Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Let's turn back to Capitol Hill.
Speaker 3: The Treasury Secretary Scimpesson saying how since Senate Republicans can
Speaker 3: cut a deal on salt within the next two days,
Speaker 3: believing senators can begin voting on the bill by Friday,
Speaker 3: President Donald Trump writing, no one goes on vacation until
Speaker 3: it's done. The former chief of staff the Vice President,
Speaker 3: Mike penns Mark Short, joined us now for more. Mark,
Speaker 3: good morning, Good to see you as always, Thanks for
Speaker 3: being here, Thank you for being here. You're a big
Speaker 3: part of passing the president's first tax bill in his
Speaker 3: first term. How different is this effort? How much harder
Speaker 3: is it this time?
Speaker 1: I actually don't think it is harder, because I think
Speaker 1: the prospect of having a two and a half treeon
Speaker 1: hour in tax increase for a lot of Americans or
Speaker 1: twenty one hundred dollars per family is a big enough
Speaker 1: threat that it keeps you Republicans united. So there's going
Speaker 1: to be a lot of noise over the next several days,
Speaker 1: and a lot of noise on the Medicaid provisions will
Speaker 1: being noise unsolved, But I think ultimately there'll be sufficient
Speaker 1: votes in the House and.
Speaker 2: Sent to get it done.
Speaker 3: Can we get to the noise on sol And I'd
Speaker 3: love your personal opinion on this. What you think they
Speaker 3: should do that they aren't doing right now?
Speaker 1: Well, I think from a policy perspective, the salt provisions
Speaker 1: are terrible. I think the reality is that you have
Speaker 1: Middle America subsidizing blue states that are poorly run, and
Speaker 1: they have enormous deficits, and so they provide enormous deductions
Speaker 1: because their taxes are so high, it provides no incentive
Speaker 1: for them to actually fix their own problems if their
Speaker 1: wealthiest tax payers are able to have enormous deductions. Having
Speaker 1: said that, what I think is actually going to happen
Speaker 1: is they think that with the standard deduction now at
Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars, the priority for those who want the
Speaker 1: salt deduction is to get it to forty thousand, but
Speaker 1: they'll lower the income threshold. Now, how many people have
Speaker 1: income under forty four hundred thousand dollars they're taking deductions
Speaker 1: of over forty thousand, I think is probably a pretty
Speaker 1: small number. But the realtor base, actually the lobby base,
Speaker 1: is more concerned about getting the deduction back because one
Speaker 1: of the provisions that we pass twenty seventeen. Prior to that,
Speaker 1: there were thirty one percent of taxpayers itemized. Today it's
Speaker 1: down to nine or ten percent. And the real estate
Speaker 1: industry wants that back, and so I think you're going
Speaker 1: to see them fight for the forty thousand, the lower
Speaker 1: the income threshold.
Speaker 4: I will just say New York does contribute about eight
Speaker 4: percent of the GDP to the overall United States of America,
Speaker 4: and it doesn't get the same amount back. So there
Speaker 4: is this argument being made by a lot of representatives
Speaker 4: in New York that actually the US is the number
Speaker 4: of blue states have been cheated by US spending. So
Speaker 4: I mean that is sort of a backdrop here, just
Speaker 4: to recognize that.
Speaker 1: I think leastly just argument go on a per capita basis. Sure,
Speaker 1: but I think it's hard to argue that New York
Speaker 1: and federal cities aren't getting their fair share of federal dollars.
Speaker 4: To take a step back and beyond the SEL debate,
Speaker 4: which I'm sure it could be, we don't want to
Speaker 4: get to New York.
Speaker 2: Social media spending.
Speaker 4: Social media spending, I'm telling you, just definitely invest in
Speaker 4: in hone those strategies. But I am curious about, you know,
Speaker 4: just going forward, how important it is to get those
Speaker 4: offsets and how to attenuated. Some of the Republican Congress
Speaker 4: members are to offsetting any kind of increase the deficit,
Speaker 4: if it's not from potential cuts, then from increasing tariffs.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, those are two big different questions. I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit cynical on this, I confess to you. The
Speaker 1: reality is that neither party is addressing was driving that
Speaker 1: the deficit is the debt. Neither party is willing to
Speaker 1: address entitlements pending. So you're going to hear people who
Speaker 1: pound their chest and say we're fiscal conservatives and we
Speaker 1: need more cuts here, but we're really talking about pennies
Speaker 1: on the margin of the size of this bill and
Speaker 1: the size of where our debt is today. So if
Speaker 1: they were really serious about wanting to cut the debt,
Speaker 1: they'd actually be addressing in titlements. And so yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you'll see some posturing from some people, but ultimately,
Speaker 1: again I think they're going to fall in line because
Speaker 1: it's not just the fact you have an enormous tax
Speaker 1: increase on working families. There's also significant border funding in
Speaker 1: this And if you can tell me that they're going
Speaker 1: to be members from border states who are Republicans are
Speaker 1: going to pose this bill with President Trump in the
Speaker 1: White House. I just don't see it happening now. On
Speaker 1: the terroriffs, look, the reality is you talk about the
Speaker 1: significant revenue coming in. I think that again, that's a
Speaker 1: tax on the American people. That's what the Repords Company
Speaker 1: is not coming from foreign Government's coming from American importers.
