Populations, where a group of animals from one side cannot reproduce with another group of animals. The survival of the species is at risk. Woodruff all that and more, on tonights pbs newshour. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by moving our economy for 160 years. Bnsf, the engine that connects us. Supporting social entrepreneurs and their solutions to the worlds most pressing problems skollfoundation. Org. The lemelson foundation. Committed to improving lives through invention. In the u. S. And developing countries. On the web at lemelson. Org. Supported by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation. Committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org and with the ongoing support of these institutions this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Woodruff the Trump Administration is out with the Broad Strokes of what it calls the largest tax reform in u. S. History. The plans main features, released today, include cutting Corporate Tax rates to 15 from 35 . It would also consolidate existing income tax brackets into just three, ranging from 10 to 35 . And, it would double the standard deduction, while repealing the estate tax. At a white house briefing, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin promised the plan will not make the deficit worse. This will pay for itself with growth and with reduced reduction of different deductions, and closing loopholes. We will be working very closely, as i said, with the house and senate, to turn this into a bill that can be passed and the president can sign, and theres lots and lots of details going into how that will pay for itself. Woodruff Republican Leaders said the plan offers critical guideposts for tax overhaul, but democrats called it a massive tax break for the wealthy. On another issue, secretary mnuchin said today that President Trump has no intention of making his tax returns public. Congress moved closer today to trying to prevent a Government Shutdown on saturday. Democrats say one stumbling block apparently fell away when the white house agreed to continue subsidies for millions of poor people under obamacare. Meanwhile, conservative House Republicans announced they will back a newly revised plan to repeal and replace obamacare. It is not yet clear if moderates will go along. There is word that President Trump has settled on a course of action against north korea. A Top National Security advisor says it begins with diplomacy, but includes a range of options. That word came as all 100 senators took a bus caravan to the white house for a classified briefing. Democrat chris coons of delaware was among those who spoke afterwards. I was encouraged that they chose to brief the entire senate. And it was a sobering briefing where it was clear just how much thought and planning is going into preparing military options, if called for, and a diplomatic strategy that strikes me as cleareyed and well well proportioned to the threat. Woodruff house members had their briefing later at the capitol. And, north korea issued a new warning that it will go to the end apparently meaning a Nuclear Strike if there is an allout war with the u. S. China today unveiled its first domesticallybuilt aircraft carrier, the latest step in a major naval expansion. The vessel slowly slipped into the water in the port city of dalian, to much fanfare. It is expected to become operational by 2020, after undergoing sea trials. President trump today decried a new legal blow to his immigration policy. On tuesday, a federal judge in San Francisco blocked his order to withhold funding from socalled sanctuary cities, which seek to protect many of those who are undocumented. The president tweeted that the decision was ridiculous and vowed to appeal. He lumped that in with criticism of the 9th judicial circuit, where Appellate Courts also blocked his travel ban. Later, he echoed that complaint im never surprised by the 9th circuit. laughter as i said, well see them at the Supreme Court. Woodruff mr. Trump later told the Washington Examiner newspaper that he has considered proposals to split up the 9th circuit. Meanwhile, the department of Homeland Security formally opened a new office to help victims of crimes by undocumented immigrants. Secretary john kelly said it will help shine a light on victims, as part of the president s push on illegal immigration. Multiple studies show native born americans commit more crimes than immigrants do. The Trump Administration is going to review socalled National Monument designations for millions of acres of federal land. They go back to president clintons time in office. Mr. Trump ordered the review at the interior department today. It is aimed at what he called a massive federal land grab that bars drilling, mining and other uses. Environmental and tribal groups denounced the action. On wall street today, the Dow Jones Industrial average lost 21 points to close at 20,975. The nasdaq fell a quarter of a point, and the s p 500 slipped one point. Woodruff still to come on the newshour i sit down with white house budget director Mick Mulvaney to talk about the president s budget and tax priorities; approaching President Trumps first 100 days in office a look at what he has accomplished here at home, and much more. Woodruff on this day when the white house is unveiling the outline of a tax system overhaul, and negotiating down to the wire over a federal spending plan to fund the government through september, i sat down with the head of the office of management and budget, director Mick Mulvaney. Firsts aigthsdz i spoke with him at his office this afternoon, before there were reports of a deal on health care subsidies. Director Mick Mulvaney, thank you very much for talking with us. Judy, thank