Charlie Kirk calls the SALT deduction “a penalty for well-run red states”
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From the June 17, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble
CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): Senator Mullen, you're the liaison between the House and the Senate when it comes to the Big Beautiful Bill. What should our audience know about these negotiations?
SEN. MARKWAYNE MULLIN (GUEST): Well, they're fluid. The — and the president is very, very involved in this, Charlie. What we don't wanna do is get in a ping pong back and forth where the House sends — where we send this back to House, the House amends it, send it back to us, and we end up going in to conference, and that would take weeks, if not months, to negotiate. What we're trying to do is work all the problems out now, like, with SALT, with the debt limit, with Medicare and Medicaid. When we start talking about some debt limit increase, that is a very sticky subject for some because there's a lot of people in both chambers that doesn't wanna put that limit increase in this. But understand that if we don't do this, this is a leverage point for the Democrats because we will have to raise our debt limit. If we don't raise our debt limit, then we default. And is — and this is what I said on multiple places, not raising our debt limit is like not getting a business loan when you're buying a fellow business. You can have a business plan to make it profitable, but it doesn't mean you're gonna make it profitable the first day. That's why you have a business loan. I feel like if we follow Trump's economic plan, we raise a debt limit now, there's a good chance that we can be — that we can balance a budget in three years, and this might get us to three years depending on how much growth we have. $4.5 trillion dollars — huge debt increase. I get that. But we have to do it to get out of this problem. As President Trump said, he didn't create this problem. He inherited it. It's on us to fix it, and we've gotta try fixing it. And this bill moves us that way. But I think the probably the two sticky points is a debt — or the debt limit increase — well, three, debt limit increase, deficit reduction, and SALT. And SALT could be the poison pill here if we don't get it right.
KIRK: And so the — and, yeah, so the — we can't allow a poison pill. What — and, like, senator, you're from Oklahoma. Oklahoma is well-run. Governor Stitt is great. You know that I visited Oklahoma State University.
MULLIN: Yep.
KIRK: You guys, I think, balance your budget or get close to it on approximation of it. You know, you guys are — have a great tax policy. I don't understand — what is the argument from Republicans for SALT other than they wanna bring goodies home? They are subsidizing JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul. I know you gotta be the negotiator. I know you gotta try to make a deal happen on SALT, but I gotta be honest. It is a penalty for well-run red states.