Graduate of the cobart school of business there and subsequently went to work briefly at u. S. Steel and then the u. S. America mercantile exchange. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1990, became a partner in 1994 and rose up to be the head of the Commodities Division and then ultimately the currency commodities fixed income division. And cohead of the Global Securities division. And then ultimately in 2006 became the president and chief operating officer and director. And he is on a tight schedule, so im going to start right now. Thank you for doing this. Im just wondering how much of my bio you memorized. Well, i memorized it a little bit. Pretty good. So are the eagles bigger in washington or wall street . What egos . No egos. None . Neither place. Okay. And have you found since youve become one of the two point men on the tax bill that youve become very popular . All of a sudden people call you and tell you how important their issue is for National Security or National Defense or whatever reason . No less or no more people called me today than have called me for a long time. Okay. Maybe its just a personality flaw. It seems like no more, no less than before. So people arent calling you more than they did a year ago . Not really. You dont have High School Friend call you, oh, this a few of that. Not really. Its been interesting. You know, people let me do my job. Im sure once they start seeing what we do and how it impacts them, that may change. I think people reserve the right to call me, but so far they havent exercised that option. Okay. So yesterday or today the house leadership unveiled their bill. And you going to have a meeting at the white house with the president and leadership at i guess 1 30. So in talking about it is the bill that was released or supposedly today is that something the president can support . If that bill went through today the president would sign it . David, as you know, the group of six of us came out with a framework. And we got that framework after starting in really diverse different places, the six of us. We got ourselves to a unified framework, which really has two driving principles in it. Driving principle number one is we had to deliver a middle income tax cut. Number two is we had to lower the business tax rate to make us competitive with the rest of the world. The bill that the house delivered today accomplishes both of those objectives. In fact, they stuck very much to the framework that we had delivered. So, yes, the bill that the house has delivered, the ways and Means Committee delivered today is a bill that the president can support. And do you have any reason to think the Senate Finance committee will read the same bill . I think the senate like the house is going down their paths in regular order. One of the other components that we agreed to as a group of six is that we were going to do tax reform in what we would call regular order. We would go through normal committee processes, the Tax Writing Committee in the house, the Tax Writing Committee in the senate, they would write their own bills, they would go through their committee process, they would go to floor. If we needed to go to conference at the end. Thats exactly whats going on here. And thats how were going to get the buyin in the process. The senate is doing that. They are cooperating with the house. And the house did cooperate with the senate. So we are going to get bills that have a lot in common. Im not sure theyre going to be 100 in common, but i think were going to be in agreeing up position to deliver a tax bill to the president s desk this year. This year . This year. So youre very confident that the house and senate will pass and the conference will pass it this year . We are working towards this year. Okay. So did the house leadership tell you that they have the votes in the house to pass it now . The bill just got dropped, we know that the house has been spending enormous amount of time with their members, with their Committee Members as well as the rest of their members working on the details. I am confident and speaker was in the oval office two days ago talking about the bill with the president. We were there together. Im confident the speaker is going to be able to deliver a bill out of the house. When you do these bills, you know, you have a tenyear cost or something, a production cost or costs a certain amount of money. That number is prepared get it through the legislative process. And we happen to very strongly believe that we are going to way, way surpass what theyre going to score on the revenue side of the equation. Okay. Does the treasury have its own revenue estimates are they are just not relevant in terms of these things . No, trade is extremely relevant. They have a large group of people in the treasury that spend enormous amount of time on tax and scoring tax and working on that. And they have their own revenue estimates. We have our own revenue estimates. Everyone else is going to have their own revenue estimates on what the Economic Impact of tax reform what it will do to the economy. But in the end when theyre marking the bill up joint Tax Committee numbers that really matter. So in terms of the bill itself, its a bill that is designed to have 1. 