Transcripts For CSPAN Sen. 20240705 : vimarsana.com

We are here to talk about both domestic policy and foreign policy. We have negotiations underway on capitol hill now that link those two things on discussing whether to give aid to ukraine and make changes at the border. New happened do just come from a Senate Briefing with president zelenskyy. What did you hear from him and what was your reaction to his message . Sen. Vance i always try to be a little closed off about these things. First of all, thanks for having me. I appreciate being here. I want foreign leaders to have their own conversation with u. S. Senators without them immediately going and blabbing to the media. I am sure nobody will report what i am saying of course. Look, it was an admirably frank conversation. Conversation. I come from the more skeptical providing ukraine aid side of the conference, but i have always admired the way he is incredibly direct about what is going on in the country, the good and bad, and the conflict. That was a different than today. We certainly learned some new things about the strategic calculus of him and his government over the next couple of months, but by and large, i think it did not change fundamentally the way that democrats and republicans will take about the conflict. You said he sounded like a resistance liberal. You think he is mishandling his discussions with republicans in particular . Sen. Vance i think it is offensive for a foreign leader who has been the recipient of over 20 million of american generosity to come to the congress and accused those who run in the opposite camp of being part of a putin clique. That makes him sonic a crazy american leftwinger. That is not the way to show, first, appreciation, and to persuade people like me. It is hysterical to me. I am may be one of three u. S. Senators on the permanent lifetime ban in russia. I have never spoken to a figure in the russian government i am sure that there are people who dont have obvious russian accents who they send out to try to capture people, but i have never spoken to anyone. It is kind of it is not kind of, but it is sensitive for the leader of ukraine to come to the u. S. And say those who disagree with the policy are in the pocket of the government i had no contact with. You said you thought that ukraine given the Current Situation should consider negotiating with russia, even if it means seating territory. Critics say that would embolden putin to do this to another country, if you could come out of it taking territory, why wouldnt he do it to the baltics or poland . Sen. Vance the strategic situation in ukraine is what it is. We went through a sixmonth counteroffensive where a lot of the u. S. Leaders were told in classified settings that something would happen. And that is by and large materialized. We have to be honest as we move through this particular conflict. No one has been able to articulate what it is that we are supposed to accomplish with another 61 billion of american aid. To the point about seating territory, if you talk to five different people, the Biden Administration, european heads of state, you would hear five different stories from a the goal is over the next six months to two years. Some say we want to throw russia back to the 1991 borders. Some would say we want to take a land bridge to crimea, others would Say Something in the middle. You need to have some strategic clarity. The lack of clarity, as a kid who grew up in the post 9 11 era, gives me weird feelings and vibes about where we were in the mid2000s, where there was a lot of if we dont stop them here, he will go here, and there was not enough actual hard, realistic thinking about what we could realistically accomplish without empowering others. To that point, if putin has shown anything the last years, it is his military capabilities maybe this is the nature of modern Ground Combat in a highly technological age, but his ability to acquire large amounts of territory with the troops he has is limited. I am not worried that Vladimir Putin is going to march to warsaw or berlin. He has not shown the capacity to do that. I would exclude the polish because they have been very good allies. If Vladimir Putin could march to berlin, that suggests the germans have to make different strategic calculations in their own defense policy, not that the u. S. Can underwrite effectively a subsidy of German Defense policy definitely. We are going to talk later about former president donald trump. Hes suggested the u. S. Should consider pulling out of nato. Do you think we should stay in nato . Sen. Vance i think all options should be on the table. I dont think donald trump desires to pull out of nato, but we have to be willing to say that nato was not a welfare project to the u. S. Taxpayer. Even after two years of putins brutal invasion of ukraine, most nato countries dont even spend 2 of gdp on defense. The u. S. Spends 3. 5 , fluctuating year to year. We have to understand that the entire postwar atlanta cyst project is currently a massive subsidy to europeans on the backs of american taxpayers and it has to stop. I am not antinato as a matter of principle, but i think we need to stop writing checks so europeans can subsidize never budgetary decisions they would like to make. That is not a good idea for the people i represent in ohio or for the europeans. You cannot as a european germany has a massive economy. France. Britain. Incredible places. It is preposterous, in my view, that these european nations would allow themselves to effectively become client states of the u. S. They should pay for their own defense and start right now. One more question on this topic. What do you think are the prospects of a deal on ukraine aid and border concession, even if the administration comes more towards republicans on the border issues . Sen. Vance i think the Biden Administration has had a come to jesus moment on this topic. If you think about where my republican colleagues are, and i represent one of you on ukraine, i am by no means the majority or i dont represent the majority of your point of my american colleagues in the u. S. Senate, but what unites us on the ukraine question is you cannot go back to our constituents as close to 10 million legal illegal entries the past years and sadie got nothing out of order negotiations that we wrote another 61 billion check to ukraine. That is politically