time for technology. ironically, that industry loaded with ceos not keen on donald trump is one of the biggest beneficiaries of donald trump. meanwhile, corporate tax reform getting all the attention right now, the fallout from all of this on this big meeting today, multiple meetings today about a tax cut on the corporate side that could be sliced to 15% from 35% right now. so a lot going on. we've got david hupp joining us. noel, a lot at stake as they go through the details of this not the least of which is whether you have to pay for it. the message from the president is no. he thinks deficits be damned, you're eventually going to get revenue down the road, so deal with that. what do you think? >> i think it is absolutely, as you know and your viewers know, it's crucial that we get tax reform. it's each more crucial that we get it -- even more crucial that we get it done many this year. it can't wait another year. i think that would assure a lot of things not good for republicans. you mentioned earlier about the 15% corporate tax rates and that's got to be done. if that's not done, i think you're going to see an economic freefall, you know? don't depend on me, you know, for that expertise, depend on people that are, you know, economic advisers that are saying it's going to be an economic catastrophe if this is not done. so there is a lot at stake here, and i think that donald trump, you know, meeting with this, you ody onhe's meeting with my mnuc, this, gary cohn, republican leaders, this has to be done, and it has to be done right, and we can't afford to have a fumbled ball on this at all. neil: you know, david, from your vantage point knowing speaker ryan so well, do you think he is of the same mindset as the president that deficits can be damned here? we'll create a lot of revenue, just get me a big old tax cut, big, big, big. >> i think the most important thing to the speaker, as it is to the president, is growth. and tax cuts are fundamental to growth. if we don't do something about our tax system, we won't get the growth we need. and i know speaker ryan supports the president in that completely. neil: so what does that mean? i don't mean to belabor the point, david can. does it mean to you and does it meanthe speaker then that he can accept something thamit worsen the deficits maybe substantially, maybe by $100 billion or more, before they start getting a little bit better? because that just adds to the debt in the meantime? >> well, part of this will be determined as they deal with the fy-18 bandage -- budget bill. you have to pass the budget in the house and the senate, and that's where one of the issues is going to come to bear here for the president, as well as the speaker and senator mcconnell. to or work together, to be able to get that budget bill passed is they can have a reconciliation bill which is the vehicle they want to use for fundamental tax reform. neil: now, the problem with a reconciliation bill not to get too caught up in the weeds, noel, is that it's brief. it's ten years. it's not brief. that's a long time, but it phases out because you only need a simple majority here. so you can't do anything too crazy. but what do you make of that and whether comprehensive tax reform is limited because of that? >> well, you know, it is, and i think art laffer was on earlier today saying how important all this is, and i think that, you know, he was talking about kicking the can down the road and what's good and what's not good, and i think that you've got to do this not in little increments, but i think you've got to have deep tax cuts and something that has longevity to it. with this said, is paul ryan going to be the one that is going to be able to get this done? we see he pressured, you know, the first thing out of the box he pressured trump to do was the health care deal, and he didn't even have all his ducks in a row to -- neil: well, to be fair, his argument was that he needed that to set the base for the tax cuts and the trillionollars over ten yeas a baseline. i understand that. but, dave, in the end we're, we didn't get that, right? republicans tried but had to pull that effort. this seems to be going full steam ahead without that. am i reading that correctly? >> first of all, that effort on health care is not over, and it was a united republican desire to get rid of obamacare and then move forward. that still continues, and there's going to be some work on that in the next couple of weeks. neil: but this seems to be running on a different track. >> i think it is. i think it is, and i think the reason is because it is so fundamental to the ability to make you are economy and make the united states great. if we don't have growth, the things we need to do in defense to be the leaders of the world, to have jobs for people, those things won't happen. and that is a fundamental thing. and it goes back to jack kemp and ronald reagan who said and set up a system of cutting taxes to provide for growth for our economy. that's going to be done again, that's the model that they're both following. neil: all right. and that's the model wall street is salivating for, the dow up about 244 points. thank you very much. my next guest did mention ronald reagan, his former budget director, david stockman, is with me right now. david, you're of the opinion when people start saying deficits don't matter, game over. >> your last two guests were in fantasy land. there is no way you're going to cut the corporate tax by $2 trillion over the next ten years and not pay for it. the reason is -- neil: you don't think it'll create a boom? >> of course it won't, because when you take the corporate tax at $350 billion and cut it to $150 billion of revenue a year, where do you get the $200 billion hole filled up? it would take a $1.5 trillion increase in corporate income, profits, to fill the hole. that isn't going to happen. mostly what happens with the accounting operations overseas. you don't necessarily move jobs. so if we reduce the corporate tax -- which i think is a great idea, get rid of it. it's obsolete. it's uncollectible. it's stupid. but you have to replace it with something. you have to pay for it. we've got -- neil: you're not a fan of this dynamic accounting that -- because you had that during the reagan years, it's just they spent that money and then some, right? >> they spent all the money, and besides that, you always build into the baseline more than you're going to get anyway. so