Dramatically, so quickly, and we are still talking about the trump bump. The question in my mind is when does it stop. Berman we continue with jay wright, head mens basketball coach at vile villan. Its the most important aspect, attitude. We wear attitude wrist bands. When we break a huddle we say one, two, three, attitude. What were reminding ourselves is were not responsible for the results of what happens. Were responsible for our effort and our attitude going forward. So as we get guys at 18 years old that come, in theyre basketball players. They know theyre supposed to get a the degree and an education, but when they first come to learn basketball, we teach them first the play you make is not as important as how you react on the next play. Thats whats most important. We want you to use that attitude to separate you from other players. Berman we continue with omar saif ghobash, author of letters to a young muslim. The ideas of connecting principles and concepts goes back a long way to when i was 14 and 15 and i was going through a phase of asking many different questions and not finding the answers in our culture, but there was a sense in which you couldnt pose those questions. What i noticed is, as time went by, the situation hadnt changed and i noticed exactly the same process is occurring in my older and younger son. So i decided that, if nobody else had done it, then i should make my best effort. Berman politics and economics and letters to a young muslim, when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose good evening. Im Dennis Berman filling in for charlie rose. Donald trump swept to a white house on a promise to improve the lives of those left behind by the financial crisis and other changes overtaking the economy. He has also pledged to revoke and replace Barack Obamas significant achievement as president , the Affordable Care act, but the hurdles to achieving this ambition appear increasingly challenging for president trump. Joining me from washington is David Leonhardt, columnist for the New York Times and he writes about the problems facing the president s effort to dismantle obamacare in todays time. Also joining me is william cohan, here in new york. A special correspondent for vanity fair and author of a provocative newlytitled book why wall street matters. I note we are taping this program before president trumps address before Congress Later this evening. David, you mentioned in your column basically the. Republicans are backed into a corner on obamacare. What do you mean . President obamas health law was politically moderate health law. It was marketbased, took ideas from both the right and left and essentially said were going to expand coverage for people in this marketbased way. It was to the right of not only bill clintons plan, it was to the right of Richard Nixons plan, way to the right of Harry Trumans plan. So if you want to expand Health Insurance coverage, its really hard to do it in a way thats a lot more conservative than obamacare. And republicans did a very effective job politically of blasting obamacare, but now that theyre actually running government, they realize getting rid of obamacare and also keeping their other promises, which is not throwing people off of healthcare and not causing prices to go up, is actually enormously difficult, and they still may do it and decide theyre willing to accept throwing people off of healthcare, but theyre struggling now. You mentioned the term imaginicle promises of trump. What is specifically magical by your reckoning . Hes had several lines where he basically said this version of were going to cover everyone, the coverage is going to be better and cheaper. And, you know, people economists like to say there is no such thing as a free lunch, right . That you cant both cover everybody and have everything be cheaper. Or if you did, it would require really hard choices about getting rid of waste in the Healthcare System that led to the whole debate over death panels. So neither trump nor the Congressional Republicans have ever said, look, what were going to do is we are going to cut tax bus that also means were going to have to cut benefits, or were going to raise tax and raise benefits. Theyve just sort of pretended they could have it all. When they werent governing, they were able to do that. Now that theyre actually in charge, its proven particularly difficult. The republican governors are interesting to watch because they actually have to run states. When they came together this weekend, they said, wait a second, we dont want you throwing a lot of our citizens off Health Insurance, and those are the kind of tensions republicans are trying to figure out how to solve. Berman lets bring in bill cohan. Thanks for joining us. Bill, there seems to be a predicament by many of the ideas presented by the Trump Administration. Lots of great promises, the market believes it. What can we expect from the market realities hitting the policy reacts from your vantage point. We often back to election eve when it looked like trump was going to and did win, the market futures fell about 1,000 points, and i think everybody thought it would go downhill from there. A lot of people said its remarkable the opposite happened. The pundits were wrong, the market is approaching 21,000. I can only imagine what the reaction among americans would be if the market had in fact fallen to 14,000 instead of rising to 21,000. I think donald trump has gotten a lot of political mileage and economic mileage out of the fact that the markets have risen so dramatically, so quickly, and we are still talking about this trump bump. The question in my mind is when does it stop . Obviously, we know its not going to go on forever, never does. But