Bipartisan committee for responsible federal budget said its initial analysis of this plan shows the plan would add 2. 3 trillion to deficits over the next decade. Good afternoon. Like to start by saying that the president and all of us at the white house were thrilled to see congressman scalise back on the house floor today. Our thoughts and prayers have been with him and his family for many weeks now and well continue to root for him as he works towards a full recovery. Today the president is actively engaged in monitoring the Recovery Efforts in puerto rico. This morning he received an update from fema administrator brock long. Administrator long has briefed members of the senate this morning and members of the house this afternoon. The full weight of the United States government is engaged to ensure food, water, health care and other lifesaving resources are making it to the people in need. At the request of the governor whos doing a terrific job, the president waived the jones act. This will ensure ample sources are making it to the island. The island setting presents logistical hurdle that doesnt exist on the mainland where trucks can converge on disaster areas. 10,000 federal government relief workers are there including 7,200 troops are now on the island and working tirelessly to get people what they need. We have prioritized lifesaving resources to hospitals and can report that 44 of the islands 69 hospitals are now fully operational. The army corps of engineers is spear heading a massive mobilization to restore power, and this began with providing the diesel fuel necessary for sustainable emergency Power Generation. Theyre also working to restore longterm Power Generation and distribution around the island. Theres a long way to go but we will not rest until everyone is safe and secure. Our message to the incredible people to puerto rico is this the president is behind you. We all are, the entire country. Your unbreakable spirit is an inspiration to us all. We are praying for you, working for you and we will not let you down. As you all know, the president traveled to indianapolis, indiana, yesterday to deliver out tax relief to hardworking americans. Our framework is based on four key ideas. First, we will take taxes for the everyday hardworking americans. Second, we will make the tax code simple, fair and easy to understand. Third, we will cut taxes on american businesses to restore our Competitive Edge and create more jobs and higher wages for american workers. And finally, our framework encourages American Companies to bring back the trillions and trillions of dollars in wealth thats parked overseas. Robin heldman owns a small printing and Digital Services business in indianapolis. Robin and her husband, roger, bought the business in 1991 and have since tripled in size. They both work full time in the shop and employ three additional people. As robin describes it, her family is living the american dream. However, robin feels Small Businesses in our country have been neglected and in her words, put on the back burner. Shes now excited about what the president and congressional leaders are proposing. She believes this tax cut will be a boom, not just for her Small Business but also for her customers. Robin relies on Small Businesses to take risk and make investments in Marketing Campaigns that require printing services. Robin is thrilled about the possibility of the tax code being simplified to allow the average taxpayer, such as herself, to save time and money and they can invest in their families and their business. People like robin are at the heart of the president s tax relief plan. To talk more about the tax relief plan, id like to bring up n. E. C. Director gary cohn and after gary takes a few of your directors, we will have tom to answer questions specific to the Hurricane Relief efforts and then ill come up for more general if you guys are insistent and have other topics you want to cover. Thanks. Gary thanks, sarah. I was going to make some opening remarks but i wont because you covered a few of them. Couple things i will say, the president has made his goals very clear what he wants to achieve here with tax reform and cutting taxes in the United States. I think you know where we are in the process. The group of six has been working really well together. Were now in the hands of congress. We want to go through a normal regular process both in the senate and the house and were working well with both tax drafting committees and the committees will work and continue to work really well and quickly and we are trying to drive reform as quick as we can. The basic premise behind it i wont take you through what we talked about before. Again, the question we get asked a lot, ill say it right now, we have to make some basic assumptions right now on where were going to end up with the brackets but ill tell you based on our assumptions, a typical family earning 100,000 with two children that has been a standard deductor, used the standard deduction, continues to use the standard deduction, they can expect a tax cut of about 1,000. Thats where were headed and where well continue to be. With that i think ill open it up to questions and see whats on your mind. Reporter gary, the big criticism theres been criticisms to give money to the rich. But the criticism to your home state, connecticut, california, by eliminating the state and local deduction, there are certain people that will suffer double taxation. These are itemizor. Is that a hard and fast line with you or would you be willing to give that up in congressional negotiations . Gary our plan is based on lowering rates and expanding the base. Its very simple if you think what were doing. You expand the base by getting rid of the loophole. The loophole that the wealthy taxpayers have used to pay tax on less of their income. So we have designed a plan where youre going to pay a lower rate but you are going to pay it on more of your income. Thats a basic core premise of our plan and were committed to and were sticking to it. Reporter the criticism is there are some people in the middle income for whom this tax will be beneficial because they itemize who might get hit by that. Gary just to remind everyone in here. 25 of American Families today itemize. 