if you do get some good effects from a tax cut, that will only make up for the optimism you start out with. remember, reagan started with $930 billion in debt, he ended up with $2.8 trillion. those tax cuts didn't pay for themselves. it started us down the road to the $20 trillion that we have today. neil: how did you guys factor in the bull market boom and all you got from that and the hundreds of billions of dollars of boom we're getting from this market rally since trump's election? what do you go to factor that in? -- what do you coto factor that in? >> you have the robo machines tagging 2400 on the s&p and 21,000 on the dow. it's meaningless. it is not sustainable. we have an economy that's in very bad shape -- neil: this is the only game in town to goose it, right? the federal reserve's out of that stimulus business. >> yeah. neil: so the only stimulus we can have is the fiscal. >> but we've had $20 trillion worth of stimulus already. we've got $10 trillion built in before one dime of the trump agenda -- neil: what would you do? >> what i would do is recognize we're going to havslow growth for a long time. we've been living way beyond our means. we've got to start moving towards a balanced budget. i would slash defense, not increase it. i would reform social security and medicare and make the wealthy retirees pay their own way. i would dramatically reduce the size of washington in a big block grant and send it back to the states, and and i would unleash the american health care consumer by giving him his money back so that we have real consumers shopping -- neil: so if you had your druthers, you would just junk the health care law itself. >> i would -- of course. i would repeal obamacare -- neil: you're making friends left and right. >> of course i am. [laughter] but the reason we're not getting anywhere, the reason we have trump now proposing a huge corporate tax cut without paying for it is that everybody's at a dead end. this thing -- neil: well, you say without paying for it, they argue -- go ahead, i'm sorry. >> this thing will be dead before arrival. neil: really? >> politicians on capitol hill are not going to cut revenue by $2 trillion over a decade and not replace it with something. you know, this is just fantasy. neil: well, won't they do what ronald reagan did in '81, one big old tax cut followed up five years later with a follow-up tax cut that closed loopholes -- >> yeah, but that isn't what happened. the first tax cut was 6% of gdp when fully effective which would be the equivalent of $1.7 trillion a year today if you can imagine -- neil: in today's dollars? >> in today's dollars, okay? and then because it got way off the deep end, we had to recoup 40% of that tax cut with all the tax increases that -- neil: but we did once again lower rates. >> no, that had nothing to do with -- neil: i understand that, but you raised other taxes, limited deductions and other things, so maybe that's something they could do down the road. >> maybe they could, but in '82, '83 and '84, we had increased bills. i was accused of being a tax grabber -- neil: what brought ron reagan -- ronald reagan, becau you were arguing that this deficit stuff was real, that he should pay attention to it. >> yeah. i mean, that was part of it, but i think the history needs to be clarified here. neil: okay. >> the 1986 law was lower the rates, broaden the base. it was revenue-neutral. neil: maybe that's the problem. we have 35% in this country, people not paying any federal income. >> this is the point about the income tax. right now six million people pay 60 of the federal income tax. 16% of the filers pay 80%. so we're at the point where the income tax is only a rich man's tax. if you cut it across the board, it'll have -- neil: it'll disproportionately benefit them just as the revenue -- >> well, but, you know, when you have that few people paying income taxes, the response -- neil: but we can't control spending. >> okay. and that's the problem with donald trump today. this is the last straw as far as i'm concerned. he's proving that he's a 70-year-old kid in a candy store who wants one of everything. more defense, more veterans, walls, law enforcement, infrastructure, tax cuts, phenomenal tax cuts for everybody. doesn't he know that there's $10 trillion of debt, new debt built in over the next decade that he inherited, and whether he likes it or not, he's got to address that? he can't pile on more. neil: what do you get from going from 2% growth to 3% growth? in other words, that's a 50% increase in gdp growth. >> yeah. neil: wouldn't you get some bang for the buck from that? >> you wouldn't remotely pay for the tax reduction that it takes to get there. tax cuts don't pay for themselves. they generate a little reflow -- neil: then what happened with your experience with reagan? >> well, exactly that. we had massive, you know, monumental deficits that got resolved not with economic growth, because growth in the '80s was average, 3% -- neil: 20 more million jobs. >> well, the economy grows when you have a growing labor force. neil: right, that's my point. >> it would have been growing anyway. neil: not like that. yes, sir, yes, sir. neil: you think jimmy carter if he were in there for another -- we would have had that kind of growth? >> i would say from 1955 with lyndon johnson, jfk, johnson, ford and carter the average growth was 3.2%. during the reagan/bush era, the average growth was 3.2%. the idea that there was some extraordinary boom in the economy is not true, and the boom that we had for a few years was due to a pure keynesian -- neil: but if you raise taxes or radically cut spending at this point, isn't that elixir just as problematic? >> sure. neil: so we have no good choices. >> we have no good choices. neil: you are really bumming me out. >> isn't it time in this country we sober up and recognize that printing money -- neil: no, i like being drunk. [laughter] >> borrowing money is not any ticket to prosperity that's sustainable or real in any way. and so unfortunately, there is no net tax cut that's going to happen. it'll have to be revenue-neutral, it'll take years to do x i doubt whether the votes are there to accomplish it. neil: wow. we'll see. all right, david stockman, always good seeing you. trump is the book, his latest bestseller, and we want to get those views across here. rather than hearing from one person here, all points of view. we've got the time, and you're worth that. president