Immigration and Tax Reform

HUGH HEWITT: Morning-glory, America. It's Hugh Hewitt. And thank you for listening to the Hugh Hewitt Show. That music means it is the last radio hour of the week. That means it's time for the Hillsdale Dialogue, our weekly journey into the highest issues of the most important things in the West, done with someone from Hillsdale College. Hillsdale.edu for all things Hillsdale.

Usually Dr. Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College, joins me. Sometimes one of his colleagues on the faculty in Michigan. And sometimes Dr. Matthew Spalding, head of the Kirby Center in Washington DC. And that is one of those weeks. This week, Dr. Spalding is back from the Kirby Center. All things Hillsdale at hillsdale.edu, and all of my previous dialogues collected at hughforhillsdale.com.

Matt Spalding, good morning, and a happy Friday to you, November 3.

MATTHEW SPALDING: Good morning to you. Good morning to you. Good day.

HUGH HEWITT: We have a lot to cover, and I want to begin by saying--

MATTHEW SPALDING: A lot to do this week.

HUGH HEWITT: Oh, my gosh. But yesterday, I sat down-- and I'll show it on MSNBC tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM with the majority leader of the United States Senate, Mitch McConnell. And we talked about whether or not comprehensive immigration reform compromise was out there. And people can watch that tomorrow and see it.

You were around for welfare reform in the '80s. You were also around for the Reagan Immigration Bill. At the time the Reagan Immigration Bill happened, what consequence did you attach to it? What significance did you believe it portended?

MATTHEW SPALDING: Well, look. This is what Reagan looks back and sees as the greatest mistake of his presidency. At the time, it was seen as a good, fair deal. Both sides got something, and it was going to work out fine.

The problem is that-- and this is the key lesson I fear people have not remembered, not learned or forgotten-- is that Reagan's side of the deal, he got some changes in immigration. The left got number changes, what they wanted.

But what Reagan settled for, which was the mistake, is rather than getting structural changes in immigration policies, he got promises of future spending, essentially. Future action on the border. And lo and behold, it never took place.

And what I fear is that there's talk of a deal here. And I think recent events in New York and the president's comments really point towards that. Well, what I fear is it's not going to be a deal having to do with changing the structure of how immigration works.

I think the other side wants to desperately not get into that spot. And how well the Republicans push that or get into a position to do so, it's not clear to me right now. But all the cards are on the table. All the pieces are there for a classic-- and I think, actually, quite good-- deal that both sides should be very happy with.

HUGH HEWITT: Last night, the president spoke with Laura Ingram on the Fox News Network about immigration. Here is what that exchange consisted of, cut number five.

DONALD TRUMP: All of those things are happening. Changing migration--

LAURA INGRAM: Is that going to be part of any DACA deal? So if the Democrats want Dreamer help, they're going to have to do--

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

LAURA INGRAM: They're going to have to do-- e-verify chain migration.

DONALD TRUMP: Sure. Chain migration is one of the most important things that most people--

LAURA INGRAM: Is that a requirement for you?

DONALD TRUMP: Until yesterday, most people never heard of chain migration. I gave a form of a press conference, and I started talking about chain migration. And this horrible animal-- he's an animal as far as I'm concerned-- 23 people have touched him-- maybe came in because he was in-- and he was only in with a green card, supposedly.

But chain migration, where his whole family comes in. His mother can come in, his father, his grandmother. Everybody comes in. Chain migration is a disaster for this country, and it's going to end.

Now, I've been talking about it for a while. But I think the public, until yesterday, probably never heard about chain migration.

LAURA INGRAM: Well, the Republicans didn't want to touch it for a long time. You know that compared to what the Republicans--

DONALD TRUMP: No, they're touching it now. It's become a very, very strong point right now.

LAURA INGRAM: Will it be part of a Dreamer deal? A DACA deal?

DONALD TRUMP: Yes. It will be part of a DACA deal. DACA is a lot different than Dreamer.

LAURA INGRAM: For the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, will you require that if any amnesty talks will require chain migration can't?

DONALD TRUMP: I don't think any Republican would vote for anything having to do with leaving chain migration. Chain migration is a disaster for this country, and it's horrible. I mean, just take a look at him. 23 people-- potentially 23 people.

LAURA INGRAM: Is that verified?

DONALD TRUMP: It's what I heard. It's what I gave. Whether it's 23 or whether it's two, as far as I'm concerned--

LAURA INGRAM: That's a big difference, of 2 or 23.

