Want to get some sleep, you cant reread something 22 times. 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 a good enough athlete to be an athlete in college. But thats a whole other story. I know the feeling. So after you graduate. You went back to your native area, cleveland, and you worked for u. S. Steel . I did. You werent a steelworker . That was a little joke in my career there. I worked for the Home BuildingProducts Division of United States steel that sold aluminum siding, gutter coil and replacement windows. Were you good at that . I wasnt there long enough to find out. There was a story that you met somebody who asked you about options, you took a taxi ride with him and you got a job. So ill give you the fiveminute version of the story. So after my freshman year in college, i did the typical summer internship at the cleveland Brokerage Office at one of the major broke er deale. Spend the rest of the summer in any group you want. Of course i fell in love with the commodity guys, because they were yelling and screaming and throwing phones around. This was in the summer of 80. It was in those summers. For those of you who have any remembering of whats going on in the commodity market, this was during the Hunt Brothers and what they were doing in the gold and silver market. They had a big gold arbitrage desk in this office. I convinced my grandmother to give me money to open up a trading account. I learned to trade gold that summer, made a ton of money in those 30 days, tried to convince my father that i shouldnt go back to college. I lost that argument. I dont know how i lost that argument even to this day. I finished college in two years because i wanted to get back to the financial markets. The u. S. Steel was kind of a joke. 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 i would walk in and get a job, of course. Little did i know, there would be 17 layers of securities around the commodities exchange. Hung around theres trying to get a job. And literally in desperation, i could get on the floor, but couldnt get through the turnstile. I got to run to airport, ill call you from the airport. This is before cell phones. I always got to remind kids there were no cell phones back then. I jumped in the elevator with him and said i heard you were going to laguardia, can we share a taxi. And in that taxi ride, he happened to be one of the senior guys in one of the big Brokerage Firms on the floor. And that week, they started Trading Options on futures. He said, hey, do you know options, i said of course. I gave him all the lines, he said im the options trader, i have no idea what im doing, if you could stand behind me and help me trade, we would hire you. So i got home to cleveland that night. I went to the barnes noble, they still existed back then. I happened to buy the right book. I bought the options on strategic investment. The mcmillan book. I said i cant read this whole brook over the weekend, i picked two chant evers and memorized them. Went back for the interview next week, convinced them i knew about options and they hired me and i started the next week. Wow, great. So i guess two questions arise immediately, one did you give any of the profits of your gold arbitrage to your grandmother . I gave her the money back a week later. With the profits . No, forgot about that. But shes still alive today. So 105 has week. Wow, congratulations. Something good about that. I hope shes the man who hired you, what became of him . Hillary bergman. Hes still around. Hes still in business. If he called you up and lobbies you on the tax bill, would you listen . He doesnt have my cell phone number and dont give it to him. Okay. He probably could find you. That worked out. From there, you got a job in 1990. You joined goldman. Yes. Turned out you were a good trader. Worked your way up and worked out. Yeah. Its been a good run. Lets go back to the tax bill. You sure . You sure you dont want to talk about trading . Well, your great skill in trading, youre going to lose money. You have to get over and go on to the next thing. You cant get depressed. Exactly right. Did you have trades that just didnt work and how long did you stay with them . Most of your trades dont work. Really . Yeah. Wow. Okay. [ laughter ] i mean, thats the difference between good traders and bad traders i always say. Okay. I always said, 80 of your trades arent going to work. You have to realize the 20 that are really good and stick with them. Okay. So now 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 . Never met him. Thats not true. We met each other once at a yankees game. In George Steinbrenners box many, many, many years ago. He was a man who died with no estate tax. Thats what hes famous for. Okay. [ laughter ] so, you got somebody called you. Was it jared and said would you like to me my fatherinlaw . Did you realize it was a Job Interview or what did you think it was during 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 . You werent sure . You really werent 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 i towards the end i think it turned into hey, what would you do in my Administration Even though 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 quite intrigued with the meeting. Your family, were they supportive of you going to washington and working for a nondemocrat or they didnt care . My family is supportive of me in 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 of treasury. Do you remember that comment . I might have. I might not have. All right. So in any event, you joined. 