one direction or the other. a lot of what he said was really to underscore what he had said in the report to dispel some of the confusion that bill barr tried to create. he certainly i think made it clear again that this is being left to congress now because he didn t have the power to indict. but he was also not willing to say congress should impeach. i think that s consistent with his fairness argument that he made that if he wasn t going to say the president should have been indicted and not with standing the department policy, then he probably wasn t going to say the president should be impeached but rather that congress should consider what repercussions should follow, what course to take whether it s through an impeachment enquiry or throughity oversight function. it left that to the congress. i just want to close our discussion with robert mueller s final words today that were he addressed them to the country but they were definitely aimed at you because you have jurisdictio
and al fromme said something that we think is an interesting way to? democratic party. he said the party in the 80s is that they were all about fairness and not opportunity. and bill clinton pushed them to opportunity. and he said i see the democrats sblipg the fairness argument. when you talk about fairness, some voters say what are they taking away from me? when you talk opportunity, they think what are you doing to make me feel better? that flashback to the age of the dlc and that was how democrats came out of the wilderness in the 1990s. are it may be a bigger problem than the lack of a message which is clashing messages. and you re going to see this emergence. we ve had a good time watching the republicans fight. we ll have a good time watching democrats fight. that could be more dangerous for democrats than no message at all. how do you think the democratic base vote letters respond?
deductions and when we close loopholes they may not see it that way, sure. on average, everybody is going to benefit. average tax cuts for families for your viewers the median family in america is going to get $205 tax cut. that s rea205 $2,005 tax cut. that s real money. steve: some of those individuals with deductions with stuff might get a tax hike, but they would be few and far between according to what you ve said. however, do you think ultimately the result of this tax cut bill is people in those high tax states, their state legislatures are going to have to do something about the high tax rate. that s the argument, steve. look, these numbers may not be exactly accurate, but what members of congress or conservatives see is basically 46 state are paying higher federal stacks to subsidize higher state taxes. it s really a fairness argument. should states people in
extra dollars in their paychecks next year, but it s not going to make a huge material difference in their lives the way the president explained it, and that could end up backfiring when people believe people at the top end of the spectrum and corporations are getting the bulk of the tax cut and that could lead to the class warfare and the fairness argument and democrats are using that to attack this bill and that s part of the reason that the popularity of the bill is somewhere in the high 20s or low 30s. right. not necessarily something going to help them in 2018. you do have more folks people making comparisons the way obama got obamacare through, when you go only along party lines and how that impacts people. let s have a little fun this morning and talk about joe biden, and if he is going to run for 2020. my good friend, chris cillizza here at cnn has a great column this morning. he said biden made clear in his
responsibility. the people of this country have the responsibility of choosing our president they have chosen. let me ask you this about the tax bill. you ve been chosen to be on the conference committee. one of the biggest disputes that some have have to do with this idea of writing off state and local taxes. let me ask you this philosophically. why is it that corporations are going to be able to write off state and local taxes but not individuals? do you see where the fairness argument in that sort of gets traction? i think the question about writing off ordinary business expenses versus writing off state and local taxes are two very different questions. one has to do with businesses. the other has to do with how we treat high-tax states like new york and new jersey, and do we allow other americans in south carolina, north carolina to subsidize those high taxes? we re looking at ways to sweeten the salt solution. we have challenges without any question, so we re going to