DONALD TRUMP: No, no, I know that. But I hear it's 23. It's a lot of people.

HUGH HEWITT: So Matt Spalding, your reaction on many levels to what the president said there.

MATTHEW SPALDING: Well, all the pieces were in there. There are a number of things I think were very, very significant. If you back up and remember back when Senator Cotton and Mr. Purdue introduced their legislation, they put a lot of these things on the table.

The president allowed DACA to expire, or at least did not extend it, which actually meant he threw it back into Congress's hands. You had this event in New York, which has to do with the diversity lottery. The terrorists came into the country through the diversity lottery.

And the president has raised it here, in particular, many times this question of chain migration. This is once you get in, not only can you bring in your immediate relatives but extended relatives as well. And this goes on and on and on ad nauseum.

The overall larger political point here is that we have lost control of our immigration system. Now, we can debate the details, and I think he's got some very good details he's raising here. But we're not in control of the policies by which individuals come into the United States and have freedom of movement and the ability to stay.

HUGH HEWITT: And so I think that I would summarize--

MATTHEW SPALDING: That's even before you get to the question of who comes here legally or not. We just lost that control. We as a country do not have that within our grasp, which means you're open to terrorism and all sorts of other activity that we as a country clearly do not want happening regularly on our ground.

HUGH HEWITT: So a visa lottery. If you win the visa lottery, and they say, oh, we don't have enough Uzbekies, so we're going to get 100 Uzbekies. You're not actually bringing in 100 Uzbekies. You're bringing in 100 Uzbekies plus every other Uzbeki who is related to them by a degree of one. And then once those Uzbeki get here, they get to bring in everyone who--

MATTHEW SPALDING: They do the same thing. That's right. That's right.

HUGH HEWITT: It's really kind of insane.

MATTHEW SPALDING: And in this case, it starts with literally a random selection. You've identified countries where we have-- there are low numbers of immigration, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to take into consideration, but then you randomly pick individuals in that category and essentially give them what they actually call a golden ticket. And once they have that golden ticket, it spins out after that.

So the idea of having some sort of policy by which we can rationally, at least, have some parameters over immigration. Who, what, when, why, where has largely been lost in the diversity lottery is really though not as large as some of these other questions in combination with other pieces. But it is a perfect example of that. I mean, it's a random choice as to who gets to come here.

In a world of terrorism and concerns about the effect on immigration, on economics, and other policy issues, is totally absurd. And from the broader perspective of, say, the American constitutional tradition, makes absolutely no sense at all from the idea that somehow those who come here and become Americans and citizens, we should be open to that. We should be open and welcoming from an immigration point of view, but we should always be concerned about who comes here for what reasons and to make sure they're coming here for the right reasons.

HUGH HEWITT: I want to understand something. It is insane, in an era of terror, to award any visa ever randomly. It's insane in the age of terror. [LAUGHS] It doesn't make a lick of sense.

MATTHEW SPALDING: And that the president jumped on this-- first of all, he's raised it before. This is nothing new. But that he honed in on this is, I think, correct from a policy point of view, but also politically, a great maneuver to this. Because for the average person, it is obviously absurd.

And the fact that this person came in through the diversity lottery randomly, but also there have been numerous previous cases, including one back in 2002, where this is the individual out in Los Angeles who ended up killing two people. He had tried to come in and was denied admittance because he was thought to be connected to a terrorist group. Yet his wife then later got the golden ticket.

Through the random lottery, she was chosen to come, and he changed his application. He came into the United States and five years later killed two people at LAX. That's absurd. That's crazy.

HUGH HEWITT: It is crazy. I'll be right back, America. My guest is Dr. Matthew Spalding. He's head of the Hillsdale College Kirby Center, existing as a lantern in the shadow of the Capitol, of truth, freedom, and constitutionalism. When we come back, we'll continue to discuss about what the president wants to do on immigration and then turn to the tax bill.

Matt Spalding was deeply involved in the last major legislative success of the Republican's welfare reform. The very last major legislative success was in the mid '90s when Bill Clinton was president. It was the Welfare Reform Bill jammed down President Clinton's throat.

And not since the mid '90s has there been a major overhaul of any piece of legislation. Obamacare was a defeat for sweet reason, but now the Republicans are back with a comprehensive tax reform bill. We'll talk with Matt Spalding about how one gets that passed and whether or not this one will pass, as well as a couple of more thoughts on immigration when we return to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Stay tuned.

