Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) is running to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) as leader this fall, and he spoke with the Washington Reporter about his vision for the leadership, the Biden-Harris “day late & dollar short” defense budget, and how he hopes to implement more policies like the “transformational” Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that he helped shepherd into law as the GOP’s Whip. 

When it comes to his path to win the intra-GOP Senate leadership race, Cornyn will lean on relationships he’s built for years, as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) for two terms, as GOP Whip for six years, and more.

“These leadership races are based on longstanding relationships,” Cornyn said. “I know all of the voters, and they know me. They know the other candidates as well, and so a lot of this is listening to what their priorities are.”

Cornyn wants “to figure out ways we can get the Senate committees working again — which is the best way to pass good legislation. It forces you to work together and build consensus. And I think having robust floor debates and opportunities for amendments are going to be really important, because each senator who’s here deserves the right to represent their states and to have their voices heard and to cast votes as they see fit,” he said.

Cornyn would first tackle America’s debt crisis — “all of our ability to fund our national security apparatus and do everything else we do depends on getting the fiscal situation in better shape,” he said.

Although he doesn’t expect much cooperation from Democrats on Medicare and Social Security reform, “there’s still about $700 billion a year in mandatory non-Social Security, non-Medicare spending,” he said. “And then I think we’re also going to have to look at the tax code. Increasingly, the tax code is being used for welfare benefits, like the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit and others, as well as the huge bloated subsidies we saw under the Inflation Reduction Act.”

For his agenda to succeed, Cornyn needs Republicans to win this fall — and he thinks that a good crop of candidates will make that possible. “The job of the Chairman of the [NRSC] is to do two things,” the former NRSC chair from 2009-13 said. “One is to recruit candidates, and the other is to raise money. And Steve Daines has done a magnificent job on recruiting…I think we just have one more left with Mike Rogers in Michigan, but we’ve got an outstanding slate of candidates, so I’m optimistic that we’ll get the majority back.” 

The issues that those Republicans can run on cover everything from the economy to the border, which Cornyn said that Democrats “just don’t care” about solving. While Republicans won’t directly be able to run against Joe Biden heading into November, Cornyn sees his replacement on the ticket as a similarly good target. While Harris succeeded in the “political coup” that ousted Biden, Cornyn thinks that some of her polling “boomlet” is “just Democrats who were relieved that they won’t have the albatross of Joe Biden around their neck.”

GOP wins in November will require a “very, very tough, very expensive campaign,” but Cornyn said he would “do everything I can to make sure we’re in the Senate majority, and I’m going to continue to do everything I can to help President Trump get reelected.” 

Cornyn’s ties to President Donald Trump’s possible administration run deep; Sen. and Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance (R., Ohio) is a Cornyn clerk-turned-colleague. Another of Cornyn’s former employees, Noah Phillips, is the kind of appointee Cornyn hopes Trump will make throughout his administration in 2025 and beyond. Phillips, who had served as Chief Counsel to Cornyn on the Senate Judiciary Committee, spent over four years on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Democrats have recently “populated these federal agencies and departments with the most activist individuals you can imagine,” Cornyn said, and he looks forward to dismantling “some of the overregulation that we’ve seen,” if Trump wins this fall. He singled out “people like Larry Kudlow, Kevin Hassett, my friend Brooke Rollins” as individuals he hopes to see in another Trump administration. 

Below is a transcript of our interview with Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), lightly edited for clarity.

Washington Reporter:
What would Senate Majority Leader John Cornyn look like? How are you campaigning for this? 

Sen. John Cornyn:
Well, Matthew, I’ve been in the Senate for quite a while now, and I’ve held a variety of different offices in leadership, including two terms running the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and then, of course, I was Whip for six years during the time that President Trump was in office and we worked well together. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is just one of the things that’s top of mind that we did, which was pretty transformational.

Senator Mitch McConnell has been an outstanding leader for our conference, but all good things have to come to an end. I’ve learned a lot from him, and he has been very effective. One of the things he’s done that I particularly appreciated was prioritizing the federal judiciary, including the three members of the Supreme Court of the United States who are going to continue to be important legacies for his tenure and our majority. 

