{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.hagerty.senate.gov/press-releases/2026/09/09/icymi-hagerty-joins-varney-co-on-fox-business-to-discuss-tariffs-on-israel-affordability/", "ICYMI\u2014Hagerty Joins\u00a0Varney & Co.\u00a0on Fox Business to Discuss Tariffs on Israel, Affordability", "2026-09-09", "2026", "2026-09", "Republican", "Senate", "TN", "Bill Hagerty", "H000601", "www.hagerty.senate.gov", "hagerty", "https://www.hagerty.senate.gov/press-releases/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON\u2014Today, United States Senator Bill Hagerty, (R-TN), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations, Appropriations, and Banking Committees, joined Varney & Co. on Fox Business to discuss the foreign trade restrictions on Israel and affordability ahead of the midterm election.\n\n*Click the photo above or here to watch*\n\nPartial Transcript\n\nHagerty on foreign trade restrictions on Israel: I\u2019m disappointed, but I\u2019m not surprised. If you look at [the United Kingdom, Canada, France and others], they\u2019re much more concerned about their own domestic politics\u2014appeasing the left in their own countries\u2014than they are about supporting Israel, who is locked arm in arm with the United States and its Arab neighbors trying to defeat a 47-year-old terrorist regime in Iran. Rather than do that, rather than step up to the larger macro issues, they are pandering and dealing with the [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS)] crowd in their own countries. They should actually be focusing on more important issues in their own countries\u2026 Their military capability that they\u2019ve let wane; they should be beefing that up. Their energy independence\u2014that they\u2019ve lost\u2014instead of depending on Russia, they should be building and working with us. Here they are wasting their time, again, pandering to domestic politics.\n\nHagerty on affordability: I\u2019m in Dallas right now. I was with [Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA)] last night. He makes a very important case: One thing that doesn\u2019t seem to be getting covered very much at all is the fact that job growth is on the rebound. We have exceptional job growth in the private sector. Wages are growing again. That was not the case under Joe Biden, where wages were growing at half the rate of inflation. Under Biden, we had inflation over 9%. We brought that down\u2026 I\u2019ve got the Freedom to Build Act that targets the incredibly high cost of housing right now. The bureaucrat tax, as it\u2019s called, the cost of permitting before you even build the house can be as high as $100,000 in some areas. Dealing with this bureaucratic overhead\u2014the speaker mentioned no tax on tips, no tax on overtime\u2014all of these policies are aimed at bringing affordability to the surface, and we\u2019re going to be focused on it very much.\n\nHagerty on former President Joe Biden\u2019s failed economic policies: We were dealt a very bad hand coming out of [the Biden administration]. But I think what you\u2019ll hear the next couple of days are the programs and the policies that are aimed at dealing with this. If you look to the other side, what have the Democrats\u2019 options been? The only thing that they\u2019ve delivered since [President Donald Trump] took office is two historically long government shutdowns. That has certainly not been good for the economy. In fact, it\u2019s taken GDP growth off. That\u2019s their solution. [The GOP\u2019s] solution is actually to target the problems, deal with deregulation, increase energy independence. We\u2019re producing at a higher level than we ever had before. And by the way, President Trump will resolve the situation in the Middle East and that will bring medium-to-long-term stability to the oil and energy markets, and we will see much greater prosperity from there.\n\n###", 1, "2026-09-10T09:25:58Z", "2026-09-10T09:27:09Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.hagerty.senate.gov/press-releases/2026/09/09/icymi-hagerty-joins-varney-co-on-fox-business-to-discuss-tariffs-on-israel-affordability/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.8294588662683964, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}