{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=31EB17CE-71CA-4E2B-8E9A-AC80F0B0B83C", "Thune Joins the Ruthless Podcast", "2025-12-04", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "Clickhereto watch the video.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined the Ruthless podcast.\n\nOn Republicans\u2019 message heading into 2026:\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s safer streets, more money in your pocket, and \u2026 new opportunities for a better life. And those are all things that I think that we\u2019re focusing on, it\u2019s those bread and butter issues that the American people \u2026 care the most about.\n\n\u201cMost elections, in my view, tend to be kind of economic elections. And I think \u2026 is my \u2026 neighborhood safe? Is my community safe? Is my country safe? \u2026 I think that safety and security are major issues. And I think the work that we\u2019ve done to close the border, the work we\u2019ve done on national security, to get more funding into the areas that make sure that the country is secure and safe and ready to deal with what is the \u2026 threat matrix that is out there in a very dangerous world.\n\n\u201cAnd \u2026 on the economic front \u2026 the things we\u2019re doing in the area of tax and regulatory policy, energy policy, will create better-paying jobs, better opportunities, and an expanding economy \u2026 The tax stuff that we\u2019ve done is more money in the pockets of the American people \u2026 The average family in this country, at least in my state\u2019s, about $2,500 less in taxes that they\u2019re going to pay next year because we extended the tax relief from 2017. If that expired, everybody was going to be looking at a new huge tax increase \u2026\n\n\u201cPeople are \u2026 looking for new and better opportunities to get ahead, and we want to do everything we can to make that possible for them. Part of it is creating those better-paying jobs, better benefits, and obviously having \u2026 a kind of economic activity out there that allows companies to invest and grow and expand. And I think the types of policies that we\u2019ve put in place on the regulatory front, the energy front, the tax front, provide those types of incentives.\u201d\n\nOn securing permanent tax relief for Americans:\n\n\u201cI think most Americans \u2026 trust this president and his team to handle [the issue of affordability] and to handle it effectively. I do think that \u2026 the challenge going forward is demonstrating to the American people that [Republicans\u2019 tax provisions] \u2026 avoided a catastrophe. You don\u2019t get a lot of credit for avoiding a catastrophe, but there were things in [the Working Families Tax Cuts], like no tax on tips \u2026 no tax on overtime \u2026 reduced taxes on Social Security, on recipients or seniors \u2026 [increasing] the child tax credit, indexed it for inflation, made it permanent.\n\n\u201cThere are areas out there in which people are actually going to see lower tax bills overall. Yes, we did extend the 2017 [tax] law, made it permanent, which had lower rates, doubling the child tax credit, near doubling of the standard deduction \u2013 all important features to protect them from that tax increase \u2026\n\n\u201cThe other things we did on the business side to create those incentives for business \u2026 the bonus depreciation, interest deductibility, R&D expensing, 199A for small business deduction \u2013 those are all things that I think are going to unleash a lot of investment in this country. You\u2019re starting to see evidence of that \u2026 If you talk to business leaders, CEOs, both small and large businesses, everybody \u2026 sees that \u2026 [and] this country\u2019s being well-positioned \u2026 We want to make sure we do everything we can to create conditions that are favorable for growth.\u201d\n\nOn Democrats\u2019 historic obstruction:\n\n\u201cOne of the reasons we\u2019ve been in so many days, so many hours, cast more votes than any Senate in history, is because the Democrats are forcing us to do everything the long way and the hard way and dragging it out. And it\u2019s unfortunate, because some of these things, they\u2019re basic functions of government \u2013 and funding the government is one of them \u2013 that you ought to be able to figure out and agree on. But [Democrats] really dug in on that and \u2026 unfortunately drug the country through the longest government shutdown in history.\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cUnanimous consent is a key feature of the Senate. It takes consent to almost do anything, and [Democrats], instead of doing it that way on these routine nominees \u2013 and I wouldn\u2019t call them low-level nominees, but they\u2019re not your Cabinet-level folks \u2013 and they \u2026 forced us to use the time, burn the clock, cast the votes, and so we\u2019ve racked up a lot of votes. And it\u2019s \u2026 a sign of the times. It\u2019s unfortunate in a lot of ways, because I think it gets harder and harder to do the big things in a bipartisan way. But even when routine things are hard to get bipartisan support for, we\u2019re in a whole different place than we\u2019ve been before.\u201d\n\nOn Democrats prioritizing their far-left base:\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s kind of mind-blowing \u2026 That [far-left] wing is where the energy, the money, the activism \u2026 in the party is right now, it\u2019s the progressive wing \u2026 They\u2019re very unforgiving, and they want nothing more than confrontation with Trump on every issue.\n\n\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter how basic the issue is or how fundamental it is to actually governing the country, [Democrats] just want to fight on everything. And it\u2019s unfortunate because \u2026 these relationships that you work to carve out and to build through the years to be able to do bipartisan things, it\u2019s getting increasingly difficult to accomplish that. I\u2019m still hopeful. And there are a few things I think that can actually be candidates for bipartisanship, but we\u2019ll see.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "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.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=31EB17CE-71CA-4E2B-8E9A-AC80F0B0B83C"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.2991930600255728, "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"}