New Tax Bill Provision Benefits Wealthy Trump & Corker.
BURNETT: New tonight, a tweak in the tax bill could be a major windfall for President Trump and possibly for a crucial Republican who suddenly turned from a no to a yes. All but ensuring the bill passes. I'm talking about Senator Bob Corker. That a provision allows people to make money off of renting or leasing real estate to take advantage of a 20% tax deduction. Coincidentally, that's how Corker and President Trump make millions of dollars between 1.2 and 7 million just for Corker alone last year. Now, Corker was a vocal no vote, the statistical (ph) change is not why he flipped to yes. In fact, he said he didn't even know about the change, which raises a crucial question. Then why is he supporting the bill, because he said deficits were the reason he was voting no in the first place, and of course, provision like this new one certainly don't address the deficit issue if anything they make it worse by putting Corker setting about face aside. The other big winner, of course, is President Trump. According to records, Trump Tower here in New York generating to $14 million in rent and leases, and his building down on Wall Street, $17.4 million. OutFront tonight, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and Austan Goolsbee, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Oboma. So, governor, let me start with you. Let's talk about Bob Corker. How in good faith can he vote for a bill when it not only clearly benefits him, which OK, fine, you didn't know about, but now he does? That -- but it also adds to the deficit, which he said, on principle, was the reason he couldn't support it.</s>GROVER NORQUIST, PRESIDENT, AMERICANS FOR TAX REFORM: OK. No. I talked to Corker two days before -- the Friday, he voted against the first bill in the Senate. He had hoped to have a trigger. But when I talked to him on Wednesday for half an hour, he was for the bill, he had agreed that there would be a 1$1.5 trillion reduction in total revenues. That was the amount of the reduction in taxes that he thought was appropriate, that growth would cover that. He then later thought maybe we should have a trigger to enforce it. And then when he got out on a limb on the trigger, he couldn't come back because the parliamentarian, not the Republican Senate, they were willing to give him a trigger, the parliamentarian said, you couldn't do that. So he was never objecting to the 1.5 trillion, and this whole discussion we're having is a teeny piece that doesn't even have anything to do with the 1.5 trillion. But he was always a yes on this tax bill, he wrote the 1.5, that was his number that Toomey (ph) and other Republicans negotiated with him, and Fortman (ph) and others. So, this idea that he flip-flopped is just fundamentally wrong. He's been -- this was his idea, 1.5, and this -- I -- the taking --</s>BURNETT: OK.</s>NORQUIST: -- House version rather than the Senate version --</s>BURNETT: So --</s>NORQUIST: -- doesn't change any of the deficit.</s>BURNETT: -- everything you're saying is absolutely true?</s>NORQUIST: Yes.</s>BURNETT: But Austan -- I'm not saying it is, I'm just saying, let's take it that way. But Austan --</s>NORQUIST: I'm telling you this.</s>BURNETT: -- what about the fact that the tax is -- I mean, this is assuming that the taxes get taken away for individuals in eight years. That's not going to happen, this whole $1.5 trillion is a whole load of BS, and I'm sorry to call like that but it is, and Grover, you know it. Austan.</s>AUSTAN GOOLSBEE, FORMER CHAIRMAN, COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS: Look, the thing is, the American people know perfectly well what this bill is. That's why only 26 percent of America approves of this bill. This is the Roy Moore of tax plans. This is a sham wrapped inside of a travesty, inside of an enigma. We're finding each day, a new stinking Easter egg we found. This one that -- oh it turns out the president of the United States stands to personally benefit millions. We're going to find a series of more of them, such as the president promising that hedge fund -- the heads of hedge funds would lose their carried interest deduction. Oh, we just found out they don't lose their carried interest deduction.</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>GOOLSBEE: It's a massive tax cut for high-income people and large corporations and barely anything and for millions of people and increase in the taxes on the middle class.</s>BURNETT: Well, it is an increase for the middle class and wealthy in many blue states, of course, which have high tax rates. A lot of people are going to be paying more across this country. Grover, you know the issue is here also what about this, what is it, the average family of four, $170 a month. That's how much they're going to save according to the GOP, even GOP estimates. How is that going to transform the economy?