Today, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined CNBC’s Squawk Box to discuss President Trump’s State of the Union address, which highlighted historic progress on border security, economic recovery, government accountability, and tax relief for working families and drew a sharp contrast with Democrats who refused to stand in support.
  
Highlights from Leader Scalise’s interview:

On President Trump delivering the most secure border in history:

“The number one election issue in 2024 was border security. It was the biggest issue everywhere you went. Border towns, places nowhere near the border, because people saw how crazy it was when Democrats opened the border. Joe Biden, for four years, let it happen. And you saw it, it wasn't just millions of people. It was violent criminals. You saw crime spike. Every city was seeing violent crime because of this. President Trump said, 'I'm going to stop it.' And he did. And when he said – the easy question, Democrats call it a trap because they've lost their way as a party – will you stand up for America against people coming in illegally who want to do us harm? And they sat down, and it showed the country who's on your side and who just wants to have wide-open borders and violent crime in communities. And they would not stand up when you had victims of crime. President Trump pointed out, by the way, in the audience, people whose daughters were murdered by these illegals who came in because of their open border policy. And here's the mom saying, 'Don't let it happen to anybody else.' And Democrats are sitting down like they're okay with the murder. It's insane. And so it showed the American people just what's going on.”

On Democrats refusing to celebrate tax cuts for hardworking Americans:

“If you want to throw the bums out, voters saw last night who the bums were. The people who were sitting down when President Trump said: I want to give you a big tax refund. When you file your tax returns, you're going to get over $1,000 back. No tax on tips, no tax on tips. No tax on overtime. And he said, and they – and he pointed to Democrats because every Democrat voted against that – he said, 'They want to raise your taxes.' And they all stood up and applauded. That was maybe the only time the Democrats stood up and applauded when they basically took ownership of the fact that they, as a party, want to raise your taxes. And you're seeing it in New York, you're seeing it in California, where they're raising taxes to the point where they're running their own people out of their state. Well, do you really want to get run out of America? Vote for Democrats if you do. But that's going to be the contrast in November's election.

“I think people, they recognize, look, they lost $3,000 of buying power during the Biden years. Four years, they lost $3,000. They made up $1,200 of that in the first year of Donald Trump. It's a lot more money in their pocket, but it's not where they used to be before Biden took office. And so we need to keep that progress going. We need to keep delivering for those working families, and we will. But you saw last night who wants to go back to the days of taking money out of your pocket."

On President Trump rooting out fraud and protecting taxpayer dollars:

“You saw when he started talking about fraud in Minnesota, and J.D. Vance is going to be the fraud czar in charge of rooting it out, you saw all the Minnesota Democrats yelling at him. I mean, how disgraceful is that? First of all, yelling at the President of the United States, yelling because he is stopping fraud of your money? $19 billion so far identified.We have whistleblowers in Minnesota. Many of them are Democrats who say we're disgusted by the theft of our money by people. And the governor is looking the other way. The attorney general is looking the other way. That's more money out of your pocket for theft. And we're stopping it. President Trump is stopping it.”

On building on the success of the Working Families Tax Cut:

“Well, I'd like to see a reconciliation 2.0. I've been in meetings with some of our members. We put together cross-sections so that you have not just the ultra-conservatives or just the moderates or just the swing district members. We put them all in a room, about 15, kind of break them up. And then we start talking through, is there consensus? We have a two-seat majority. And as you saw last night, every single Democrat is going to vote against cutting your taxes. And so if we're going to do it, it's going to be done on our own only with Republicans. And so the consensus isn't there yet. We have to obviously build that.

“We did that for the Working Families Tax Cut. We built that bill over months of meetings and negotiations with our members, with the President, with his team. Then we put together a phenomenal bill that's delivering now for American people, signed by July Fourth of last year. When you file your return this April, you're going to get over $1,000 back because of that bill. Most families will. We're not at that stage yet. We're trying to see if we can find consensus. If we do, we'll move it. We'll do it on our own because, sadly, you saw Democrats just want to root against America because they don't like Donald Trump. But the American people elected Donald Trump, and he's delivering on the promises that he ran on. That's what people are excited about.”

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