He is a native of new york. Graduated from yale in 1995 , where he was the publisher of the yale daily news and also a member of skull and bones, which he cannot acknowledge because it is a secret society. 1985 is that right . Sec. Mnuchin if i were, i cannot acknowledge it. Mr. Rubenstein he joined Goldman Sachs in 1985, became a partner in 1994, and rose up to be a member of the management committee. He was the chief Information Officer of Goldman Sachs. He was also head of the Mortgage Securities department at he left one point. In 2002 after 17 years and armed june capital, which did number of financial investments, one of which was in the bank, which he bought from the fdic. He also was involved in the entertainment business. Entertainment, he financed and coproduced a number of movies avatar, mad max, superman, batman, other movies like that. Ultimately sold the bank and before that, he told me at a dinner once that he was going to become the Campaign Finance chairman for donald trump. I said, you will never do you heard from again because [laughter] mr. Rubenstein that probably wont lead to anything. Sec. Mnuchin that is correct. Mr. Rubenstein my predictions are usually wrong. It worked out reasonably well for you. [applause] sec. Mnuchin and for the president. Mr. Rubenstein and became secretary of the treasury, appointed by the president and confirmed on february 13 up 2017. Have you talked to your accounting about your own taxes . Are they going up or down . [laughter] sec. Mnuchin well, i am definitely making a lot less money in this job. I cant categorically say. But my rate is going up. Given california and new york, my rate is going up. Mr. Rubenstein are your friends still friends of yours because their tax rates are going up . Or are they saying they are happy . They are happy with the tax bill or not . Sec. Mnuchin absolutely. I think people understand the Economic Impact that this is having and will continue to have. I think even for people in new york in california, there is a slight increase. It is not a big increase on the high end. Obviously, we saw yesterday walmarts announcement, which was very impressive. Over a Million People at walmart getting additional bonuses. Were now up to 130 companies and 2 million workers that have gotten raises and special bonuses. Mr. Rubenstein the process of getting a tax bill through congress. Were you convinced you could get it done in the first year . Sec. Mnuchin i was. Originally i was on the record saying we could get it done by august. There was a scheduled to get it done by august. Obviously, the health care delayed things. This was a well thought out plan. Mr. Rubenstein it didnt go through what is called regular order, meaning Committee Hearings and so forth. Do you think regular order is more or less a good thing to avoid in tax legislation, or are you happy with the way it went . Sec. Mnuchin technically it did go through regular order. The issue is a went through reconciliation, which was 51 votes, but technically it did go through the Committee Process and regular order. Mr. Rubenstein is there anything in the bill that you wish was not in there . Is there anything you are not happy with . Sec. Mnuchin overall, i couldnt be more pleased with it. If you look at the process and i think what worked very well is first of all, the house committees had worked on taxes and thinking about this for a long time. Way before the president and i showed up, they had been working, had gone through a blueprint. During the campaign and developing the president s economic program, we spent a lot of time with the president thinking about taxes. Taxes were a major part of his platform and what he was going to do. I think we couldnt be more pleased. Thats not to say that every single page and every single line item, but we could not be more pleased with the overall bill. Sometimes after you pass these major bills, there is a socalled technical corrections bill. To get that past, you need 60 votes, presumably. Are you going to try to get a technical corrections bill or you dont need one . Sec. Mnuchin i think that is something we will see. I dont know if we will or we wont. It is something weve talked about. I would say as opposed to everyone else who has moved on to other legislative things, our number one issue is implementing the tax plan. It is a massive amount of work at treasury and the irs. Yesterday we Just Announced the new withholding tables. So people will get tax breaks in february, i would say. The good news is there is nothing we have identified so far that we think is particularly problematic that we think we would need a technical correction. There are like 80 sections of the bill left to the secretary to put out regulations. We have a lot of work at the treasury and irs. Sec. Mnuchin mr. Rubenstein very often when you pass tax legislation, the irs has more work. There does not seem to be evidence of hiring more irs agents. Is there effort to do that or you dont need to do that . Sec. Mnuchin this touches every single aspect of the irs from technology to processes to forms , and we are speaking with congress about getting additional funding for the implementation. We would expect we would hire a significant number of people to help with the of limitation. Mr. Rubenstein but not to audit people . [laughter] i would say, in all seriousness, one of my projects for the irs is to look at how we can use Technology Much more for audits. We want to make sure that we automate. As you know, there is something called the tax gap, the theoretical difference between what we do collect and what we should collect. We are going to look at using technology to narrow that. Mr. Rubenstein one of the most important changes in the tax code as a result of the bill is the elimination of the deduction for state and local taxes. There is a limitation of 10,000. That was controversial, politically controversial, i suspect. Do you think you could have avoided doing that if you had phased in the Corporate Tax cut . In other words, the Corporate Tax cut comes right away. If you phased it in over five years, would you have been able to keep that deduction . Sec. Mnuchin david, as you know, within