Listen: North Dakota Senator John Hoeven’s conversation with Austin Erickson
FARGO, N.D. – President Donald Trump has said he will wait two weeks to decide whether to join Israel’s war with Iran so the country doesn’t develop a nuclear weapon.
Iran has been under heavy strikes from Israel and has suffered losses to its missile arsenal.
“It’s not going to come to American troops on the ground,” North Dakota Senator John Hoeven said in an interview with Flag Family News. “We’re already supporting [Israel] with a whole variety of assets.”
“Everything from intel to our THAAD anti-ballistic missile systems to our ships and aircraft. We need to provide any help it takes to make sure that Iran’s nuclear capability is taken out on a permanent basis.”
Hoeven says he has been kept informed on the firefight in Israel in briefings from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the CIA.
In 2015 the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, including the United States, secured an agreement with Iran to limit the Iranian nuclear program. Iran then got some sanctions removed.
Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. The Trump administration said Iran “negotiated the [agreement] in bad faith, and the deal gave the Iranian regime too much in exchange for too little.”
THE BIG BEAUTFIUL BILL ACT
Right now, the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” on taxes and spending is in the Senate after being passed in the House. Hoeven believes a full Senate vote on it will happen next week.
Hoeven says the bill has close to $2 trillion in spending cuts and says it will lead to more than $2 trillion in revenue growth by reducing income taxes by making the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent.
“It should be pro growth so people keep more of their hard-earned dollars in their pocket, no [federal] tax on tips, no [federal] tax on overtime, no [federal] tax on Social Security, but also more savings to help with the debt and the deficit,” Hoeven said.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released a new dynamic score of the “Big Beautiful Bill” on Tuesday saying it will add $2.8 trillion to the national deficit in the next 10 years. As of Friday at noon it was at more than $37 trillion dollars according to USDebtClock.org.
“As we saw with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which we passed during President Trump’s first term, we will see additional revenue from economic growth,” Hoeven said in a statement to Flag Family News back on June 4. “In fact, federal revenues from 2018 through 2024 came in at nearly $1.5 trillion higher than originally projected when the TCJA was passed. We expect similar results this time around due to the pro-growth policies we’re advancing [in the Big Beautiful Bill],”
LAWMAKERS’ SAFETY
Hoeven says he feels safe in Washington, at home and while he’s meeting with people across North Dakota after Minnesota Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman was killed at State Senator John Hoffman of Champlin, Minnesota was shot.
Hoeven says he hasn’t been threatened since those shootings, but he has had to deal with threats in the past.
“We had an incident some time ago where a guy came in an actually broke the window to our office here in Fargo with an axe. At that time we did some things to try to make sure we had additional security in place,” Hoeven said.
In April 2021, 30-year-old Thomas Starks of Lisbon pleaded guilty to federal destruction of government property. He was sentenced to probation and was given a nearly $2,800 fine. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for North Dakota estimates damage to Hoeven’s office exceeded $1,000.
