BUCK: We are pleased to be joined now by the senator, one of them, from the great state of Tennessee. Senator Marsha Blackburn is with us. Senator, thank you so much for making the time.

SEN. BLACKBURN: I’m delighted to join you! Thank you.

BUCK: So, how do you feel about — let’s just start with where your state is now, which is also Clay’s state — Tennessee — when it comes to the situation of covid and how we’re trying to get back to normalcy here?

SEN. BLACKBURN: Well, in Tennessee, we have been open for quite a while. And as I am talking to Tennesseans on this, they are saying, “Look, we are being careful.” People are talking to their doctors. If they’re a candidate for a vaccine, they’re getting the vaccine, and what they want to make certain is that we get people back to work, that children get back to school, and that those children — when they go to school — are not going to have to wear masks. I have heard from so many parents that have elementary school children, and they talk about the health issues — whether it’s mental health, physical health, emotional health — and the effects of these masks on children.

CLAY: Senator Blackburn, thanks for coming on.

SEN. BLACKBURN: Sure!

CLAY: This is Clay. We live in basically the same area, which is a great area in the state of Tennessee. My kids went back to school today. I started off the show talking about it. We got to go into the classroom, meet the teachers, shake their hands like normal parents would, see the other parents, see the other kids.

No masks, and it felt so good to be back to a form of normalcy. How important is it for regular people — the kind of people like you and me and everybody out there listening to us right now — to get on with their lives in a normal fashion? No matter where they may live, covid’s not going away. We can’t shrink in terror forever.

SEN. BLACKBURN: Well, and, Clay, that is the thing. And I hear it from people every day, whether I go to the grocery store or church or one of the grandkids’ games. What I hear from people is, “We want life to go back to normal,” and what you’re talking about — those things of being able to take your child into the school building and go to the classroom and go through that day with them — that is something that is…

It’s not only important to the emotional health of the child. That’s important to the family to be able to have that, to share that experience, to talk about the day, to talk about how important it is, to be able to get in the car together and go to the fair without a mask on and see your friends (chuckling) and go to the pool because it is really hot and see your friends and do those things that we all consider to be normal participations in our everyday life.

And people want that. They do not want the federal government to come in and mandate masks or mandate vaccines or to mandate lockdowns. But here’s what we have to realize. The left likes lockdowns because it gives them control! They would like to have a permanent pandemic. They would like to keep you in that state so you’re dependent on them.

You look at the bills and things that are coming through us. What are they trying to do? Make people dependent on the federal government by taking more money out of your pocket, having it go to Washington, D.C., go to programs that will have outlived their usefulness by the time our kids and grandkids have to start paying this bill. That’s what they like.

BUCK: Senator Blackburn, it’s Buck again, and I’ve talked to you before several times about the unfolding or just continuing disaster at our southern border. I know you’re very vocal on this issue. You’re speaking about control before. It seems like the Biden administration is choosing to be out of control when it comes to what’s happening at the U.S.-Mexico border. What can you tell us about where this stands right now, both in terms of any possible action in the Congress to deal with this — we know it’s not there yet, but could there be in the future — and also what it means again in Tennessee?

SEN. BLACKBURN: Well, before the Senate right now I have an amendment to this infrastructure behemoth — which, by the way, is not paid for. I have an amendment that would allow them to put $1 billion into a shovel-ready infrastructure project. And that amendment says, let’s take a billion dollars out of Amtrak — which has already been given billions of dollars — and let’s put that on the southern border to build a wall.

That is a shovel-ready infrastructure project. Everything is there you need to build it. And, by the way, it would save us some money because right now, we’re having to pay people to guard all of the equipment and supplies and the border wall components. We’re having to pay people to guard it! So let’s put a billion dollars in here and build that wall. Now, that is something that the Border Patrol has been telling us that they need. President Trump listened to them.

He gave them the ability to have more equipment, more boots on the ground, started building the wall. The Biden administration’s immigration policy is a disaster. They have turned every town into a border town, every state into a border state because of the over one million illegal immigrants from 150-plus countries that have come into this country since Joe Biden took the oath of office, and the cartels…

You know, Buck, as we have talked about: The cartels are running that border. They are making money off of every individual that crosses that border. These people are being subjected to physical and sexual abuse. And the cartels are making money off of human trafficking, sex trafficking, drug trafficking, labor gangs, and MS-13 gangs. And this is what we are seeing in our communities. Build the wall. Secure the border. It’s a great infrastructure project. That is something that we should agree to move forward on.

CLAY: Senator Blackburn, you mentioned the infrastructure bill. I want to talk about the budget here for a moment, which I know is gonna be up next.

SEN. BLACKBURN: Yes.

ClAY: Kyrsten Sinema came out, the senator from Arizona and said she wasn’t in favor of the $3.5 trillion price tag. I think Joe Manchin basically has let it be known he is not, either. Have you been talking to either of those senators? I know it’s as much of an art as it is a science. But what does this budget number end up looking like to you, given that the Democrats have to get 50 in order to get through reconciliation? What’s the cost going to be based on what you’re hearing?

SEN. BLACKBURN: What I’m hearing on that $3.5 trillion is it’s really going to be more like $5 trillion.

CLAY: Right.

SEN. BLACKBURN: Now bear in mind, they have already spent $1.9 trillion and now they want to spend another $1.2 trillion to infrastructure. So you’re up a little bit over three. Now, Bernie’s budget is $3.5 trillion, but it’s going to be more like $5 trillion. And what I think we have to do is back up and look at what has happened with our nation’s debt. If you — and I’ve got a graph on my social media and my website on this.

If you were to start at George Washington and go to George W. Bush, the day he left office, the debt was at $10.6 trillion. That was too much for me. But that’s what the nation’s debt was. Then during Obama’s term as president, basically we doubled that number. They literally ran the numbers off the credit card. Then you have President Trump, and he added to it, started trying to cut back on regulations and size of federal government.

We had covid hit. So you had debt get added there., and now Biden is pushing us to $30 trillion in debt, and he has been in office for six months! This is something our children and grandchildren, they are going to be paying this in the form of higher taxes. And this budget that Bernie is pushing forward, it has a cap gains tax increase, it has a corporate tax increase. And, by the way, if you are a small businessperson, that one’s gonna get you. The marginal rates are going to go up. That is going to get a lot of our small business owners.

CLAY: It’s also retroactive —

SEN. BLACKBURN: Yeah!

CLAY: — which is crazy to me, Senator Blackburn.

SEN. BLACKBURN: Yes! Exactly!

CLAY: Nobody’s hardly talking about that, but we don’t even know what the rates are going to be. Say you’re a businessperson right now, they could go back and say, h”Hy, you’ve been paying tax without even knowing what the rates are.” It’s madness.

SEN. BLACKBURN: Well, it is madness, because you’re right. They want to make it retroactive to the first of the year. Guess what? Joe Biden wasn’t even president on January 1.

CLAY: Yep.

SEN. BLACKBURN: But what they’re wanting to do is make it retroactive to the first of this calendar year. So we’re just continuing our push to stop as much of this bad action as we possibly can. I’ve got a total of 30 amendments on that bill, that infrastructure bill and slowing this process down, having people look at it and become aware, having them contact their legislators and saying, “Hey, we do not want you to vote for this infrastructure bill, and we certainly don’t want you to vote for this budget.”

BUCK: Senator Marsha Blackburn, thank you so much for being with us from the great state of Tennessee. We appreciate it.

SEN. BLACKBURN: Thank you.