5 trillion of incremental debt at the end of ten years. Wed like to say less revenue. Okay. Thats how the instructions are. The instructions are less revenue. Okay. Now, originally it was supposed to be a revenue neutral bill. Why did the administration and the house go for a 1. 5 trillion deficit increase in debt . So the reconciliation instructions give us room to produce a piece of legislation that has 1. 5 trillion of less revenue on the scoring system that youre talking about. Right. We do not believe that is going to be the actual reality. We believe that by lowering the business tax in the United States and becoming much more competitive with the rest of the world and dropping our rates down we will encourage businesses to come back to the United States and redomicile back to the United States. We are going to grow our economy at a faster rate than the model is going to project. We also believe that by lowering the tax rate on middle american hard working families they are going to spend more money, velocity is going to increase in the system and the economy is going to grow. So we do believe that theres going to be more growth in gdp, more revenue to be taxed and therefore the revenue that theyre saying wont show up, we believe it will show up and we will be able to tax it even though we tax it at a lower rate. Okay. Lets talk about the Corporate Tax cut. Its going to take the Corporate Tax rate from 35 to 20 . Now, theres some people who say why not phase it in over five years. It would cost less money. The administration wanted to do it immediately. Do you think theres a big advantage of doing it immediately versus fazing in . We do think theres a big advantage to bringing it in. Youve sat in a lot of corporate boardrooms, ive sat in a lot of corporate boardrooms. Boards like to know whats going to happen and they like certainty. Yes, itd be nice to say its certain, but theres nothing more certain than by having it happen. We know next year and on top of that giving people a fiveyear expensing window where they can do 100 expensing, we are sending a very clear message that we want you to invest in this country. We want you to move jobs back. We want you to hire people. And were not making it ambiguous. Were making it clear what we want you to do and how were going to grow the economy. The phase in we dont want people to think about investing in this economy. We want you to do it now. So repatriation provision would be under excise, so theres no incentive to keep tax offshore because youre going to pay it back one way or another. So that money will all come back presumably. Is there any incentive that the people who bring it back, companies who bring it back have to create jobs . Or what are they likely to do with the cash . Does anybody have any idea . So, david, youre right. The repatriation deemed safe, so its not like you get the choice to bring it back or not bring it back, were going to collect a tax on you over the tax window whether you bring the money back or not. Were going to create an environment where we hope that you invest this back in your business. But ultimately either youre going to invest it back in your business or you can distribute out of your business to someone else whos going to reinvest it back into another business. O lets talk about some of the controversial provisions. Of course controversy is in the eye of the beholder, but lets talk about state and local income tax. You must be very familiar with that. Ive heard about it. Right. So in states in new york, massachusetts, other high taxing states, high state and local income tax, they will no longer residents of those states will no longer be able to deduct this income tax, is that correct . In this proposal. It is sort of correct. There are a couple little provisions in there that we did add back some real estate taxes property tax if you do choose to be an itemizer. So as a whole we have eliminated the vast majority of those deductions. Dont you believe that will be very difficult for high state tax representatives or centers to agree to that provision . David, the other day this comes down to are we delivering a middle income working family tax cut or not. We believe that the house plan is delivering that. And when you score it out and when you see the distributions and the distribution tables will be out relatively shortly, the distribution tables will determine whether were delivering that tax cut or not. We believe that this plan that the house laid out is able to adequately deliver that distribution to those working families where we told you we were going to deliver that, that tax cut. The average family of four and materials that came out today is medium family of four income is 59,000 and they will get a tax cut of about 1,140 or Something Like that, roughly . I wont argue for 40 dollars. So the median family of four will get it. What about the people who are in the upper income . Will they be getting a tax increase or tax cut or just neutral . Look, it depends on each and everyones individual circumstances. As you know the hard part about taxes is everyone has their own unique set of circumstances. We set out with the objective and i said we had two objectives, middle income tax relief and Corporate Tax relief. We have not targeted the upper income brackets, but we do believe there are quite a