hopefully we can, as it comes a legislative opportunity to do more work there.

ISAACSON: You’ve been an advocate of a more targeted approach to tariffs. Give me your impression of the tariff — things that are happening now and whether the on again, off again, I can never — I have to get up in the morning trying to figure out which ones are on, off, being delayed.

MOORE: That’s right.

ISAACSON: Well, you say that. Is that a problem for the economy when we don’t get up in the morning and know exactly what’s on and off on tariffs? And is there a better way to do that?

MOORE: So, absolutely. I love this question, being able to engage on this. I’m a member of the trade subcommittee on Ways and Means, and I was — I recently shared my thoughts with the ambassador over the USTR and I said, look, think of the good work that the first Trump administration did with respect to 301 tariffs largely directed at China, and those — that work that we — that President Trump did then existed through an entire Biden administration without any changes. That’s how you know you’ve done smart, good, sound, long lasting policy. And it wasn’t even codified in legislation. This was codified in executive order that President Biden looked at and said, hey, we’re not going to touch this either. I said, that is a great opportunity to enhance and look at that area where you could improve on that and also deal with de minimis because I think de minimis has been taken advantage of. That’s when you allow anything under $800 to come in tariff free. And people gain that system. So, there — that’s a lot of some of the work that I’ve been talking about. I’m great if tariffs are used to help us get non- tariff barriers out of the way, get into better negotiations with some of our allies, our trading partners across the world. But no, I don’t like the turmoil and the constant back and forth, constant back and forth. I hope that’s just for a moment. Long-term high tariffs is economic policy moving forward, that would be very difficult on our economy, that would — that eventually would raise prices. But we have been taken advantage of. And so, we need to do some of this type of stuff. And I’m hopeful, and I’m confident that the Trump administration can get to the right spot and hopefully, sooner than later.

ISAACSON: Congressman Blake Moore, thank you so much for joining us.

MOORE: Thank you.