Welcome back, America. It's Hugh here with Dr. Matthew Spalding. He is the Director of the Kirby Center, Hillsdale College's outpost inside the beltway. All things Hillsdale are at hillsdale.edu. All of the Hillsdale Dialogue that you hear each week at this time, with either Dr. Spalding or Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale, or one of their colleagues on the faculty and staff at Hillsdale College. All of them, from 2013 forward, are collected for binge listening at hughforhillsdale.com.

Dr. Spalding, I want to read you a tweet storm over the last hour from the president. It begins-- and I'll just read it without breaking-- "everybody is asking why the Justice Department and FBI isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with crooked Hillary and the Dems. Now Donna Brazile book says she paid and stole the Democratic primary. What about the deleted emails, uranium, Podesta, the server, plus, plus people are angry.

At some point, the Justice Department and the FBI must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it. The real story on collusion is it's Donna B's new book. Crooked Hillary bought the DNC and then stole the Democratic primary from crazy Bernie. Pocahontas just stated that the Democrats, led by the legendary crooked Hillary Clinton, rigged the primaries. Let's go FBI and Justice Department.

ISIS

 just claimed the degenerate animal who killed and so badly wounded the wonderful people on the West Side was, quote, 'their soldier.' Based on that, the military has hit ISIS quote, 'much harder over the last two days.' They will pay a big price for every attack on us."

That is a tweet storm like few tweet storms. Matthew Spalding, your reaction.

MATTHEW SPALDING: That's quite a storm. That's quite a storm. Well, I mean, look. The tweets from the president is how he is communicating directly out to the American people. And it's a stream of consciousness, but he gets on a roll, and he starts pointing things out.

My reaction to a lot of these things, let it play. It's playing out. He's adding commentary. He's pushing this along. We're seeing this-- he's putting a wedge into the Democratic Party, right?

You will unite your people and divide your enemies. And he is just putting that wedge there. But the wedge is becoming apparent of its own. This is quite amazing what's coming out of all this. The turn in this whole debate about collusion. I think he is pushing that along.

He's also using this-- and we go back to the immigration question-- how this is playing out in the connection between what happened in New York because of the diversity lottery. The discussions going on Capitol Hill that are going to be setting up an immigration deal. I think this is an occasion-- and of late, where you see there's a connection between his tweets, which some see as these just random musings that occur at 2:00 AM. But in actuality, there is some thought behind it. I think there's a certain strategy, or at least a line of reasoning you see in his tweets.

HUGH HEWITT: Yeah. It's not 2:00 AM. Right now he's taken over Morning Joe. Morning Joe is putting up his tweets. I just read his tweets. He takes over every morning news broadcast. He captures them.

It's a hostile takeover of my show. I don't much mind it. It's great radio. People want to hear them. But I've got to read them, and Morning Joe's got to cover them, and Fox and Friends has got to cover them.

MATTHEW SPALDING: Right. It's powerful. And all of that, in a way, I think, now that is supporting his-- he's maneuvering it to support his agenda. There's a-- he's using-- this as an example of the way in which he is actually prudent, to use the word.

He's using this modern technology, which everyone says is so un-presidential. He's using this modern technology to actually communicate in a way that contributes towards the direction he wants to see policy go. Communicating to Congress and the American people.

HUGH HEWITT: Yeah. It's interesting to me, Matt Spalding. When we come back, we have a long conversation about the tax bill that's come out and how you're going to negotiate that through there. But the president is-- remember how Reagan did one story a day and changed the way a President--

MATTHEW SPALDING: Yeah, right.

HUGH HEWITT: This is a different one story a day. This is 15,000 stories a day, but it's all focused on Donna Brazile's book.

MATTHEW SPALDING: And the old argument was you had to stay focused. You couldn't have multiple messages coming out. But that's not true anymore. I mean, the point now is you've got to stay ahead of the message. You've got to do it so rapidly and so rapid fire that they can't keep up with you. And he seems to have figured that out.

HUGH HEWITT: You constantly lay down fire. You constantly lay down tweet fire, and it works. I'll be right back. Dr. Matthew Spalding runs the Kirby Center, Hillsdale College's lighthouse of reason inside the beltway. It burns bright every single day. And Matthew will be back with me as we talk about the Kevin Brady unveiled tax reform when we come back after the break. Who wins, who loses, does it stand a chance? Does it have a prayer of passing? I'll talk about it tomorrow morning with Mitch McConnell as well at 8:00 AM on MSNBC. Do not miss my conversation with the leader on Saturday morning on MSNBC. Stay tuned.