bit in for the upper income families. Were dealing with a state tax. And were dealing with other things that affect upper income taxpayers. So we do believe when you look at the package in its entirety, were able to touch every taxpayer in some positive way. So look at the estate tax. Youre going to phase that out over a period of time. So i think the estate tax goes away in four or five years under the proposal. Why not just get away with it right now immediately . Just cost too much . Again, its about scoring. I think the house plan is 24, but theyre going to double the exemptions day one so next year double the exemption to 11 million, a person with 22 million for a married couple and then in 24 full extension on the gift tax. But the gift tax will stay in place more or less. I dont know what theyre going to do, theres definitely going to be gift tax restrictions in there. In other words if you want to give money to your children, youre better off to wait for years to die then youll get it tax free youll have to debate that with your children. I think my children prefer i stay alive. Well, i have no doubt that thats the case. Im not sure it is in my case. So lets talk about universities. New provision that many people didnt anticipate is now in there which says if youre a university and you have a private university, not a Public University, you have an endowment could be a 2 tax on that endowment income, why not include if youre going to do something Public University have big endowments as well. The house is making a decision on how they want to balance the bill, how they want to make it work. Its over a billiondollar threshold. Its not the first dollar of endowment that you have. I also think there are some laws in the system about taxing private entities versus public entities, youre getting into a layer of tax legality that i will admit is above my understanding of the tax code. I doubt theres anything at this point. Now, you work on very complex corporate transactions. Have you ever worked on anything as complex as the tax code . Probably not. Probably not. I mean, its got as many moving parts and more constituencies than ive seen in almost any transactions than any transaction ive ever done. Now, this bill is designed to pay us with no democratic votes. Can the Administration Live with that . Yes. We prefer it to be bipartisan. And we have spent enormous amount of time trying to make it bipartisan. I think youve seen that the president is traveled with democratic members of the senate to their states to talk about the bill. The president has had dinners with Democratic Senate members. Weve had bipartisan meetings. Both the house and senate in the white house. I and secretary mnuchin spent a lot of time with different democratic groups. Weve met with the blue dog dems a couple different times trying to get bipartisan support for what were doing. We would love to have a bipartisan 60vote bill. But if its a republicanonly vote, the president s still going to sign it. Hes not going to not sign it. It delivers middle class tax relief and 20 Corporate Tax relief and it shows up, i can guarantee you hes going to sign it. And does the president expect to be involved in lobbying members for votes . Or is he going to say now its a house problem or senate problem, ill stay above the flame . Or is he going to get involved in lobbying . The president cares a lot about tax reform. This is one of his main pillars that he ran on. Its all about cleaning up washington. Its all about making the system fair. Its all about returning hard earned income tax to middle class families, the president s going to do what he needs to do to make sure we deliver on his campaign promise. Lets get back to a few other things before we get back to tax reform. Lets talk about trade. Another easy issue. Nafta. Do you expect there will be a renegotiation that will be agreed to . Or do you think theres more likely that well pull out of nafta . We are trying to renegotiate nafta to be fair, to be good for American Workers, to be good for american jobs and to make sure all american based companies are treated fairly in the free trade system. All right. So you think you will work out a deal . Were trying. Negotiators are continuously meeting. And were continuously trying to get to a point where we think that american based companies with american based manufacturers are treated as fairly in the agreement. Okay. In terms of trade the president will be going to china shortly. He has from time to time been upset with the trade deficit we have with china. Does he have any plans to do anything about that or mention that to sxi jinping when hes there . I would probably assume it gets mentioned. Okay. And what about south korea . Hes not going there but hes been upset about the treaty we have with south korea. He is going there. Oh, im sorry, hes going to vietnam, south korea, japan and china, is that right . Hes going to tokyo and then yeah, and the philippines. So he goes to south korea he will mention the trade imbalance . Uhhuh. Okay. Let me ask you hes also got many other issues on his agenda. Obviously north koreas a big issue. Hes going to spend a lot of time talking about north korea. He has gone overseas before, you have gone with him but now your responsibility is to get the tax