Senate Republicans are not interested in revisiting the 2017 tax bill. I think the President and Vice President, understand that. Beyond that, we're interested in trying to get an outcome. And I think the first step is obviously to define what infrastructure as the definition of it. And we all think all agreed to work on that together. My preference is to include the committee's there where they experts are the President's actually been meeting with members of my conference I'm I'm coming down here tomorrow, who know the most about this, and I don't favor having a top down dictation, as to what this package looks like, but rather a consultative process in which everybody in my conference is involved in.
I felt our meeting was very strong, we talked about infrastructure. I think there's a place that we can find bipartisanship and it's one thing I brought it to the President, we first have to start with a definition of what is infrastructure. That's not home health that's roads, bridges, highways, airports, broadband. Those are the places we could find common ground to work together. The other thing I think America wants to know is that you're not going to wait a decade to build it, I brought up the president that we need need for reform. Most litigated legislation to find anywhere. We need to streamline not wait 10 years on average you're getting seven to 10 years. We want to be competitive, we have to have things built. Now, I also took the opportunity to talk to the President about my concerns about the rise in inflation, especially the numbers that we see today. The concern of what has happened where incentivizing people not to work in America as I've traveled this country back to school back to health and back to normal also raised a concern, along the border. I want to talk to the President about having traveled there few times of what I'm seeing there, just if America was able to watch those young girls one even 11 months old and had a rancher not found them, would they even be alive today. The sad part is, that's not the only story like that is day in and day out, those are places we can work together and should work together to try to solve what is happening there. I'm really concerned what I see from a future of economics of America. We have not seen the inflation month over month like this. Since the 1970s and 1950s, we've not seen gasoline lines or what we're going to find rationing since Carter was president. Those are things that we should be looking forward, not backwards. And the idea that spending more trillions of dollars into this economy when you have a supply constraint is actually the reverse that you want to do to keep America, and make sure we don't have the inflation going.
Well, first of all, the conference will decide but I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with. We're sitting here with the President today. So, from that point of view I don't think that's a problem
for us because the White House is talking about a $2 trillion package, give or take, by raising corporate tax publicans are talking about five $600 billion on infrastructure, user fees, you don't want to raise corporate taxes, they don't want to use a lot of zeros and commas in between.
Not to go straight here but you won't find any Republicans gonna go raise taxes, I think that's the worst thing you can do in this economy. When you watch inflation your gas is going up. Remember gas price today national gas price has not been this high. So President Biden was vice president, you watching food costs go up you're watching housing costs lumber costs. There is inflation and everywhere, cars have not moved this high month over month 10% So raising taxes would be the biggest mistake you could make. Remember the economy we had when we lowered taxes, the 3.5% unemployment, you had everybody having opportunity regardless of where you went America some of the great best employment we have, so that that that to us is a non starter, what we walked into the room with where can we find agreement. And I felt that was productive I felt all of us as leader and the President the Vice President sitting down saying, let's first decide what is the definition of infrastructure, if we can all decide that, then we can work on what the need is and how to and what we need to spend that was productive and I felt coming out that's where we were ending up.
We're not interested in real reopening the 2017 tax bill. We both made that clear to the President. That's our red line. We believe that in February of 2020 we had the best economy, we've had in 50 years, we believe that was a major reason for it. And so from my perspective, this discussion about the way forward on infrastructure will not include revisiting the 2017 tax bill.
No way you get the question because you married a girl from Bakersfield, who was fabulous. By the way, yes. We know that you're definitely married up but
we know the President spent a lot of time on infrastructure with you guys today. Are you satisfied that he's spending time because we don't really hear talking about the border crisis in the Middle East, the gas supply issues right now because he's spending enough time. Leading, are you satisfied with the leadership levels.
Look, I thought the meeting today was productive, and I know he wanted to have the meeting on infrastructure. But I want to take the opportunity to talk about the concerns I'm hearing around the country of affordability. The price of gas, the crisis at the border that's coming every single day. The ability to get people to go back to work the incentive to keep back, you're not the school's the millions of kids who are not back at school. These are the concerns I'm hearing every day so I took the opportunity to raise those with the President. The President engaged on those topics I would like to have more I'd like to see some action on that I'm very concerned with what's happening in Israel, the president we did touch on that at the beginning he brought that up. I committed the President for his comments yesterday. Israel's ability to defend themselves and they should be.
Let me add just one thing on the issue of inflation and getting people back to work, what I did last week was to have roundtables with businesses of all size, sizes, including hospitals, said what's your biggest problem number one that can't get people to come back to work. And number two, inflation, exactly the same thing that Kevin was hearing and others are hearing around the country. I think that's a direct result of flooding the zone with an extraordinary amount of money I will say this, there's great excitement, state government and local counties they've never seen anything like what's headed their way with this mountain of money that's coming in. Hopefully we can capture some of that to make this infrastructure package, go forward in a way that everybody would like to see you go forward
chaining. Bottom line, based on what you've heard from the President today or McConnell Walker, about the prospect of working with this White House, particularly
on infrastructure.
I think there's an opportunity that we could work together on infrastructure. Now, let me preface that we're not interested, as long as not anything about tax increases and it dealing with infrastructure that we start with the concept of what is the definition, and that we're able to make reforms, so you can actually build the roads not decades away that you modernize a lot from the 1970s, so money roads gets built to get faster, but what I really want to work on is making sure turning this economy around getting people back to work back to school back to health and back to normal. I believe in the vaccine that's why I'm wearing a mask. I want people back in school. The other thing too, you have to understand those numbers we heard today on inflation that should terrify every American, because it's not a question of whether there's going to be a tax increase, you just had the biggest tax increase, you've had more than 10 years and it hits you already. And for those who have lower income, it's getting hit harder. That's why we got to incentivize people to get back to work, get the economy moving again and stronger, and stop this inflation and part of what Congress has recently done by spending those trillions of dollars is the wrong action to take, in the economy, we have the day that you could propel inflation even greater make people's money worth less. The affordability, the affordability is more difficult. Those are the things I want to discuss and correct and also the last question.
Are you concerned about your future leadership giving you protected training for so long.
Not at all. No, I'm looking forward to being speaker in the next Congress. Thank you all very much.
