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WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined America’s Newsroom on Fox News.

 

On confirming President Trump’s nominees at a record pace:

“Well, we’ve tried to manage the clock, Dana, and you’re right, it’s hard. And particularly when you’ve got a lot of Democrat resistance, which we do, so we’re having to work through that. But we’ve figured out ways to manage the clock in a way that I think maximizes the ability for the president to get his team in place as quickly as possible. And we’ll continue to do that.”

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“[I]t takes a team effort, which we’ve had. Our members have been really good. And I think the president, in the end, is going to have the team he wants to implement his agenda, which we fully support, and we’re going to do everything we can to see that that gets done as well by supporting him, where necessary, with legislative initiatives and activity as well.”

 

On budget reconciliation:

“[The House and the Senate] have the same end result, end goal. I mean, we want to get to the same destination. How we get there, the House and the Senate operate differently, clearly, and we have procedural issues we have to deal with in the Senate. But … these efforts are going to, at some point, they’re going to merge.

“I mean, we’re going to link up with the House and get something to the president that he can eventually sign into law. But you know, in the meantime, obviously, what I tell people, and they ask me, ‘How much of this can you do?’ … I tell them the two numbers that are the most important numbers – and this is even with the use of budget reconciliation, which enables us to do legislation in the Senate with a 51-vote majority instead of the usual 60-vote majority – the numbers you have to pay attention to are 218 and 51. Because it’s 218 to pass anything in the House and 51 to get anything through the Senate. And so as we think about, what are the, you know, the limits on what we can do, what are the opportunities, the possibilities out there … those are the numbers that are most important.”

 

On implementing the DOGE agenda:

“There are so many systems in our federal government that are antiquated. You know, people operating in silos, bureaucracies built upon top of bureaucracies and modernizing our federal government, using technology to make it more efficient. I mean … this is a long overdue process. I’m delighted that it’s happening, and we want to do everything we can to be supportive.”

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“It was actually reported… that only six percent of the federal workforce is back in the office full-time. I mean, think about that. Now, there are some offices, obviously, that you can, or jobs, you can do remotely, but the federal government, the federal workforce – this, like I said, this is long overdue. It’s going to take somebody, probably from the outside, somebody like Elon Musk, to be able to do it and do it right. And obviously they’re going to identify some things that, you know, perhaps can’t be changed or fixed, but there’s a ton of stuff out there, I think, can be done better.”

 

On removing tax credits for electric vehicles:

“EVs don’t pay the gas tax. If you drive a gas-powered vehicle in this country, you’re paying for the repair of the roads, because that’s what funds highways, it’s the Highway Trust Fund, which is where the gas tax goes. And … the tax credit is something that, you know, was put in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which was a massive spending bill on the part of the Democrats. And frankly … it was an ill-advised thing in the first place.

“I mean, if you look at parts of the [world] where Dana and I are from in Wyoming and South Dakota, you know, in a cold weather climate with long distances, EVs just don’t make sense. And here you are, we’re subsidizing that to the detriment and expense of everybody else in the country. So yeah, there are things that need to be evened out.”