reconciliation, we had a certain amount of money we had to work with. That is one of the tradeoffs we could have made. The elimination of what people refer to as salt, state and local taxes, that was something that was part of the house blueprint from day one. That was something we kind of thought through. For 10,000, i realize for people in this room, that may not sound like a lot for state and local taxes, but that was a meaningful impact for a big chunk of the country. I think we have the right balance. We have said this from day 1 why should the high tax states be subsidized . Let me just say, because then normally the followon question is, the high tax states are donor states and they give more money. My response to that is thats because there are more wealthy people that live in those states. Mr. Rubenstein some people say it was an effort by the red states to tax the blue states. Sec. Mnuchin i dont think thats the case at all. There is not one meeting i was ever in that anybody said this was a political issue. It was an economic issue. Mr. Rubenstein what do you think about governors who might be saying to your constituents, you can make your payment to your state and local taxes and make it a charitable to adoption . Charitable deduction . Sec. Mnuchin i think that is one of the funniest things i have possibly heard. [laughter] sec. Mnuchin i will say we will wait to see the language. I think most people understand the concept of a charitable deduction. That is voluntary, that goes to help people and things like that. It is very different than the high cost of real estate taxes in my favorite two locations, new york and california. Mr. Rubenstein so there would be no auditing of governors who proposed that . You wouldnt audit their taxes . Sec. Mnuchin we wouldnt audit their taxes, but i can assure you we will audit real estate taxes this year. Mr. Rubenstein the people who worked on this tax bill, the gang of six, what were those meetings like . How did you avoid the press knowing when you were meeting . What was the interchange like . Sec. Mnuchin one of the things that worked really well is this was a team effort. There were a lot of people in the beginning who said, the white house and treasury should put out your own plan, you should write the bill. I think it was very clear to us from the beginning that we needed to make sure the treasury, the white house, the house, and the senate or on the same page. When we started the process, i think the house and senate were pretty far apart. We worked every week on narrowing those differences. And then just answer your second question about how did we avoid one of the good things about having the secret Service Follow me around is that they can take you through kitchens and garages and things like that conveniently. Mr. Rubenstein so the tax bill, it is said by some that it will increase the u. S. Debt by roughly 1. 1 trillion to 1. 5 trillion over five years. Do you agree with that . Sec. Mnuchin i dont. Mr. Rubenstein do you think it will be revenue neutral . Sec. Mnuchin here are the numbers. Lets start with joint tax, ch scored a dad i think atred a dad scored it 1. 5 trillion. That is what we had to reconcile to on a static basis with no change. Joint tax thought there was about 500 billion of what we call dynamic scoring, revenue we would get back. There was also another 450 billion or 500 billion in what we call the difference between the policy and the baseline. They were measuring it to the baseline, tax extenders rolled over every year. Again, our view is you should measure it to what the actual policy is. We think there will be over 1 trillion of growth. I do think it will pay for itself. Mr. Rubenstein you are projecting growth at 3 for the next 10 years or so. Sec. Mnuchin it is actually ut 2. 9 , but we do believe for modeling purposes, we used 2. 9 , but we do think we can get to 3 or higher. Mr. Rubenstein but if you fail, 2. 3 , theot 2. 2 or deficit would be much higher. Sec. Mnuchin by definition. But it is never going to be higher again. The worstcase scenario is the 1. 5 is the 1. 5 trillion less half 1 billion. Mr. Rubenstein there were no democratic votes for the tax bill. Did you try to get democratic votes . There was just no willingness to participate . Sec. Mnuchin we did. We had a series of meetings. The president hosted several bipartisan meetings. We had several democrats fly with us on air force one with the president to their home states when he gave speeches. From the beginning, the democrats sent a letter to the president and copied me and made very clear kind of what their conditions were. I think there was a big philosophical difference. We were focused on creating growth and creating things that were good for the american economy, and they kind of drew a line in the sand. Mr. Rubenstein if the democrats were to regain control of the government at some point, lets say congress and even the white house at some point, do you worry the tax bill would be undone because there are no democratic votes . Sec. Mnuchin not at all. First of all, i think it is an unlikely hypothetical, but even if it were, i think that that period i think it will be clear that you have the economic growth. If there is growth, it is not going to be unwound. Sec. Mnuchin money is going to be there is a tax on money that is offshore, so you are going to bring money back or put an excise tax on it. Presumably companies will bring it back. There is no requirement that they invest it in job creating kinds of things. Why was there no requirement that use it in a certain way . Sec. Mnuchin thats a good question. That is something we talked about a lot. Various people came up with ideas. Should we put conditions, attach it to this . I think our view was if we create the right incentives, companies will bring it back because we charged them the tax either way, so obviously there is a big incentive to bring it back. As you know, david, certain industries, people should make capital investments. Certain industries, people should return money to workers as we have seen with walmart. So i think philosophically our view was, let the companies allocate that capital. We believe 70 of