Welcome back, America, to Hewitt. Huge lines for the iPhone X stretching around their trademark store in Chicago. Good morning. I'm joined by Matthew Spalding, Director of the Kirby Center. It is the Hillsdale Dialogue. All things Hillsdale collected at hillsdale.edu. You can, indeed, subscribe there, absolutely for free for Imprimis, the weekly-- the monthly speech digest of Hillsdale.

All of the online courses, including the critical courses on the Constitution, are available for free screening at hillsdale.edu. And all of my conversations with Matt, with Dr. Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale, with other members of the Hillsdale community, collected back to 2013 at hughforhillsdale.com.

Matt Spalding, you did welfare reform in the '80s. Now Kevin Brady and Paul Ryan want to push through tax reform. What do you make of the bill as unveiled and its prospects going forward?

MATTHEW SPALDING: Well, even before I talk about the details of the bill, I want to make one point which you're alluding to about welfare reform and reform generally. In the earlier segment, you made a reference to reform but also a comprehensive bill. And there's something interesting in those approaches, which we should play out for just a second.

The way the Left likes to do things-- and I don't mean just the Obama administration, but the modern, progressive liberalism-- is it must be comprehensive, which is to say, evenly done by experts across the board. Very technical, comprehensive everywhere.

The alternative approach, which I think we're seeing here come out, and is the better way to do things, generally, is what we'd rather call reform. Which isn't necessarily meaning it's a bunch of experts that do it, but it goes through the give and take of politics but also compromise to come up with something that's supported but also accomplishes a larger objective.

It's interesting. I was thinking on break. I like to think while we're on break, Hugh. But it is interesting that the parallels right now that we're thinking about both go back to the same year, 1986, in the Reagan administration when there was an immigration reform which made some mistakes. And there's a big lesson to be learned there by the Trump administration. And a tax reform package in 1986, which was actually a great success, and there are actually great lessons to be learned there as well.

That's fascinating. Because the Reagan administration's strategy was political reform. Advance the policy, advance wherever policy, like water going into cracks, but be willing to deal with the realities of how do we actually get this through legislatively.

In the immigration reform of '86, we learned that-- the lesson that we learned that was a mistake is that the deal has to be structural. It has to have actual things in it. And it has to have some limits.

One of the things you-- in that interview with President Trump that was passed over here that I caught was the president was insisting this is a deal about DACA not the Dream Act. I don't know if you caught that.

HUGH HEWITT: I did.

MATTHEW SPALDING: It's a very important difference. Because DACA, under President Obama, had some limits to it. It was controllable. It was definable. DACA is unlimited. So, the point is-- the piece is, and how it comes together, they seem to be picking up on those lessons.

My point here, long answer to your question is, I see signs in this that the workings of big tax reform, going back to '86, have been learned. The answer, I think, is not actually in-- these are good details, especially on the corporate side. There has been some angling around that some of the other things are not exactly what everyone wanted, how this is going to work out. It's not clean. It has more deductions.

But the dealing to get there, Kevin Brady, how that's played out, it's more rapid than it was in '86, in terms of how fast this is being put together. But it seems to be that's the kind of process we're looking at, which at a certain point gets a certain inevitability about it. There will be some more give and take that comes through.

Hopefully they'll pull in a few Democrats. I think they're going to need to. But I'm actually much more-- I'm more positive today than I was last week.

HUGH HEWITT: So am I. And it's because they made some smart choices to leave the 401k's alone.

MATTHEW SPALDING: They avoided some land mines.

HUGH HEWITT: The only thing, it mystifies me what they did to the home mortgage interest deduction. And Matt Spalding, you and I have been around. We know incentives matter, right?

The realtors are going to go crazy. Because if you take away the home mortgage interest deduction for new home purchases over $500,000, you've taken away an incentive to buy homes in coastal California, in Chicago, in New York, in Philadelphia, in Washington DC. And you've turned every realtor in the country against you, because the home market is actually one market. I really do not understand what they think they did here.

MATTHEW SPALDING: No. I think they were probably thinking they were coming up with a reasonable trade-off by making that $500,000 amount. I think they might not be used to property values. I know here in northern Virginia, that's probably not enough when you're buying a newly purchased home.

But they also left everything else intact. So people who are currently deducting wouldn't do that as well.

HUGH HEWITT: Matt, let's pause on that for a second.