trump is signaling a change in his border wall fundsituation. it might wait. maybe that alone will keep the government open so the lights stay on. after this. ♪ ♪ when you're close to the people you love, does psoriasis ever get in the way of a touching moment? if you have moderate to severe psoriasis, you can embrace the chance of completely clear skin with taltz. taltz is proven to give you a chance at completely clear skin. with taltz, up to 90% of patients in fact, 4 out of 10 even achieved completely clear skin. do not use if you are allergic to taltz. before starting you should be checked for tuberculosis. taltz may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you are being treated for an infection or have symptoms. or if you have received a vaccine or plan to. inflammatory bowel disease can happen with taltz. including worsening of symptoms. serious allergic reactions can occur. now's your chance at completely clear skin. just ask your doctor about taltz. neil: all right. the upshot is this for the president of the united states is this: he still wants that border wall, but he can wait on it a little bit. adam shapiro, what can you tell us? >> reporter: we know the spending bill that congress is looking at according to the white house does include some money for border fencing and repair and replacement of existing fencing. but here's a statement that the white house issued to our producer, brian schwartz, in which they said, quote, the president expects to receive some funding for border protection in fiscal year 2017 and some in fiscal year 2018. he wants to get started on this critical construction and stop the flow of illegal drugs and crime from the southern border. the president tweeted as much earlier this morning. now, there is also this from senator rob portman of ohio who says there could be a wall in some places and technology in other places. i think you're going to get a down payment on border securit and then finally, one otr issue we're not paying too close attention to today, but it's still playing out in the background, is the fact that negotiations over health care reform still continue, and the white house believes it now has support for, if you want to call it obamacare repeal and replace, now has support from about 80% of the freedom caucus. neil? neil: all right, adam, thank you very much. so what does a former congressman who was involved in these exact type of meetings here, the wheeling and dealing that goes on the avoid a government shutdown, pete hoekstra with us right now. congressman, always great to have you on. first off, what do you make of the president telegraphing he can wait a little bit on this wall? obviously, he ran into a buzz saw, we're told republican concerns that this could really complicate matters when it comes to keeping the government lights on. what do you think of this? >> i think the president and the white house are going in exactly the right direction. don't fall into this trap of having to fund the wall in the first major appropriations, it's actually not that major to fund the government for the next five months. don't put all your eggs in this first funding mechanism. the president has three and a half years, major spending bill in september. he's got can get this done. neil: do you get a sense, congressman, that the tax cut -- we had dade stockman here -- david stockman here, if the president is sending signals that deficits be damned, it's t to be big and that is well woh it, it's going to create more revenues than is spent, do you subscribe to that? stockman did not. >> i heard that interview. i found it kind of interesting. no, i was part of congress when we actually balanced the budget back in 1995-1996 -- neil: i didn't know you were that old. i had no idea. [laughter] >> yeah. neil: i'm kidding. >> me either. [laughter] yeah. what did we do? we reformed the tax code, we cut taxes. we restrained spending. we didn't grow spending, we doesn't cut spending, but we slowed the growth, reformed welfare, we kind of came together, and what did we see? significant economic growth, and the end result was that we balanced the budget for four years. i think it's a pretty good formula to move forward, and i think the president's working on those. you know, reforming the tax code, cutting taxes is a positive thing -- neil: i think as you said at the time -- i'm sorry, but one of the key things you said at the time that it's a matter of the direction. bill clinton got that as well, this notion you don't have to solve the deficits and debt overnight. you have to show and convince the world that they're going the other way, and that can go a long way. >> oh, that's exactly right. we set in place, you know, a path that said we're going to balance the budget. and, actually, we balanced the budget three, four years ahead of schedule -- neil: that's right. >> -- because people saw a consistency. they said, hey, we now have a tax code that we know is going to be in place for a while. we've got a commitment over a long term to restrain spending. people invested, they spent money, and who is the biggest beneficiary of a growing economy other than the american people? the federal government. revenues soared -- neil: very true. >> -- and that's how we got to a balanced budget. neil: but the key there was combining the tax cut with realistic slowing government spending. you didn't have to instantly reverse it, just slow that down and send a signal that you mean what you say. >> that's exactly right. and i think donald trump understands that get the tax code in place, and i don't think you're going to see a, you know, and his budgets have proven it, you're not going to see an explosion in spending. clearly, he wants to invest in the military, and when you take a look at what's going on in north korea, when you see what's going on in the middle east, that is absolutely essential after the military's been starved for the last eight years. neil: all right. >> so that's a prudent expenditure, and that will help the economy as well. neil: congressman, you haven't aged a day. keep at it. very good seeing you. >> thanks, neil. neil: pete hoekstra, the former michigan congressman. the dow at about 250 points right now, the nasdaq over 6,000, facebook, alphabet both hitting all-time highs today. do any of you remember the fight back and forth with obamacare and all of that? forget about whether the

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