Next a look at President Trumps priorities for congress with White House Legislative Affairs director marc short. He talked reported at the Christian Science monitor breakfast. He says tax reform and a legislative fix for the daca program or deferred action for child arrivals, are high on the list. My friend, good morning. Im dave cook from the Christian Science monitor. Thanks for coming. Our guest today is marc short. Assistant to the president and director of the office of legislative affairs. This is his first visit with our low cal Breakfast Club come home to what steve bannon called the pearl clutching mainstream media. Thanks for making time for us in your busy schedule. Marc short, a virginia native graduated from washington and lee university. He got his start in politics serving as finance director for Oliver North Senate campaign picky when on to become executive director of the Young Americas Foundation where his role included stewardship of Ronald Reagans ranch. After running the ranch he earned an mba from university of virginia. He worked in my Security Department entering the Bush Administration served as senator hatch and since chief of staff and later was chief of staff with th House Republican confere under then conference chair mike pence picky was later hired by freedom partners for becoming the organizations present. And into the biographical portion of the program. Now onto breakfast mechanics. As always we on the record. Please note my blogging or tweeting. In short no filing of any kind while the breakfast is underway to give us time to actually listen to our guest says. Social embargoing the session is over. It will and probably at 9 a. M. To help you curve that relentless healthy urge will email several pictures of the session to all the reporters here as soon as the breakfast inns. As regular attendees know if youd like to ask a question please do the traditional thing and cindy aristotle nonthreatening signal and i will happily call on one and all in the time we have available. Given the number of reporters today, please try to confine yourself to one question and to others have had a chance. We will start off by offering our guest the opportunity to make some opening comments and they moved to question from around the table. And with that, they seek and for doing this. The four is yours. Ill be very brief because im anxious to get your questions, thank you for hosting me, a special thanks to david and linda for hospitality this morning for me and my team. I know Christian Science monitor has been a leader in helping to not just cover the news but help fridays and we appreciate [inaudible] we appreciate it. Im honored that you included me. Thank you. The Trump Administration has been and remains refocused on jumpstarting the american economy. And allowing the private sector to create jobs. What weve seen already is the president take unprecedented steps in cutting unnecessary regulations come basically getting government out of the way of our economy. The Trump Administration is withdrawn 860 regular joint actions to date and we work with congress to pass 14 pieces of legislation under the congressional review act. The executive actions of legislation combined to save our economy an estimated 18 billion annually. These actions are having a real impact in the lives of American People. To date since inauguration weve created 1. 2 million jobs, 125,000 of those in the manufacturing sector. Wages are up, Small Business optimism is up. The dow jones as you know is up 20 since election day at the and the s p just reached another record high. But theres a lot more that we can do to return jobs to american shores. Thats why the president is focused on providing tax relief this year. We have been working with congress to get unified tax relief to the president s desk. In fact, since april the white house has met with over 250 members of both parties of congress to discuss tax reform. Soon we will relieve an outline with congress and the committees will get to work on a bill. And the spending do we reach with Congress Just last week provideprovide the legislative e need to get this done this calendar year. But as weve all learned, the legislative process is slow. And then this new season of bipartisanship we hope Senate Democrats will end their Unprecedented Campaign of obstruction against some of our nominees. In total we sent 385 nominees to the senate. Only 35 of those of those nominees to date have been confirmed. By contrast, 70 of the Obama Administration nominees had been consumed by the same date in obamas presidency. At this point compress obama had 385 nominees confirmed compared to 133 for this administration. With the emergencies were facing in texas and in florida, the importance of getting these nominees into their jobs is hard to understate. Blocking these nominees during a National Emergency is dangerous and it is irresponsible. So we call on democrats to stop playing politics with our nominees and help us to fill our department. I will say that i am encouraged that last night i spoke with leader schumer chief of staff about a path forward, and in particular as you know today will be a confirmation vote on the council of economic advisers to pass it. We also believe that in much of the recovery at this point it turns to a housing issue in both, particularly texas likely in florida as well. And to date are deputy secretary of hide which is yet to be confirmed despite being voted out of committee three months ago. We do hope that they will allow for a vote this week and occurred some of my conversations last night that that will