On Fox News & CNBC, Portman Discusses Jobs, Tax Reform, National Security & More

During interviews today on Fox News and CNBC, Senator Portman discussed the need to fix our broken tax code to make America more competitive, create more jobs, and increase wages. Portman has been outspoken on the need to reform our tax code to provide relief to Ohio's workers. Portman also discussed the need to lower health care costs for Ohio families and small business while still protecting Ohio's Medicaid expansion population, particularly those receiving treatment for heroin and prescription drug abuse. Lastly, Portman discussed President Trump's trip abroad, the recent attack in Manchester, and the need to reassert America's role in the world and keep America safe.

Excerpts of the interviews can be found below. The full Fox News & CNBC interviews can be found here https://youtu.be/afhcbtBCj74 and here https://youtu.be/pVjy62DoTmg.

PORTMAN ON FOX NEWS

On the Manchester Attack and POTUS' Trip Abroad:

"I think the trip in general has been positive. This notion of America's leadership role having been eroded over the last eight years is real and I think we are seeing through this trip and through some other measures that have been taken, a reassertion of America's global role. Not as the world's policeman, but maybe more like the sheriff where you have a posse with you and the posse includes these countries in the Middle East that the president talked about in terms of fighting ISIS. The Gulf State countries. But also in terms of our NATO allies to be sure that we are pushing back in Eastern Europe with Russia, to be sure that we are together in terms of the fight against terrorism. I think in general, that's been very positive...

"It's a three pronged approach. One is the military part we talked about and that is important to go after ISIS and that's happening now in Syria and also in Iraq. Second, we have to do more in terms of ensuring the people who come to this country are not here to do us harm. There are a lot of foreign fighters who have gone into the fight, more from Europe than from the United States. But many of these European countries have a Visa waiver program with us where it's easier to come into our country because they are allies because we're generally not concerned about it. But we have to be more concerned now. About 5,000 of these foreign fighters can go back to European countries and then have relatively easy access to the United States. We do need to tighten up on the Visa waiver programs and ensure that we are doing everything we can to protect the country.

"Finally, homegrown terrorism. Let's face it, that is probably the toughest of all. And there I think it's law enforcement, the FBI, even local law enforcement. But it's also having better relationships with the Muslim community in this country. That's what's been successful in finding some of these terrorist threats. In my own home state of Ohio, we had the first foreign fighter who was arrested on terrorist charges because the Muslim community worked with local police to identify the threat and to be able to stop somebody before he committed an atrocious crime. This is a dangerous world."

On the Budget and Tax Reform:

"I hope we can get to three percent [growth], but it's going to require these other pro-growth elements that are not part of the budget, including tax reform significantly. Also doing something on regulations. Smarter regulations is really important. We did mark up a bill last week in Committee, bipartisan, that would do that. Other issues have to be dealt with like the increasing costs of health care and ways in which we can restore some growth in the economy by having better skills training, using the federal dollars much more wisely in that regard. I think that's the key is to, yes, restrain spending, but also get the economy moving again ...

"We have focused on the individual regulations, as you know, about 56 million hours of work have been taken out by better regulations and by savings of over $76 billion to the economy, so that's already starting to happen. But then broader regulatory reform I think is in the next few months. In the meantime, health care is first, tax reform is second, the reason is we are doing them both under a budget procedure and you have to finish one before you start the other. I do think by the end of this year, this calendar year, I think tax reform is very possible. I think there is more consensus, frankly, around tax reform then there is around health care and I think there is an opportunity for Republicans to come together on a basic pro-growth agenda that has lower taxes, broadening the base of taxation, by getting rid of some of the complexity of the tax code and that's a time honored wisdom that that's going to grow the economy. I'm hopeful we can get to the kind of growth numbers they have in their budget."

PORTMAN ON CNBC

On Tax Reform:

"As you know, I believe [tax reform] ought to be revenue neutral, but it ought to use the dynamic score, meaning a macroeconomic score that assumes that good tax policies actually might change behavior. And it will. It has to be done for two reasons. One is to help people get higher wages because we need growth for that and second is to deal with the debt and deficit because it's going to require both restraining spending and economic growth.

"Of course there's kind of the push and the pull. And you know, part of the pull is to assure that you have tax reform that actually does not create a penalty, a steep cliff when you try to go to work. So part of the tax reform effort for folks who are low income is to say, okay, if you take a job, you're not suddenly going to see both the loss of your benefits and a big tax increase. And there are ways to do that. That's one of the things we're working on now on tax reform. On the other side you want to create the opportunity for work and training and that's why there is a work requirement in some of the welfare programs, in others there are not. I think that's something that, again, if you look at the president's budget, I think he assumes there will be some sort of work requirements that the states would be able to put in place should they choose to under the new Medicaid program they're talking about. So it's both. But, this gets us, again, to tax reform, where you don't want to have a tax code that penalizes work. You want to encourage people to go to work and get on the first and second rung of the economic ladder and that's something I think we can do as part of the overall tax reform effort..."

On Medicaid:

"I think what you do is you reform the program so it works better for the recipients ... And what you want to do is give governors like my governor, John Kasich you mentioned, much more flexibility to be able to run a better program so you can cover the same number of people but you can do it in a way that's much more cost effective, and better for them. So, for instance, more managed care. For instance looking at preventive care. Giving governors the ability to design programs that work for individual groups within Medicaid. And that's what the House and Senate should be doing in my view. So my big concern, as you know, is that Medicaid right now is the single biggest payer for drug treatment. And at a time of an opioid crisis in this country, this is prescription drugs and heroin and synthetic heroins, we have to be sure we provide for the kind of help people need, rather than pulling out the rug at a critical time. I think we can do that. And I'm working on that with some of my colleagues."

On Bipartisanship:

"I do think with regard to what Congress comes up with in the end, which will be 12 of, I hope, individual spending bills that there will be a lot of Democrats who will support those. And look on the tax front I think there's also an opportunity to reach out to Democrats. Let's face it our code is broken. Everybody knows it. We've talked about this on this program in the past, even Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader and I came together about a year and a half ago with regard to the international side because it's crazy to have $3 trillion locked up overseas. We want to bring that back. Bring it back at a low rate, repatriate it, and invest that here in this country. So I think there's some aspects where we can find bipartisanship and we just passed a regulatory reform bill out of committee last week that had some bipartisan support that I've worked on for several years. So I think you're going to have to find individual areas where we can find agreement, and push those hard. Because, we do need to figure out a way to come together as a country and solve some of these problems."

Read this original document at: https://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=312BCEBF-4E5B-4EDC-AC21-C808D0D3597D