Here’s a 16-minute audio segment from yesterday’s edition of the Rush Limbaugh Show, in which House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) dropped in with guest host Mark Steyn to talk about a number of items surrounding Congress and federal policy.

A partial transcript of the highlights follows…

On the contrast between Democrats and Republicans:

“Frankly, that is the question for this November and I think there could not be a clearer contrast in why we’re going to hold the House – which I feel confident we will – than [last week], Bernie Sanders laid out the Democrats’ alternative if they were in charge…Go look at what they said they would do today on tax policy. We passed a historic tax cut bill that’s getting our economy going like it’s never been before and we did it by lowering every single rate and more Americans now have money in their pocket. Over 90% of Americans actually have more money in [their] pocket because of our bill. [Democrats] want to reverse that. They’re actually proposing, Mark, to raise income taxes at the individual level and at the corporate level. They want to go and double the amount of money that the death tax is going to impose on people. They want to reimpose the alternative minimum tax, which is a tax on middle class families. So that was their proposal that they said if Nancy Pelosi is Speaker again, that’s what they would do. So I think you can see what the contrast is. We’ve got some tough, tough races. But we’re battling, we’re doing the things that we need to do to hold this majority. Paul Ryan has been doing a great job as Speaker, but I think everybody knows what Nancy Pelosi would do, and you can just go see what she did back from 2008 to 2010 when they did Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, they passed cap and trade in the House, they wrecked the economy, and we’re finally cleaning up the mess.”

…

“I think that the big reason we’re going to reverse that trend and hold the House is because ‘it is the economy, stupid!’ And when you look over the years – people had gotten used to eight years where there was less than 2% growth every single quarter. Millions of people just gave up looking for work. Well now we are over 3%, the economy is growing even more, employers are looking to hire good people so we’re getting millions of people now out of the unemployment lines and back into the workforce. We’re working on welfare reform that will actually help people not only get back in the workforce, but become part of the American dream again where you don’t actually have to just live off of government; you can actually go out and earn an honest living and also be able to provide for your family and buy a house and do the things that everybody should have the opportunity to do.”

…

“[The job numbers] are remarkable numbers and we want to keep that going, and I think you’re going to see it continuing to grow as more companies – look at over 400 companies now that we have been tracking that have given pay raises and bonuses to their workers. We actually started tracking this on Majoritywhip.gov/TaxReformWorks and you can go see a list of every company and the good thing is it’s growing. More companies are giving benefits to their workers, they’re seeing it in their paychecks and that’s why I think we’re going to hold the House and have strong case to make for why we should stay in charge in the House and the Senate and Nancy Pelosi should not be Speaker.”

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“[The Democrats] really have no agenda. They move from issue to issue depending on you know, – back a few months ago we had the Schumer shutdown because they thought shutting the government down and not paying our troops because they wanted people that are here illegally to get the right to vote, they thought that that would be a winning issue for them. And they got creamed with public opinion because people saw that and said, ‘how could you possibly say don’t pay your troops?’ And so we finally won that Schumer shutdown and now they’re on to the next thing. And they don’t have an agenda, except [last week] they laid out that they would raise your taxes, both individual and corporate if they got back in charge. So, I think everybody knows what’s at stake in November.”

On government failures in Parkland:

“Frankly in the case of the Parkland shooting we saw breakdowns [in] government. Look, the FBI had this guy’s name for months before the shooting where he said – it wasn’t just other people – seemed like half the kids in the school knew he was going to be a school shooter. But he himself said he was going to be a professional school shooter. The FBI got that information and for whatever reason they dropped the ball. And you know, look, they’re out there running around on all this Russia foolishness and trying to – almost what seems like partisan witch hunts. But, there was a case where they had a job to do and they didn’t get the job done. And even at the local level, I mean, you know, you had an armed guard out there hiding outside when the gunman’s inside. Look, I had two police officers on duty – thank God – because they confronted the shooter immediately and they both got shot in the process. Well, David Bailey and Crystal Griner are true heroes, but they saved the rest of us. And so I’m just thankful for the prayers, and, you know, how we’ve been able to get through this.”

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“You know, when I was shot they, the police officers there ran to the fire, as you said, and they both got shot. It was heroic in what they did to save all of us. And so you know, in this case people say, ‘what about gun control?’ What I say is it was people with guns who saved my life because, you know, whatever weapon the shooter is going to use – it was a rifle in my case, where the gunman had a rifle. You know, the fact that you had people there with guns to confront the shooter is what saved all of us, and so people want to take away the rights of law-abiding citizens before they even find out the facts, and most cases when you see that government failed at the federal and local level, you wonder why more people want to defend themselves…even if you live in a rural area, there might be a 20-minute response time just because you’re so far out. People ought to have that right to defend themselves. That is the tenet of the Second Amendment.”

On working with President Trump:

“If you look at all the big things we’ve done in the House, we passed the repeal and replace of Obamacare working closely with President Trump and he did anything that we asked him to do in terms of calling members, bringing members into the Oval Office to help us get that bill passed. He did the same thing for tax reform. When we started out and embarked upon this effort to cut taxes for everybody at every income level, President Trump himself invited us down to the White House the day the bill was filed to advocate for this bill and to fight for the middle class; it wasn’t just to make sure every tax rate was cut. In our corporate rate we had become the highest corporate rate in the industrialized world. We wanted to bring all those rates down and President Trump was there every step of the way. He has been wonderful to work with. Look, he came to the hospital to see me; a lot of people don’t see that side of him. He called just to check on me and we talk about a lot of things, but we talk about what it was going to take to get our economy back on track and he cares passionately about that, and he’s done a great job of getting our economy turned around.”

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“He’s doing everything in office he said he would run on, starting with Neil Gorsuch. You know, he put a list out there, Mark – imagine that, there’s a [candidate] out there saying there’s an opening on the court, I’m going to put out a list. Hillary Clinton never put out a list because she didn’t have to; you knew it was going to be an activist liberal judge. But he put out a great list and most people would say Neil Gorsuch was the best person on the list and now he’s on the Supreme Court. And ever since [President Trump] has started unraveling a lot of these radical regulations that President Obama put in place – that helped get our economy moving. He said he was going to cut taxes; he followed through. He’s following through on the things he’s promised and that’s remarkably refreshing to see when somebody is in high office. And Vice President Mike Pence could not be a better pick. When President Trump made that pick I think it said a lot about President Trump that he wanted to have the strongest ticket to get this country back on track.”