bill so youre not going to go on this trip . Yes. I had a long discussion with the president where i thought it was a better use of my time. Not that the trip isnt unbelievably important, but our, you know, tax reform is so important that i thought being here and working with congress and secretary mnuchin is in the same place that the two of us staying here and working with congress to make sure the tax reform stays on his agenda while hes gone. Its a long trip hes gone over 12 days that we should stay here and work on that. Thats what were going to do. When youre doing that, will there be when theyre having markups, theyll be calling you because your input is valuable and so you expect a lot of back and forth . Yeah, we have great relationship with leaderships of both house and senate, with the committee chairs, committee leaders. Were in relatively constant dialogue with them on where theyre heading, what their ideas are, what their concepts are and making sure were all working together to get a bill to the president s desk. Now, on health care legislation, do you expect that will be revived as a possible thing to do . After tax care or tax reform . I mean, right now were planning on looking at health care in a year. Okay. There was a rumor that maybe the president or somebody wanted to have elimination of the mandate in the tax bill, the health care mandate, is that off the table now . The president tweeted that yesterday. So its not off the table. Its something that could be looked at. Okay. And we are spending a little bit of time looking at that. And if it works and we have votes, the president would be inclined to have us look at it and look at it quite aggressively if we can get that down as well. The president , when he does a tweet, does he call you and say im going to do a tweet in a certain area . Does he consult with you sometimes or not so much . Sometimes yes, sometimes no, depends on the time. Okay. In terms of your background, you have been very public about the fact that you were not a great student because you were dyslexic. Uhhuh. How did you realize you were dyslexic . And how did your family get you treatment for that . Well, i try and explain this to people. This audience might be the right age to understand this. In the 1960s when i was growing up as a dyslexic kid, i dont know if dyslexia was sort of a commonplace name for a disease. So when i was growing up, you know, it was not diagnosed, or if it was diagnosed it wasnt called what it was called. In fact, i probably wasnt diagnosed until high school or even later. What my issue was. So before that you didnt realize you were at a disadvantage and you just thought you werent a great student . Well, look, i knew what was going on. I thought it was everyone else had a problem. I knew where i was, everyone else had a problem. So the typical issue was that everyone thought i was lazy, didnt apply myself, didnt care, bad student, i was labeled all of those issues because i could never keep up with the work. I could never get the homework done. I could never be prepared for class and thats because, guess what, there just werent enough hours in a day to possibly be prepared for class. And the negative feedback just became such a bad negative feedback loop that you sort of fall into this rut. And it was no ones fault. No one knew any better. It wasnt that my parents werent trying. They were surely trying. So you figured out in high school. Barely. Barely. Did you ever think it would be easier the word for the problem was yourself starts with a d, thats all i know. So you went to American University. So did you struggle there or you did okay . So i know theres i just saw i know theres an American University crowd in here somewhere. The president of the university is right here. Oh, right in front of me. So thank you to American University for accepting me because i was probably a long shot for them. But when i got to college it was completely different. You get to college and you get to reinvent yourself. I explain to my daughters when they go to college. No one knows youre the dumb kid, or no one knows youre the kid that cant read, you get to walk in with a complete blank slate. And you get to redefine yourself. Number two thing about college, and ive said this to every kid whos ever listened to me is at mass you go to class 16 hours a week. So what is college . College is a time management exercise. So if you tell me id be in class 16 hours a week, i can get prepared to be in class 16 hours a week because i can reread the same thing 22 times, i can figure it out on the 22nd time usually. In high school when you have to be in class eight hours a day and then you want to play a sport and get home at 8 00 at night and you want a few hours of sleep, you cant reread something 22 times. College to me i dont want to say was easy, but getting in was hard. Doing okay in college was all about time management. Yeah, i maybe didnt spend as much time having fun, but i was able to get myself through because i was able to manage myself. Were you an athlete as well . I was not. I was not a good enough athlete to be an athlete in college. I know the feeling. Okay. So after you graduate you went back to your native area of cleveland and you worked for u. S. Steel. I did. What were you doing . You