would be allowed to run without a budget. the biggest economy in the world is operating without a budget all too often? i should be a shocker right there. it is a sign we need to fix the process. but even only do get it done, the appropriations bills and what they are -- that is the passing of the funding bills that fund our discretionary portion of the budget, one third of the budget. and you do have bills for different pieces of that. two thirds of the budget is on the automatic pilot, social security and medicare, they don't go through the appropriations process. even we do have a budget we don't get the final bills done. thethey -- and that is opportunity for the authorizer's to look at how we are spending our money. look at what programs are working. figuring out which bills are the priority. if you skip over the process, we don't think about what direction we want to be going in. host: we have matters of the fiscal budget with maya macguineas. if you want to ask questions, (202) 748-8001, republicans. (202) 748-8000, democrats. independent, what do you think about what the front pages talking about with the changes for corporate taxes? guest: much to our surprise last week, we heard that they would unveil at least the outlines of the tax reform, probably this wednesday. i am lucky enough that i was in a panel with the secretary of treasury on wednesday so i'm hoping we have a real discussion about the high-level principles objective outlines of the bill. the kinds of things that we are healing -- the kinds of things that we are hearing is that there is a lot of the big folks of the tax reform bill will be on lowering the corporate tax rate. they are floating the number, 15%. that is aggressive. reforming the tax code is a national priority. with the highest marginal tax rate in the world. it makes us not competitive when we compete globally. which we do often. and there are a lot of ways we need to reform the tax code. there are also a lot of ways we need to reform the individual tax code. thisf the big fights over whole question of how to reform taxes will be, is this tax reform? which changes the tax code in a way that allows us to be more competitive, supervised the tax code and promotes growth? or will this be a big tax cut? to do.s a lovely thing politicians love to cut taxes. but if you don't offset the record levels of national debt, the highest it has been since he came out of world war ii. and if we have cuts that are not paid for, it will be a really big tax cut which is what the president has said he wants -- it will be a explosion in the debt. and we hear people saying that tax cuts pay for themselves but there is no credible argument that tax cuts pay for themselves. what there is is a lot of literature and resource that is shown the way that tax cuts promote growth, which we need to focus on in this country, you bring the rates down and you don't add to the deck. because that decreases growth. it could undermine the purpose of tax reform. and another way you could get it would be broadening the base. getting rid of the $1.6 trillion in tax break that we have in our tax code per year. getting rid of those improved the way we allocate capital. andy offsetting the cost broadening the base, we can grow the economy more and i think that is a really important objective. i am worried that they will say well, the offsets are hard for different companies and different industries. host: everybody wants their cut. it affects people personally. guest: when i came on the show you for, you don't get people saying yes, good, that is a good idea. people love the homeowner reduction but if we take a look lookif we have a serious at the base, it won't be nearly as effective in growing the economy. way, taxgrow the easy cuts but it could do a lot of damage to the economy. before we take calls, the treasury secretary steve mnuchin talked on a as conference monday about the goals for tax reform. we will let you listen to what he says. >> we have been clear on what the president's objectives are for tax reform. middle income tax cut. the president. simple as occasion, the average american should be able to do their taxes on a large postcard. business tax reform. we need to make business taxes competitive and we expect that with doing that we will bring back trillions of dollars from offshore. for itselfn will pay with economic growth. host: the tax plan will pay for itself. that is the claim. guest: reading between the lines, because that is what we do we listen, my expectation for where it is headed is that they will try to pay for some of the tax cut and what they are not no politicians like making hard choices but that is what governing is, making hard choices. you they will try to pay for part of it and what they can't pay for they claim will come from growth. doeseform and tax cuts grow the economy. there will be growth. but again, not enough to pay for itself. something important about this administration is that trump ran a campaign where he talked a whole lot about the threat from our $20 trillion gross national debt. and what he said was, the way they were going to deal with the debt and get it under controlan- we have to manage our deficits and bring down the debt. but if you start saying you will use growth to pay for tax cuts, that is double counting. suddenly, you no longer have the growth to deal with the debt. and we are right now on track that this administration will borrow another $10 trillion over the next decade. we haven't seen the full budget yet and i'm hopeful that they will bring that down. now, doing nothing will increase the debt by another $10 trillion. the