{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=A737023B-FC5E-4574-B8C6-5608B7AA3474", "Thune Joins Bret Baier on Fox News", "2025-12-18", "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", "Clickhere to watch the interview.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined Bret Baier on Fox News.\n\nOn Senate Republicans\u2019 accomplishments:\n\n\u201cThe things that we did in the \u2026 [Working] Family Tax Cuts Act that was passed earlier this year are \u2026 really unprecedented and historic. You think about no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, reducing taxes for seniors on Social Security, locking in lower rates, the doubling of the child tax credit, near doubling of the standard deduction \u2026\n\n\u201cI think you\u2019re going to see a remarkable 2026. I mean, we\u2019re excited about the prospects for the economy, and you look at the things we did and the other things in the One Big Beautiful Bill \u2026 the school choice, child care tax credits, the newborn tax credits, or these accounts that are going to be created for people in this country. These are all pro-family initiatives that we think are going to start to yield big dividends.\u201d\n\nOn Republicans\u2019 pro-growth policies:\n\n\u201c[T]he president \u2026 he inherited this mess \u2013 [from] the Biden administration with \u2026 all the spending that they did, trillions and trillions of dollars of spending, which flooded our economy with more dollars, which drove inflation up.\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201c[T]hose steps that we took last summer, you\u2019re going to start to see that, and the American people are going to start to feel that. When you start seeing the impact of what we did on taxes and regulations and energy, and you\u2019re already seeing the cost of gasoline going down. You\u2019re going to see that in other areas \u2026\n\n\u201cInflation, which \u2026 in the month of October was \u2026 down to 2.7 percent \u2026 down from what was expected. You\u2019re starting to see that already. But I also think you\u2019re going to see more growth in the economy because of the policy changes that we made.\n\n\u201cAnd when economy is growing and expanding, it\u2019s throwing off better-paying jobs, people are doing better \u2026 I think what you\u2019re going to see in 2026 is safer streets, you\u2019re going to see more money in people\u2019s pockets, and you\u2019re going to see new opportunities to get ahead for the American people.\u201d\n\nOn Republicans\u2019 plan to lower health care costs:\n\n\u201cThe Democrats are going to have to come to the table and realize that a straight extension of Obamacare subsidies is not a sustainable future for the American people \u2026 Democrats talk about affordability. The least affordable thing that the American people have \u2026 in front of them today is the cost of health care \u2026\n\n\u201c[Republicans are] open to fixing and addressing this, but you\u2019ve got to do it in a way \u2026 that actually solves the problem and lowers costs. If you stay on this path right now, with all the waste, fraud, and abuse, the same thing is true today that I said last September \u2013 and that is that there are no income caps, there are zero-dollar premiums, there are literally millions of people in the exchange who don\u2019t even know they\u2019re covered because the payments go directly from the federal government to the insurance companies, and so people are automatically, they\u2019re auto-enrolled by the insurance companies, and there\u2019s no accountability in this program.\n\n\u201cThe Government Accountability Office just did an audit of this program, and of the 20 fake claims they submitted, 19 of them got approved. That\u2019s a 95 percent failure rate. So it\u2019s got to be reformed, and we\u2019re open to that, and if the Democrats want to work with us, we won\u2019t get it done before the Christmas holiday, but when we come back in January, there are discussions that are going on right now. We have folks who are interested in fixing it.\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=A737023B-FC5E-4574-B8C6-5608B7AA3474"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8656589780002832, "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"}