it will ultimately flow back to the workers. Mr. Rubenstein the president was involved. Did you call him every day . Sec. Mnuchin the president was unbelievably involved. If i go back to the campaign, kind of on his two Major Economic speeches, one was detroit and one was new york. Literally up until he went on stage, he was fine tuning the tax rates, what we were doing. We debated them. I would say there is no question that for the last year, he called either gary or i or both of us every single day, with either he had views or we were reporting back to him what we were doing. Mr. Rubenstein when you get a call from the president , does that make you nervous, you dont know what he is going to say . Or you are happy to get those calls . Sec. Mnuchin no. It does not make me nervous. One of the good things for me in this job is i have known him for a long time. I traveled with him for a year on the campaign. I would not be here if i didnt feel like we could have a good twoway conversation. At the end of the day, i understand he is the president and it is his decision. On the tax bill today mr. Rubenstein on the tax bill today as you see it, you are very happy with it and you dont see any need to make modification. You are going to live with this bill, there is no effort to modify it in anyway. Sec. Mnuchin there may be a need for certain technical corrections. But i think again, there is nothing we have identified right now that is a problem, but we will see if we need to finetune anything. Mr. Rubenstein the debt of the United States is 20 trillion. You are responsible for making certain that we pay the debt. And as an owner of treasury bills, i want to make sure you do pay that debt. Are you worried about the debt limit . You are actually over the period of time now. You have a couple more months before you cant pay my treasury bills, is that right . Sec. Mnuchin this is one of the things that multiple treasury secretaries advised me on before i got into the job. I have been through one extension. Certain people were critical of me in the extension. At the end of the day, this is all about we absolutely have to raise the debt ceiling every time we get close to the debt ceiling. I think one of the things the president and i are thinking about is, how should this process be changed . We have a debt ceiling, we have a budget, and we have appropriations. In any business, you plan what you are going to spend and then you plan how you finance it. It is somewhat of a ridiculous process the way we do this. Mr. Rubenstein do you think we should have a debt limit at all . Sec. Mnuchin i wont go so far as saying we shouldnt have a debt limit, but i do believe when money is authorized to be spent, there should be some mechanism that the debt limit is also raised to pay for it. However we refine that process. Now er thing we are i am using these treasury superpowers because we have hit the debt limit. Again, the problem with that is all that does is the more time you extend it, this town doesnt really work until you hit a deadline that you need to do it. Mr. Rubenstein speaking of another deadline, the government will run out of money relatively soon. I think january 19 . Sec. Mnuchin that is, again, authorization to spend. We will not run out of money. The debt limit is running out i will have the cash, we just wont have the authorization to spend it. Mr. Rubenstein the operation of the government, the funding of the government, do you think that will get resolved in time . Sec. Mnuchin i dont think there will be a shutdown. I think it will either be resolved or there will be another cr to extend this. Mr. Rubenstein so lets go through a couple other things before we get back to the tax bill for a moment. You grew up in new york, went to yale, went to Goldman Sachs, why did you want to be an investment banker . Is that what you studied to be . Sec. Mnuchin i did study economics. When i was at yale, i was actually publisher of the yale daily news. I was very interested in publishing. Thought i i actually may want to go into publishing. I actually applied for a job at conde nast for the summer. I think probably one of the best things they ever did was reject me. They said, thank you very much but we are not hiring summer interns. I actually ended up working at Salomon Brothers were three Salomon Brothers for three summers. I had grown up around wall street and really liked the mortgage trading business. That is kind of where i started. Mr. Rubenstein so you left Goldman Sachs and started your own Financial Services company. One of the companies you bought was indymac. That was controversial at times. Why was it controversial . When you were confirmed, people ask you a lot about it. Sec. Mnuchin so, i was sitting in my office in new york during the summer of 2008, watching tv, all the news. This was kind of the middle of the crisis and indymac literally there were people lined up around the block time to get their money out. This was a real bank run. We had not had a bank run in a very long time. Indymac was one of the only deals the fdic actually had to take it over and operate the bank. Most of the ways the fdic took over banks is they would take it over friday night, sell it on friday night, open up for business on monday. Indymac was a highly problematic bank. It had specialized in nodoc loans. Their mortgage portfolio had 30 delete lindsays delinq uincies. Even during the financial crisis, it was hard to originate loans that were that bad. The only reason i was able to buy it and put together an Investment Group was no real bank wanted to buy it. It had every problematic loan. It had construction loans, home builder loans, a big portfolio of reverse mortgages. We came in, cleaned up, but the reason why it was controversial was because it had so many that we had tos work through those under government costsharing agreements. Mr. Rubenstein you ultimately sold it to cit, it did well. Let me ask you about your movie career first before i get to donald trump. What does a producer actually do . Youu are a producer are picking the actors or actresses . What does a producer actually do when you are producing these movies . Thet of all, i was proba