Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.) is a potential successor for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), who has chaired the Senate Republican Conference since 2007. Thune, the GOP’s current Whip, discussed with the Washington Reporter his vision for running Senate Republicans and which policy changes he hopes to see after November’s election.
Thune’s platform in his bid to lead Senate Republicans is simple: “solutions.” Problems such as the economy (“entitlement programs that are spiraling out of control”), national security (”we have underfunded our military”), and the northern and southern borders (“portal[s] not only for people from Central and South America now, but for people all across the world”), plague America, Thune said. His time spent on the Senate’s Finance and Commerce Committees gave Thune insight into how to “unleash the economy,” he told the Reporter, which will include bringing back Trump-era tax cuts, including on corporations.
On the governing side, Thune doesn’t want to sit around between now and next January, especially when it comes to a deal on spectrum, which he said “needs to happen, but it has to happen in a way that actually guarantees that there will be spectrum made available for commercial use, and what the Democrats have done is try to move a bill that doesn’t accomplish that objective.” Thune’s alternative, which he put forward with Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), opposes the Democrats’ vision of “pick[ing] their favorite ways of using the proceeds” and being against future auctions, thereby creating more debt. “As of right now, the process that Democrats are using is not inclusive of Republicans or our ideas,” he noted. “And it doesn’t create a spectrum pipeline, and in my view, fundamentally that is the issue.”
If Democrats win November’s elections, Thune fears tax increases. “If we don’t get control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, or God forbid that Biden gets reelected, not only will you have $4 trillion of tax increases with the expiration of the Trump tax cuts, you’ll get a whole bunch of new bad policies that the Democrats will use to raise revenue to fund more government spending,” he said.
Thune’s preferred alternative under a Republican administration is to focus on “an economic cluster of trade, tax, energy, regulations, and then the border, of course.”
A second Donald Trump administration will hopefully “undo a lot of the damage the Biden administration has done, like the net neutrality that they reinstituted over there,” Thune said, singling out the Biden administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for using “regulatory authority to clamp down on political speech [in] an election season.”
The “hierarchical,” and “top-down” style of Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) is the opposite of how Thune would lead his conference, he said. Schumer “invests a lot of authority in the leader and it doesn’t distribute power to members, and we’re organized differently on our side.”
Thune will be one of the many Republicans vying for the Senate’s top job. “My view,” he said, “is that if nothing else, just open this place up and let the talent shine.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.), lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
You’re one of the top Republicans on the Commerce Committee. What do you think will happen with the wireless spectrum auction bill?
John Thune:
It needs to happen but it has to happen in a way that actually guarantees that there will be spectrum made available for commercial use, and what the Democrats have done is try to move a bill that doesn’t accomplish that objective. The alternative that Ted Cruz and I have introduced has a spectrum pipeline which we desperately need. The Democrats’ bill, of course, picks their favorite ways of using the proceeds. And of course, they are all against future auctions. So it creates more debt. There’s nothing about the way they go about this that I like and it may be that hopefully we can find some common ground and actually legislate on this. But as of right now, the process that Democrats are using is not inclusive of Republicans or our ideas. And it doesn’t create a spectrum pipeline, and in my view, fundamentally that is the issue.
Washington Reporter:
You’ve expressed a lot of concern about the FCC, and regulations on speech. What can be done between now and January, and do you think a second Trump administration would repeal any of the measures that you’ve spoken out against?
John Thune:
Trump, obviously, by executive action would be able to do a lot of things once he gets his team installed and we want to help him do that quickly and hit the ground running, get his folks in the right places, and start to undo a lot of the damage the Biden administration has done, like the net neutrality that they reinstituted over there. That governs the internet like a Depression-era monopoly telephone company, under what we call Title II. Title I is information services, Title II was telephones, and so they tried to pull the internet under Title II and that gives them the authority, if they want, to regulate rates and I think that’s ultimately where the Biden FCC wants to go with it, so that’s a huge mistake.
But the thing I think too what you’re alluding to is the use of their regulatory authority to clamp down on political speech. It’s an election season. And they want to regulate artificial intelligence in a way that allows them to determine what can go on broadcast or cable outlet media. But it doesn’t apply to big tech, which is interesting. So you’d have this kind of bifurcated rule where the FCC regulates everything that goes on television but that doesn’t deal with big tech because those tend to be their allies.
