"We have to get this done': Speaker Ryan on CNBC

Interview

This morning, Speaker Ryan joined CNBC's Squawk Box, where, as usual, they got a bit wonky on tax reform. Check out excerpts below:

Speaker Ryan: "We want to make sure that taxpayers in not just every income group, but in every state get relief. We don't want relief to just go to 46 states. We want relief to go to 50 states. That's why we're making sure that we work the numbers. This $10,000 property tax deduction that we allow to continue really does make sure that a person in that kind of category is taken care of. What the CBO, Joint Tax, and all the other analysis says is that the average taxpayer in every income group gets a tax cut . . . the purpose of this is to cut taxes for everybody, and so we want to keep doing that and we know that this SALT fix is really necessary to make sure that that's the case."

Speaker Ryan: "The status quo is that we're the only country left with a worldwide tax system, which penalizes companies from bringing money back. They basically don't as a result. That's why we have 3 trillion dollars of cash parked overseas in the first place. Unlocking that brings that money home, but unlocking that also puts us on a better level playing field, by having a territorial system. Combining that with a 20 percent tax rate, getting us from the last of the country pile, meaning the highest industrial world tax rate, to one of the best tax rates. We really are convinced that that's going to give us faster economic growth, higher wage growth. The Tax Foundations says almost a million new jobs, faster GDP growth, and pressure upwards on wages, about 4 percent on average on wages. So that means everybody's after-tax income goes up in this country because of that."

Speaker Ryan: "We better do what we said we would do. We ran on tax reform. We know there's nothing more we could do that will do more to grow the economy and raise wages, get after-tax incomes up, get economic growth faster, get to a 3 percent economy. We know there's nothing we can do like this, that gets us to this kind of an economy, we know we can have. Yes, we said we would do this, and we have to do this. That's the covenant we have with our supporters, the voters, the people. That's why you vote for Republicans. Yeah, you bet, we need to make good on this promise if we're going to be successful politically, but most importantly, if we want to be successful as a country we have to get this done."

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