werent a steel worker. No, no, it was a jump in my career there. I worked for the Home BuildingProducts Division of United States steel. Sold aluminum siding, gutter and replacement windows. Were you good at that . I wasnt there long enough to find out. So theres a story, sometimes may be true that you met somebody who asked you about options, you took a taxi ride with him and you got a job. Explain. So ill give you the fiveminute version of the story because its about so after my freshman year in college, i did the typical summer internship at the cleveland Brokerage Office of london, a week in equities, week in the back office, week in fixed income, week in commodities, spend the rest of summer in any group you want. Of course i fell in love with commodity guys because they were yelling and screaming and throwing phones around. It was typical for my personality. This was in the summer of 80. For those of you have any remembering of whats going on in the commodity market, this was what they were doing in the gold and silver market they had a big gold arbitrage desk in this office. I convinced my grandma to give me money to open up a trading account. I learned to trade the gold that summer, made a ton of money in those 30 days, tried to give in to my father that i shouldnt go back to college. I somehow lost that argument. I dont know how i lost that argument to this day, but i realized that what i wanted to do in life. I went back, i did my next three years of college in two years because i had to get back to the financial markets. The u. S. Steel thing was a little bit of a joke because i was trying to take a month off and then went to new york and my dad forced me to get a job. So while i was doing the u. S. Steel issue i took a friday off, came to new york to go to the floor of the commodities exchange, naively just thinking id walk in and get a job, of course. Little did i know thered be like 17 layers of security around the commodities exchange. Literally hung out there for the entire day trying to figure out how to get a job. And literally in like desperation at the end i finally got myself on to the floor but couldnt get through the turnstiles and literally saw a guy running off the floor at 2 30 yelling to someone, hey, i got to run to the airport, ill call you from the airport. This is before cell phones. I have to remind kids. No cell phones back then. I jumped in the elevator and said, hey, i heard youre going to can i share a taxi. So i got in the taxi with him and in that taxi ride better luck than good always he happened to be a senior guy at one of the big Brokerage Firms on the floor. That week they had just really for the First Time Ever in the United States probably the world they started Trading Options on futures. He said, hey, of course gave him, said, well, im the options trader, i have no idea what you are doing, if you could stand behind me and help me trade, wed hire you. So i got home to cleveland that night, i went to the barnes noble, i happened to buy the right book. I bought the options and strategic investment and i said i cant read this whole book over the weekend, take two chapters and memorize them. Pick two chapters and memorize on two different strategies, went in there, went back for interview the next week, convinced i knew everything about options, moved to new york the next week. Wow. Great. So i guess two questions arise immediately, one, did you give any of the profits of the gold arbitrage to your grandmother . So i gave her the money back like a week later. With her profits . No. Forgot about that. Shes still alive today. Wow. 105 last week. Wow. Congratulations. I hope shes watching. The man who hired you what became of him . Hilary bergman. Hes still around and in the business. If he called you up and lobbied something on the tax bill, would you listen . He doesnt have my cell phone number and dont give it to him. Okay. Hed probably find you. But that worked out and then from there you ultimately got a job in 1990 joining goldman and turned out you were a pretty good trader so you worked your way up and worked out. Yeah, its been a good run. Okay. So lets go back to the tax bill for a moment. Are you sure you want to talk about trading . In trading you can lose money, you just have to get over that and go on to the next thing. You cant get depressed. Exactly right. So did you have some trades sometimes just didnt work . And how long did you stay with them . Most of your trades dont work. Oh, really . Yeah. Wow. No, i mean, thats the difference between good trade and bad trade. I always said like 80 of your trades arent going to work. You have to realize the 20 that are really good and stick them. Right. So you were a registered democrat, is that right . I still am. All right. Still are. So did you actually know President Trump before you got this position . No, never met him. Thats not true. We met each other once at a yankees game. Okay. We were in George Steinbrenner box together many, many years ago. He was a man who died when there was another state tax famous for. Okay. So you got it somebody called you was it jared or somebody said would you like to meet my fatherinlaw and did you realize it was a semijob interview . What did you think it was in the transition . Wasnt quite sure. It was portrayed as