Senator Marshall: Republicans Are Making America Safer and More Prosperous

Senator Marshall Hosts Local Virtual Press Conference

Washington - On Wednesday, U.S. Senator Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), hosted a local virtual press conference to discuss President Trump's progress on peace talks in Iran, the passage of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act and how it cuts regulations to free up the housing market, the growth of Kansas' manufacturing economy, and the SAVE America Act.

Senator Marshall expressed how, after 47 years of terrorism and violence against the world, the war in Iran has ended that threat and made Americans safer for generations to come. He applauded President Trump for his bold actions to put American safety and security first.

Click HERE to download the full video.

Highlights from Senator Marshall's remarks include:

On the war in Iran and progress on a peace deal:

"Well, good morning everybody, and thanks for joining us. We're live from our office here in Washington, DC. Wanted to at least touch on two topics: of course, Iran is upfront in everybody's mind, and also I hope we have a little time to talk about housing."

"So, first of all, on Iran. I think, most importantly, what I want to communicate is that I hate war, and I'll be no part of a forever war, especially. And I think it's important for the folks back home to know why, why I'm so much against war. I think it starts with the fact that I served, my dad served, my brother served, my son is serving. Multiple generations from my family have served - and by the way, they were all enlisted people. My wife lost an uncle in World War II. So, I feel as a former officer and now a senator, I feel responsible for the 13 lives we've already lost in this Iranian war. And I just want to minimize our casualties - hundreds of people wounded."

"But beyond that, you all knew I grew up in El Dorado. And every weekend, most every Saturday, Sunday, we would drive to our grandparents' family farms and drive by the cemetery. And growing up in the 1960s, what I remember driving by that cemetery, were all the flag draped coffins. And the young boys that I'd seen play high school football just the last fall were coming back in body bags. And no one could explain to me that war and what we were doing there, and again, it was very informative to me. And the last thing I think of the 'why' this matters to me: 1991 was Desert Storm - kind of our first venture into this Middle East quagmire - I would have been a young lieutenant in medical school, the Army Reserve. And it just seems like that war lasted until just a couple years ago. So, I hate war, and I don't want to be any part of a forever war."

"As I think about this memorandum of understanding with Iran, I always stay focused on those goals. That number one is no nukes, next is no forever wars, number three, keep the Strait open, and number four is affordable gas and groceries for Americans. So, as long as you stay focused on that, the memorandum of understanding made sense to me as well. But the big advantage I have, of course, is talking to Vice President JD Vance, talking to Jared, talking to Steve Witkoff about, you know, filling in the gaps between here, between that memorandum of understanding. I think that's what I want to do today, is try to communicate to kind of fill in what's not being said in that particular agreement. But again, keep going back to, does this get us towards those four specific goals in mind?"

"I want to back up and say, look, if it were up to me, we would not leave Iran with a knife and a pistol - if it were up to me. But I know we have destroyed about 85% of their military, we have destroyed their economy. Think about their economy: 70% inflation, their GDP now per capita is equivalent to someone from Haiti, the poorest country in our hemisphere. So, we have destroyed them militarily and economically."

"But to get them to a point where there would be total capitulation, I think would take bombing of civilian targets, or at least there would be civilian casualties. When you start going after infrastructure, there's going to be tens of 1000s of civilians killed, and in my estimation, it would take a ground invasion along with that. You know, just think back to Normandy, think back to the shores of Iwo Jima, that even though we bombed them. If we think that we want to get them totally to have an unconditional surrender, that's what it would take, and I'm not willing to do that. But I feel like we've got as far as we can without boots on the ground and without creating significant civilian casualties, as well."

"So here we are today, we have a memorandum of understanding. We've had Vice President Vance over there, Jared, and Steve over there as well. I would describe the situation as we're going down three different roads, three different paths that we're working on. The number one would be the nuclear situation, and we can dive down in that if you want to. Number two is dealing with Lebanon, and we can dive down that one. And then number three, I think is everything else, and I think it's so important that in this everything else, whether it's, you know, what do we do with sanctions? What do we do? What type of arms does Iran get to keep?"

"We want local participation, we want those Gulf Coast nations - those Persian Gulf nations to be involved. We have defanged Iran, and now those other countries can take over being the policeman - we don't have to be the policeman of the world. Now we may have to come back and play whack-a-mole. And I don't want to be overly optimistic here either - I'm very hopeful, this is further along, the talks are going better than I expected them to - but at the end of the day, I realize that we may have to bomb them 'back to kingdom come' as my grandma would say. I hope we don't have to do that, but we're going to give them this 60-day chance to make progress and deal with the issues I'm describing now."

