[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW]Ahead of the Republican Senate primary runoff tomorrow in South Carolina, I’m sitting down with Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) as he and Sen. Darline Graham make their final appeals to South Carolinian voters.

In this episode, Norman dives into his core political priorities, emphasizing fiscal conservatism, securing the integrity of elections through the SAVE America Act, and reforming major entitlement programs.

Drawing on his background in the private sector, Norman said Washington needs more business-minded leaders who understand how to balance a budget and tackle national debt.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:

Congressman Ralph Norman, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Congressman Ralph Norman:

Glad to be with you, Jan. I appreciate what you do.

Mr. Jekielek:

So, you know, for decades here, Lindsey Graham has really set the tone on foreign policy out of this seat that you are now running for in the runoff. And you’ve been calling for, for example, an end to endless wars. You voted against some federal defense spending bills in the past. I guess I want to get a sense from you how your foreign policy differs from Senator Graham’s. And how will you explain those defense votes in the past and so forth to a state that has so many military bases?

Congressman Norman:

Overall, Jan, what I would say is,I believe in peace through strength. I believe that Donald Trump has brought that back. It’s been nonexistent under Joe Biden, under Barack Obama. They were empty suits. They were paper tigers that no one took seriously. Now, with what’s happened in Iran, this president has got us back on the thought. He’s not just giving empty rhetoric. Democracy, as we have with taking out one that would take this country out in Iran. They were the number one sponsor of terror. 

That being said, we have got a huge dilemma, a huge cancer in this country, and it’s called deficit. It’s called overspending. It’s called not focusing on things and spending dollars on things that we cannot continue. And we cannot be the world’s police. Endless wars, I don’t think the people in America want to continue to do. 

But we need to protect, take out the threats like Iran, and we need to help the only democracy in the Middle East, which is Israel. Taiwan is our trading partner and friend. We’re at war with a socialist party that’s trying to take over this country. And it’s down the line, and they’re similar to what’s happening in what has happened in China, Russia, and in other countries that don’t have our best interests at heart and will take this country over. 

So that being said, where I would differ with Senator Graham, I don’t want to write blank checks. Everything that we spend now has got to be in the vein of getting the cancer in this country to where it’s curable. 40 trillion dollars is not curable. I will talk about it. I will bring it up. I will act on it when I get into the Senate. So, it’s going to differ with that, but we have to remain strong. But if you’re bankrupt and if no one is buying our bonds, you don’t remain strong.

Mr. Jekielek:

So, one of the things that a lot of people are talking about when it comes to this race is where President Trump’s endorsement has landed. And you’ve called that a head-scratcher. Explain to me how you see you can overcome the lack of that endorsement at the moment.

Congressman Norman:

And it’s an endorsement that comes from a man that I fully supported. I mean, I will always be grateful and would be indebted to President Trump for saving this country. Jan, can you imagine if Kamala Harris had taken the reins over from a totally inept Joe Biden? It’s totally disastrous. So what he did was save the country, and I will always support him on that. And I still will. 

When he did support Darlene Graham, it was a head-scratcher. She’s being bankrolled by the Washington elite and lobbyists, the people we fight against that give support to causes like moveon.org. They’re coming after South Carolina and me because they know what they get with me. You know, I’ve got an anti-spending, I’ve got an aversion to socialism, and communism is the best way to say it. 

And the fact that the candidate that he picked is a candidate that is beholden to them, that is fighting Donald Trump. The deep state, the Washington elite, is broken. Washington is just broken. And the fact that they’ve endorsed and really taken an interest in this race is concerning. And so all of my money has come from either my bank account or has come from the people of South Carolina. That’s who I represent, not the deep state and not the Washington elite.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’ve mentioned basically tackling that deficit a number of times, of what you want to really accomplish in the Senate if you were to be elected?

Congressman Norman:

Right now, it’s the SAVE America Act, verifying our elections. That’s it. You know, that’s the number one priority of President Trump. And the Senate has chosen not to pass it. We’ve got a 53 to 47 majority in the Senate over so-called Republicans. And when they take off for five weeks and don’t deal with it, when the House has passed it three times, it’s a quagmire in the Senate. And not just this bill, Jan. 

It’s every good bill we send over there on the budget, and the House has responsibility for the budget. It’s appropriated in the Senate. And the fact that either conservatism leaves the stage when it goes to the Senate. And I’m simply going to highlight that and be a vote against that, and to be a vote for solvency and making sure this country is for future generations. We’re not heading in the right direction. And we can do that. 