happen. On top of tax reform nominations on Hurricane Relief we have other important priorities for the American People. We are long overdue six to secure our borders and congress will provide the legislative fix to daca. The president is still committed to rebuilding americas infrastructure in this congress did we so think americans deserve relief from the spiraling cost of healthcare insurance and lack of options caused by obamacare. But these are just some of our priorities and theres a lot more to be done. Fortunately what weve seen so far in the economy is the president s policies particularly at executive branch level some of the Regulatory Reform is making a difference. Well continue to work with congress to fulfill the promises the president made to the American People. With that i look to your questions. Thank you. As you know my job is to throughout the ceremonial softball, then well go to john bennet, caitlin, justin, jonathan, elizabeth, heidi, dimitri, alexis, george. That should get us going. There are people who look at the deal that was done, fiscal deal that was done last week as a sign that President Trump is the First Independent president to hold that office, not focused in terms of load on either party trick is that an assessment you would agree with . How does it affect your job as legislative director . I think that the president first and foremost rather than Party Affiliation looks at what he can do best for the American People and to fulfill the promises he made on the campaign trail. I think that the deal that he struck last week enabled us to do the deck and focus on taxable. I think the president has made getting jobs back in our economy the number one priority, and that tax reform is what we think is necessary to get the economy growing again. I confess that i he did find soe of the coverage interesting because imaging and my opening remarks weve been meeting and a bipartisan level with members of congress for months on tax reform. And so the president has sought to get cooperation from democrats on several pieces of legislation, but i confess i think some of the coverage in our initial few months was that, i know im painting with a broad brush so forgive me but i think some of the commentary was this president bushs rely on his face and he cant accomplish lots as he continues to throw out in space to the last few days the coverage is been how windward is is present going to cost anything it be discarded the leadership of his own Republican Party . So theres an irony that its either youre not going to get anything done because youre just rely on your face or your neck anything done because youre partnering with schumer and flows in networking with the colleagues. Think the president s focus of what he can do for the American People. And the less worried about what relationships are come with the coverage is about the goingson with mcconnell, with ryan, pelosi or schumer. And you agree with the comment that he said majority of their made within your times that the deal last week is not as good as it looks for democrats because of the extraordinary measures being employed so that the debt ceiling doesnt happen, what happened until 2018 . I looked at it it was a good for the American People. The American People are tired of impasse in washington, tired of the dysfunction of washington, d. C. In many reasons that was what President Trump was elected. I think there was a lot of frustration about the way washington, d. C. , worked and in the matter of time we came in september with i think a lot of commentary about how in the work of everyone to get to september if theres a robot on debt ceiling, a roebuck and continued resolution, too much contrast to do. I think the president clear the deck effectively at the america people are believed they are not having crisis conversations about a continuing resolution, about a Government Shutdown or about the debt ceiling. I think that again he was looking out for whats in the best interest of the nation. John boehner from cq roll call. You mentioned speaker ryan and taxes. Speaker ryan has talked about a corporate rate somewhere maybe around 20. The president pretty firm is at 15 . Is it any wonder room on that 15 that could bring this some kind of deal together . Or is 50 nonnegotiable . The president wants to get corporate rates down to 15 . I think it doesnt help ourselves to negotiate against ourselves, and so we should anchor what we think is best and i think we all understand that ultimately theres probably compromise to get to the best deal, we think whats best for the American People is a 15 corporate rate right now. We think it makes us more competitive on the national stage. This isnt just about corporate rates. Its about jobs in her country. What we seems because of our unfair tax code that Many Companies have decided to leave america and take jobs within. We believe its important to reduce those rates so we can be more competitive and keep jobs here here. On daca, could you outline what the administration would be looking for and if the villain cox, something that would restore daca to be compared with, other security measures . Are you willing to go for more of the dream act scenario where they get actual legal status as opposed to [inaudible] i think the white house will be laying out legislative priorities that we would like to see, as any part of i daca package in probably within the next couple of weeks. But i will say that broadly there several things that we think are important we do think its important to secure our border we do think interior enforcement is critical and we also think