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 used to have a big office. You had a great view. Now you have no view. You got over that, right . Yeah. I agree. I did have a great office before. Great view, i know. When youre working in the white house, its easy to get people to come to see you. How do you find that working environment at the white house compared to lets say goldman . Easier . Harder . More pressure every day . Oh, from a pressure standpoint, its dramatically more pressure. I think when you realize that youre working for 300 plus million americans and trying to deliver to them the best ideas and the best results and 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, you can say i screwed up, im sorry, well do better tomorrow. When youve got citizens and youve got news watching you 24 hours a day, you cant mess up. Youve got to do it right. So you developed 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 . Can you just walk in anytime . Has it changed a bit . Now you cant walk in because the new chief of staff doesnt like that . Look, 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. In the transition, in the beginning when we got here, we were spending enormous amount of time together with many other advisers he had in the oval office. Now the reality is weve got a pretty welldesigned game plan. Were in execution mode. Im in execution mode with the president and the secretary of treasury. Its getting a bill done. I had unbelievable access to the president. When i need him or want him, i can go in and see him. Thats not a problem. Hes not bashful about telling me his views. Hes not bashful . No. You develop a close relationship with him. After charlottesville, it wasnt as strong. What is your relationship with the president today . As strong as its ever been. You can talk to him anytime. I probably saw him five times today. Wow. At least. Im leaving here to go be with him. Okay. The new chairman of the fed is to be announced, i believe. You are one of the candidates. You really want that job or youre not sure . The president , sharply at 3 00 is going to make his decision known. Hes made a spectacular choice and im proud of what he is doing. No regrets if you are not the person getting the job . Im really supportive of the president s decision. Its a great decision. Okay. Many people who work in the white house, i did it myself, you know, they burn out after a while. So, how long do you think you would like to stay in the white house . If theres a tax bill, would you like to go . Two years, three years . David, 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. When you cant, what would you like to do next . Private equity . Something important like that . Being your replacement, you filled that last week. Thats off the agenda. If you were available, we would have talked to you. Could have, would have, should have. There you go. Back to the tax bill far moment. Im not sure youre interested still. Could have, would have, should have. Back to the tax bill. On the tax bill, would you say that the average person will get a benefit, say the average family of four, the average individual will see a tax cut or that was our objective. We have spent an enormous amount of time working with the house and the senate to deliver the president s agenda. The house has done a very good job of doing that. You are changing the mortgage interest deduction. I think right now, up to 1 million. You have lowered it to 500,000, but its perspective. Is the Real Estate Industry going to support this bill or not . We hope everyone supports the bill. The reality of Home Ownership is that people buy homes when they feel good about the economy, they feel good about their job, they feel like they are going to be employed for a while and have wage growth. They dont buy homes because they deduct interest. The data, he would say maybe the data shows the mortgage deduction leads people to buy bigger houses than they should buy. Growing the economy is whats important. Charitable deduction, there was no discussion about that. You are leaving it alone. Correct. What about the deduction for child credit, child care . You are increasing family tax credit . Increasing child care credit as well as other family related credits. We are definitely taking the child care credit up. The house is proposing going from 1,000 to 1600 for 16 and under and dependent credit of 300 for yourself, your spouse and dependent children below 230,000 of income. What about the process of going through the house. Is there going to be trade offs where somebody says why not get rid of this deduction and ill give my support for that . Thats the house process. Thats exactly where we are. The ways and Means Committee will work on the bill for a couple weeks. They will deliver their bill. They may make trades in there. You know, chairman brady will chair that committee. Me might have changes to make himself, then the bill goes to the full floor of the house and they will ultimately decide what the bill should look like and vote it out. Thats the entire regular way of process. If it didnt pass this year, its not going to be that big of a disappointment. Next year, you could live with that, i assume. We can live with that. We have to do it for the economy. 