INTERVIEW: Rep. Ralph Norman lays out red lines on reconciliation, predicts "we'll get there"

Rep. Ralph Norman (R., S.C.) has a red line when it comes to reconciliation, but he predicted in an interview with the Washington Reporter that the House and Senate will “get there,” with a little cajoling from President Donald Trump.

However, Norman has some lines in the sand, namely the Biden-era subsidies to green energy companies. Some in the Senate are trying to keep those in. “If that’s in, I’m out,” Norman said. “I’m not doing it. I won’t vote for that…I don't care how long they keep us up here. We'll stay up here through July 4, all of August. I don't care, but the day is over when we're going to keep spending. Young people like you will not have a future if we keep doing that.”

“The Inflation Reduction Act gave car manufacturers that make the cars run on batteries a $7,500 credit,” Norman said. However, “you have to let the American people decide what car to buy. It's not that complicated. The wind and solar panels that are going up all over the country, that's not sustainable. I'm in the Solar Caucus, but you shouldn’t be getting a subsidy.”

Another red line for Norman is keeping in work requirements for Medicaid — which he fought for in the version passed successfully by the House. If people who “choose to lay on the couch and eat potato chips and collect a government paycheck” are going to receive Medicaid, he said, “I'm done. I'm not voting for that. That's what we had to fight for.”

Likewise, Norman said, illegal immigrants should not receive payments from programs like Medicaid. “If you're not a legal resident, should you be getting a paycheck if you have never paid into the system? No.”

The stakes, Norman said, are incredibly high; “we’ve got one chance in a lifetime with reconciliation to make this happen.” The South Carolinian has communicated his position to both James Blair and to Karoline Leavitt, who made the case to House Republicans this week that Trump wants the bill on his desk ASAP. Norman would like to see Trump himself make more of a proactive case himself.

“The president is the best salesman that we've seen in a long time,” Norman said. “Put pressure on the Senate. Get them in a room. It's gonna take his leverage…We [in the House] passed it.” Now it’s time for the Senate to send a version over that is similar enough to the original House version, or Norman said it is going to have serious problems. But, he said, “we’ve got to read it. We're not like Nancy Pelosi, who said, ‘you’ve got to pass it and then find out what's in it.’ I'm done with that.”

Republicans in both the House and Senate will have very little room for error; virtually no Democrat is expected to support any version of the bill in either chamber. Norman is not surprised by this, and he referred back to the Democrats’ shameful performance during President Trump’s joint address to Congress earlier this year.

“We had a case where a little boy had cancer,” he said. “None of them stood up, none of them. They hate this president so much that it doesn't matter. All they want to do is keep power. Government is their God, and they've lost the tracks.” Democrats in New York nominating a socialist, pro-terrorist lawmaker as their nominee for Mayor is just the icing on the cake, he said.

Norman said that in contrast with the Democrats’ “un-American” opposition to Trump’s successful strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, he is fully behind the president’s maximum pressure campaign.

“He’s exactly right,” Norman said. “His judgment is great. To get criticized like he is is unwarranted. Who would have thought that he’d have brought peace in the Middle East? Our enemies there don't understand anything but force. It's peace through strength.”

Below is a transcript of our interview with Rep. Ralph Norman, lightly edited for clarity.

Washington Reporter:

What are your priorities in the final version of this bill from both South Carolina's 5th District standpoint and for everyone else in the state of South Carolina?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