MATTHEW SPALDING: They changed the incentive of it, but how does this work out in terms of changing other deductions? Changing the rates? That's the question.

HUGH HEWITT: In the housing market in California, there are numerous distortions because prop 13 provides that your property tax rate is capped, and you can pass that house on once to a child. And therefore, it has decreased the mobility of homeownership dramatically. People hang on to their houses. They don't move, and then they leave it. That distorts the housing market.

What's going to happen now, by grandfathering in all mortgage deductions up to a million dollars that existed prior to--

MATTHEW SPALDING: They'll hold on to those houses.

HUGH HEWITT: They'll hold on to those houses. It's just like Economics 101. They just distorted the housing market. So I don't think they have a single realtor in the room. They don't have anyone from the homebuilding industry in the room. And my gosh, are home builders going to come down on their head.

Back in the day, when Larry and I worked at the Claremont Institute with people in Southern California when they were building homes, they cannot believe what they're reading this morning. And I have to think it comes-- and riddle me this.

I think the House is very insular. And not just the House, but more importantly, congressional staff. I don't think they get out much, Matt Spalding, and I read it in every one of their proposals. It reflects a ghastly insularity.

MATTHEW SPALDING: No. I think that's-- there's a lot of truth to that, but let me turn it around for a minute. Because maybe this will be adjusted as we go. But one of the things in '86, you recall, that allowed this to break through is that they got something on the table. They had versions. They got it out there. And they pushed through what was just a narrow special interest conversation so that we could actually look and see how the pieces interacted.

Getting to that point, I think, was the achievement of yesterday. What the final measure will be, what the particulars-- this one in particular, I don't know. I think there are going to be some pushback and discussions, and at least-- I don't know if you saw Senator Manchin's comments yesterday, but he said, no for now. But he's clearly open to further discussion.

HUGH HEWITT: Joe Donnelly and Joe Manchin have to vote for-- Joe Manchin and Joe Donnelly have to vote for a tax bill, or they are doomed. It is that simple.

MATTHEW SPALDING: I think that's right. But he clearly wants to hold out for something. He wants to get some more changes in it. But then you come back to Murkowski and other people like that, right? I mean, there's going to be some give and take here. I have no doubt of that. This is the beginning of a process.

HUGH HEWITT: There is also Senator Tom Cotton has put on the table-- and I'll ask Leader McConnell about this tomorrow, and people can watch on MSNBC. They can find the answer. That's called a tease.

Can we get Senator Cotton's idea to get rid of the individual mandate back on the table? The president wants it. Kevin Brady said it complicated passage. I don't know anyone in the Republican Party, you tell me who, would vote to retain the individual mandate when you can add $300 to $600 billion of additional tax reduction by getting rid of it.

MATTHEW SPALDING: Oh, I think that's absolutely right. Of course they would vote for it. But you'll get pushback from that further-- where do you make up the income? How does this play out in the tax bill? Right?

I mean, I think they've got that fine balance between where you do your cuts. You want good cuts, but then you go back to someone like Corker. Right? He's concerned about the deficit. This is increasing the deficit everything we do here.

HUGH HEWITT: According to Cotton, when you get rid of the mandate, you save money. That's-- I don't know why, but the CBO scores the elimination of the mandate as a deficit reduction between $300 and $600 billion. Don't ask me why. It doesn't make a lick of sense to me. But CBO never made a lick of sense to me either.

MATTHEW SPALDING: Then that should be the gimme. That should be the gimme.

HUGH HEWITT: It should be a gimme. And the reason Kevin didn't want it, Kevin Brady said that complicates it, because more people-- some people like the mandate. And I said, I don't know any Republicans who like the mandate. I mean, is there anyone?

MATTHEW SPALDING: Well, yeah. But what it does-- I think that from a tax perspective, I think you're absolutely right. I think what he's voicing there is that look, we took a shot at this in terms of health care reform. Putting that in there means we've got to come back and address that again, because we pull out that mandate in that tax.

I think that's a great thing. That's exactly what they should do. That's called legislating, and you come back and fix the other parts of it. But if we've got this piece we can put on the table and get something out of it, we should definitely do that.

HUGH HEWITT: Now let's talk about timing. To move on the Republican timeline, they have to move this through the manager's amendment, through the chairman's amendment, by the end of the week, through the House Rules Committee, and through the House by two weeks from then, and then over to the Senate if they want it done by Thanksgiving. Is that possible, Matt Spalding?