So what I’d like to do is help my fellow Republicans not only defeat bad ideas, which there are a lot of here in Washington DC, but also to help take some positive steps, particularly we’re going to be having to deal with a historically high debt. Interest on the national debt now exceeds what we appropriate for defense spending. The world has gotten more dangerous. I think it’s the most dangerous it’s been since World War Two, and particularly from my perch on the Senate Intelligence Committee, I get to read about that in minute detail, and you don’t need to read classified materials to know that that’s the case. So I think the most important job of Congress is to keep the nation safe and strong. Obviously, we can’t do that without a good economy and eliminating a lot of the overregulation and overreach of the Biden administration is going to be an important piece of that. The Supreme Court has helped us out a little bit on the Chevron case. And so it’s clear the federal judiciary is going to be looking more closely at where Congress has granted authority for these agencies to act and where it has not. But just sort of getting back to the premise of your question, these leadership races are based on longstanding relationships. I know all of the voters, and they know me. They know the other candidates as well, and so a lot of this is listening to what their priorities are, trying to figure out ways we can get the Senate committees working again — which is the best way to pass good legislation. It forces you to work together and build consensus. And I think having robust floor debates and opportunities for amendments are going to be really important, because each senator who’s here deserves the right to represent their states and to have their voices heard and to cast votes as they see fit. 

Washington Reporter:
Mitch McConnell’s legacy is clearly defined in large part by the judiciary. Is there a one word or one area where you really want a Senate Majority Leader John Cornyn to define the body? 

Sen. John Cornyn:
Well, obviously it’s all a team effort, so it’s not about any single player. But obviously, to me, the thing that jumps out that I alluded to briefly was just the fact that the reason why we are the strongest, most powerful nation of the world is not just because we have the best military. It’s because we have the strongest economy and we could pay for it, and that is increasingly in jeopardy as we continue to rack up debt. So the most important thing we can do to that end will be depending on, again, the election, if we win the trifecta, to pass a budget and then to let the committees go through the reconciliation process. 

But I think this has to be about more than just extending the expiring tax provisions. The federal government spends $6 trillion a year, but the appropriators only deal with about a quarter of it. And so we need to look at mandatory spending. Unfortunately, I don’t anticipate a lot of bipartisan cooperation on Medicare and Social Security, but there’s still about $700 billion a year in mandatory non-Social Security, non-Medicare spending. And then I think we’re also going to have to look at the tax code. Increasingly, the tax code is being used for welfare benefits, like the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit and others, as well as the huge bloated subsidies we saw under the Inflation Reduction Act. My predecessor in this job was Phil Gramm, who’s written a great book if you haven’t had a chance to read it, called The Myth of American Inequality, where he points out that our welfare system basically provides a guaranteed income of about $40,000 a year to a family of four if you count all the benefits. But even in our means tested programs, we don’t take into account all those benefits as income, which you ordinarily would. He also makes the really important point, and this is something I’m going to be focused on, is establishing solid work requirements so that able-bodied individuals don’t live off the rest of taxpayers, but they make their contribution to their family as well as to the Treasury. So those are going to be some of my areas of focus, but all of our ability to fund our national security apparatus and do everything else we do depends on getting the fiscal situation in better shape. 

Washington Reporter:
You ran the NRSC for two terms. How do you feel like the Senate map is looking? What is your perspective on how things are shaping up, and how the Democrats swapping Joe Biden with Kamala Harris changes things, or doesn’t change things?

Sen. John Cornyn:
Well, first, I’d say the job of the Chairman of the Senatorial Committee is to do two things. One is to recruit candidates, and the other is to raise money. And Steve Daines has done a magnificent job on recruiting. He also has been very strategic about this, because he’s worked with President Trump to endorse the most electable individuals, in other words, to help them through their primaries and and I think we just have one more left with Mike Rogers in Michigan, but we’ve got an outstanding slate of candidates, so I’m optimistic that we’ll get the majority back. You asked about the political coup we saw where Joe Biden was deposed in favor of Kamala Harris. She, by and large, is unknown, except for the Biden-Harris administration, the results of their policies, which are a disaster at the border and 40-year high inflation. Unfortunately due to her late entry into the race, she’s experiencing a little bit of a boomlet. I think some of that is just Democrats who were relieved that they won’t have the albatross of Joe Biden around their neck. But her record is pretty horrific, and she’s trying to disavow all of the positions she’s taken previously. And I think a lot of people are going to be wondering which Kamala Harris do we believe?

