I'm kat timf i'm bill hemmer i'm harris faulkner and this is the fox news rundown friday july 23rd 2021. I'm dave anthony senators keep trying to work out a bipartisan infrastructure compromise but many republicans are wary the conversation that senate has been having is about a wish list of democrat priorities that i believe make the american economy less stable and will unemploy not re-employ but unemploy millions of americans we speak with republican senator tim scott and lisa brady two billionaires blast off with their own rockets. They got some backlash here on earth but is it the dawn of a new industry are you going to say.
Oh that's just a that's just a sad nothing or you're going to say did i just witness the birth of something that will transform the future of civilization. We speak with famed astrophysicist neil degrasse tyson and i'm rachel campos-duffy. It stalled but the trillion dollar infrastructure plan at the senate isn't dead even after republicans voted against proceeding with minority leader mitch mcconnell saying around here. We typically write the bills before we vote on them senators in both parties are still working on the specifics but even if it ultimately passes house speaker nancy pelosi says.
Majority leader chuck schumer and together they would give a massive boost to the economy ease inflation pressures create jobs increase productivity and reduce income inequality. Republicans disagree senator john barrasso tells fox it's the ultimate liberal wish list with taxes and spending and regulations that are not just reckless. They're scary when you really think about it many republicans are also skeptical of that first and smaller bipartisan infrastructure plan well. There certainly seems to be some interest in having another vote next week so that tells me that some people are still at the negotiating table gop senator tim scott is from south carolina.
I will say that when asked to vote on something without any legislation without any text without any understanding or appreciation of what in a package. How in the world someone votes for that i have no idea. So i assume that by this time next week we will have had an opportunity to have greater eyes on the specificity within the legislation. Now senator the majority leader chuck schumer had said listen this isn't a final version we're just voting to proceed. We can have all kinds of amendments and we'll put the bill together but we just want to move forward. What is wrong with that approach why do you not like his idea. Well it's kind of like hitting a target that you don't have or maybe even worse spinning somebody around 20 times in the middle of the dark and say please hit the target even though.
There are people standing around you could do real harm to the to the american economy to the american people. If you are spending three and a half trillion dollars or one trillion dollars without any understanding or appreciation of what it does to the american people as opposed to for the american people and let's remember. This is a group that told us that they were putting together a 1.9 trillion dollar coveted relief package with only one percent going to vaccines and less than 10 percent going to covet related health. The level of confidence that i have in this administration is very very low.
What would you support if say there is a vote next week and the senate does go forward and proceed what kind of a bill will you say yes to well one of the things. I've said oftentimes is in order to find a common ground you have to have common sense and there's not much common sense in the middle of their overall infrastructure approach their overall infrastructure approach includes things like the pro act that eliminates the right to work for 27 states. It compels or requires folks who are working to pay dues.
If there's a union present at their employer that is completely inconsistent with common sense however i would love to have a conversation in a silo from these policy positions that the democrats want to lead us down that road. I'd rather have a conversation about traditional infrastructure broadband could be a part of that conversation roads and bridges airports and ports all part of that conversation that is not the conversation that we've been having the conversation that senate has been having is about a wish list of democrat priorities that. I believe make the american economy less stable and will unemploy not re-employ but unemploy millions of americans all right now that is what.
They say would be something separate though right that that human infrastructure as they call it three and a half trillion dollars and they have a lot of things. They want to do on that that's through a reconciliation process though that you would not be able to block correct of all 50 democrats and then the vice president comes in they can do existential harm to the american economy and to the american people without question.
The vehicle of reconciliation could allow them to do some things to the american people without us being able to block it the good news is however that when you're having a large broad conversation about their objectives the vehicle of reconciliation cannot be used for certain policy positions that's why the negotiation overall is really important to understand what's in it the devil being in the details is incredibly important.
When you have a reconciliation vehicle that can only be used for specific revenue items. So they're going to try to push through or push into other packages things that we need to understand so any rush to getting this done without the ability to understand every word in the legislation could be very dangerous to what we believe to be common sense approach on many of these issues your colleague from south carolina fellow. Republican senator lindsey graham has said that maybe in order to block something like that he might not show up and then there wouldn't be quorum which sounds like something that texas democrats did.
When they tried to block the republican voting reform bill is that something that could be done is that something that some republicans would support. I i have not uh i have not taken that into consideration on what we could do one thing i love about lindsey graham he has a way of throwing jokes in the middle of serious conversations to lighten the mood. I can't imagine that happening i think americans all across this country have seen a loss of income because of the biden administration's approach to things like inflation to their approach to covet relief so much money increasing the demand with a very small supply has led to increases from car rentals to used cars uh laundry machines to airfare to moving to hotels.