I want every dollar accounted for when South Carolina citizens send their dollars to Washington, D.C. I want to know where it’s being spent. And I want to make sure that we start the path of paying off the debt. That’s not a figment of our imagination. I mean, it’s a hard number. They can say it’s not. But the sad part about it, Jan, it’s not just the $40 trillion; it’s the high Trust Fund. It’s Social Security. It’s Medicaid, Medicare. And you’ve got to tackle each agency like DOGE did. He was demagogued for doing that, but he did the right thing.

Mr. Jekielek:

So let’s talk about Social Security then. What’s your vision for that? You know, there’s going to need to be a transition there. What is your vision for how to accomplish that?

Congressman Norman:

There are going to have to be some hard changes. All we’ve got are worthless notes. They’re talking about, at the end of this six-year term, a 25-28 percent cut in Social Security. That’s our money. It’s not their money, but they’re spending it as if it is their money, the government, I mean. The first thing I would do is raise the $147,000 limit on Social Security, or the limits ought to be taken off. 

Secondly, we have over a million new cards issued each year. We ought to have some fee based for the new recipients instead of just eating that.And there are a host of other reforms, but we know we cannot keep the reforms that we’re going with now because there are no reforms. The politicians have been scared because we’ve been demagogued by the media when you do anything with Social Security. 

What about the novel idea of investing the 6.2 percent that we pay and the 6.2 percent that businesses pay? What about letting us invest that, not send it to Washington as a crutch? Those are just some of the things that I will be proposing and putting them on the table and trying to get Congress, the Senate, and the House to buy into it. But if we continue the same path, we know where it leads. It’s a dead-end path.

Mr. Jekielek:

And, you know, Senator Graham has advocated for job transition programs to keep people paying into the system and so forth. But the way I read your view is more of a kind of a market-based structural change. Why do you think that’s necessarily a better approach?

Congressman Norman:

It’s not working. Nothing we’re doing now is working with Social Security. The people coming into the system, the money’s getting confiscated. And, you know, it’s a novel idea to let us invest our own money. What could be worse than the system that we now have with no reforms? And so the things I mentioned are just the beginning point. You know, you’ve talked about a means-based system that I don’t know whether that works, that the wealthy would bear some of the burden. 

I don’t know if that’s the right way to go. But we can come up with a way that gets it solved or at least starts it on the path to solvency. The ones that are collecting checks that are no longer living. That was one of Elon Musk’s main issues that he pushed and effectively showed. But what do we do about it? Nothing. 

Look, there’s a way to verify who’s getting a check from the government. And if you have a system that is not even challenged or not even any new solutions put on the table, then you'll have 22 to 28 percent confiscated by the government and cuts in Social Security. A lot of people live on that. It’s not like people can just say that’s not important. It is to many Americans.

Mr. Jekielek:

One of the things that I see being talked about a lot is increased disclosure and laws around increased disclosure for PACs, for political action committees, and outside groups. What do you think about that?

Congressman Norman:

Absolutely. The outside groups that are funding my opponent are people who, again, have funded organizations that are contrary to our Constitution and contrary to what we believe as a democracy. And so exposing that—you call it dark money, call it whatever you want—but it’s money we don’t have control of. We don’t know where it came from, and we don’t know why they’re funding it. 

But, again, using my case, the dark money is totally financing a campaign for somebody that is unknown, and you don’t know what they’re going to do when they get there, but they will owe some allegiance to whoever put them there. And that’s the dark money that needs to be exposed and identified.

Mr. Jekielek:

So, of course, you’ve been part of the House Freedom Caucus for a while, and the House Freedom Caucus has been, you know, some people have kind of accused it of being in this adversarial mode, sort of more focused on, I guess people might say, political fights as opposed to actually getting legislation passed. In the Senate, you need 60 votes typically. So, what’s your approach going to be in the Senate, and how will you deliver for South Carolina in this new kind of mode, I guess, in the Senate?

Congressman Norman:

What I'll deliver for South Carolina is really taking focus and really dialing down on the one that is at hand: the SAVE America Act. And we may not have, I think there are a lot of people in the Senate, even though we’ve got a 53 to 47 majority, that don’t believe in that. They’re somehow profiting off a system or don’t want integrity. Well, I’ve got a problem with that. Now, the only way I deal with it is to try to meet common ground and move forward on some things. 

But if you can’t do that, you have to replace them. And I will work to do that. And just like they’re trying to keep me out here in South Carolina, because they know that they don’t want their gravy train cut off, which is a broken Washington, D.C. system that they want to keep going. That’s why they’re dialing down on my campaign. But it’s more of a problem nationwide as well, some more than others. California, New Jersey, Oregon, and New York are states that will cease to exist in the way that they’ve known because socialism and communism has never worked. It’s not going to work now.