75 of American Families do not itemize. So when youre talking about itemizor, you are talking about 25 of the population. We also have many things that were doing in the tax plan to help out American Families. Were lowering tax rates. Were going from seven rates to three rates. Were expanding the zero rate. Up to 24,000 for that family. First 24,000 of income they will pay zero on. Were lowering the 15 rate down to 12 . So the next rate will be 12 . Were doing things to help that family. Were expanding the parameters for childcare greatly. We will move the uper bound to a higher income level so that family may be eligible for more and more credits. You have to look at the plan in its entirety. The one thing i would beg all to do is dont look at any one piece. Look at the plan in its entirety. Thats how were looking at tax reform. Were looking at it in its entirety. Reporter followup on what john was asking, the standardized deduction versus itemized. There are people who think if you dissuede people from itemizing you will suppress the real estate market, that people wont be interested in buying homes because they wont need to use itemized deductions, can you address it . Gary first, were protecting the mortgage interest deduction. Second, the Home Builders today came out in favor of our tax plan. The number one reason why people buy homes is theyre excited and optimistic about the economy. They have a job today. They feel confident theyre going to have a job tomorrow and their kids are going to get a job and their spouse has a job. They feel like theres upward wage pressure. They feel theres mobility in their job and they feel good about the economy. Thats when people go out and buy homes. Weve not been in that situation in america for the last decade. We have to get america back to a place where people feel excited and exuberant about the economy. When they do that theyll go out and spend money. Theyll buy homes. People dont buy homes because of the mortgage deduction. Again, 75 of families dont use itemized deductions. Reporter how are we going to ensure wealthy taxpayers wont get lower rates in the tax plan . Gary we spent time on the antiabuse we dont want to see wealthy individuals or wealthy groups or families move their tax rate down from the 35 rate to a 25 rate. We are spending time on that. The tax writers in both the house and senate are acutely aware of this issue. We got language on it. You will be seeing language as we deliver more of the details. Reporter is it today, though . Gary the specific is we are acutely aware of that. Guys like myself should not be allowed to put their assets into a partnership and reduce our Tax Liability by 10 . Reporter two things about one thing you said this morning and something the president said yesterday. You said you couldnt guarantee necessarily that no taxpayers would actually pay more taxes under this bill. Because of the details you were talking about just before, that is a real possibility. Some of the calculations are lower income people could see a few dollars or not more than that. Is it a red line for you and the president that all middle class taxpayers secondly, the president said yesterday this tax cut would not help him. In fact, he said in indiana it would be bad for him. Based on what we know, little what we know about his finances, he did a big cut on the 31 million. On passthrough income, 2. 5 million. He would save a lot not paying estate tax. His heirs would. How can you say this is not a plan that would help him . Gary the American People are concerned about their financial position. What theyre concerned about is when they go to work every week, how much do they get to keep . How much goes in their pocket versus how much goes to government . How much do they ge get to spend versus the government . If we allow a family to keep another 1,000 of their income, what does that mean . They can renovate their kitchen. They can buy a they can buy a new car. They can take a family vacation. They can increase their lifestyle. Thats what our tax plan will do. Our tax plan is aimed to return more income back to hardworking americans. Thats what were trying to do here. Reporter speaking of passthroughs and the president saying this tax plan wouldnt benefit him. Dont you think it would be a good idea if the president prove that by releasing his tax returns . Gary like i said, what were trying to do and what we are all working in the white house is to increase the lifestyle of american citizens, our hardworking citizens that get up every morning and work as hard as any people in the world to try and keep more of their hardearned income. Thats what were all about. Thats what our tax plans about. Our tax plan is trying to get the economy, get the growth rate back to a normalized rate above 3 . Yes, we just had a quarter of 3. 1 g. D. P. People didnt think we would get to 3. 1 g. D. P. For a while. We are at 3. 1 . Can we go high her . 