Speaker 1: And the reality is you're one hundred percent right on
Speaker 1: the days of this that you know we're anticipating from
Speaker 1: Peter Navarro ninety deals in ninety days. We see where
Speaker 1: that's con so far. And I think they wanted to
Speaker 1: push the July nine D eight because they're hoping they
Speaker 1: get this all wrapped up by July fourth. If it
Speaker 1: slides past July fourth, I think you'll see that date
Speaker 1: slide as well. But you're going to continue to see
Speaker 1: I think the President wants the leverage to be able
Speaker 1: to use the tariffs however he wants whenever he wants,
Speaker 1: which provides enormous uncertainty in the economy.
Speaker 3: The presidents of the Nights have summer today. I'd love
Speaker 3: to turn to foreign policy with you. What did you
Speaker 3: think through the strike server at a weekend and the current
Speaker 3: posture of this administration.
Speaker 1: I think it was exactly the right call, and I
Speaker 1: think that it's actually pretty consistent with where he was
Speaker 1: in the first administration if you recall the maximum pressure
Speaker 1: campaign and the strike on solid Money. I think what
Speaker 1: is different is that I think the first administration had
Speaker 1: a pretty united foreign policy. I think there's much more
Speaker 1: divergence in the second administration on what that foreign policy.
Speaker 2: Is within the White House, I think, so I.
Speaker 1: Think within the White House too, not just with outside.
Speaker 2: What do you think the biggest difference is at the
Speaker 2: moment within the White Well.
Speaker 1: I think that there's a lot of people who have
Speaker 1: embraced sort of the isolationism of the party today, and
Speaker 1: I think they are represented, their voices are representing the
Speaker 1: White House. But I think the President made the right decision,
Speaker 1: and I think that I think moving forward, Iran wants
Speaker 1: ceasefire because it buys some more time. I mean, how
Speaker 1: many seasefires have Iran and Hamas agreed to since the
Speaker 1: Ranian Revolution forty six years ago. So I think it's
Speaker 1: important in the United States stand with Israel.
Speaker 3: And this is going to sound somewhat contradictory. But to
Speaker 3: be successfully isolationists, do you have to be interventionists sometime?
Speaker 3: Do you have to demonstrate that to do nothing you
Speaker 3: have to be willing to do something now?
Speaker 1: Again, Well, that assumes that those who are articulating isolation's
Speaker 1: views today are actually consistent in their viewpoints. I think
Speaker 1: that in many cases there are plenty of grifters that
Speaker 1: have surrounded the president and so they were isolations in
Speaker 1: this moment, they were interventionists eight, nine, ten years ago.
Speaker 1: So I think the premise of your question applies there's
Speaker 1: actually consistency on those articularly in that few today, And
Speaker 1: I don't think there.
Speaker 4: Is just pairing this with NATO. Do we have a
Speaker 4: sense of what the final word is going to be
Speaker 4: with Russia and Russia Ukraine? Given the willingness to use
Speaker 4: intervention in or on, is there a discussion around that
Speaker 4: and support for that in the case of Russia.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the biggest, starkest differences between
Speaker 1: the first administration and the second administration. And the first administration.
Speaker 1: President Trump would be very proud about having sent Javelin
Speaker 1: missiles and talked and ridiculed that Obama only sent blankets
Speaker 1: to Ukraine, there was plenty of I think deterrence against Russia.
Speaker 1: That it seems this time around that is not that
Speaker 1: same position, and so I'm not sure that what happened
Speaker 1: in the Middle East and Iran actually applies to what's
Speaker 1: going to happen in Ukraine and Russia. It seems that
Speaker 1: this administration is not as supportive in Ukraine as the first.
Speaker 2: Trump administration UK What do you think changed.
Speaker 1: I think that there's several things that change. I do
Speaker 1: think that there's a different personnel in the White ass
Speaker 1: I think that from where it was as far as
Speaker 1: the State Department, the National Security Staff, and frankly the
Speaker 1: Vice President. I think those are big personnel changes that
Speaker 1: differ in this form policy.
Speaker 3: Make sure I appreciate your time as always. Good to
Speaker 3: see you, Thanks for being here. Really good to see you.