Q&A with Congressman Hern: White House meeting with Trump on GOP agenda, debt ceiling, and border issues

Tuesday afternoon, Congressman Hern was among a group of about a dozen Republican leaders in the U.S. House and Senate who met for about 90 minutes at the White House with President Trump and his staff to discuss passage of his America First agenda and other salient issues.

Griffin Media's Alex Cameron interviewed Rep. Hern Wednesday morning. This is a transcript of most of the interview:

Alex: Overall, what was the purpose—was there a single focus for the meeting?

Rep. Hern: Well, it was really about unity, it was about making sure we’re all on the same page, that we all agree that the border, energy dominance, and the tax package was the most important thing we had to do. We didn’t really talk about the process going forward, that’s going to be more about the leadership and about how we’re going to do that and how we’re going to get the votes to do that.

Alex: So, this was more about what to include (in a reconciliation package)?

Rep. Hern: Just making sure we’re all on the same page, making sure that we’re unified—you have the House leadership, the Senate leadership together, myself, Senator Lankford, James Lankford, was there, and certainly Leader Thune, the Speaker of the House and others there in the room, along with the president’s policy staff. So, it was all of us together about the policy; also the political team for the president, to make sure that everybody understood the enormity of the situation, about the mandate the president had been given, winning the electoral vote as well as the popular vote, something that Republican presidents have a hard time doing.

Alex: So, was part of the discussion about the debt ceiling, do we include that in this? Was there talk about how you move forward with these things?

Rep. Hern: The president is obviously very concerned that past Republican leadership had punted the so-called debt limit into his presidency and had not given him a clean slate to come in like President Biden had, and he was very concerned about that, the limitations that was going to put on him, basically trying to do the mandate the American people have given him. And so that was something that was really important to him to have that discussion to see where we were.

Alex: I’m reading about these different possibilities, possibly attaching a debt ceiling increase to a disaster aid bill, making it part of the (FY) 2025 funding package—what do you think is going to happen?

Rep. Hern: Well, we have March 14th a hard deadline, because that’s when the continuing resolution is up to, and then also we have the debt limit expiring, actually at the end of this month. There will be extraordinary measures put in place, there will be suspension of certain payments, but those will be backpaid, and that will all come to a head on March 14th. We need to work on this now, we need to get the ‘25 appropriations bills done, that will be a bipartisan maneuver, there’s not enough partisan posturing to do and certainly Chairman Cole will have to work on…so these are very important issues to understand. We also have the disaster-- once we understand the disaster number from Southern California-- we’ll have to make sure that gets done, as well because people are going to need a lot of help. The border-- it’s going to need some money. We’re already seeing the Democrats that are supporting many of the border initiatives. And then when you also look at the debt limit, it’s a great place to put that, so we can understand where we are and what we’re playing with as we go forward.

Alex: What did President Trump say to you, what was point he really wanted to make?

Rep. Hern: Well, he wanted to make the point that he needed cover, the same cover that Joe Biden had to do his policies, and right now we’re still under the constraints of the Joe Biden administration, with the debt limit, with this continuing resolution that we’re paying for the stuff that happened under his administration, and it’s really keeping the president, our current president, President Trump, from doing his agenda. The American people want this cleaned up, they want to move forward, we’re seeing where 70% of Republicans in America want this agenda done. If we’re going to defy history as a Republican House, then we might want to get his agenda done and we want to do it as quickly as possible.

Alex: A lot of the stuff you’re talking about that has to get done, would you agree, will require Democratic help to get done, because some of your members aren’t going to vote to increase the debt limit, some of them aren’t going to vote for the FY’25 spending package.

Rep. Hern: I think it’s important as we are crafting the bill for the March 14th deadline that we look at this. If we’re going to get the appropriations bills done, as I alluded to, it’s going to be bipartisan because you have to get 60 votes in the Senate. If you’re looking at the Southern California disaster relief, that will be bipartisan. We know, if we craft the border initiatives right, it will be bipartisan. I think it’s important to note that Democrats would be perfectly okay with getting rid of the debt limit, so that would be a bipartisan vote, as well, because there are Republicans like myself who think it’s important that we have the debt limit so that we have a day of reckoning every 2 to 4 years about where our national debt is.

Alex: Did (President Trump) invite Democratic leadership (to the meeting)?

Rep. Hern: I don’t know, but they’re not in the majority, so the reality is, as I’ve said time and time again, we can’t blame a lack of results on Democrats, Republicans have the House and the Senate, the president invited the people who can get this done, and we’ll see where it’s at.