First of all, we've got to realize we've got a financial crisis on our hands with this country, with the spending. Now, we've got a transformational president; what he did with Iran and with the bombs he dropped, it's now up to us to make sure that we can fund our military. The bombs cost money and we're on a path to completely train wreck this economy. I hope it's not going to take the bond market when they get to a point when they have no confidence that they will get paid back, having a dead stop for the economy not either not buying the bonds or the rates we're paying are unaffordable. All of that is to say that it's about the money. We've got a math problem. The bill that the House sent over had $1.6 trillion in savings. It had the revisions that we had to fight for in the budget, which three of us said, ‘no, we're going to stop it until we get things like work requirements for Medicaid.’ If I'm able to go to work and if I choose to lay on the couch and eat potato chips and collect a government paycheck, I'm done. I'm not voting for that. That's what we had to fight for. Another was illegal aliens. If you're not a legal resident, should you be getting a paycheck if you have never paid into the system? No. Now I blame the Biden administration for letting 15 million in this country, but that's past history. It is what it is. We're getting them out. Trump is having to do things like spending money to remove people who should have never been in here the first place. That's one side of it, the other side is on the tax credits. The Inflation Reduction Act gave car manufacturers that make the cars run on batteries a $7,500 credit. You have to let the American people decide what car to buy. It's not that complicated. The wind and solar panels that are going up all over the country, that's not sustainable. I'm in the Solar Caucus, but you shouldn’t be getting a subsidy, and you go down on down the list. We’ve got one chance in a lifetime with reconciliation to make this happen; we just met with James Blair and with Karoline Levitt, who speak for the White House, and they are asking if we are going to stay up here and work and get the president the bill that he wants. I don't know which bill he's talking about, but the Senate's talking about spending far more money than we had, they’re thinking about rolling back the Biden-era IRA tax credits, like the one I mentioned about the car. If that’s in, I’m out. I'm not doing it. I won't vote for that. They keep saying they're going to keep us up here. I don't care how long they keep us up here. We'll stay up here through July 4, all of August. I don't care, but the day is over when we're going to keep spending. Young people like you will not have a future if we keep doing that.

Washington Reporter:

What are the most important provisions specifically for your own constituents?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

The tax package, the Trump-era tax policies, rapid depreciation, deductibility of interest, Child Tax Credit. All those things are good. Reductions in rates, which we've accounted for, and with the growth, this country is going to take off like never before. That's the leverage we have. When you mention the big, beautiful bill, most Americans are going to work, feeding their families, going on vacation, they don't get into the minutia of what's actually in the bill, but with the tax cuts, if we allow that to expire, 26 to 30 percent cut of take home pay for everybody in the country, including you.

Washington Reporter:

How is the White House trying to cajole you in the House and your counterparts in the Senate to reconcile your differences on reconciliation?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

They say ‘we need the big, beautiful bill passed.’ I said, ‘which bill are you talking about?’ If it's just any bill, and if we're going to continue down the track of going bankrupt, I'm out. I'm just not doing it. And I said to James Blair and to Karoline Levitt that the president is the best salesman that we've seen in a long time. Put pressure on the Senate. Get them in a room. It's gonna take his leverage. He came over to the caucus meeting with the House members, and there are 435 of us and he got it together. We passed it. Look, if a manufacturer promises you a car, and then when you get it it doesn't have tires, it may have a motor, but it may not have a roof. What are you gonna say? No. And all I said was, put pressure on the Senate and send us the same bill that the House sent over. I'm good to go. If not, then we’ve got a fight going on. Businesses that have to do this all the time; in your family budget, in my business world, we have to fight, to examine where your money's going. You have to tell some people you can't do things, you can't spend the money the same that we've always done, and expect a different result. And other people spoke up too, but we got this bill, and then what's coming down the road? Social Security's going bankrupt in 2035, the Highway Trust Fund. It's not like we've got a boatload of money that we've got to go to; we don't. So I'm wasting my time up here if we're going to just go along and get along. The Swamp is raising its head here. I will tell you, the DOGE Commission, what it came up with, wow. Things like millions of dollars to Sesame Street in Iraq.

Washington Reporter:

You didn't watch that Sesame Street?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

I might need to. But stuff that he identified, they jumped on Elon Musk. Elon Musk didn't get paid. He just identified things and for the media and everybody to say he's doing something wrong is just crazy. Look, he built a successful business. Most of these people here, they've always gotten a paycheck from the government, and I'm just saying that the till is low now, with money that we can get to continue running the deficit.

Washington Reporter:

To continue that car analogy, you probably would oppose a tax credit for the beaten up wheel-less car also, is that correct?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

That’s correct.

Washington Reporter:

So where is the bill, from a Hot Wheel to a Ferrari?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

This always happens up here. July 4th is coming pretty quick. This Friday is coming pretty quick. We're supposed to fly out of here. They always wait to the last minute and say, ‘here's the bill,’ we don't have time to read it. We can't digest it. And we're saying ‘we're not doing that.’ The president wants to have us all back for signing the bill on the White House lawn, which is fine. I'll come up anytime. But now we’ve got to read it. We're not like Nancy Pelosi, who said, ‘you’ve got to pass it and then find out what's in it.’ I'm done with that.