1 of g. D. P. Means 3 trillion. It more than pays for a tax cut. Thats what were trying to do with our tax plan. Reporter if you cant guarantee all middle class americans wont be or some middle class americans wont see their taxes go, does that contradict the central promise to help middle class americans . Gary our tax plan is aimed at making sure we give middleclass americans a tax cut. We are going to give middleclass americans a tax cut. That is what we are spending all of our time on doing. And we got lots of tools at our disposal to make sure we do that. Reporter do you think they will see a tax cut . Gary as i said this morning and ill say it again i could read this statement from this morning. I love it so much. I could not guarantee that. You could find someone in the country that their taxes may not go down. Remember, we have 50 states. We have counties. We have cities. We have longterm Capital Gains. We have shortterm Capital Gains. I guarantee you. Ill guarantee you can find someone in this country, maybe someone whose taxes wont go down. Reporter can you walk us through a timeline how the tax committees will get through this and what confidence do you have given whats happened so far this year on capitol hill they will actually get this done . Secondly, why did you decide to stay at the white house in the wake of charlottesville . Gary so i am very confident that the house and the senate are working as quickly as they can. If you look at chairman brady right now and what hes doing in the house ways and means committee, they are working, they came in on sunday to start working on the tax plan. They will continue to work every day. You know, chairman brady has said they will get through the tax plan as quickly as they can. We would hope that we get through the house in october. We would hope to be in the senate in november. We hope to have a bill done by this year. Why am i here . Im here just for this reason. Think about the opportunity that im involved in with President Trump in being able to rewrite the tax code . Something that hasnt been done for 31 years. The amount of impact we can have on the u. S. Economy and u. S. Citizens in changing the forward outlook of the United States, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and i would never miss this. Reporter one followup, when you are done with tax reform, will you no longer gary there are many once in a lifetime opportunities at the white house. Reporter on the Child Tax Credit which we have heard ivanka trump talk about and campaigned on, can you give us any kind of description what that will look like . I know its still being written but what is the goal here . Refundable . Gary i think we said in our outline yesterday if you read it, the existing childcare credit is refundable and will stay refundable. The additional money that will be put into the credit will be nonrefundable. We want to encourage people to work. We want to have people have taxable income to take the credit against. The size of it were still working out. That is reporter range in mind . Gary yes. Were continuing to work on that range. We are working to deliver a large middleincome tax cut to american workers, one that they rightly deserve. Let me go to the back. Reporter one said the plan will add 2. 2 trillion to the deficit. Are they wrong . Gary we think theyre wrong. Lets not argue that. We firmly believe that this tax plan will have a dramatic impact on Economic Growth. We know that 1 change in g. D. P. S led 3 trillion back and i will live with 800 billion paydown. Reporter on the corporate side, your critics said on the repatriation of assets, companies dont always use those assets to invest in manufacturing and jobs and the things that you guys are talking about. How can you guarantee that wont happen this time . Gary if thats our worst case scenario, companies repay try ate their money, what happens . They buy back shares and issue dividends and pay the repay tryation tax and get another 20 on Capital Gains or dividend and the people that get that money back and people reinvest it in new investments and new capital and putting new enticing rules into the system. We are giving people a fiveyear writeoff that they can instantly expense. Thats fine. That money will get back in the economy and drive jobs, Economic Growth and drive prosperity. Reporter you have asked the question twice and i would like you to answer, i get your message on the middle class, but this tax plan appears it will benefit the president and his family. Why not just be candid about that . Gary it will benefit the middle class. Thats what American American taxpayers care about what they take home. They care about what they have to spend. Thats what they care about. Thats what i care about. I bet what you care about. Reporter he is saying he wont benefit but it appears the way this is put together he actually will and a lot of people do care about this. Gary let me take you through the components that you are obsessed about. Im taking too long here. You talk about the death tax and that being a great benefit. The two biggest drivers are epeal of the death tax are the nfib and farm bureau. Those are the two organizations that spend the most time lobbying repeal of the death tax. Death tax has the biggest effect on them. Small businesses and farms. Wealthy americans do a lot of estate planning, they can use trusts and all types of things that are legal within the tax code to make sure they dont pay death tax. On the a. M. T. , im not going to get into deep, deep, deep calculations on a. M. T. But on a broadbrush level when you do the a. M. T. And get rid of the deductions of state and local taxes that is the biggest addback. A. M. T. Becomes irrelevant. So all the things that you are trying to pull that, you are not looking at the planet in its entirety and dont make sense once we do it. Reporter gary, just as a followup question on that. In your appearance to this group you said i cited to you the worry of groups such as jim martin and 60plus Seniors Association that you are going to drag out repeal of the death tax, that it wouldnt be immediate and you said at the time is immediate. Is it going to be an immediate repeal as soon as the tax pack age is passed . Gary its immediate. Everything is immediate. Only thing that phases out is the fiveyear expensing. Reporter speaking of Small Businesses, lets start negotiating, yesterday senator schumer said democrats may be willing to work some kind of Small Business tax relief into comes out of all this . What offer do you want to make to the democrats . Gary our opening offer and final offer are on the table. We are starting at 25 and willing to go hire. If you want to counter something lower, we are very negotiable. Reporter one more. Gary i got to go. Sarah try