President Donald Trump heads to Missouri Wednesday to get back to legislative business and tout a major tax reform overhaul.
Trump’s top economic advisor, Gary Cohn, revealed the trip in an interview with the Financial Times, in the same interview where he criticized the president for his Charlottesville comments, saying the administration ‘must do better.’
The trip will focus Trump on a top priority of Republican congressional leaders and some of his staff members, including Cohn, who said he was ‘reluctant’ to leave his job but felt pressure to quit following Trump’s comments about violence on ‘many sides’ at a white supremacists protest.
‘Starting next week, the president’s agenda and calendar is going to revolve around tax reform,’ Cohn told the publication.
President Donald Trump heads to Missouri to give a speech on tax reform, economic advisor Gary Cohn said
‘He will start being on the road making major addresses justifying the reasoning for tax reform and why we need it in the U.S.,’ he added.
The trip follows the announcement of an agreement on principles between Trump and congressional leaders, though the statement reveals little about what the reform might look like.
‘We have a good skeleton that we have agreed,’ Cohn said.
‘Now it is [House Ways and Means Committee] Chairman Brady’s time to get the [House] Ways and Means Committee together to put flesh and bone on it, and they will do it next week when the House comes back into session,’ he said.
He was optimistic about what would be Trump’s first major legislative achievement, following the collapse of an Obamacare repeal.
Gary Cohn, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, said in an interview that Trump’s ‘agenda and calendar is going to revolve around tax reform’
Cohn, who is Jewish, made his comments in an interview where he chastized Trump for his comments about Charlottesville
‘I do think it can pass both of the tax committees and both chambers in 2017,’ Cohn, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, said.
Trump hits the road following a rough week where he took a single trip – heading to Phoenix for a campaign-style rally followed by a speech to a veterans conference. That followed a 17-day working vacation that featured the Charlottesville remarks and the resignation of many CEOs from two advisory boards that Trump then disbanded.
Cohn did not appear disturbed by Trump’s running feud with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, which followed McConnell’s public statement that some of Trump’s early expectations weren’t reasonable.
President Donald Trump is hitting the road to tout tax reform
House Speaker Paul Ryan criticized Trump’s comments after he relitigated his Charlottesville remarks at an unscripted campaign rally Tuesday night.
Trump on Friday went after Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who said Trump has not yet demonstrated the needed ‘competence’ and ‘stability.’
‘We work well together and we have made a massive amount of progress,’ Cohn said. ‘We released a statement at the end of July saying we were united in a framework that we intend to move through the legislative process, and I have no doubt they will work with us to do that because they know how important tax reform is for the country.’