Washington Reporter:
If Republicans win a trifecta, what would your top legislative priority be? How would that change if Democrats have the House, Senate, or White House?
John Thune:
Well, I think if we have unified control of the government, the trifecta, then obviously we can use budget reconciliation, which is the legislative vehicle that will enable us to extend the Trump tax cuts.
So tax reform will be huge on the agenda, which means we have to pass a budget and so we have to get to work on that right away. I think energy and the border will be huge issues. But some of those will be able to be fixed, at least on some level, by the administration. Trump comes in, Biden had reversed all of his policies on the border and on energy. Trump can come in and do the reverse of that and get rid of Biden policies.
And we can help on that. The Congressional Review Act gives us some authorities to pass resolutions of disapproval. We used that very effectively when he was the president last time. So a whole bunch of Democrat regulatory changes that had been made that we were able to undo. So we’ll look at all the levers immediately to undo a lot of the regulatory heavy-handed regulatory state damage done by the Democrats. And then see what we can do proactively on energy, border, and the economy primarily. I would say tax reform and then some of this tech stuff, too. I think there’s a real opportunity with AI. I think there’s real opportunity with trade. The Biden administration has done nothing when it comes to market access. Trump has some different views on trade with regard to tariffs, but I do think if you could get them focused on opening markets in areas of the world that put pressure on or that compete with China, there’s a huge opening there for that. I’d say it’s an economic cluster of trade, tax, energy, regulations, and then the border, of course, figures prominently there as well.
Washington Reporter:
What on the Senate Finance Committee side are you working on between now in November and then after to keep those tax cuts as the law?
John Thune:
We are meeting already now as members of the Senate Finance Committee on the Republican side in four different working groups to take pieces of it and to kind of figure out the strategy in terms of how we would get these extended. And we work with the House. I met recently with Steve Scalise and we walked through and mapped out what a reconciliation bill might look like, how we would put together a budget that would enable that and some of the things that are going to hit us right away if we have the unified control of the government. The steps are in place, folks are having those conversations, but you’re right. Bonus depreciation, R&D expensing, interest deductibility are huge for businesses in terms of faster cost recovery. For LLCs and S Corps and sole proprietorships, what we call pass-through businesses, there’s a deduction you need to continue to keep them competitive with the C-corps, the large businesses, and so there are a whole bunch of policies that are going to expire. And if they do, then that’s unfortunately a tax increase on the American people. That includes individual rates, that includes doubling the Child Tax Credit, nearly doubling the standard deduction, those are all individual changes, which would go away if we don’t do something.
Washington Reporter:
Is President Biden right to propose raising the corporate tax rate to an uncompetitive level compared to other countries?
John Thune:
We went down from 35 percent to 21 percent in 2017, they want to raise them back up to 28 percent. And that generates another trillion or so dollars that they can use for other stuff. What happens in this election really matters because not only do you lose all the Trump tax policy if it expires, but you also get a whole bunch of new Biden policies that are going to increase taxes. And even in the Inflation Reduction Act, they created a minimum of 15 percent tax that was designed to catch corporate companies that weren’t paying taxes, but they’re going to be looking for ways to generate more revenue. And it will make the US less competitive. One of the things about getting the rate down to 21 percent, is it finally puts us in the sweet spot in terms of where the rest of the world is. We just weren’t competitive, and we were losing businesses. We were hemorrhaging companies that were going overseas. That stopped. The inversion stopped cold once we reformed the tax code and changed the incentive structure for businesses that are looking to invest and created incentives for them to invest here in the United States. So it’s all in play. It’s all in flux and how this election comes out is going to determine largely what that future looks like. And I fear if we don’t get control of the House, the Senate and the White House, or God forbid that Biden gets reelected, that not only will you have $4 trillion of tax increases with the expiration of the Trump tax cuts, you’ll get a whole bunch of new bad policies that the Democrats will use to raise revenue to fund more government spending.
Washington Reporter:
Do you have thoughts on how America can secure the southern border? Do you have thoughts on how the northern border is a potential security threat?