Mr. Jekielek:

Do you think that President Trump was given bad advice by national strategists in terms of deciding to back Senator Graham?

Congressman Norman:

I don’t know why he decided that. It’s been a head-scratcher for me. I don’t understand it. I’ve got the highest rating in my delegation. I’ve stuck with him. Now, I haven’t been a puppet, but I'll give you an example. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act has some things. As on the budget committee, we stopped it and delayed it a day, which in politics, that’s nothing. And we made the bill better. I will use the leverage of stopping passage to get better bills that are more conservative for the taxpayers. That was a perfect example. 

And the specific thing that I named during the debate was I was fighting to get the tax subsidies for electric cars and solar panels that we shouldn’t have been spending money on. We were successful. We moved that bill more so that it’s more conservative. And so I will do that as a senator and call attention to it to make changes that will put money back into the taxpayers’ hands.

Mr. Jekielek:

So let me see from our discussion, I’m thinking, you know, number one on your priorities is to make secure elections. Number two, fiscal responsibility. I mean, maybe just because I asked specifically about this, but social security, meaningful social security reform and transition number three. Can you round that out for me a little more with your other kind of key areas?

Congressman Norman:

The umbrella is financial solvency. That’s the umbrella. As a subset, passing the Save America Act for secure elections. We have got to keep a focus on energy independence. We cannot depend on China and other countries. Or in the case of manufacturing, China is making way too many products that we ought to be making here in America. We have to keep our businesses strong. But it’s peace through strength with our military, which has got to be funded. 

And the dollars have got to continue to go there while making sure all of our agencies have been slimmed down to making sure they’re functioning at the highest level. Anybody—and I would compare it to any business—goes through an analysis. Yet, they spend money for investment. We’ve got most of our taxes, over 30 to 50 percent, going for things that are not necessary when it comes to getting us in financial shape to pay off our debt and start our infrastructure all over this country that was quite frankly dilapidated because it started in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

Mr. Jekielek:

You know, one thing that I keep seeing coming up, right, the looming prospect of a government shutdown, right? We seem to be often ending up in these situations. So, if you’re in a situation where Senate leadership asks for compromise on a budget deal, for example, which is the kind of thing that we do see, how would you handle that kind of pressure?

Congressman Norman:

The pressure doesn’t bother me. But the Democrats, as we saw last year, will shut the government down under any circumstance. Put the health and welfare of the people that elect them, food in the mouth of babies, as they said, but they'll shut it down. And as they did before, our ICE agents were not paid, our TSA agents checking the security in the airports were not paid. They will do that. 

So we'll just have to deal with it when it comes to the Senate floor. It’s a little bit different than the House floor because on the budget committee, you can do that.I would love to be on the budget committee in the House as well, I mean, in the Senate, as well as other oversight committees that can take a hard look at the monies going out versus the income coming in.

Mr. Jekielek:

We’ve talked about the SAVE America Act a number of times now as we’ve been talking. And so, how would you actually get it across the finish line? Because a lot of us out here are scratching our heads around this.

Congressman Norman:

To just drift along and say we don’t have the votes, to me, is unacceptable. You do something. When you’re drowning, you try to get to the top and swim. So we’ve got to swim and it takes changing minds. I don’t know whether Mr. Thune can do it. I don’t know whether McConnell or the leadership in the Senate can do it. I know Ron Johnson, head of the budget, will be a fiscal hawk when it comes to our monies being spent. You just take it. 

It involves people, Jan, and it’s going to take a totally different change in strategy to do that. And maybe we can’t do it with the people we have, but we have to work with who’s in there now. They have six-year terms and you have turnover. But with the Senate, it’s a difficult body to work with. But I’m not content not to put anything on the table as a proposal, like with Social Security, like with Medicaid, Medicare, like with the Highway Trust Fund. These are things you can’t let sit and just say these things are or will get better on their own. I’ve never seen a cancer that’s cured with aspirin, and that’s what we’re trying to do.

Mr. Jekielek:

So, one of the things I hear talked about a lot, well, increasingly almost like every year or every election, is term limits. Where do you stand on that? For example, Senate term limits.

Congressman Norman:

I put the bill up every year. Howie Rich out of New York has been great at promoting this, but the term limit bill that most politicians signed: three terms in the House, six years, two terms in the Senate, 12 years. Look, the founders didn’t intend for politicians of either Democrat or Republican or independent parties to go up there and live forever. It’s an 80/20 issue with the American people, but it’s just hard to get it passed because people want to stay there forever. I’ve always term-limited myself. I will sign the term limit pledge for the Senate, only two terms, and come home. But everybody ought to be doing that. You need business people in charge, not professional politicians.