you for having me. Woodruff i did want to start with talking to you about taxes, the big announcement today. Sure. Woodruff the proposal, among other things calls for increases in standard deductions, individuals and families. Big cuts in corporate business taxes. What is the administration trying to accomplish with this proposal . Getting Economic Growth back where its supposed to be. I think what weve forgotten for the last decade is that america used to be a fastgrowing economy. If you look over the course of our 200plus years, were supposed to grow at about 3 on average and thats where weve been since world war ii at the very least, even further back than that. And for the last decade, we have been growing at 2 . That doesnt sound like much, but when you think of it in terms of the compound interest, and an economy our size growing only 2 a year instead 3 the difference is tremendous. Folks who are 30 years old, have never had a job during a time when the economy was growing at 3 . And its entirely different. When i was a young person, if you got fired, you could find another job. If you wanted to quit, you could start your own company. We havent had that for 10 years and were trying to get back to that. That is what is driving not only everything we do at the white house but the tax plan. Woodruff a lot of analysts say when you put together the proposed business tax cuts it, the individual cuts, and the proposal to do away with some of the taxes now in the Affordable Care act, in essence, its the top 1 of americans, 1 of american highincome level who are going to benefit the most from this. How do you im not sure how could they could come to that conclusion. I would be curious to know what assumptions theyre making regarding the value of deductions. For example, we get rid of all the dedeductions on the personal side, except charity and some of the home interest deduction. Im not sure how you could make that conclusion, unless youre making some wild assumptions about the name of those deductions. Woodruff where do you see the benefits coming, what income . Middle class and business, writ large, both Large Business and Small Business. In fact it should be one of the largest deductions on Small Business, s. Corporations in the history of scorporations. Were trying to drive the economic benefit to the taxpayers in the middle, the folks who are in the middle class, who are paying the taxes and the place wheres they work. Woodruff we know the tax cuts for these socalled passthrough businesses, ownerowned businesses, are going to be among the beneficiaries. We know President Trump, its the kind of business he has. How much does he stand to benefit . And i ask people of because people are saying we dont know what his tax income situation is. He has said hes not going to release that. How does the public know that he doesnt stand to benefit significantly . I actually dont care about whether or not someone else benefits. I care about whether i benefit, i being just anybody. As long as im better off, why should i care if somebody is as well . What i look tat through is the lens of the business i used to run. I owned a restaurant, a fast, fresh, restaurant mexican restaurant. I rolled burritos the name i announced i was running for congress. S corporations pay tax at the passthrough rate, typically the highest individual rate of the owners of the business. You take that to 15 tallows me to keep a lot more money in my business. What i would have done had i still been in that line of work is start preparing to open another restaurant. Woodruff i want to ask you about the revenue loss that comes from all these tax cuts. The administration at one point was talking about a border tax, some dined of adjustable tax at the border. That doesnt appear to be part of the proposal right now. How do you address significant drop in revenue at a time when the country is has deficits that are historic . We can talk about deficits more and i want to. But lets talk about you asked a couple different things, which is the border tax. Keep in mind, that this is the first round of discussions. Its not a precooked bill. Its not prepackaged. This is sort of our principles, so just because its not in this first round of principles, doesnt mean it wont be in a final version of the bill. The president is interested in trying to figure out a way to tax imports, especially from countries that tax our exportz. Regarding the revenue loss, keep in mind, the Corporate Income tax only generates i think only 300 billion a year. So you can do a fairly good bit within the Corporate Tax and not cost a lot of revenue. And finally and youve heard secretary mnuchin talk about this today were hoping for really, really good growth from these tax reform s. Pgh woodruff but as you know, when big tax cuts instituted during the presidency of ronald raigoon, that growth didnt materialize. They ended up having to raise taxes again by the end of his administration. Aaah, actually thats not true. We did get really good growth from the regan years. We saw g. D. P. Grow at very high rates as we came out of recession, something that didnt happen at the end of the recession in 2007, 2008. President obama chose to deal with his recession by increasing regulations and getting government more involved in the economy. April regan decided to do the exact opposite. President regan got a tremendous result in terms of Economic Growth. President obama gave us eight years without 3 growth. I do think history shows us if we do the tax reform right, that we can put people back to work and grow the economy. Woodruff well, i want to move on to the budget. Sure. Woodruff you finish up the fiscal year later on. Right now, we dont know if theres an agreement on a spending