the question is when will people sort of come to terms with the fact that the trees dont grow to heaven, and i think its going to start when, as david was talking about, if obamacare does not get repealed and the costs related to that, the costs of this proposed new budget that were beginning to hear more and more about, what if he cant repeal some of the regulations that hes talked about repealing . What if he cant get the tax cuts hes talked about, that hes promised . What if he cant repatriate these trillions of dollars from overseas . When his reality of governing hits up against the promises that he made, then i think people are going to say, hold it, whoa, we may need to rethink this stock market direction here. Berman david whats the reality on the trump agenda as you see it . We have skepticism as to how the market is reacting toward trump either way. We had a stock market boom for the vast majority of president obamas presidency, we had stocks rising when people thought Hillary Clinton was going to be elected. Then there was the little gyration when trump was elected and the market has gone back to booming more. I think any effect the president has on the market is relatively ended and the market boom could end if trumps agenda succeeds and the market boom could continue even if his agenda falls apart. I think one of the lessons is we as citizens give president s way too much credit for the economy and too much blame. It wasnt actually george h. W. Bushs fault we had a recession in the early 90s, et cetera. I think the question is is the Trump Administration doing the kinds of things that are likely to lift growth . Im skeptical. Berman why . Give us three quick examples, if you could. The basic notion that the way to turbo charge growth is to cut taxes and to have less regulation. If you look over the last 50 years, there isnt evidence one way tore the other. Yes, growth surged after Ronald Reagan did that but growth was weak after george w. Bush did it and growth was faster under bill clinton who regulated and raised taxes under Ronald Reagan. So i looked at all that evidence and i would say i dont think even modest or significant changes in the tax rate are the prominent or significant drivers of growth. These things are more unrelated than related. Berman if nothing matters, what does matter when it comes to the American Economy . Well, things certainly matter. I think longterm absolutely no question education matters. I dont think anything matters as much as education and the skills of a workforce long term. Thats not a yeartoyear thing. I think we know much less about the economy, we know the fed is important and avoiding financial crises are important. I think the odds of a financial crises in the next few years are relatively low, but i worry we could be seeing signs of excess. And we saw a decade ago that not caring about regulation is not a particularly great way to avoid dpliedges sees. Berman bill you wrote a book why wall street matters. Do you agree with david . Sounds like a centrist view hes taking there. I dont want to be put in a position of disagree being david but im going to a little bit here. I do think tone matters. I do think some policies do matter. When you, just as a pure mathematical calculation, if you increase corporate profits by reducing taxes, for instance, then, as you know, the pricetoearnings ratio that the market is driven on, the stock market will go up because earnings have gone up. You dont have to expand the multiple on that for that to happen. I think some of the reason why the stock market has gone to 21,000 is the expectation that those tax rates will be cut, Corporate Tax rates, which are obviously the highest in the western world and probably need to be lowered, though im not sure why, but it seems to be something people talk about and are excited about, and i think thats part of the reason why the stock market has gone up. You know, when you deregulate, i mean, look, the pendulum swings, right . You know, the Clinton Administration at the end, you know, took off stegall and is a freeforall. The law that governed how banks were regulated. Could be both in the investment and commercial banking business. You know, under christopher cox, the surfer congressman who was chairman of the s. E. C. During the george bush administration, all sense of regulation was taking off. Basically, it was like wall street was driving on the wrong side of the road with a ferrari and a whiskey bottle in their hand. No surprise we got into a huge financial crisis in 2008. Now were in a position where there has been too much regulation, too much sand thrown in the gears of left veteran cal of capitalism, this beautiful machine, and now were in a position where donald trump says, hey, well take all this off. I think there needs to be a grand bargain with wall street where there is a corresponding agreement with wall street that were going to reform our compensation system so our incentives on wall street are not to reward people for taking risks with other peoples money. If you take away regulation and let people guam wbl peoples money youre asking for a financial crisis. Thats where i disagree with david, if we dont marry a grand bargain of compensation and incentive reform on wall street with this deregulation, you are virtually guaranteed a financial cry sills. So from a legislative standpoint, your best tweaks would be, from your perspective, what . I think it depends what the goal is. I think if the goal is longterm growth, then i think you want to make sure youre not running up longterm deficits. So im concerned that the whole focus of the Trump Administration is on the discretionary budget and there is no focus at all on Social Security and medicare