untenable and i think morally untenable, as well. What we have told Biden Administration is what republicans are unified about his we need more Border Security and democrats want more aid to ukraine. Into that combination is the genesis of a deal if the president is willing to make one. So far, he has not been able to. So lets shift to domestic policy, something you have spent time thinking about. My colleague wrote in asking if republicans could become the party of the working class probably . This is something you focus on. It was specifically noted that spending more money on infrastructure, doing more Workplace Training programs, and he called it a new formula for activist government, which is not how people traditionally have thought of republicans. Is that the right way to describe this agenda . Sen. Vance i dont know that i would call it activist government. Generally, i want the government to be as small as possible, consistent with obligations, creating a lot of negotiating room and open questions. I dont like the idea that the activist government affords some mistake. Take a few basic or ways in which americans have gotten off course. To tie this back to the ukraine question, one of the main witticisms i have made of the ukraine policy is that it is not responsible to the real manufacturing limitations that exist in this country. Thanks to the terrible attacks in israel, this is no longer abstract. We have been rerouting artillery meant for ukraine to israel and vice versa the last few years because we dont make enough artillery shells. We have an economy that is 10 times the size of the russian economy. Yet, the russians make more artillery shells in a week than we do in a month. How is this connected . We have to make more of our own stuff in the u. S. We have allowed ourselves to be an economy that was way too dependent for growth on tech and financial services, and that is where way too much of the gdp growth has been the past years. It has been bad for workers and national security. Being much more supportive you heard the secretary of treasury mentioned this being much more supportive of american independence and manufacturing is a critical part to what the Republican Party will be about the next 30 years. I intend to plato world to play a role. We have a major demographic problem in this country. Every western nation except israel has a demographic problem. We dont have enough families. There are a host of social problems that come from having a demographic pyramid, just after the chinese, and, yet, we are slow walking ourselves into the problem. We have to be more aggressive in supporting families in this country because it is a good thing to do, and because it is good for the country as a whole. You mention this thing where u. S. Has the highest four year Completion Rate in the country excuse me, world. We have a lot of college degrees, kids who did not learn a useful trade in college but have 60,000 of student debt. The Republican Party has to have an answer to that problem for the next generation of americans. You cannot tell every kid who grew up in my hometown that you either go to a Fouryear College and get 100,000 of debt, or you have no realistic pathway to a middleclass job. A lot of you guys serve and lead companies where we need a lot of skills in the workforce that a lot of modern colleges are not giving these kids. There is a better way to create a better labor market and more useful skills if we get a little outside of the Fouryear College model. Those are a few small ways in which you are going to see republicans like me pushing the party in a more proworker direction the next decade. Just back to the topic for a second of manufacturing defense is, an obvious one, but even in other areas where you think the government should intervene to encourage companies to make things in the u. S. In the past, traditional republican stay out of it. Sen. Vance one example, i have a piece of legislation, bipartisan, that would effectively make federal government a purchaser of last resort for a whole host of antibiotics. One of the reasons is we dont make enough in the country, but another reason why we have growing superbugs in our Health Care System is not just that the bugs that are out there are resistant to our technological capacity to treat antibiotics. It is because we have such a narrow range of antibiotics that are commercially available that the bugs are sort of evolving in response to this narrow age of antibiotics. None of the reasons this is true is because we dont have enough production of a broader spectrum of antibiotics out there. This is one area the government can step in and we can allow more pharmaceutical manufacturing because it is good for workers in communities like mine, but also means you will have a broader spectrum of antibiotics available to the Health Care System. Which is good for a whole host of reasons. I have a sixyearold, threeyearolds, and a oneyearold i dont know if any of you have small children but if you are an American Family and you take your kid to the pharmacy for a near infection, you can count on being told that the first, second, or third antibiotic your doctor would like your kid to take is not available. Why . Because we dont manufacture enough of our own antibiotics that have become way too reliant on other countries to make these critical ingredients for us. We have to get away from it. During the united auto worker strike, you met with workers on the picket line at the stellantis plants, not something most republicans would do. You think your party needs a different approach organize labor . Sen. Vance it will be casebycase. The way that i have approached organized labor, and i had good relationships with some unions and not good ones with others, is that if you are going to be focused on Economic Health or the wages of workers, i might not agree with you on every single issue or Public Policy but there are ways to work together. If you are, lets say, the starbucks for restate union and you are getting involved in the israelhamas fighters, taking the side of hamas, my reaction is, when, what does that have to do with higher wages for burritos and, two, why are you injecting yourself into a leftwing political argument that you have no business addressing . I dont think we will distinctively always be more prounion but i am willing to work, especially with the workers