Nick Givas on April 12, 2018
Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana said Thursday that he would not challenge fellow congressman Kevin McCarthy of California for speaker of the House.
“I’ve never run against Kevin and wouldn’t run against Kevin,” Scalise said on “America’s Newsroom.” “We’re good friends. The meeting last night we are talking about the things we want to see move off the House floor and move through the Senate. We passed good bills in the House to address many of the problems facing our country domestically and in foreign policy. We want to see the agenda move to President Trump’s desk and talking about how to get that done last night.”
Scalise said McCarthy should be considered a “conservative” and said he has helped get “big things” done during his time in Congress, citing the tax bill as his main achievement.
“I don’t make up titles and I’ve got a long record as a conservative who’s fought to advance a more conservative agenda. Kevin’s a conservative, too,” Scalise said. “The people that want to try to rate all of that, in the end we’re going to be judged on what we get done — and we have gotten some really big things done. Again, the tax cut bill is the biggest but … rolling back regulations, working with President Trump to get our economy moving again. But there’s more we want to get done. We want to reform some of these broken programs.”
“You look at the welfare state right now. There are a lot of people that just gave up looking for work because the economy was so bad for eight years under Barack Obama,” Scalise said.
“We want to get millions of people who gave up looking for work to get back into the workforce. People that are ready to work, they just lost confidence in the economy. Well the economy is finally doing better. Let’s help get those people off the welfare roles rolls and actually become part of the American dream again,” he said.