on a spending plan for the rest of this year. Where does that stand right now . That is a really, really good question, and i dont know, either, which bothers me a little bit because im the budget director. But we thought we had a deal on monday. The democrats objected to our inclusion of the bricksandmortar portion of the border wall. They said that was a poison bill expil to sort of drive home their point they said, well, now we want these costsharing payments, cost the c. S. R. Payments the cost sharing reduction payments to the industrys part of the obamacare, and they put that on after they found out our request for the wall. We took the wall request away on monday and were still waiting for the democrats to let us know where they stand. We thought we had a deal on monday, almost 48 hours ago now, and we have no idea where the democrats are. We dont know if theyre doing internal polling that maybe says theyre going to benefit from a shutdown. We really were not concerned yet, but im a little surprised that we havent buttoned this up. Woodruff is the administration, are you, the president , prepared to go ahead with with a spending arrangement that does not include these payments to subsidy payments to Insurance Companies that help lowincome americans . Thats whole idea. The bipartisan bill that i think has been negotiated now for three months, two months, on the hill, never included those payments until about two weeks ago. So we just assumed when we gave up on our immediate demands for the bricksandmortar wall that the democrats would do the same thing and for some reason theyre not being straight forward yet in what they want to do with the payments. Woodruff the white house you mentioned the wall, the fact that the president said he felt very strongly bthere had to be money in there to pay for a bricksandmortar wall. What signal that does that send . That was a centerpiece of his campaign. Yeah, the day after we signed the bill that keeps the government open for the last five months of the fiscal year our fiscal year ends the end of september the discussions begin immediately for the larger budget for the full 2018 fiscal year in fact, thats the budget we happen to be working on today as well. Were doing 17 and 18 at the same time. Those conversations will have actually already started in terms of what wall funding will be in 2018. So i dont think its fair to say hes dropped anything. We simply said, look, this is the last five months of the fiscal year. Theres very little we can get built in five months anyway, so lets focus instead on things we agree on. The democrats say they support Border Security. In 2006, for example, thensenator obama voted for a lot of the stuff were asking for right now . Woodruff its not a lessening that this is a priority. Its a recognition of the fact that we only have five months left in the year anyway. Those are the only discussion were having right now. There are other things we can agree on. Lets agree on them and fund the government and Start Talking tag about 2018. Woodruff final question, were coming up on the 100day mark im familiar with it. I heard a little bit about it. Woodruff for President Trump. There are critics, even friends of the administration out there, who say this has been a rocky beginning for this administration, that you havent been able to get as much done as you wanted, pulling back obamacare hasnt been repealed and replaced. The border wall that weve just been discussing. How do you see these first 100 days . A lot of stuff that was entirely in our control, i think weve actually exceeded our own expectations. You can talk about the number of bills the president has signed. I think theres been at least 13, more than any president since world war ii. The number of executives orders weve issued. Again, its not just number of these things but what theyve done. Weve undone a lot of Regulatory Regime the Previous Administration nut. Weve undone a lot of damage they did with our executive orders. So weve actually been able to reduce role of government in your life a great deal in the first 100 days. We take that as a huge success. I think President Trump is the first president since the 1880s to have a Supreme Court justice in the first 100 days. Yes upon we have not gotten health care done. Ywere just starting tax reform today. But keep in mind, those are things we have to work with congress, and congress turned out to be a lot more broken than we thought it was. In fact, one of the reasons we think democrats have not responded on our Funding Proposals for this year, is they dont want to give it to us within the first 100 days. Thats how poisonous the atmosphere is that were working in. They sort of agreed in principle. They want to say yes, but they wont say yes until after 100 days to deny that to the property thats absurd and the folks back home pay the price for that. Woodruff budget director Mick Mulvaney, thank you very much. Woodruff now, a very different view of the president s tax plans. William brangham takes it from here. Brangham in addition to cutting the corporate rate and reducing the number of tax brackets, the president s blueprint calls for eliminating the alternative minimum tax, or a. M. T. , as well as the estate tax. It would also eliminate any taxes on the first 24,000 of a couples earnings. And, it would cut all itemized deductions, except for two big ones mortgage interest and charitable giving. Im joined now by Jared Bernstein. Hes an economist who served in the obama administration. Hes now a fellow at the center on budget and policy priorities. Welcome. Thank you. Brangham first reaction to the president s tax proposal. There are a lot of problems with this proposal. I can think of three or four right off the t