"Now I want to talk, maybe dive down in those three buckets, or those three paths a little bit further. Let's talk about the nuclear situation as well. So, Iran is probably sitting on about 1000 pounds of 60% enriched uranium. It would have to go to 90% to be weapon grade. Now what's important to me - and I just wish I could get this message out - is we are trying to take swords and turn them into plow shears. We want to take this weapons-grade uranium and down blend it into something that could be turned into nuclear energy."

"And there's precedent for this - thanks to President Reagan's leadership, we got the USSR, the Soviet Union at the time, to take 5000 tons of weapon-grade uranium and convert that into energy uranium. And here, we're just talking about a half of one half of one ton, so it can be done. It can be down blended right there, it could be then shipped to Russia and then sold as some type of nuclear energy. At one point in time, 1/10 of the electricity produced in this country was from former weapons made by the Soviet Union. So, I think it's very, very doable, it's very safe. They certainly are making great progress in that way, beyond the MOU, even talk of letting American inspectors in there as well."

"Now, Lebanon, just for a second. Certainly I've been a big supporter of Israel through my entire career. Again, it's a spiritual issue to me that I was taught in Sunday school at a young age, 'He who blesses Israel will be blessed.' And I've stood beside Israel as strong as anybody has, but I'm always an American First senator - of course I am. If we don't deal with Lebanon, it'll be a tinder box that reignites this agreement. So, I'm glad it's included in the agreement, and I remain hopeful. But I also understand you know, Israel can be a little bit of a loose cannon, and certainly Hezbollah can be a loose cannon as well, but we have to deal with that. Yes, Israel should be able to defend itself, all those things."

"And I love, I love, what Vice President Vance is doing here with Lebanon. What they're talking about is setting up a demilitarized zone. Think back to Korea again, it was President Truman, President Eisenhower that came up with this concept of a demilitarized zone that's really kept, for the most part, peace there for now since 1952 or so. So, setting up a demilitarized zone there between Lebanon and Israel. It's so important - the Hezbollah, these terrorists, they dig tunnels that are miles long to try to invade Israel, so if there's a buffer space there controlled by the UN, I think that's a great thing as well."

"And I think that kind of brings me down the third row: what do we do with sanctions? I think, most importantly, unlike President Obama's agreement, we're not sending them any American dollars. Zero. I want to dispel one of the biggest lies I'm hearing out there is that Americans are giving them any money. Okay, we're not giving them any money. We are letting them sell oil right now, sell their own oil right now for the first time. And again, President Obama did the same thing when he had his agreement with them - he let them sell their own oil as well."

"Now, there's been this talk of this $300 billion and I think people are getting way, way, way ahead of themselves. That would be no American dollars. There are literally hundreds of billions of dollars of their money that's frozen in different countries. What we would allow is again, I want that regional rule over Iran. If they're going to use some of that money that benefits the entire community there - the entire Gulf Coast nations - then great. So, we would allow them to build it. But we would always have a veto on how to use their own money. And again, we want that interaction between the local governments rather than just us."

"So, I think it's okay. And again, it's a trust but verify - they have to hand over their all their uranium before much of any of that happens as well. And then we're not going to allow them back to their own money anytime soon as well. So, we go along again. I think back to Reagan, this trust but verify is exactly where we are as well."

"Maybe I'll give you a couple other thoughts, just in general, about the differences between this agreement and President Obama's agreement. I think this has been well reported, that number one, this is the first time Iran's ever signed a document specifically that they would not develop any nuclear weapons. Number two, Iran's agreed that at the end of the day this final agreement would be a UN security resolution. So, it'll be great to bring in other countries again to supervise what Iran agrees to as well. Of course, we talked about no money up front, I think that's a big difference between the agreements as well. Including Lebanon was one issue that was not in the other agreement as well. So, I think those are the those are the main differences. Remember, again, President Obama's agreement - with all due respect - would have allowed Iran to start enriching now, and they would have had allowed them to have a nuclear weapon by 2030, 2031 as well."

"I'm going to finish where I started. You know, I spoke with President Trump several weeks ago about this situation, we're going to see him again tomorrow and talk about this, I'm sure. But my North Star is always no nukes for Iran, no forever wars, keep the Strait open, make gas and groceries more affordable, and achieve that long-term goal that for generations to come, Americans will be prosperous, safe, and secure."

