Former US Chief of Staff for Mike Pence Marc Short Talks Tax Bill
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EasyCater, your business tool for food. To learn more, visit EasyCater.com slash podcast. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. Let's turn back to Capitol Hill. The Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson, saying House and Senate Republicans can cut a deal on salt within the next two days, believing senators can begin voting on the bill by Friday. President Donald Trump writing, no one goes on vacation.

Until it's done, the former Chief of Staff to Vice President Mike Pence, Mark Short joins us now for more. Mark, good morning. Good to see you. As always, thanks for being here. Thank you for being here. You're a big part of passing the President's first tax bill in his first term. How different is this effort? How much harder is it this time?

I actually don't think it's harder because I think the prospect of having a $2.5 trillion tax increase for a lot of Americans or $2,100 per family is a big enough threat that it keeps you Republicans united. So there's going to be a lot of noise over the next several days. There's going to be a lot of noise on the Medicaid provisions. There'll be noise on SALT. But I think ultimately there'll be sufficient votes in the House and the Senate to get it done. Can we get to the noise on SALT? And I'd love your personal opinion on this, what you think they should do.

that they aren't doing right now? Well, I think from a policy perspective, the SALT provisions are terrible. I think the reality is that you have middle America subsidizing blue states that are poorly run. And they have enormous deficits, and so they provide enormous deductions because their taxes are so high.

high. It provides no incentive for them to actually fix their own problems if their wealthiest taxpayers are able to have enormous deductions. Having said that, what I think is actually going to happen is I think that with the standard deduction now at $30,000, the priority for those who want the SALT deduction is to get it to $40,000, but they'll lower the income threshold. Al?

How many people have income under $400,000 or are taking deductions of over $40,000? I think it's probably a pretty small number. But the realtor base, actually the lobby base, is more concerned about getting the deduction back. Because one of the provisions that we passed in 2017, prior to that, there were 31% of taxpayers itemized. Today, it's down to 9% or 10%. And the real estate industry wants that back.

And so I think you're going to see them fight for the $40,000, but lower the income threshold. I will just say New York does contribute about 8% of the GDP to the overall United States of America, and it doesn't get the same amount back. So there is this argument being made by a lot of representatives in New York that actually the U.S. is – that a number of blue states have been cheated by U.S. spending. So, I mean, that is sort of a backdrop here, just to recognize that.

I think, Lisa, there's argument to go on a per capita basis, sure, but I think it's hard to argue that New York and federal cities aren't getting their fair share of federal dollars. Just take a step back and be on the SALT debate, which I'm sure it could be. We don't want to get too New York here. Social media spending. No, social media spending, I'm telling you, just definitely invest in it.

hone those strategies. But I am curious about, you know, just going forward, how important it is to get those offsets and how attenuated some of the Republican Congress members are to offsetting any kind of increase in the deficit. If it's not from potential cuts, then from increasing tariffs.

Well, okay, those are two big different questions. I'm a little bit cynical on this, I confess to you. The reality is that neither party is addressing what's driving the deficit and the debt. Neither party is willing to address entitlement spending. So you're going to hear people who pound their chest and say we're fiscal conservatives and we need more cuts here. But we're really talking about

pennies on the margin of the size of this bill and the size of where our debt is today. So if they were really serious about wanting to cut the debt, they'd actually be addressing entitlements. And so, yeah, I think you'll see some posturing from some people. But ultimately, again, I think they're going to fall in line because it's not just the fact you have an enormous tax increase on working families. There's also significant border funding in this. And if you tell me that they're going to be members from border states where Republicans are going to oppose this bill with President Trump in the White House, I just don't see it happening.

Now, on the tariffs, look, the reality is you talk about the significant revenue coming in. I think that, again, that's a tax on the American people. That's where the revenue is coming from. It's not coming from foreign governments. It's coming from American importers. And the reality is you're 100% right on the dates of this, that we were anticipating from Peter Navarro 90 deals in 90 days. We've seen where that's gone so far. And I think they wanted to push the July 9 date because they were hoping they'd get this all wrapped up by July 4. If it slides past July 4, I think you'll see that date slide as well.

But you're going to continue to see, I think the president wants to leverage and be able to use the tariffs however he wants, whenever he wants, which provides enormous uncertainty in the economy. - The president said the NATO summit today, I'd love to turn to foreign policy with you. What did you think of the strikes over the weekend and the current posture of this administration? - I think it was exactly the right call. And I think that it's actually pretty consistent with where he was in the first administration. If you recall,

the maximum pressure campaign and the strike on Soleimani. I think what is different is that I think the first administration had a pretty united foreign policy. I think there's much more divergence in the second administration on what that foreign policy is. Within the White House? I think so. I think within the White House too, not just with outside. What do you think the biggest difference is at the moment within the White House? Well, I think that there's a lot of people who have embraced sort of the

the isolationism of the party today. And I think they are represented and their voices are represented in the White House. But I think the president made the right decision. And I think that, you know, I think moving forward,

Iran wants ceasefire because it buys them more time. I mean, how many ceasefires have Iran and Hamas agreed to since the Iranian revolution 46 years ago? So I think it's important the United States stand with Israel. And this is going to sound somewhat contradictory, but to be successfully isolationist, do you have to be interventionist sometime? Do you have to demonstrate that to do nothing, you have to be willing to do something now and again?

Well, that assumes that those who are articulating isolationist views today are actually consistent in their viewpoints. I think that in many cases there are plenty of grifters that have surrounded the president. And so they were isolationists in this moment. They were interventionists eight, nine, ten years ago. So I think the premise of your question implies there's actually consistency on those articulating that view today, and I don't think there is.

Just pairing this with NATO, do we have a sense of what the final word's going to be with Russia and Russia-Ukraine, given the willingness to use intervention in Iran? Is there discussion around that and support for that in the case of Russia? I think that's one of the biggest, starkest differences between the first administration and the second administration. In the first administration, President Trump would be very proud about having sent Javelin missiles and talked and ridiculed that Obama only sent blankets to Ukraine.

There was plenty of, I think, deterrence against Russia that it seems this time around that is not that same position. And so I'm not sure that what happened in the Middle East and Iran actually applies to what's going to happen in Ukraine and Russia. It seems that this administration is not as supportive of Ukraine as the first Trump administration. Mark, what do you think changed?

I think that there's several things that change. I do think that there's a different personnel in the White House. I think that from where it was as far as the State Department, the National Security staff, and frankly, the Vice President, I think those are big personnel changes that differ in this foreign policy. Mark Shaw, appreciate your time, as always. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. Really good to see you. For enterprise organizations, managing all your food needs is a tall order.

But with Easy Cater, you get a single workplace food vendor with the tools and resources to make it easy, giving teams across your organization an easy way to order from a huge variety of restaurants, all on one platform. All while consolidating your corporate food spend so you can control costs, streamlining billing and payment and simplifying reporting.

EasyCater, your business tool for food. To learn more, visit EasyCater.com slash podcast. For enterprise organizations, managing all your food needs is a tall order. But with EasyCater, you get a single workplace food vendor with the tools and resources to make it easy. Giving teams across your organization an easy way to order from a huge variety of restaurants, all on one platform. All while consolidating your corporate food spend so you can control costs.

streamlining billing and payment, and simplifying reporting. Easy Cater, your business tool for food. To learn more, visit easycater.com slash podcast. This is an iHeart Podcast. ♪