which is all our longterm fiscal challenges come. Im concerned we seem to be disinvesting in things like science, education and things we know fuel longterm growth. So i think there are lots of things that matter. My skepticism is whether we can draw a Straight Line from most of these policies to the economy next quarter or the stock market this month. Berman all right, the deficit question is important. If we look at the numbers debt to g. D. P. Is around 110 , which is a rather incredible number. Weve gotten used to it in the last ten years, bill, but back prior to that in the aughts, we were 60 to 70 . I think this is hanging over the Trump Administration because all hes talking about, the nontext policy center examined trumps proposal and said the National Debt will go from 20 trillion to 27 trillion, were going to look more like greece and japan on a debt to g. D. P. Ratio before long weeks already starting to get there. 110 from 60 is mind boggling. Weve had big wars and theyre very expensive and we seem to be comfortable with the National Debt and Interest Rates have been so low so thats the market basically saying were comfortable with your high debt to g. D. P. Ratio, but at some point something has to give. You cant give all the toys away for free and not expect to have to pay for them. David, youre on the ground in washington. Are the republicans willing to go further on the deficit than previously to get some of trumps agenda passed in perhaps ways they werent comfortable before . I think its unlikely. I mean, i think what weve seen from Congressional Republicans is their number one priority on fiscal matters is cutting top tax rates, cutting taxes for companies and higherincome individuals. Thats a higher priority for them than the deficit. My guess is that are continue. Theyre in a tricky spot right now because the way theyve lined this up legislatively and procedurally, healthcare has to come before taxes. They have an easier path to a republican deal on taxes than on healthcare, but they cant get to Health Care Without first passing health care or abandoning it. You saw the president lament this yesterday the fact tha Health Care Comes first. So thats going to be one of the interesting things to watch today, abandon health care or do they come on a deal on health care which lets them goat taxes. And i think republicans, good deal or not, im skeptical, will be able to agree to a deal, will substantially cut highend taxes and substantially increase the deficit. Berman doesnt that go against republican views for the last three decades . The catechism of the republican economic platform has been deficit reduction, redo you seeing the debt, and now were talking about as if those things dont matter. Its mind boggling to me. Berman what do the republicans say, david, to someone in his or her district, exactly what bills saying, i have been preaching this a long time. Whats the argument . Americans arent that worried about the deficit right now and i dont think theyre crazy to be focused in the medium term on other issues. I would argue wage stagnation, i would argue the rise in nonemployment that isnt captured by the unemployment rate, i would argue all those things are more serious immediate issues than the deficit. I think the deficit is a more serious longterm issue, but i dont think theres a huge political price to pay for raising the deficit. The question is how do voters react when they see the deficit was going up and the reason it was going up was to deliver tax cuts to people already doing very well. I dont know what the answer will be, but im confident the democrats will run on that in the midterms if thats what the republicans do. Lets have one question for each of you. A lot of people voted for drimp, and they had grievous about the way the economy was headed. For people who dont Pay Attention to all this stuff were talking about but who care about whats in their pocketbook, whats the single most important thing they should be paying attention to right now, bill is this. In my mind, its how donald trump deregulates wall street, how he deregulates business generally and how he sort of unleashes the power of our economic engine, you know, and allowing capital to flow to Small Businesses that need it, to hire more people, to build new plants and equipment, to pay people higher wages, that is the single best way, i think, that the people who were so concerned about the way they have been treated and who voted for donald trump, theyre going to get the greatest benefit when that economic engine is starting to run properly again. Berman david, for people who dont care who David Leonhardt is or what he says, whats the thing they need to be most focused on . And to be clear, i think a lot of these grievous are legitimate. I think people have a right to be angry about the economy. I think in the short term, whether republicans or democrats, i think they should care about Health Insurance because its a huge driver of bankruptcy. If we go back to the system where you dont have Health Insurance through your job, were talking about huge numbers of people subject to bankruptcy. I encourage them dont just look at washington. Look at your local School District. Nothing affects long term growths and communitys Living Standards like education. There is so much focus on washington. For people who dont care about the weektoweek stuff in washington, focus on how your School District is doing because that will have a huge effect on the quality of your childrens lives long term. David leonhardt, william cohan, thank you. Always a pressure to chat. Thank you. Berman tomorrow is march 1, first day of the month to have the ncaa tournament. Villanova is seeking to repeat as national champions