</s>GROVER NORQUIST, PRESIDENT, AMERICANS FOR TAX REFORM: OK, two things, one, I hate to break up the party about how lower and middle-income people aren't going to get anything, but I'm looking at the joint tax committee which is the official bureaucratic group that does all these ratings and if you look at who gets the biggest tax cuts, it's people earning between $20,000 and $50,000 a year, more as a percentage of their tax payments than the other group. So, this idea that somehow the rich guys are getting a bigger tax cut than other people, you're actually looking at a 6 percent cut for people who are in more than a million, 13, 11, 10 for people in the $20,000 to $50,000, range they get a larger percentage tax cut of what they pay. So, this argument that the D's are trying to push that lower and middle-income people are not going to benefit the problem they have is between now and the 2018 election, every two weeks, people are going to see one in their paycheck and two in their 401ks. Their 401ks will tell them their assets are going up and their pay stubs will tell them they got to pay increase to the government.</s>GOOLSBEE: Two-thirds of Americans do not have a 401k. This is the root of the problem.</s>NORQUIST: OK, 401k, IRA, own shares of stocks --</s>GOOLSBEE: Two-thirds of America has no 401k and this is geared toward very high-income people. We're going to raise it so that we get a big tax cut for estates over $20 million dollars. We're going to preserve the tax breaks for private jets. Let's preserve them for hedge fund managers. Let's write into the law -- this writes into the law whatever benefits to the middle class, let's get rid of them by the end of the bill, so that millions of people are actually paying more by the end of this bill. That's why 26 percent of America supports it. It's the least popular thing in decades.</s>NORQUIST: And your problem is that you're going to have -- one second.</s>BURNETT: -- tax cut, right, they have to admit that the focus of this bill is to give a tax cut to corporations which will then juice 401k stock prices, wages and everything else, right? That's the bet. But that is a bet, because what you see on your taxes is real money and what you see in your 401k if you even have one is not real money, because it could go down the next year. And I don't know anyone who really treats it like real money.</s>NORQUIST: OK, two things more than half the country is in the stock market, 401ks, IRAs, defined-contribution, savings and in addition to that, every cop, fireman and teacher has their money saved in the real life stock market, inside their pension. You may not care about those but they do notice these things, and they do matter.</s>GOOLSBEE: I care about them, let's give them a tax cut rather than to the big corporation and try to juice the stock market to flow down to them.</s>NORQUIST: There's nothing flowing down about stock prices going up when you own shares of stock. But you're also forgetting a couple of things. We take the standard deduction from $12,000 up to $24,000. You can tell people who make $24,000, $25,000 and $50,000 --</s>GOOLSBEE: But you eliminate the single exemption by the way. So, like it's not a double but OK.</s>NORQUIST: It's doubling from $12,000 to $24,000, that's the standard deduction. You don't have --</s>GOOLSBEE: Getting rid of the personal exemptions and then phasing it out and abolishing it by the end of the bill. This is exactly the example of what I'm talking about.</s>NORQUIST: Add to that, OK, the 6.6 million Americans that you don't want to talk about, the ones who are hit in the 2015, the most recent numbers they've got to show, with the Obamacare penalty because they didn't want to buy Obamacare, $700, $2,400 for family of four, they paid -- the 6.6 million Americans are directly screwed by the Obamacare legislation, they pay a tax and get nothing, nothing, nothing for it. [19:35:010] That ends with this law. You don't like to talk about that, but 6.6 million Americans are going to notice that they're no longer getting screwed by the government and they're going to notice the tax cut in this bill for people, 80 percent of whom or in less than $50,000 a year.</s>BURNETT: OK.</s>NORQUIST: This stuff -- this bill has been written over the last five years in public, in hearings, it was all put together a couple years ago in the House side as well. And so, all of the pieces of this had been looked at, scored by joint tax, scored by CBO, the House and the Senate had two different approaches on how do you deal with subchapter S corporations, and they're both fine ways to do it.</s>GOOLSBEE: The reason it is epically unpopular is because people have seen what's in it. That's all I'll say.</s>BURNETT: All right. And I -- thank you both very much.</s>NORQUIST: And by November, they'll know what's in it, and that's why you're wrong.</s>BURNETT: And I will say deficit numbers are all bogus. No one has any idea what they are until they are what they are, but it is pretty incredible, that in a country where Republicans say they're so obsessed with the deficit, they're willing to pass a plan that adds a trillion to have dollars to it if it's even accurate. Thank you both.</s>NORQUIST: We're obsessed with growth. You're obsessed with the deficit. Growth --</s>BURNETT: No, actually, I mean I can go through books written by people on the GOP who are obsessed with the deficit, and the debt in this country. It's been like the single biggest thing, unless when Democrats were in power. Even the president pointed out Barack Obama's debt record. I'm just pointing out Republicans are happy to add.</s>NORQUIST: And now the Democrats are obsessed on it.</s>BURNETT: Thank you both. And next, breaking news, we are live on the scene of that deadly train derailment in Washington state. Was speed a factor? And unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrials, the secret Pentagon program is a secret no more. And the man who headed that effort to find them is OUTFRONT.