president was critical of president obama for increasing the debt by that much and i'm sure that's not what he wants to do. but if he takes the growth dividend and uses it to pay for tax reform instead of broadening the tax base, he won't be from growth. debt and then we are in a dangerous situation. it is hard to make people understand why they should care about the national debt that it is the underpinning of the economy. a sustainable fiscal situation is necessary for the economy to stay strong and grow with an -- ansed and of living increased standard of living. if we don't tackle that then growth is in jeopardy and it affects families and a multiple ways. host: let's go to cindy. caller: regarding the politicians, i happen to agree wholeheartedly with you. and some of the previous callers and guests this morning did touch on the same point in different subjects. let's look at who we are really talking about. we are talking about people who charge you $50,000 a month minimum pay in their pocket plus their health care plus they are guaranteed pension. and their jobs are completely in the constitution. and like everybody else in this country, if you do not do your job, you should not have your job. comey should be putting handcuffs on over half of them. because it is deliberate criminal negligence. host: thank you. guest: that kind of frustration directed a politicians is certainly broadly shared. and i think the election was a huge reflection of the incredible frustration and dissatisfaction and anger at washington. i work really closely with politicians of both parties. i am a political independent. i will tell you that from working with members, they do come here because they do want to do good policies. i think there are a lot of things that make the system nonfunctioning. one of those things is the polarization between the parties, where they are more focused with eating each other up and having a win for a democrat or a republican rather than getting things done and i think there are a lot of pieces in the system that are making it more difficult. i don't tend to think it is a reflection of bad people. i'm sure there are bad apples but i think it is more systemic. one of the things we do need to learn from the election is not only do we need broad, sweeping, policy changes, i think we have learned a lot about the need for a great economy that is working better for everyone -- there are big structural changes that we do need to be grappling with. and i do think we need political reform. on fiscal policy. i want to fix the debt but i think we need to figure out ways to fix the political system. because in many ways, the record levels of debt is a reflection of the dysfunction in this country. the fact that we have gotten to a point where we have every politician competing to give away more. and instead of showing the leadership or stewardship of putting in place some tough choices like as parents, we have to do with kids, but making those responsible choices that would set us on a sustainable track, there are lots of incentives to take the easy way out and to spend more time fighting than governing. there are many fixes that need to take place in the city. i hope that one of the outcomes of the election, which was the cry for focusing on the change is that people start working together on those issues. host: this is david from alexandria, virginia. on the independent line. caller: the national debt, is it even payable? cannot even be paid back? and what is the federal reserve's role in the situation? ?ith federal income tax which was created in the early 1900s? tost: i will take a minute expend about the debt because they totaled that is about to hit $20 trillion which will be a big mark. the debt held by the public which doesn't count to the portion of the debt we hold is $14 trillion. the way i think about the debt because it is the most relevant is that what it is is a share of the economy. so our debt right now is 77% of the gdp. that is -- and this is a big stemming point -- twice the historical average that we have had in this country. it is twice the size of the debt compared to the economy where we were when we went into the economic crisis of 2008 and it has doubled since then because we had a huge downturn and we have put in place a lot of policies without paying for them. the economy didn't recover for a while as he grew the debt a bit and we didn't come up with a plan to bring it back down. why that matters is that when we economic crisis, you want to be prepared to respond to that. you want to have healthy debt levels. we do not. what is even more troubling is where we are headed. to 89% projected to go of gdp over the next 10 years if we do nothing. that is before we make any policies. and if this administration or congress passes policies that at two the debt instead of putting us on a path to bring it down, those numbers will become even more staggeringly dangerous for the economy. so your question about paying it back, we don't have to pay back the debt. a small sized national debt is a healthy thing to have. it creates the treasury market. there is nothing wrong with the debt as part of a country. but what is wrong is when you have a debt that is going faster than your economy. so we don't need to pay back $20 trillion. need to find a way to make sure the economy is going faster than the debt. the will involve growing economy and slowing the growth of the debt. host: when it comes to examples like the corporate tax cuts, they talked about growth being the key driver but what kind of growth does the united states need to see? is it achievable? what kind