Washington Reporter:

As I look at this from the outside, I see the very slim House majority, doing this all of the time where they are fighting, and then somehow, at the end of the day, they pull a rabbit out of the hat, and whatever ends up needing to pass ends up being passed. Is that a fair assessment of this?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

I want them to send what we passed back to us, and we're good to go.

Washington Reporter:

Are you concerned that there is a version that comes out that you think will not pass? Or do you think that Johnson's team will be able to find a way?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

As we just relayed, if the Senate makes all these changes, like the tax credits, if they strip all that out, then it's not going to pass.

Washington Reporter:

Why do you think they are doing that? Because you have made your position very clear on this.

Rep. Ralph Norman:

Well, I'm not sure they are going to make those changes, but we relayed the message, and the White House wants us to be positive. I get that, but we were positive, and we passed the House bill, and we had a lot of internal fighting over that, but to Mike Johnson's credit, and to the credit of others, we came together. Was it as much as I thought? No, but I don't get everything I want. Reconciliation gives us the vehicle to do that.

Washington Reporter:

What do you think it says about the Democrats in Congress that it's basically a given that none of them will vote for any version of this bill, and that would leave Americans stuck with the largest tax increase ever? There are a lot of individual provisions of this like school choice, things like that, that are very popular, that no Democrat in Congress is expected to vote for.

Rep. Ralph Norman:

I'll use this analogy that I used during the State of the Union. We had a case where a little boy had cancer. None of them stood up, none of them. They hate this president so much that it doesn't matter. All they want to do is keep power. Government is their God, and they've lost the tracks. New York is a perfect example. That socialist, communist candidate, that's gonna ruin New York. But if the people put up with that, then we're to blame, and it's not just Democrats. You’ve got some Republicans that are on the receiving end of a lot of subsidies, that have pressure points. There are different industries in South Carolina, I've told different groups that have come to me, ‘no, I'm not going to fight for that.’ You can't cure cancer with aspirin, and that's what we're trying to do. And if I say, ‘well, yeah, I'll carve my subsidy out,’ then Alabama is gonna have to cut yours out. It doesn't work that way. Everybody's got to have ownership in this. And I think we'll get there. Trump's gonna put the pressure on a lot of them. It may as I said, go to the Senate.

Washington Reporter:

You were just talking about this potentially next mayor of New York City, this radical Islamist who wants to abolish the police, abolish private health insurance, etc. You deal with Democrats from New York and from New York City on a regular basis here. Are you surprised to see that that's where their party went?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

I've seen it coming. Look at the Budget Committee, they said, we want to cut waste, fraud and abuse. We ought to be together on it. ‘Okay, tell me what your plan is.’ The problem is, they don't do what they’re saying. We're actually doing something with cuts. We're actually cutting on the recision package, $9.4 billion. We passed it. We need one every week to get this House back on a financial track. But they value power more than they do anything else. A lot of people hug us and we'll go on the floor and they are nice to talk to, but when the cameras come on, it's a different story. You ought to be the same anytime, but it's not that way.

Washington Reporter:

What do you want to see the DOGE legacy continue to be now that Elon Musk is phasing out his time in government?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

Keep the people doing the same thing. It's no different than a business. They know where their money goes. You as a young person ought to know where your money is. We need to let the people decide.

Washington Reporter:

In South Carolina, there was just a special election in which the Democrat won and drastically overperformed expectations. Do you read any significance into that? Is that a red flag for Republicans to be paying attention to?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

We're facing now is the funding for left candidates is astronomical. I mentioned Dan Bongino the attacks on ICE agents, the basically no consequences when you put a brick in a policeman's face. That's being funded. Somebody has to pay for the bricks to be there. Somebody has to pay for the frozen ice bottles. That's kind of a scary thought that groups are coming in and doing that. Meanwhile, they're putting candidates up and funding their campaigns. It costs a lot of money. It just does. And the left has had a free ride. That's how these empty suits have gotten in. They claim to be a conservative, but when they get in office, they're bought and sold by who put them there.