So it’s going to be a very, very tough, very expensive campaign leading up to November the Fifth, but I’m going to do everything I can to make sure we’re in the Senate majority, and I’m going to continue to do everything I can to help President Trump get reelected.

Washington Reporter:
What would your goals be in working with a second Trump administration? And do you think it’s helpful for you that you’d have a former senator in JD Vance as the vice president?

Sen. John Cornyn:
My relationship with Senator Vance is good. As you may have read, he was a law clerk for me in my Senate Judiciary Committee office back when he was at Yale Law School. So I didn’t really get to know him too well back then. But that was before he became famous. I’ve gotten, obviously, to work with him while he’s been in the Senate, and I anticipate we’ll continue to be able to work well together. My working relationship with the Trump administration was very good when I was Whip, and had to obviously do a lot there. But I think really what I’m trying to do now is to try to figure out how do we begin to prepare for what I know is going to be an extremely heavy lift next year. We’re talking about the budget, talking about reconciliation, and in light of the fiscal situation and in light of the dangerous world we’re living in. 

So I’m reaching out to my my colleagues in the House, people like Congressman Jodey Arrington, who is chairman of the Budget Committee, and obviously to Speaker Johnson and Steve Scalise, but also talking to some of the folks who I hope will be part of the Trump administration, people like Larry Kudlow, Kevin Hassett, my friend Brooke Rollins, who I’ve known for a long time, and trying to make sure that we’re all sort of moving along parallel paths toward a common goal. It’s a little early, but it’s not too early to think about it. But obviously, we’ve got an election to win, but once the election is over, should we be successful, we are going to have to move with dispatch to get this done, because time will not be our friend. 

Washington Reporter:
Are you telling your current clerks “if you do a good job, you too, can potentially be vice president”?

Sen. John Cornyn:
You know, it’s such a mysterious process by which the vice president is selected. I won’t tell you what John Nance Garner said about the vice presidency, but you can look it up yourself.

Washington Reporter:
One of the more polarizing people in the Biden administration is Lina Khan at the FTC. What do you think a future Trump administration would do in terms of handling the FTC appointments and enforcement out of that agency?

Sen. John Cornyn:
Well, another one of my former staffers, Noah Phillips, was a member of the Federal Trade Commission, and he’s sort of an exemplar of what I would hope a second Trump administration would nominate. Obviously we need work there, because President Biden and Vice President Harris have populated these federal agencies and departments with the most activist individuals you can imagine, and it’s sort of breathtaking in that regard, and people who are not particularly constrained by the law, but try to gain any advantage they can, and basically dare somebody to sue them and take them to court. And that happens, but unfortunately, it takes a long time. Trying to dismantle some of the overregulation that we’ve seen that is one of the hallmarks of the Biden administration is going to be very important. The economy as you recall, back before COVID-19 hit, was about the best economy we’ve seen, certainly in my memory. Unemployment rates were historically low, particularly for minority groups, blacks and Hispanics. I’m hoping that we can do a repeat of that with the second Trump administration.

Washington Reporter:
In addition to serving in the Senate, you’ve been Attorney General of Texas, and you were on the Texas Supreme Court, and now you’re on the Judiciary Committee. What do you make of the latest push by Biden to “reform” the Supreme Court?

Sen. John Cornyn:
Well, let me just say it’s a bad idea whose time has not come. Of course, this is reminiscent of what FDR tried to do back in the 1930s and he was basically just laughed out of town. People realize that the Supreme Court is not supposed to be another political branch, and judges aren’t supposed to make decisions based on polling, but rather on the law and facts. I think this is just sort of a knee-jerk reaction to a court which has done a lot of good in restoring the rule of law and avoided policy-making which is not their job. Democrats don’t like that because they view the legal system as a way to achieve goals that they can’t win, either at the ballot box or in the Congress. But the Supreme Court has appropriately put the responsibility back in the political branches, and that’s where the accountability occurs and should occur, not through life tenured judges who don’t run for election. 

Washington Reporter:
Did your experiences as Attorney General and on the Texas Supreme Court make you particularly excited about any of the cases that have been ruled on in this current term?