ofw growth we will likely see. it will be slightly below 2%. those are reasonable projections and it is difficult to protect the economy but what makes it easier to project the normal is how you grow the economy is labor market growth and productivity growth. labor market growth, we know it will be slower than it has been in the past and the reason is because baby boomers are moving into retirement. there are now dealing with a demographic polls with people moving into retirement which slows the growth of the workforce. when you hear people talk about a 3%-4% growth, it is nearly impossible to achieve that. i think we should be striving for growth in the 2% and put in place policies to achieve that growth that include tax reform and that her spending priorities and more public investment and reforms. a lot of those things could help promote growth. they can increase growth by 1/10 of a percentage point. not a full percentage point. so of someone says they will grow the economy by 1% a year, there is no indication that that is possible. want to do we don't is rely on false promises about growth. and i am concerned that we will see numbers that are unrealistic and unachievable. and if you put them in your assumptions, you borrow more than you can and you create a bigger debt cycle. let's let the congressional budget office make the projections and use those numbers and then let's aspire to grow the economy more and picking smart policies. for: you are on the line maya macguineas. morning.ood federal agencies should be funded by tax dollars. isever, proposing taxes political suicide to politicians. what is happening now is that the congress is authorizing political agencies to set their own fees. and the public is being attacked -- the public is being taxed by officials. becomes, whereen does the allegiance lie when there getting their money from the fees from corporate america and knocks -- and not from tax dollars. that is the citizens of america. guest: that is a great question. i'm not going to go into the details because i don't know what feeds you are talking about -- i don't know what fees you are talking about. most of these do have to be overseen and authorized by political representatives. i don't want to comment because i don't know which fees that is. it does sound like an interesting point. i will make a broader comment in which i do see movement in moving towards the hard choices. be paid for by tax dollars but it is really hard to raise taxes. it is hard to raise taxes and it is hard to cut spending. those are the things we need to do to bring the fiscal gap back online. politicians are loath to make those choices so i'm seeing and outsourcing of those choices. outsidemmissions and experts to make corrections. and it is a big issue. i tend to think it may end up working better, which is somewhat disappointing. we need political leaders to be a will to make those hard choices. but if they can't, we will end up in dangerous places. thattsourcing to experts the public votes the day or night on, that makes it more politically palatable -- politically palpable. i also want to point out that we have to look at ourselves as voters. we have to be willing to say to a politician -- i understand why you are raising taxes or cutting or doing what we need to do to get done. expectrs, we need to that from politicians. if we make getting the that under control one of the national objectives, we have to understand it means trade-offs have to be made and we cannot punish the politicians who are willing to make them. we have a policy that rewards giving the way things to pretend you can grow your way out of a problem. but it is not true. but it leaves a terrible economic situation for our generation and our kids and we should be striving to do better than that. host: here is richard from iowa. i'm trying to think the democrats might use this around that republicans to not have a budget by the date. but then maybe they will. that is my opinion. findthey might just try to a way to blame them. and a lot of these taxes, local upes, it seems like they go every year like a property tax and stuff. and stuff like that, it eventually the desk wrote the national debt up. that is the way i feel about it. that is all i have to say about that. guest: the point in their which i really sadly agree with, again, i don't think we will shut down the government. i don't think it is in either theyical party benefit and will hold the blame for doing that. but the fact that he were sitting there in iowa and are analyzing what we're doing here and you think one party may let the government shutdown because you think it will hurt the other party is a reflection of a feeling i share. which is a deep sadness and frustration with how much fighting there is between the parties. and i think there is a calculation that is always going on. the fact that there is a willingness to sacrifice important basic functions, keeping the government open or , thatg the debt ceiling shouldn't be a political calculation but it is. i share your concern. parties do share the blame for this. but we shouldn't be worrying about this, it isn't a game where two teams are starting to clobber each other, it is the stewardship of the largest country in the world and we waste so much time and energy with the political calculations that go back and forth. i'm sure that republicans and this,ats can deal with the problems. they should be fighting on the solutions but a lot of energy goes into the political calculations of a pretty strong tension that exists right now. the: caffe is calling in on democrats line. caller: good morning. i have my