Washington Reporter:

What would you like to see Congress do in terms of countering these anti-ICE riots that are leading physical violence against police in America?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

People ask me all the time, ‘why isn't your message getting out?’ I said it's very simple. When you have a CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, basically downgrading what President Trump did, saying that the weapons didn't work in Iran, a country that has killed plenty of Americans, it’s a problem. If I've got one megaphone and the left has five, who's going to be heard? I will be drowned out, and that's what you get, other than Fox, and they've changed, but we’ve just got to keep our message and then get good people in office.

Washington Reporter:

I was in Israel last week when all of this started going down. I’m curious about what you think about Trump's Middle East response, and whether you see it as a vindication of his maximum pressure campaign on Iran, and then secondarily, I've definitely been curious what you think about the Democrats’ responses to Trump's strikes on Iran.

Rep. Ralph Norman:

The Democrats’ response is un-American, and it shouldn’t be tolerated. They won't give President Trump credit for anything, and we can't tolerate that. You’ve got to beat them. You’ve got to run people for office and beat them, because that's not right. They've just lost their way. When it comes to bipartisanship, on what? It’s like getting in a car and going on I-77 one going east, one going west. How do you get together? Like killing a child? I mean, they'll sit there and vote for killing live babies. In the 60s, it wasn't like that. Now they've elected people by choice to overtake this country. That's what I believe.

Washington Reporter:

What is driving this? You just called it anti-American.

Rep. Ralph Norman:

They are basically burning up New York City and are calling it a peaceful protest. I believe in the First Amendment, but doesn't it cross the line when you're breaking windows, burning cars? I told a reporter who was asking me if I’m against protests. It's not a protest when you tear somebody's building up or break into their house. What if it happened to their house? I'm worried about it for you young people.

Washington Reporter:

What do you think about Trump's surgical strike and the maximum pressure Executive Order policy that he implemented from the day he took office in the second term?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

He’s exactly right. His judgment is great. To get criticized like he is is unwarranted. Who would have thought that he’d have brought peace in the Middle East? Our enemies there don't understand anything but force. It's peace through strength, and that gets back to the big, beautiful bill. You’ve got to be in a financial position to be able to afford to fund the military, to give us the strength that we have to have. If we don't do that, then everything else is null and void. And Bongino just mentioned the Chinese influence, and he said this just a few minutes ago, that it is scary what they're doing, that we could wake up one morning and our credit card won’t work. Your bank account’s wiped out. And he said that this keeps me up at night, what China is doing. We can't get TikTok out. What if we try to put a TikTok in China? It's not reciprocal. This is not that hard. You’ve got to protect America and the left is just not doing it. They want to give it up. And that’s why Biden gave Iran, you never hear this either, $16 billion in cash for bribe money. How does that work? Didn't work too well.

Washington Reporter:

There are no atheists in a fox hole, but there are no liberals in a bomb shelter. What do you think the Middle East would look like this past 14 days if Kamala Harris had been president?

Rep. Ralph Norman:

There would have been a nuclear weapon used on Israel and on America. Kamala Harris is part of the problem, she's wanted to pay bond money during the riots. How does that work? I mean, that's un-American.

Washington Reporter:

What would you like to see with TikTok? It keeps getting this 90 day extension that flies in the face of the congressional forced divestiture of ByteDance.

Rep. Ralph Norman:

Well, do away with it. There are all of these teenagers who say they use it. I'm sorry. Teenagers don't run the country. I look at their opinion, but if our safety and freedom are are at risk, you deal with it. It ought to be reciprocal. If TikTok can come in our country, can we put a TikTok in China and not have them compromise it? No, they'd never let it. Think about the Chinese spy balloon that flew over this country. During the Biden administration, we had a hearing where I asked the question, why are the Chinese doing this? They said ‘China didn't know about it.’ I said, are you kidding me? They literally said that. I said, well, I'm done. If you believe that, you’re so naive that you should go out in the middle of the night and drive through New York City without lights on, with a blindfold on to see how that works out.

Washington Reporter:

Congressman, thank you so much for your time.