On the passage of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act:

"So, I think I covered everything I want to on Iran. Before we open it up questions, I do want to talk about the housing bill that we passed out of the Senate yesterday. People ask me, 'Can you guys ever do anything on a bipartisan basis?' Well, this is something we did. 85 to 5 was the final vote on this housing bill we did yesterday."

"I think it's important to reflect back, how did we get here? Under President Biden, we saw the cost of housing go up at least 50%. If you're a young person under the age of 40 starting a family, a young family and you haven't bought your house yet, it's almost impossible to get into a house right now - unless you have some family members helping you or something. So, we're trying to address the cost of housing."

"We'll talk about what does this bill do - and I want to get this right. This legislation streamlines environmental reviews, modernizes manufactured housing rules, unlocks private investment, empowers community banks, and updates multifamily financing tools to expand housing supply and bring down costs for American families. Okay, so that's the background."

"I think the easy one is the Wall Street investors - look, we don't want Wall Street investors owning home in Great Bend, where I live, so we've come to a compromise. The most they could own is 350."

"What I really like, though, is the deregulatory environment. When I've talked to builders, contractors, for the past several years - look, housing's been an issue in Kansas, certainly since my days as a Rotary District Governor in 2015, this was a top issue to every community - but when I talk to builders, they said it's the regulatory environment is the challenge. That typically, from the time they buy a green space, until they're building, would take two years. So, the bank is sitting there on the loan, and then the owners of this green space are sitting on this as well, waiting and waiting. So, we streamline that process, the environmental passes to get through."

"But we're also challenging local communities to streamline theirs as well. If you've seen one community, you've seen one community, when they try to address the issues of housing. We've been to several communities, and I want to salute a couple that are doing great with this housing. These are places we visited: Russell is doing a great job, Salina, Hutchison, Abilene, and KCK. Those are those are five communities. And there's others that are doing a good job as well, but more recent projects where they went from 0 to 100 miles an hour on housing projects. So, each community is going to have to solve it their own way."

"On the federal government level, I think it's important to realize what we've already been doing. It looks like to me the federal government's investing about $125 million a year in tax credits and housing grants across the state of Kansas every year, and we're helping build about 2000 units a year, as well. So, those are real results, but we're hoping that this new legislation will make it more affordable to build these new homes and break the backlog."

"But one thing is not going to fix this. Again, I go back to how we got here: under President Biden, he let 10 million people come into this country all at one time, it saturated the housing market and made a tough situation even worse. And then, along with that, of course, when he borrowed - when we went from spending $5 trillion to $7 trillion a year at the federal government, that lit inflation on fire and caused increased interest rates. So, we're still digging out, I get it, things are not perfect, but I couldn't be more optimistic than I am right now."

On the economy in Kansas:

"Kansas had two quarters last year with GDP over 6%, the third quarter we had the highest GDP growth in the entire nation. I just see manufacturing booming across the state - Boeing setting on contracts through 2030. But it isn't just the big aerospace industries, anyone that's making agriculture products, or maybe it's windows out in Fort Scott. Wherever there's manufacturing, it's booming, but the challenge is we don't have enough people for the jobs we have."

"As we see the price of gas go down - and I've seen it go down from four and a half dollars a gallon to under three and a half dollars this week. We were in southeast Kansas for most of the weekend - went to visit my folks in El Dorado for Father's Day as well. Everywhere we went, gas was typically under three and a half, a couple places closer even to $3 a gallon, so that's great to see. As that gas price comes down, it'll lead us out of inflation as well. But everything else is, I think, pretty stable."

"And, of course, groceries follow gasoline in so many ways. I'm going to just point out the obvious here - when a farmer plants that wheat, he's going to have to touch that field three or four times with a tractor or a combine, so lots of diesel fuel. And then you got to take that wheat to the to the flour, to the co-op, and then to a flour mill, and then to the bakery, and then to the store. So, at the end of the day, there's maybe 25 cents worth of wheat in a loaf of bread, but the but gasoline touches that multiple, multiple times. So certainly, we're excited to see the price of gasoline come down, think you'll see inflation come down with it, and I really think again that the table set for a great economy this year - and now it's time for the banquet."