come in and talk to the president elect at the time about your views of the u. S. Economy and what you thinks going on. Okay. And so after the first time you met with him, did you think you were going to get a job offer or you werent sure or you werent really sure you wanted one . I had all of those emotions. I knew i was going to talk about the economy. In typical president elect trump style the interview went literally 360 degrees, went the gamut of all different topics all over the place. And toward the end i think it turned into, hey, what would you do in my administration, even thats not where i was when i walked in and i wasnt sure when i walked out what 100 of my thinking was. But i was intrigued to meet with him. And your family were they supportive of your going to washington and working for a nondemocrat . Or they didnt care. My family is supportive of me whatever i want to do. More importantly theyre supportive of helping the country in any way we can help the country. Okay. So at one point the president said if i met you earlier i would have made you secretary treasury, do you remember that comment . I might. I might not have. In any event, so you got the job, when you got to washington, did you realize that the white house job while its close to the president you have a small office, you got a big office, a great view before now, you have no view, youve gotten over that, right . Yeah. I agree. I did have a great office before. Great view. I know. So when youre working in the white house its very easy to get people to come and see you. If you want to see somebody, you invite them in and how do you find a working environment at the white house compared to say goldman . Easier, harder, more pressure every day . From a pressure standpoint its dramatically more pressure. I think, you know, when you realize that youre working for 300plusmillion americans and trying to deliver to them the best ideas and the best results in the most efficient way possible, its pretty daunting. Look, i had shareholders and i had partners, but its different from partners and shareholders. When i had partners, youve done this, say, hey, i screwed up, sorry, well do better tomorrow. When you got citizens and you got news watching you 24 hours a day, you cant mess up. You got to get it right. So you develop a very close relationship with the president. How many times a day in the early part of the administration were you going to see him . Could you just walk in any time . Has it changed a bit now you cant just walk in because new chief of staff doesnt like that . The president likes people coming in to communicate with him. He likes knowing whats going on. He loves the input. He loves opinions. He loves views. You know, in the transition in the beginning when we got here we were spending e nnormous enormous amount of time together with many other advisers he has in the oval office. The reality is we got pretty well designed game plan. And were in execution mode. Im in execution mode with the president , with the secretary of treasury and the members of congress in getting a tax bill done. So i have unbelievable access to the president whenever i need or want him i can walk in and go see him wherever he is. Thats not a problem. But hes not bashful about telling me his views. Oh, hes not bashful . No. Hes not. So youve developed a very close relationship with him and after charlottesville it was said by maybe some in the press it wasnt as strong, what would you say today . I think its as strong as its ever been. Okay. So you can talk to him any time and hes happy with you and so forth . I probably saw him five times already today. Wow. At least. Im leaving here to go be with him. Okay. The new chairman of the fed is to be announced this afternoon, i believe, so youre one of the candidates. Do you really want that job or youre not sure . The president sharply at 3 00 is going to make his decision known, i think the president s made a spectacular choice and im really supportive in what the president is doing with his decision. Okay. And no regrets about if youre not the person getting the job, no regrets. Im really supportive. And its a great decision. Okay. So many people who work in the white house, i did it myself, they burn out after a while. So how long do you think you would like to stay in the white house . After the tax code you would like to go, or two years, three years, any plan . The opportunity to execute the president s economic agenda and deliver for the American People is an extraordinary opportunity. Im going to do this as long as i can possibly do it. Whenever you cant possibly do it anymore, what would you like to do next . Private equity or something important like that . Well, you know, being your replacement you filled that job last week so thats off the agenda. Well, if you were available, we could have talked to you. Well, could have, should have and would have. There you go. Back to the tax bill for a moment. Whats your interest in this bill . Could a, should a and would a. On the tax bill would you say that the average person will get a benefit, average individual at a certain level will see some tax cut. That was our objective. Weve spent enormous amount of time working with the house and working with the Senate Making sure were delivering on