Insurance bacon tvs fruit shoes all those things are up because of the biden administration inability to handle economic issues the president does get pretty good marks in different polls on his handling of covid though well if you're able to separate out the warp speed that led to the fastest delivery of a vaccine in human history. You can separate out the five cares packages that were passed under the previous administration of the trump administration the american people are not delineating between 20 and 21 about what started under president trump and what continued under president biden without that distinguishing of the conversation of covet relief the fact that we are in much better shape today mostly driven by the success of yesterday.
Uh it is it is uh important for us to yes celebrate success but b if we're going to figure out who gets the benefit or who gets appraised for that success you're probably talking more of the trump administration than you are the bible administration. Now to the issue of police reform at a cnn town hall wednesday night in ohio president biden said we have to change police conduct and the president denies republican claims that he and democrats want to defund police. They want police though to look at them as equals senator tim scott has been leading police reform negotiations for republicans last year it was certainly harder to actually negotiate.
Because it became very apparent very quickly that the democrats wanted the issue more than the solution they wanted to be able to have this as an election year issue. It's one of the reasons why we never brought resolution to some very important issues and frankly my colleagues. On the right my republican colleagues have been quite supportive of our approach to police reform and the good news is for the american people. Who are watching us very closely we are still at the table negotiating but what we're not going to do is we're not throwing police under the bus.
We are not going to change the qualified immunity for individual officers. We are not going to look for ways to defund the police we are actually going to refund the police or we're not going to have a bill. I think i am i am thankful that there are people of good intention on both sides of the aisle having this conversation. But my responsibility is to break the concepts of the notions of binary choices that don't exist you don't have to choose between communities of color and officers choosing one means choosing the other so there's no doubt that we're going to do what is in the best interest of law enforcement and the community that they serve and we're going to either get that done by keeping people working together or we're going to not get it done at all i'm confident that we will have a resolution to this issue.
What we had by the end of june was simply an agreement on the framing as i had hoped for and in july writing the text it takes a long painful process but unfortunately we've had so little legislating that people don't remember. What it looks like this is a long process and it should be because we are indeed the saucer that cools the cup senator you're running for reelection you're already out there. I've seen stories you've raised about 10 million dollars already so far where are you on this and why do you say this is the last time you'll run this is not my profession this is a calling and i believe that term limits are important for every senator in my opinion and i think that the best way to lead is the lead by example and and so i've made the decision. Before i arrived at in the senate to only serve up to two full terms i've served part of one so i i can't serve more than two full terms based on my own commitment and i'll serve those two terms.
If the people of south carolina allow me to and the grace of god of good health i will hopefully have that chance to do so uh finally. We're running because we have work that's unfinished on my opportunity agenda we have expanded opportunities under the previous administration president trump and the republicans we were able to bring unemployment to the lowest levels ever recorded in history for african americans and hispanics a 70-year low for women at 3.5 percent a 50-year low for all americans so continuing to work on the economics is really important in this nation an incentive-based economy is incredibly important.
We see the success of that through opportunity zones and then we have other issues that we have to work on i i'd like to have definitions like infrastructure mean things like our port south carolina port authority needs the resources to continue to expand our exporting opportunities around the world. We need better roads and bridges uh that's a that's a factor throughout this nation. So i'm going to continue to work on the common sense common ground issues that every american that i've talked to think are important and sometimes. We miss those obvious things in washington you know people keep bringing you up for possibly a 2024 run for the white house something you would consider or what well you know.
I'm a gamecock fan and one of the things i've learned about football is you take one saturday at a time and if you want to be successful there's no reason to think about the next Saturday. If you haven't won the one in front of you so my theory and i don't mean this to be flippant but i mean to be to be sincere the most important thing. I can do to continue to serve the people of south carolina is to win in 2022 and if you can be successful with that the good lord knows what's next. But my greatest joy professionally has been to be the united states senator for the great state of south carolina and i hope to continue to do so senator tim scott republican from south carolina of course thank you very much for joining us god bless thank.
You this is rachel campos duffy with your fox news commentary coming up it was a launch heard around the world has cleared the tower the first manned flight for blue origin the space company launched by amazon founder jeff bezos. What we're doing is the first step was something big the bezos flight which also included the oldest and youngest ever astronauts came less than two weeks after british billionaire sir richard branson rode his rocket into space each describing. It as a dream come true with much more than personal meaning for the future though not everyone on social media seems to agree. But the white house is on board and investments in space create jobs can improve life here on earth through climate monitoring and medical advancements just to name a few spokeswoman jen saki says the ingenuity of commercial partners will help the country advance to its next stage of space exploration.