we should be moving to a meritbased immigration system. To what extent that can be one package or not, multiple packages can we dont know. I would ask you got to think one thing that is not received enough attention is that this week on the house floor that will be a vote on ms13 legislation. That is been a priority of the administration to we worked with house leadership to get that on the calendar that has filed legislation that was previously passed on century city. The house passes on the people with several pieces of legislation that we think are critical to our country, and were hopeful that the senate will be taking up those bills at some point this fall. Justin from bloomberg. I want to go back to taxes and ask both, you met with mark meadows last week. Im wondering how that conversation went and did you guys are able to Reach Agreement on tax reform, and if you anticipate them helping, the House Freedom caucus helping with the push to just kind of fall on the earlier question. You want to get the corporate status as possible. Is it going to mean unlimited extension which Republican Leaders leadership across with said really essential to the Economic Growth that you expected it . Lets take the second one first. On the expensing front we do not think that expensing should be prioritized at the expensive rate. We think thats whats more important to get the economy growing. [inaudible] the question was about expensing relative rates. My dew point is the administration believes that its more important to get rates down and that while we value the discussion on expensing we want to prioritize getting rates down. Regarding the conversation with mark meadows and Freedom Caucus, that is an ongoing conversation i think we partnered well within. We parted well with his conference. As you know they are very supportive with our efforts on repeal and replace. And so thats not an unusual current. I talked to mark prete said. I thought to this morning before coming over here. We value the partnership think that they laid out i think a pretty fair case which says in order to get tax reform done, we will have to pass a budget first. And their position is that we want to know whats in the tax reform package before we vote on the budget. I think their viewpoints are understood a and i think that ty will get details attachable before budget will come. Jonathan from the new jersey starledger. According to the Tax Foundation the state and local tax come with a half of those against a local Tax Deduction made less than 200,000 a year. So how can you describe this as a middleclass tax nobody making to a thousand dollars a year gets the estate tax or pace atop taxi. So can you describe as middleclass families attacks plant as present proposed that illuminates, lowes the cap rate and eliminates the state and local tax exception . Many of the most wealthy in her country and once i think could manage was an deduction think anybody else and i think im making the tax code simpler and more fair you will see will looking to get rid of the deductions that make it easier to comply with fairly difficult tax policy that america has right now. Additionally we would be lowering the individual rates on the middle income so we do want to prioritize income tax relief and despite the analysis that you cite, i think what weve seen in the analysis weve done is that those particularly in the state suffer from the highest tax burden on state and local taxes, and thats a deduction that is public belt probably better dealt with at the state level than the federal level. I want to continue on the theme of donald trump is the First Independent president. Theres been a lot of speculation over whether hes remaking the Republican Party or perhaps fomenting the schism within the party. I just curious what your take is on that and what kind of impact the president might have on the midterms next year . I dont think the president is fomenting the schism within the party. I think in many cases you look at the special election set event conducted zafar and the present is for the stick in many cases he is hoping to get the party granted back with the grassroots activist. So i think hes been an asset in helping us to strengthen the party. But again i think the president was a whats best for the American People. He saw looking at through a prison of what benefits which Political Party more. You want to do a followup . Okay, sorry. The Huffington Post at the end of the table. Thank you. I guess is the administration committed to making sure that corporate rate is extended to s corp and partnership . If so, is the white house prepared to explain how much the president personally will benefit from that change . I think that we are committed to extending it to Small Businesses, and i think the details of that will be coming forward and im going to ask on the second question about the president s benefit. I think thats been a conversation thats been discussed throughout the campaign. I think that he will be happy to share his tax returns when the audit is completed. Heidi from usa today. Thank you. Laying out the priorities on daca, im wondering that the continuous walk along the entire southern border help whatever compromise is reached by the end of the year on daca . I think that we are most interested in getting border security, and the president has made a commitment to the American People that he wants, he believes that a physical barrier is important to that equation of border security. Whether not that is part of a daca equation of whether or not thats other legislative vehicle i do want to bind ourselves into a con