Rep. Michelle Steel, R-Calif., told Newsmax that she turned her congressional district from blue to red in 2020 through hard work and by focusing on the issues that are important to all voters.
Today, those issues are inflation and gas prices; but in 2020 crime was the hot-button issue across the board in California. Democrats at the time were trying to defund the police, but Steel said Thursday on "Rob Schmitt Tonight" that she has always supported law enforcement.
Steel, who is a first-generation American born in South Korea, told Schmitt the large Asian American population in California cares about the same issues as everyone else. That's one reason for the shift away from the Democratic Party to the GOP, she said.
"I heard that one gas station right now hit $8 per gallon," she said. "I sent a letter out to [Democrat] Gov. [Gavin] Newsom to suspend the state gas tax; instead of suspending it, they raised it from 51 cents to 54 cents."
Asian Americans are hardworking people, Steel said, but Democrats don't seem to appreciate them.
"You know where they think the money comes from? Taxpayers' pockets," she said.
The problem Democrats have with her, steel said, is that as a first-generation American, "I have an accent. I speak Korean as my first [language]; Japanese, my second; and English, my third. I achieved the American dream. Maybe they're jealous about that."
The Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act is a "joke," Steel said, with Schmitt pointing out that Joe Biden was in California Thursday to tout the law on the same day that the government announced that inflation rose 8.2% in September over the previous year.
Steel pointed to the 87,000 extra IRS agents the act calls for.
"That's a joke," she said, "because the IRS is supposed [to] train people, help people, customer service. And they're supposed to help taxpayers, not auditing. So that's going to hurt middle-class people."
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