budget in front of me, my household budget, which i work on at least once a week, generally twice a week. i went 10 years without accruing any debt. i paid cash for everything. and this is the way i did it. and i wasn't happy to do it. my clothes are used. my shoes are used. i had to tell my children know. we can't afford it. andrk a full-time job now two part-time jobs with a college education. cannot understand how this country has so many unemployed people who cannot pay taxes because they are not employed. that is a huge loss of tax income for the country. formuch more -- 15% corporations? trump says he doesn't want to pay taxes? this is a large problem. and what i see in the various areas that i work is that there is a lot of unhappiness. there is extreme poverty. and if you think giving tax breaks to the wealthy as we do in corporations, it is making it worse. guest: thank you. you do a moving description of putting a real face on a real story to some of the huge, structural economic problems we have in this country. and i will say what i said before. someone who has done everything right, who plays by the rules of economic gain should be getting ahead. and we have challenges now that somebody people aren't. we do need job creation. that has to be happening. and growing an economy is a piece of the solution here. i could go on longer by tax reforms are a piece of that. there are different ways to reform the tax code. we could reform the corporate tax code without giving corporations "a huge tax cut." .ringing the rate down so they could be paying the same amount in taxes but in a sensible way which hopefully would -- and i believe it would, if it were paid for -- contribute to growing the economy. witten could be just a beaded in a way to create more jobs. as they butchered explanation of how the economy works that i share your frustration, completely. i don't think we need to be looking at tax reform that take things away from the middle class. i don't think that make sense of where we are right now in the economic cycle. need one that we creates better incentives and makes us more competitive and helps grow the economy in a way that should be broadly shared. i hope that is what we end up doing. i think big tax cuts to any group that is not offset isn't affordable right now and i think big tax cuts that dramatically shift the distribution of how we pay taxes doesn't make sense, given the economic struggles going on which you just described really well. will be the last color. jump right in. caller: i will jump right in. i believe in truth, fact and results. i go on my morning walk and a think about all of this stuff about the trillions of dollars of debt. in 1992, heaid that said if you make an f-14 made of solid gold, it would still not be worth $40 million. -- said that if you keep telling a lie over and over again, it does get accepted as the truth. we cannot possibly be $19 trillion in debt. ross perot said that if you were to give everybody in the world social security that qualifies, it wouldn't even equal a trillion dollars. so i'm questioning where people are making of the fictitious numbers about how we are $19 trillion in debt. i wish somebody would sit down and give the actual numbers of how much we are actually in debt. on my morninggo walk and think about the national debt. that is something we have in common. it isn't a fictitious number. it comes from the treasury. you can go to the debt to the penny and it gives a better explanation. but we are $14.5 trillion in debt for the money we have borrowed domestically or from overseas. and up to almost $20 trillion from the money we have borrowed from ourselves and we will be paying back to the trust funds for different programs. it is the amount we have borrowed minus the dollar we would pay back. this is a really serious situation. the reason i was a big ross perot fan is that he put this agenda. the he changed the way the country was talking. he said it was a national issue that people need to pay attention to. and it is critical that there are leaders who do that. make this their key issue and costly say, how can we pay for that? how can we address this problem? because right now, the debt is levels, itst record is forecast to grow forever. and that is a forecast for a damaged economy. something none of us would be proud to be stewards of leaving to the next generation. there is a legacy for those willing to fix this problem but it is a change we need to get ahead of. we have waited so long already that it requires real political leadership. host: the committee for the responsible federal budget >> this afternoon on capitol hill, bipartisan leadership of the house oversight committee spoke on concerns about donald trump's former security advisor michael flynn received money from meeting with russian organizations in 2014 without getting permission or informing officials. representatives jason chaffetz and elijah cummings updated reporters. let's watch. >> thanks for being here. to seek and obtain permission to receive >> you simply cannot take money from russia, turkey, or anybody else. it appears as if he did take that money. it was inappropriate, i'm there are repercussions for the violation of law. violations --re and there are repercussions for the violation of law. >> we are coming out of a classified briefing. we have just come from this briefing with the defense intelligence agency. they had documents for us to review relating to general plan -- general flynn. general flynn previously led the ia and served as a national security adviser until he was fired by president trump. right now we cannot discuss the