Nasa is already using elon musk's spacex for cargo flights to and from the international space station and musk doesn't intend to stop there. So it seems a new kind of space race is well underway these are the very first baby steps necessary before you open an entire new business category right space tourism neil degrasse tyson is an astrophysicist cosmic queries author and host and the director of new york's hayden planetarium. Now it would probably be more accurately described as rocket tourism right it's not often anyone has ever launched in a rocket with a countdown and for me that would be a kind of an exciting thing to participate in.
But these are these are sub-orbital flights where you go up just above the tip of the atmosphere then you fall back for a couple of minutes your weightless and then. When you re hit the atmosphere then your weight returns so it's a short journey but um i can imagine a day. Where you have full orbital uh space tourism as well as possibly visiting colonies on the moon. So i'm all for it i mean yeah it certainly sounds like feels like maybe kind of an icebreaker for the public even though technically another billionaire um had already. You know who isn't a household name had already been in space again using the term space loosely.
Because they're they're barely on the threshold as you say um well i'm an astrophysicist. So if you're going to ask me about space it's not going to be slightly above earth's surface we're going to talk about you know moon mars beyond to the edge of the universe. But i think it's the fact that people are using the word space signals a level of enthusiastic forward thinking about where this enterprise could ultimately land figuratively and literally and by the way there's a lot of attention given unto they being billionaires and as you correctly noted charles simone was one of the microsoft billionaires went into space.
Uh some years ago bought a seat on the soyuz capsule and went to the space station at a time when nasa was not selling speeds so that was sort of the earliest test cases of space tourism. Fact is if they weren't billionaires and it was still happening would then people be excited about it. I mean i think they're being distracted by the fact that billionaires are involved and it's really just think about it as a new kind of thing you might do when you go on a vacation that's all and it's the beginning of it how often do.
You get to see the beginning of an entire industry it's like watching the first ford model t roll off the assembly line. We're watching the you know the earliest right flyer airplane right and are you going to say oh that's just. Uh that's just a fad no no or you're going to say did we did i just witnessed the birth of something that uh will transform the future of civilization well because they're billionaires they actually ended up getting a fair amount of negative publicity you know people essentially saying oh look at these billionaires racing to space in their own rockets.
I mean could that could this backfire instead of creating more enthusiasm for space tourism could this have the opposite effect yeah so there's a little bit of backfiring there. I i like the fact that they put their own literal skin in the game to demonstrate the safety and the and the and the reliability of their hardware because i i had joked with elon. You know people said if vlog wants to send you to mars would you go and i joked and i said not until he sends his mother and brings her back safely then i'll go so under those conditions yeah.
I would say if they if they put their own life at risk to do this then and they've got a lot to lose um given the size of their wealth and their kingdoms and whatever else they run um that's a testament to i think how safe. It would be for the rest of us the white house spokeswoman jensaki has called this a moment of american exceptionalism and she talks about the importance of space travel to help fuel advancements here on earth does the government need to do a better job of telling that story.
when most people use something like gps they're probably not thinking hey this came from the space program yeah in fact even when they're not using gps well even when they don't know that. They're using gps right imagine telling the original gps inventors do you know one day people are going to use your satellites to find a mate within 100 yards of where. They're standing by swiping right this is this is you know who would have thought that this is how we would be using space technologies uh point is the the uh by the way. I'm a scientist and scientist is fundamentally not only international but literally universal. So i don't like thinking of american exceptionalism the way others do i think of human exceptionalism these are these are human achievements and um by the way we did send people into low earth orbit 60 years ago alan shepard among them.
So people shouldn't think of this as breaking new space ground what they're doing is thinking about it in a whole other way that people had not thought about it before and that is in the context of space tourism. Well i guess the question becomes you know how long until space tourism might be for everyone or at least let's say an expensive trip for a family or a couple who wants an out of this world honeymoon or you know how long until it becomes at least a little more commonplace or accessible however. You want to put it never and some people are are angry.
Because it is like billionaire joyrides in ways that none of us will ever participate but i think that's short-sighted and it misses some important lessons from history an example i like to give is is from the the 1987 film wall street. Um i don't know if you've ever seen that or remember there's a scene where gekko he's the rich bad guy right uh he's at his hamptons beach house and he's walking on the beach holding and speaking through his shoulder-mounted cell phone that's how big it was. But i remembered i said wow i was i was rich so i can have a phone and walk on the beach and talk through it.
But really the phone wasn't very good it was big and clumsy and heavy yes but you need to be rich to talk through it once that technology became commoditized. Now basically everybody has a cell phone almost everybody and so and it doesn't cost whatever it costs gekko to speak through that one and and so for something to become a true industry. It's got to reach for everyone and the past history especially when it's technologically driven has indeed accomplished that so what has to happen here is you get more companies in the mix you fly.