Mr. Jekielek:

Let’s talk about what day one in the Senate, you’re elected, what that would look like. And let’s assume in this case that the SAVE America Act has been passed. Okay, I don’t know if we can assume that or not, but let’s say it has day one in the Senate. What are you doing?

Congressman Norman:

I would be ecstatic if that happened. But as you know, we’re toward the end of the year. We take office in January, or at least in my case. My vote won’t count until I actually assume the office. It will be getting with the true conservatives who have been there: Rick Scott, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz. And my main focus will be on the budget, will be on spending, will be on making bills that come over from the House more conservative. And to that end, I will work. It’s going to take a lot of work.

Mr. Jekielek:

Let’s talk a little bit about your background. I mean, you’ve spent decades as a real estate developer. Maybe tell me a little bit about, you know, the lessons you’ve gleaned from being in the private sector like this in terms of what you would apply in your office.

Congressman Norman:

The benefit that I have is that I have made money and I’ve lost money. In the business arena, that’s what you do. You’re familiar with that. You’ve got to balance a checkbook, you’ve got to balance income and expenditures, and you’ve got to have a product that people are willing to buy. That’s whether you’re a physician, whether you’re a developer, it doesn’t matter the business, you’ve got to appeal to the customer. That’s democracy. 

And that’s what a lot of bureaucrats who have never been in the private sector just don’t understand. I’ve got the benefit of knowing what it takes for hard work, knowing what it takes to make sure that it’s sustainable financially, and having the courage to make those changes. And government has got to the point now where it’s really out of control when it comes to Washington, D.C. 

And it literally is broken because of that. People do not take the job seriously. They make decisions based on what’s going to return them to office so that they can milk the government and go on CODELs [Congressional Member Delegations] all over the country, where they can just keep their lifestyle. And I’m tired of that. 

There’s nothing politics can give me that I haven’t already got from hard work and from running a business. It ought to be a prerequisite before you run for office. So, you know, that’s my background. And that’s, I think you need people in office that don’t need the job. I want to recruit people to run for office that really want to help the system rather than game the system.There is a difference.

Mr. Jekielek:

What would you say would be the biggest difference with your being in office vs. Senator Graham? The biggest difference that voters will see?

Congressman Norman:

Senator Graham has been part of the government. She’s had a paycheck from the government. I think it’s the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, a great agency, but she hasn’t had the luxury of putting a lot of things at risk, where any entrepreneur, any business owner takes a risk that they will not have a paycheck or they have to pay their employees before they get a paycheck. And so that’s the benefit of starting a company, regardless of what the company is and regardless of the field that you go into. But she’s got a head of a governmental agency that does not require that as a private industry and building a company up that you either succeed or fail. That’s right, to succeed or to fail.

Mr. Jekielek:

What about from your time in the House? Is there anything that you regret about how things were done there? Or maybe lessons learned to do things differently that you could apply in the Senate?

Congressman Norman:

One of the things that attracted me to the Freedom Caucus is they ask questions. Nothing is sacrosanct that they can’t ask. And you get answers. And a lot of times it’s been hard to get true answers. Particularly when it relates to funding and to really know where the money goes, I'll apply those same principles when I go to the Senate, and no one will be surprised at what I do because of my history. And the only thing people have to go on that separates me from Ms. Graham is, one, you don’t know what you’re going to get because she’s an unknown. You do know that she’s being bankrolled by the Washington establishment. I’m not. 

My record is what I will do. And I don’t think you get a job based on your bloodlines. I think you get a job from being proficient, being an expert in what you do, and loving what you do. And it couldn’t come at a better time in the history of this country than to dig in and take part now and make change whenever we need it. The brokenness of Washington has got to be fixed.

Mr. Jekielek:

Congressman Norman, I really appreciate you taking the time here to speak with me. Perhaps a final thought as we finish?

Congressman Norman:

One, we’ve got a great country. We’ve got to protect our democracy. We’ve got to reject socialism that’s never worked, communism that’s never worked. We have to stand up against Sharia law and the Muslims. We have to stand up and fight for the country. That’s my duty. That’s our job. If you look at the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, they did that. They lost their farms, their families, their livelihoods. It’s now time to put that on the line and to make changes, and I will do that.

Mr. Jekielek:

Congressman Norman, thank you so much for joining us today.

This interview was partially edited for clarity and brevity.