"Things aren't perfect, I get it. The cost of living is still a challenge, especially for those people under the age of 40, but we're going to continue to address that cost of living, whether it's housing, like we did in this bill. I think that we'll get our price tags bill through committee next month as well. That's the bill that requires every health care provider to show their price up front, and that's going to bring down the cost of health insurance, probably $1,000 a month when it's all said and done, as well. So, locked in on the situation in Iran, hoping that comes to a good conclusion for Americans, and at the same time working on the cost of gas and groceries."

On how Kansans are better off since the Iran war:

"Yeah, I would love to. For 47 years, Kansans have lived in fear of Iran. Through terrorism they kill 1000s of their own people, especially Christians, and they're funding terrorism around the world. This is the world's largest leader in terrorism funding as well. So, we've destroyed 85% of their military, we destroyed their economy as well, we defanged this largest terrorist group in the country. You ask me what threats we have in this country right now to our country? At least on the short term, China's not going to invade this country, right, but Iran has proxies in this country right now. So, we are cutting back on their ability to fund terrorism as well - you know, they killed hundreds of marines, probably close to 1000 Americans over these last 47 years."

"Could you imagine if Iran had a nuclear weapon, what it would mean? They would shut down the Strait of Hormuz, they would charge a toll, gasoline would be $25 a gallon right now, if we allowed them to do that. And they would be holding the world hostage right now. So, I applaud President Trump for standing up and taking them on."

"Look, I wish we didn't have to - I would have much rather some other generation have taken care of this problem. Just as the greatest generation had to take on Hitler, we had to take on these Iranian terrorists right now. So, I think most importantly, is that that Americans will be safer for generations to come. And if we can keep that Strait of Hormuz open and keep the flow of gas and fertilizer open more long-term, it has to be a win for Americans as well. So, I think it creates certainty for generations to come as well. So, we are certainly a safer nation, and I think we'll be a more prosperous nation at the end of the day as well."

On Senator Marshall's interview with John Catsimatidis about Democrat socialists:

"Well, I got to remember back to that conversation, but John Catsimatidis is quite a character, it was fun to meet him as well. But you know, I asked him the question that my dad asked me on Father's Day weekend, which is 'How in the world did New York City elect a communist?' You know, it's the financial capital of the world, the mecca for communications, Madison Square Garden the greatest sports venue in the world, they elected a communist there. So, I think it was just good to get their take on the situation. And of course I think, again what's the threat to America? There is an election in November, and I certainly understand your listeners don't agree with everything that I say or do - I think for the most part they actually do - but remember what the alternative is here as well. That the Democrat socialists are the ones that are leading their party now. They have the tail wagging the dog. New York is in disarray - the socialists don't tend to care about safety and security, and of course they want to increase your taxes. So maybe those are some of the things we touched on yesterday."

On the Save America Act and the Senate filibuster:

"So, I think we are expecting to meet with President Trump tomorrow, and I have a feeling that the Save Act is going to come up. If I could pass one bill the rest of my career here, this would probably be it. I think election integrity is so important to the future of this republic. And I think probably 80%, maybe 90%, of Kansans think that it's reasonable to be forced to show an ID when you vote and proof of citizenship when you register. So, President Trump and I are not giving up on this yet."

"We certainly have at least 50 Republicans that would vote yes on that bill, but it takes 60. It'll take 60 senators to vote yes on that bill, and the Democrats are against voter IDs, they're against proof of citizenship when you register. It's really, it's that simple. So, in to order to pass that bill, we'd have to get rid of the filibuster. Okay, the filibuster is what requires us to get to 60 votes in the Senate. And there's a significant number of Republicans who will not do that - they're afraid that if we break the filibuster on this, that it really opens the door and someday Democrats will control the Senate, and they end up packing the court, and all those types of things. But nevertheless, I'm not giving up. And Senator Thune supports this 110% - it is truly the situation where we don't have enough votes to get rid of the filibuster. But I'm not giving up, I look forward to speaking with the President tomorrow at lunch as well."

On why Senator Marshall supports the peace deal with Iran:

"And I bet when it's all said and done, as Kansans start to hear more about this deal that we're trying to work with Iranians, I think that more and more Kansans are going to support it. This wasn't an easy decision - it's very complicated on what's going on in the Middle East - but I'm just going to stay locked in on those four specific goals: no nukes, no forever wars, keep the straight open and affordable gas and groceries for Kansans. As long as we keep those in mind, then I'm going to support the progress through this particular agreement, and hopefully the world's a safer place for generations to come, and Americans have more profitability as well. So, thanks everybody for joining us, and we'll see you soon. Happy Fourth."

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