You fly the rockets multiple times a year dropping the amortized cost per launch and then you get it down from a quarter million or whatever. It was there yeah 200 000 down to maybe a hundred thousand and in economic terms the demand for this is elastic so whatever you had for 200 000. You might have twice as many people who'll do it for a hundred thousand how about fifty thousand ten thousand five thousand all right i would save up several vacation costs you know.
What's it cost to take the whole family to fly to orlando and go to disney world okay that's that's a lot of money especially if you buy food there right. So you have this huge ticket and they say okay i can go disney world or i can go into orbit or into into space and i think when you have that kind of choice um you'll see many more people flocking towards this as a new kind of option for it. I know spacex is expected to send up a ship in september within all civilian crew and that trip is expected to last a few days instead of a few minutes would you be excited about that well so for that.
Uh i'm again i'm an astrophysicist so when i think of space and space travel. I'm not thinking of boldly going where hundreds have gone before in low earth orbit if you're going to put me into space send me somewhere the moon mars and beyond and elon has been talking about going back to mars forever okay. So that's where i would probably sign up otherwise no no. I'm staying on earth one more question for you. I there will probably always be people who say space travel in general but especially the idea of space tourism is a waste maybe the money's.
You know better spent elsewhere. What do you say to that so it'd be something different if we were only spending money on space and not on everything else. But we're also spending money on everything else so so it's just that space is really visible and garners headlines. So it leaves you thinking why are we doing that when we should be doing this all right i remembered people would log that complaint about nasa. For example you know why are we putting you know men on the moon okay well what are we what are we spending to put men on the moon and on average it was two at the time two three percent of the federal budget was engaged in sending astronauts to the moon.
So you're going to look at that and say we shouldn't spend that we should then solve poverty or homelessness. What about the 98 of the rest of the budget okay you're you're focusing on this two percent and saying that's wrong and not even paying attention to the rest of the 98 of the federal budget. That's going to all manner of things in this in this country. So i think that the answer here is you want a balance of what activities you engage in. In the world is anyone looking at a public art project in the middle of a square and say this is a waste of money it's not putting food on people's plate.
Why no you you choose art because it makes a country worth defending that you have people going into space and creating art and composing music and doing all of these things that enrich your senses and what it is to be human. Uh what you want to do is you do it all and i think we can and in many ways i think we are well thank you very much for always broadening our horizons neil degrasse cosmic perspective. I and all my colleagues would tell you exactly the same thing neil degrasse tyson thank you very very much for your time. You got it from the fox news podcasts network subscribe and listen to the trey gowdy podcast former federal prosecutor and four-term.
U.s congressman from south carolina brings. Now some good news with tanya j powers genshu price is on a mission he's a middle schooler in hawaii who started his own recycling program it began with a suggestion from his dad it was my dad's idea to collect cans and bottles to help fund my college tuition and then. I figured i could make it into something bigger and help other hawaiians instead audio courtesy of bottles for college with his parents help and on occasion a few volunteers genshu collects hundreds of recyclable donations. Each week separating and sorting them before dropping them off at a local redemption recycling center we want to create a system.
Where your at least yearly we can send one to two kids and a fully funded right to college so that will take two to four million cans and bottles. It's a work in progress but he's already collected more than a hundred thousand cans and bottles. There's just so many things that he's learning from this experience and so we believe this is part of his education that's his mom maria genshu is thinking big so far they've got two permanent school drop-off locations with one of them being his own middle school.
S.w king intermediate school where they've also held large drop-off events one of our goals is to get public drop-off depots at every public school in Hawaii. So we have two of the public schools right now and then we're hoping to expand that way we have a deep one every community that way that every community can come and support. He says he'll keep working toward his goal it's definitely exciting and like it's just like every can counts one cannonball time.
Tanya j powers fox news it's time for your fox news commentary rachel campbell's duffy what's on your mind if you spend time with cuban and venezuelan catholics. You will hear about the pain inflicted on them by the man who's supposed to be their shepherd pope francis the heartache and betrayal felt by faithful catholics. Many of whom risked or continued to risk their livelihoods and their lives to practice and hold on to their faith in christian traditions is the reason so many freedom-loving catholics have dubbed the argentine pope papache after the iconic communist murder check avada.
It was more than a week after protests spontaneously erupted across the island of cuba before papache said a word about the courageous demonstrators. Following a brutal crackdown of these freedom protests heartbreaking video and images emerged of teenagers being dragged from their homes in front of their crying parents and faced with the impossibly cruel. Choice of joining the military to fight against their families and their own liberation or be sent to the gulags while brave cubans were being rounded up by the government's merciless secret. Police pope francis found time to make a statement about racism in the soccer world cup but not a word about the human rights abuses in cuba.
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