U.S. SENATE – U.S. Senator Steve Daines today joined Fox Business to discuss the status of the Big Beautiful Bill, Ukraine’s latest drone strikes on Russia, and the threat of Chinese agroterrorism to the United States.
Watch the full interview HERE.
Daines explained how Ukraine’s shifting fighting tactics are a gamechanger:
Well, it’s completely changed the dynamic of the situation because the Russians understand one thing and that’s force. But it’s remarkable what the Ukrainians pulled off. You think about these drones, each of them cost $500 to $5,000, and these drone attacks destroyed $7 billion worth of Russian aircraft. Now these are airplanes that are bombers. These are part of the nuclear lift, so we’ve knocked out approximately about a third of their bombers, so it’s truly a game changer. It also illustrates where modern warfare is today in terms of, we’ve got to think differently as it relates to the impact that drones have on the battlefield…
It’s why President Trump is exactly right. Think about his Golden Dome strategy. We’ve got to find the latest and best technology and a vision here on how to protect the homeland and credit to President Trump.
Daines emphasized the need for tax permanency in the Big Beautiful Bill:
Failure is not an option. We must pass this bill. We face a $4.5 trillion tax increase if we don’t. But as Leader Thune just pointed out, this is about growth. It’s also about competitiveness and innovation. There’s provisions in this bill that we’re fighting for right now to have permanence in capital expensing as well as R&D expensing. You’ve got to incentivize investment, make capital expensing permanent. You want to incentivize research and development, make R&D expensing permanent. That’s key as we think about global competitiveness and beating China long-term to be investing in R&D. So these are provisions we’re going to the White House this afternoon and going to talk to President Trump about. We need permanence, so the business community has certainty in their investments as we’re playing not just the short game, but also the long haul here in terms of winning globally.
Daines sounded the alarm about the threat of agroterrorism to the U.S.:
This is a chilling development. And I speak on behalf of so many Americans who would be worried about really contaminating our food supply. This was a biological pathogen that the FBI discovered with these two Chinese nationals doing research at the University of Michigan. If this got into our food supply chain, coming from a state like Montana, which is one of our breadbasket states, we produce wheat, we produce barley, this fungus, this pathogen, would directly affect and destroy our crops. Can you imagine the Chinese with some kind of a plot to undermine the United States by going after our food supply? So I think this has got everybody on heightened alert. Credit to the FBI for uncovering this plot and stopping this before it became much larger.
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Contact: Matt Lloyd, Gabby Wiggins