John Thune:
They’re both magnets for people who want to come into the country illegally, because we create all the pull factors. I say “we,” I mean the Biden administration. And that’s got to change. You have to go back to the remain in Mexico policy and catch and release. You’ve got to deal with the abuse of the parole authority which these guys have just abused. Twenty two times per month more use of parole than when Trump was in office. We’ve seen 80 times the number of Chinese nationals coming into the country just this last year over 2021. People have figured out, this is a port. If you want to come into the United States, come across the southern border or come across the northern border, because they aren’t going to do anything about it. They’re going to wave you in, which is what’s happened and why we’ve had almost ten million people come into this country and those are the ones we know about. There are a lot we don’t know about. Of course there are also the 362 members on the terrorist watch list that have been apprehended. That doesn’t include all the terrorists who tried to get into the country or maybe made it in that we didn’t know about. So this is a huge national security problem. It is fixable with a change in policy, and a change in incentives, people respond to incentives and the incentive structure right now is: go to America. If you get in there, if you get across the line, chances are you’re gonna get into the country and I think it has become a portal not only for people from Central and South America now, but for people all across the world, including some really unsavory elements that I think are going to come back to haunt us in the future.
Washington Reporter:
Why is Senate Republican Leader a job that you want?
John Thune:
Eighteen years is a long time, Senator Mitch McConnell has a great record of accomplishment and a real legacy, particularly when it comes to the courts. But any time you have a transition like this, it’s an opportunity to pivot and it’s kind of a chance for a reset and just by virtue of different styles, things will look different around here because of different styles of leadership, and management, and everything else. But having dealt with Schumer now for the past four years, I hope we have a chance to actually get the Senate opened again, in working on letting the committees under regular order produce legislation, which ultimately he gets to the floor and then have an amendment process. I think one of the things that frustrates people on both sides, us and the Dems, not just our guys, is that you don’t get a chance to do what you came here to do. If you run for this job, you want to come here because you want to be a legislator, you want to make policy, you want to offer amendments, you want to have your constituents’ voices heard, and that’s not happening. So I think that there will be some real differences and changes in how things operate. I want to do it because I think I’ve got something offered to contribute. I think that we need that. We need that kind of generational change in the Senate.
Washington Reporter:
How has running the Senate Republican Conference played into your race?
John Thune:
Ultimately, it’s always about relationships. And frankly, it’s about being a good listener. In the job I have now being the Whip, you have to understand where your members are at and what makes them tick, who’s the right person to talk to them on or any particular issue and you want the team to succeed.
It’s a team sport, and you want to see your team do well, and that means you have to be figuring out how to make the people around you better. And so I’m a big believer that if you want to be a difference maker, it’s about relationships, it’s about trust, and they have to trust you, that you’re going to be able to deliver and do what you said you’re going to do. I think we’ve lived up to that. So Schumer has a very different business model. I mean, their side is very hierarchical. It’s top down. It invests a lot of authority in the leader and it doesn’t distribute power to members, and we’re organized differently on our side.
We’re more entrepreneurial, more independent. That sometimes creates challenges if you’re trying to get everybody in the same direction. But obviously, in the long run, that’s a much better model. And I think if we can figure out ways to empower individual senators, we have some incredibly talented people, allow them to do what they came here to do and to bring their skills and talents and experience and put it to the highest and best use for the good of the country, we can really do some things here that I think are good for the future. We’ve got some big challenges.
Washington Reporter:
Mitch McConnell’s legacy is the courts and the judiciary. Do you have a one-word pitch that you would want your legacy as Majority Leader to be?
John Thune:
It’d be great, honestly, to just be solutions. We’ve got some big problems we need to address. You’ve got entitlement programs that are spiraling out of control. We have underfunded our military. Our national security, the threat matrix that we face around the world today is underfunded, under-resourced, and on the economy, opening up and allowing the American miracle to translate into better paying jobs, more incentives for investment, more retirement security for people in this country. We want to unleash this economy and get the heavy hand of government in the form of taxes and regulations and rules and everything else out of the way. Everybody is prosperous and everybody’s boat rises. My background and interest of course, as you probably know, the Finance Committee, for example, makes me want us to unleash the economy. And like I said, I think you do that through trade. There’s a lot of ways to do it. I guess my view is that if nothing else, just open this place up and let the talent shine.
Washington Reporter:
Senator Thune, thanks so much for your time.