the president s objective. And i think the house has done a very good job of doing that. Now, youre changing the mortgage interest deduction, i think right now you can up to 1 million. Youve lowered it to 500,000 though its prospective. So is the Real Estate Industry going to support this bill or not . We hope that everyone supports this bill. The reality of Home Ownership is that people buy homes when they feel good about the economy, feel good about their job, feel like theyre going to be employed for a long while and they feel theyre going to have wage growth. They dont buy homes because they deduct their interest. In fact the data, if kevin were sitding here the data people buy bigger houses than they should buy. Growing the economy is really whats important for Home Ownership. Okay. Charitable deduction youre leaving that, theres never discussion about getting rid of that. Correct. What about the deduction for, lets see, for child credit, child care . Youre increasing family tax credit . Were increasing child care credit as well as other family related credits. So were definitely taking the child care credit up. The house is proposing going from 1,000 to 1,600 for 16 years and under. And then theyre giving dependent credit of 300 worth of tax credit for yourself, your spouse and your dependent children. Below about 230,000 of income. Okay. What about when the process is going through the house, is there going to be tradeoffs where somebody will say why dont you get rid of this deduction and my giving up with support for that. Youre not going to do with that push trading . Thats the house process. Thats exactly where we are. The house ways and Means Committee will be working on a bill for the next couple weeks. They may make trades in there. Chairman brady will be chairing that committee, he may have changes he wants to make himself. Then the bill will go to the full floor of the house. And they will ultimately decide what the final bill should look like and vote it out. Thats the entire regular way process. But if it didnt pass this year, the whole process, its not going to be that big disappointment, if you get early next year you can live with that, i assume. We can live with that because we have to do this for our economy, but we prefer to get it done. I think its important that American Workers when they get their first paycheck in 2018 they have more disposable income. Thats good for the economy. Thats good for our workers. Now, under your budget that you proposed to congress, youre likely to have under your budget 100 billion increase in the annual deficit from so are you worried about the increasing deficit that were having . And how are you going to deal with that problem . David, were worried about creating economic growth. You know this as well as any of us. The times we see budget deficit go down, times when weve had Economic Prosperity in this country. As long as were growing our economy, we can pay down deficits. We can grow, we can bring in more revenue, we can lower rates, thats what we need to do. Thats what we need to get the tax plan done. This year you project growth for this year, this fiscal year to be roughly 2. 5 or higher, 3 . Weve already had two consecutive quarters over 3, one included a hurricane, which we know knocked down growth pretty significantly. So, you know, were tracking probably at a run rate of over 3 right now. And were pretty excited about what we see going on in the real economy and talking to businesses and talking to business leaders. All of the data were seeing is pretty favorable right now. You know markets very well because you were at goldman for a long time. Do you think the stock market is ahead of the economy a bit, or youre not worried about the relatively high market rates . I think if we continue to execute on our plan, we continue to deregulate, we deliver real tax reform, were going to continue to see real economic growth. And were going to see u. S. Business continue to thrive. And the market is pricing that in. In terms of deregulation and other things, glass steagall, no change in that, support change in what was glass steagall, youre not there, reimpose glass steagall, is that correct . We got a bunch of changes that were going to do Financial Services industry along with the house and senate that they support to really get regulation on banking and Financial Services back to where it should be. I think everyone else agrees that weve swung the pendulum way too far and weve really handicapped Community Banks and small banks. And weve overburdened them with regulations. Weve got to get small Community Banks and medium size banks back in the lending business. We need to roll back some of that regulation. On the big, huge international, multinational banks, were pretty comfortable with where we are. But you would do this through regulation, not through a change in the legislation of dodd frank. But theres going to be some regulatory changes, theres going to be some refinements of dodd frank, of the volcker rule. Theres little changes to each of these rules to get them to the right place. Think of the surprise you found when you came to washington that, what, its harder than you thought, easier than you thought, people are nicer than you thought, not as nice, what was the biggest change . You know biggest surprise. Its hard. This is really hard. No one should underestimate how hard this is. I think what people from the outside dont understand is how hard people are out here working. You know, im working now like i worked when i was 20 years old. Youre making the same salary you made in 25. I was making more. I was making more, but, again, no one should feel sorry for me. But, you know, people are working 18, 20 hour days trying to get things done, trying to get things moved. Peoples intentions are in the right place. But its hard. The National Momentum to do nothing its pretty entrenched. Youve seen Business People come in to the oval office all the time, do they tell you in advance theyre going to tell the president a, b and c and get in the oval office and dont really say that . Ive seen every playbook there possibly is in the oval office. Tell me a, b, c, and alphabet, ive had them tell me nothing, ive seen every playbook around. So im going to influence you about the tax bill as it goes through. There will be some modifications, whats the best way to influence you, you know, a change they might want . I think they should give you a phone call. Right now. Not getting very far. Wont get very far. So the greatest pleasure of the job you have now is what . The ability to serve. I mean, when you think of my life history and what ive gone through and the ability to be in position to get back to my country is just unbelievable for me. And the biggest downside to the job if any is the hours or no. No one dies from working hard. So why take a chance, right . [ laughter ] if after the tax bill is done and you want to stay part of the administration, is there any other job you would want in the administration . Youre happy you dont want to be any other job, youre happy with this current job, wouldnt take anything else in this administration . I have such a unique job and unique platform, im pretty pleased with where i am. I didnt quite understand the breadth and magnitude of the job i was taking. A bunch of people i relied upon when im talking about coming to washington told me thats a great job, you should take it. And i wasnt quite sure it was the right job. But now that im in the job and see how far reaching the job really is, i cant im pretty pleased with where i am. I have more things to do than i possibly have time to do. No regrets . No regrets. Well, weve come to the allotted time. I know you have to go back to the white house for an announcement. So i want to thank you for your time. And thank you for your incite. Thank you. [ applause ] President Trump is leaving on his first president ial trip to asia. On his way hell stop and then heads to japan. From there he goes to south korea where hell visit u. S. Troops at camp humphrey and also address south koreas national assembly. Then onto vietnam. President trump attends the asia pacific cooperation meeting in hanoi. After that in the philippines the president will attend the meeting of the association of Southeast Asian nations. Later today National Security adviser h. R. Mcmaster will join White House Press secretary Sarah Huckabee sanders with todays white house briefing. Shell preview the president s Upcoming Trip to asia. Thats scheduled for 1 30 eastern, and well have it live for you here on cspan3. Coming up at 2 30 eastern, Congressional Democrats called a News Conference on the republicans tax plan. You can see that live from the u. S. Capitol here on cspan3. Right now on cspan3 we will take you to the capitol for the announcement of that House Republican tax plan from this morning. This is just under half an hour. Morning. Good morning. Right. Right. First, i want to thank these families for taking time out of their day to join us. Welcome. Its great to have you here today. Fantastic. You are who this is all about. This plan is for the middle class families in this country who deserve a break. It is for the families who are out there living paycheck to paycheck who just keep getting squeezed. You know, about half the country today is living paycheck to paycheck and a lot more people are about a paycheck away from living paycheck to paycheck in this country. And this is going to help give people relief. The tax cut and job tax will deliver real relief for people in the middle, people also striving to get there. With this plan the typical family of four will save 1,182 a year on their taxes. For many families having additional 1,182 more will make a real difference. That 1,182 more covers about a years worth of gas for your car. It covers your familys phone bill for the year. Depending on how much data of course your year, depending of course on how much data your kids use. That 1,182 can more can help you pay down your debt farser and remember v8 your home fapgser. That amount will help you put more money away for college, help you save for retirement, help you save for a rainy day. With this plan we are getting rid of loopholes for special interests and leveling the playing field. Were making things so simple that you can do your taxes on a form the size of a postcard. With that plan we are making progrowth reforms so that, yes, america can compete with the rest of the world. Were also making it so that families like these that are here can have more takehome pay. This is it