of some unions, when their interests are aligned with the broader american public, as they often are. I want higher wages, for us to manufacture more things in the u. S. , and that means there are a lot of workers that we should come to because with and we should. I pitched my fellow republicans, these are our voters. If you look at the trajectory of who is voting republican and democrat, if you are a middleclass union worker in toledo, ohio, there is a good chance if you worked if you are not a republican 20 years ago, you are not today, and that creates the opportunity to create political allies. A couple more, shifting gears to politics. You have endorsed donald trump for another term. There have been reports on whether you would be considered for Vice President. Have you discussed with him either serving as Vice President or in his cabinet in some other capacity . Sen. Vance i would like to have a private conversation with donald trump and not immediately send it to the press. I have never talked about a role in his administration. If he asked, i would consider it, but i really like being in the senate and i think the people of ohio elected me to do a job and i intend to. One thing that critics of donald trump pointed out is that he has said in various ways that if you were to win, he would want the government to investigate his critics, people like john kelly, mark milley, suggesting that at one point, mark milley may have committed treason. Do you think that rhetoric is appropriate and would you want a Second Trump Administration to do stuff like that . Sen. Vance it is casebycase. I say this as someone who is critical of donald trump 2015, and you could use my own words against me, very often when i see a media story about donald trump and when i investigated, what he said is far more reasonable than the media reporting. Lets just take the mark milley situation. I dont know if this is true, but i have seen reports that went from ordered the military to do a troop drawdown in afghanistan, i believe there was anonymously sourced reporting that the leadership in the military, including general mark milley, actually used staggered troop redeployments in order to tell a also a story that the troop levels were going down, even they were in fact staying the same. If you are the leader of the u. S. Military, violating the order of commanderinchief, that is definitely something we cannot allow to happen in this country. Treason . Trump use that word. Sen. Vance i dont know if it is the Legal Definition of treason, but it is not ok and someone should be relieved of command at the bare minimum. We hear a lot of threats of democracy in this country, but when the military is ordered to do something by the president and they dont, that is more of a threat to democracy. I would like to see if anybody has a question in the audience. If not, i can continue. Right here in the front. Senator, thank you for being here and for your book, which i read years ago, and it shifted my perspective on a lot of issues. My name is angel, the ceo for College Admission counseling. I wanted to get your perspective on i really worry about politicians and lots of people today really advocating for people to shift away from american higher education, which really is one of the pillars of our society. I also worry about telling young people, do not go get a college degree, go right into the workforce. That is great. What at the same time, it is not position them for higher mobility within the workforce. I also worry about the fact that often times politicians i am not speaking about you specifically sen. Vance it is a totally fair i often worry about, to be heartfelt and honest, is that we keep saying to young people, you do not need a college degree, but the people saying that would not say that to their own children. Sen. Vance fairpoint. The latter point you make, i can see it is a fairpoint, and, in fact, as a father of three young kids who are not even thinking about going to college it, my wife and i also have this conversation. There are lots of things i wish they would be thinking about doing, not just a traditional degree focused path. My wife will often say, well, in the abstract, i agree, but it is really hard. There is a tremendous amount of pressure, especially those who are professionally educated to follow the pathway. Here is why i think we have to get outside of the traditional fouryear degree model. One, as you know, there is an incredible difference between the prospects of a person who goes to harvard or goes to ohio state and graduates, versus a person who goes to an Online College and acquires a lot of debt and does not graduate. We have to be honest with American Children that the Career Prospects are incredibly bifurcated. In fact, i think a lot of kids have been lied to about what the real mobility prospects are if you go to one of these lower tiered universities, especially if they dont graduate, as we know so many do not. I had this conversation with an admissions counselor at a lower rent university in ohio, lower ranked university in ohio, she said they admitted students to the Nursing Program and had never had a kid who had a 16 on the act or below graduate. 100 failure to complete rate. I said why do you let kids to get a 16 on the act come to the program if you know they wont complete the degree . She said the financial pressures of admission caused it. That is criminal to me. This person quit her job because she put so guilty that she was layering these kids with debt knowing they would not complete their degree. That is the problem i would like to solve. Higher education will still be incredibly important in the things we do in our country. I do not want to abolish it, but i would like to be more honest with kids about the prospects out there. In order to do that, we have to tell some of the kids, maybe it is not in your best interest to go to college. I think we have hit time, but thank you. [applause] sen. Vance appreciated. Announcer more from the recent wall street journal ceo council summit, now with michigan governor gretchen whitmer, who talks about her agenda, including investments in advanced manufacturing, the auto industry, and abortion access. This is just under 20 minutes. O manufacturing, the auto industry, and abortion access. This is under 20 minutes. Governor, thank you for being with us. Gov. Whitmer thank you