MATTHEW SPALDING: [LAUGHS] When was the last time that the House of Representatives did something this big that fast? It's hard to say. What I find fascinating about it-- so on the one hand, the House of Representatives-- although I think they've been doing their job, relative to the Senate, as we talked about last week.

So they didn't pass their individual appropriations bills. They did, in the sense that they put them all together in one piece of legislation. They actually checked off their box about the budget. But they don't really budget in a serious way, in the way you're supposed to from a normal order, in terms of normal legislative order. This is of that magnitude.

This is a very tight schedule. But we have an additional factor here. To put it in Madisonian terms, they have a very, very high interest in doing this in order to maintain their political position, their own jobs, but also forward a large, overarching agenda.

HUGH HEWITT: They need it. I'll be right back with Matt Spalding to talk about why they need it so badly right after this.

Welcome back, America. What a week. A terror attack in New York City, the worst since 9/11. Indictments of senior officials who served in the Trump campaign. A blistering expose of Democratic Party shenanigans and corruption. Of course, we've got a tax bill as well, all at the end of the week. Matt Spalding is my guest, Director the Kirby Center for Hillsdale College, hillsdale.edu.

At the end of the day, Matt, what matters the most to most Americans is that they be safe and that they get to keep their money. On the safety part, that goes to the migration decision we began with, and at the end of the day, it goes to the tax bill. So the Republicans are actually talking about Republican issues. Democrats must feel a little bit desperate.

MATTHEW SPALDING: No. This is an amazing turn of events. I mean, think back. Trump was coming in. This was going to destroy the Republican Party. It was going to divide. It would be a disaster.

And the Democrats were just looking forward to sitting back and waiting to take over power. And the table-- talk about the tables being completely turned. I think we're seeing the increasing division and breakup, potentially, of the Democratic Party, which is essentially between all these fissures. All these things that are coming out, they're driving wedges between the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party and a more pragmatic wing, if you will. And they're infighting, and this will continue.

And yet here we have a situation where the table is set in this massive political opportunity-- massive in the sense that this has not been in a position for decades-- in which this president, supposedly an outlier when it comes to these questions, has placed directly on the plate of Congress, which is where they need to get their act together, on the plate of Congress.

He's thrown in their lap-- he tried it with health care, and they didn't do that. And now they've got another shot at a double. A double. Which can be a huge home run here, which is this possibility on immigration legislation and tax legislation. Safety and your pocketbook.

And if they get this right, which they could, but it's not clear. But if they get this right, you're talking about not only getting back to Republican questions, but taking this presidency and Congress now working together, with a unified agenda, presenting that to the American people.

The politics going into the election look different, and all of a sudden, a de-aligning president, who breaks things up, now is talking with his fellow Republicans about how to align things along lines that are remarkably similar and consistent with a more conservative view of things like immigration, security, and finances.

HUGH HEWITT: And what comes next, of course, is also a stimulus bill. He wants to spend more money, which is not consistent at all with what Republicans believe. But nevertheless, he did campaign on it. There are ways to pay for it. There are approaches to do so. Do you think he goes there next if this tax bill passes, Matt Spalding?

MATTHEW SPALDING: I think it's highly likely, given that that's the one thing that he promised that has not yet been touched. But I think you're right. There are some creative ways to do it. Getting this done first will get you there a lot easier.

The corporate side of this tax reform bill-- especially if that kicks in immediately. Remember, we have-- so the House bill, it takes over immediately. In the Senate, they're talking about slowing this down. Having it go into effect over time, which would be a huge mistake. But if that doesn't happen and this kicks in, this is going to be a huge boost to the economy, which is already doing very well. So I think he'll be in a very strong position to do that.

But having said that, if Congress and the Executive have learned to work together in a creative way that gets things done, there are creative ways to do this that aren't merely writing blank checks. And everything we've heard from President Trump seems to be that he didn't want to write blank checks. He actually wants to do particular things.

HUGH HEWITT: He wants to get a few things done. Yeah.

MATTHEW SPALDING: Let's go. This guy wants to win things, and you've got a Congress that has a bunch of smart people who are creative. And now if they learn how to legislate again and realize they can actually use those muscles, we're rolling. This is how it's supposed to work. This is the separation of powers in action.

HUGH HEWITT: Hopefully by next week we will see the Ways and Means Committee pass this bill on to the House floor. Matthew Spalding of the Kirby Center from Hillsdale College, thank you. This is the Hillsdale Dialogue. All things Hillsdale available at hillsdale.edu.