Sen. John Cornyn:
Well, I’m pretty excited about a number of them, Chevron, I had mentioned, is one. Another is the SEC case, where essentially the Supreme Court said these agencies can’t be judge, jury and executioner. There’s got to be due process, particularly when they’re pursuing penalties, including the potential access to a jury trial. That was reassuring. Obviously, the Dobbs decision was sort of an earth-shaking decision, but one that accorded with the long-held view by many of us, including me, that the court had simply gotten involved in policy-making when these decisions should be made at the state level by elected officials who are then held accountable to the voters in the different states. Democrats always seem to want to have decisions made here in Washington, DC, that are one size fits all. But as you know, we’re a big, diverse country, and the decisions being made in a federal system by states like Texas are going to be different than those made in Vermont or Maine or or California, and that’s the system that our Founders created. It wasn’t a national government. It was a federal government, one of separated powers and recognizing the sovereignty of the individual states to govern within their realm of responsibility. 

Washington Reporter:
What do you think about the Biden-Harris administration’s fairly weak and small defense budget? Do you think voters are paying attention to national security?

Sen. John Cornyn:
I think pocketbook issues are always going to be top of mind. When you go to the grocery store and you’re having to pay 36 percent more now than you did when Biden got elected and more for rent. Interest rates are high because of the Federal Reserve’s attempt to deal with 40-year high inflation. All that’s having a direct impact, but the border is, as you know, a concern, not only because of the flow of humanity and the migrants who are now ending up in self-designated sanctuary cities, but the drugs and the crime that spread around the country as a result of the influx of drugs across the border. So I think everybody knows that the situation at the border was much better under President Trump. We’re going to have an opportunity to help deal on the fiscal side, as opposed to just monetary policy through the Fed, with the rising prices and inflation.

But I think you have to ask people: “are you better off now than you were when President Trump was in office?” And I think the answer is a resounding no. So I’m hopeful it translates into success on November the Fifth.

And then you mentioned in terms of where the administration’s been on national security matters, I think the United States’s leadership is critical to maintaining the peace. And when people see — I’m talking about autocrats like President Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, the Ayatollahs and the Supreme Leader in Iran, or Vladimir Putin in Moscow — weak and indecisive leaders, then that is a provocation in and of itself. I think there’s a reason why the world has become more dangerous, because some of these folks think they can get away with it. Even in Ukraine two years on, we’re just now getting things like F-16s to the Ukrainians. So the Biden administration always seems to come up a day late, and a dollar short when it comes to national security. And the world is a more dangerous place because of that.

Washington Reporter:
And how do you see the Khalid Sheikh Mohammad plea deal fitting into this? Is that a deal you ever would have accepted? 

[Editor’s note: the plea deal was revoked shortly after our conversation with Sen. Cornyn]

Sen. John Cornyn:
Well, I’m very disappointed at the rate of the proceedings down in Guantanamo. I’ve been to Guantanamo a few times. I’ve looked through the window at Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and if anybody deserved justice, he did. In his case, I believe it should have been the death penalty. But this has been dragged out now for 23 years. Obviously, the pace of the proceedings down there has been glacial, but I guess in some sense, getting some resolution is better than none. I feel for the 9/11 families who lost loved ones, and I hope that in some small way, this can help them get peace. 

Washington Reporter:
What do you think explains the Democrats’ inability or lack of desire to actually even visit, in many cases, the problematic areas of the southern border? And how do you see that affecting the 2024 election?

Sen. John Cornyn:
They just don’t care. They are also reluctant to rile up their progressive base by doing anything like enforcing the current laws. Only when President Biden sort of got into a corner did he tweak some of the asylum procedures. But the truth is, we’re still seeing a huge influx of people coming across the border and enriching both the cartels that smuggle people and and the ones who smuggle the drugs. So I think this is still a huge liability — as it should be. 

I’m not prone to conspiracy theories, but I have to say that I can’t think of any explanation for how the Biden administration has dealt with a border other than their willingness to allow unrestricted migration from all over the world in hopes that someday those people may ultimately become American citizens and then become registered Democratic voters. Maybe there’s another plausible scenario, but I can’t think of one.

Washington Reporter:
Senator Cornyn, thanks so much for your time today.