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 and workers. Under your budget that you proposed, you are likely to have 100 billion increase in the annual deficit from fy 18 over fy 17. Are you worried about the increasing deficit and how are you going to deal with that . We are worried about creating Economic Growth. You know as well as any of us, the times we have seen the budget deficit go down we have Economic Prosperity in this country. As long as we are growing the economy, we can pay down deficit. We can grow and bring in more revenue. Thats what we need to do. This year, you project growth this year, this fiscal year to be 2. 5 or 3 . We have two consecutive quarters over three, one included a hurricane, which knocked down growth significantly. We are tracking probably a run rate of over 3 right now. We are pretty excited about what we see going on in the real economy and talking to businesses and business leaders. All the data we are seeing is favorable right now. You know markets well because you were at goldman for a long time. Do you think the stock market is ahead of the economy or you are not worried about the high market rates . If we continue to execute on our plan and deregulate, we deliver real tax reform. We are going to continue to see real Economic Growth and u. S. Business continue to thrive. The market is pricing that in. In terms of deregulation, you are not going to support a change in glass see gal or try to reimpose that, is that correct . We have a bunch of changes we are going do in the Financial Services along with the house and the senate that they support to really get regulation on banks and Financial Services where they should be. Everyone agrees we have swung way too far and handicapped Community Banks and small banks and overburdened them. We have to get small and medium banks back in the lending business. We need to roll back some of that regulation. On the big, huge, multinational banks, we are comfortable. You would do it through regulation, not a change in legislation of doddfrank . Look, theres going to be regulatory changes. Theres going to be refinement of doddfrank, refinement of the volker rule. Theres changes to the rules to get them to the right place. The Biggest Surprise you found in washington was what . Its harder than you thought . Easier than you thought . The people are nicer than you thought, not at nice . What was the biggest change . Surprise, i should say. I dont know about change. Biggest surprise. Its hard. This is really hard. No one should underestimate how hard this is. What people from the outside dont understand is how hard people actually are working. Im working now like i worked when i was 20 years old. You are making the same salary. No, i was making more. Again, no one should feel sorry for me. You know, people are working 1820 hour days, trying to get things done, trying to get things moved. Peoples intentions are in the right place. Its hard. The natural momentum to do nothing is pretty entrenched. You have seen Business People come to the oval office all the time. Do they tell you in advance they are going to tell the president a, b and c then get there and dont say it . I have seen every playbook. They tell me a, b, c and do the opposite, i have seen them tell me nothing. I have seen every playbook. Somebody that wants to influence you about the tax bill as it goes through, modifications whar modifications, what is the best way to influence you about a change they might want . Give you a phone call. That wont get them very far. Thats what i was hoping. The greatest pleasure of the job you have now is what . The ability to serve. When you think of my life history and what i have gone through and the ability to be in a position to give back to my country is unbelievable for me. The biggest downside is the hours . No. No one died from working hard. But why take a chance . [ laughter ] so, um, if, after the tax bill is done and you want to stay part of the administration, is there any other job you would want . You dont want to be any other job . You are happy with this job . You are happy with this . I have such a unique job and platform, i really am pleased with where i am. I didnt quite understand the breath and magnitude of the job i was taking. A bunch of people i relied on told me thats a great job, you should take it. I wasnt quite sure it was the right job. Now that im in the job and see how far reaching the job really is, i cant, you know, im pleased with where i am. I have more things to do than i have time to do. No regrets . No regrets. Look, we have come to the allotted time. Tough go back to the white house for an announcement. I want to thank you for your time and insight. Thank you. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. Everybody can eat. House republicans have unveiled their tax reform bill, hr1 tax cuts and job act. We are joined by aaron, a tax reporter for politico. This has been a priority of speaker ryan an ways and means chair, kevin brady. How did the bill come about . What is the process like . Its been a busy year on the committee and leadership. Officials from the white house, President Trump is involved in trying to drive this to a finish line. Its been a busy year on the tax front. To be honest, its been many years in the making. When President Trump was elected, i think the republican members of congress saw this as an opportunity to try to really drive things this year, 2017. We have a link to the bill on our congressional chronical. A couple highlights, reduces tax brackets from seven to four, the top staying at 39 pn. 6 . The corporate 35 to 20 . Limiting mortgage interest to loans of 500,000 or less. It caps state and local property Tax Deductions at 10,000, increasing the Child Tax Cred