U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

29–401 WASHINGTON : 2018

S. HRG. 115–234 

THE ECONOMIC REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE 

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

MARCH 7, 2018 

Printed for the use of the Joint Economic Committee 

( 

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JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE 

[Created pursuant to Sec. 5(a) of Public Law 304, 79th Congress] 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ERIK PAULSEN, Minnesota, Chairman 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

DARIN LAHOOD, Illinois 

FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida 

KAREN HANDEL, Georgia 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

JOHN DELANEY, Maryland 

ALMA S. ADAMS, PH.D., North Carolina 

DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

SENATE 

MIKE LEE, Utah, Vice Chairman 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

BEN SASSE, Nebraska 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

TED CRUZ, Texas 

BILL CASSIDY, M.D., Louisiana 

MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico, Ranking 

AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota 

GARY C. PETERS, Michigan 

MARGARET WOOD HASSAN, New Hampshire 

COLIN BRAINARD, Executive Director 

KIMBERLY S. CORBIN, Democratic Staff Director 

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C O N T E N T S 

OPENING STATEMENTS OF MEMBERS

Hon. Erik Paulsen, Chairman, a U.S. Representative from Minnesota .............. 1 

Hon. Martin Heinrich, Ranking Member, a U.S. Senator from New Mexico ..... 3 

WITNESS

Hon. Kevin Hassett, Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers, Washington, 

DC .......................................................................................................................... 5 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Prepared statement of Hon. Erik Paulsen, Chairman, a U.S. Representative 

from Minnesota .................................................................................................... 34 

Prepared statement of Hon. Martin Heinrich, Ranking Member, a U.S. Senator from New Mexico .......................................................................................... 35 

Prepared statement of Hon. Kevin Hassett, Chairman, Council of Economic 

Advisers, Washington, DC ................................................................................... 37 

Article titled ‘‘One last time on who benefits from corporate taxcuts’’ submitted by Representative Maloney ..................................................................... 44 

Article titled ‘‘No, the GPO Tax Plan Won’t Give You a $9,000 Raise’’ submitted by Representative Maloney ..................................................................... 47 

Response from Dr. Kevin Hassett to Questions for the Record Submitted 

by Vice Chairman Lee ......................................................................................... 49 

Response from Dr. Kevin Hassett to Questions for the Record Submitted 

by Senator Heinrich ............................................................................................. 51 

Response from Dr. Kevin Hassett to Questions for the Record Submitted 

by Senator Klobuchar .......................................................................................... 53 

Response from Dr. Kevin Hassett to Questions for the Record Submitted 

by Representative Maloney ................................................................................. 53 

Response from Dr. Kevin Hassett to Questions for the Record Submitted 

by Representative LaHood .................................................................................. 55 

Response from Dr. Kevin Hassett to Questions for the Record Submitted 

by Representative Schweikert ............................................................................. 55 

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THE ECONOMIC REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2018 

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE, Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in Room 216, 

Hart Senate Office Building, the Honorable Erik Paulsen, Chairman, presiding. 

Representatives present: Paulsen, Beyer, Handel, LaHood, 

Maloney, Comstock, Adams, Schweikert, and Delaney. 

Senators present: Heinrich, Lee, Klobuchar, Cassidy, Hassan, 

Portman, and Peters. 

Staff present: Theodore Boll, Colin Brainard, Gerardo Bonilla, 

Daniel Bunn, Kim Corbin, Barry Dexter, Alaina Flannigan, Connie 

Foster, Natalie George, Colleen Healy, Matt Kaido, Allie Neill, and 

Alex Schibuola. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ERIK PAULSEN, CHAIRMAN, A 

U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM MINNESOTA 

Chairman Paulsen. We will call the hearing to order. Good 

afternoon, and welcome to the Joint Economic Committee’s first 

hearing of 2018. This is my first hearing as Chairman. As Members 

know, I have worked with many of you before and, as you know, 

as Senator Klobuchar knows, I’m from Minnesota, where we work 

hard and we work together. 

In that spirit, I look forward to working with Ranking Member 

Heinrich and Vice Chairman Lee, as well as the other members of 

the Committee. 

I especially want to extend a very warm welcome to our newest 

member, Representative Karen Handel from the State of Georgia. 

And with that, we will begin. We are witnessing a sea change in 

the American economy, one that is boosting opportunities, supercharging growth, and restoring prosperity to our Nation. For eight 

years the last Administration struggled to find government-based 

solutions to a financial crisis that hit American workers hard. But 

now we have a new Administration with a very different approach, 

and I think few can deny that things have changed very rapidly. 

The job of this Committee is to understand what changed and 

why. We all want more workers to rejoin the labor force, more businesses to invest, and more wages to rise. 

I believe our work here, in gauging the economy’s long-term potential, can inform us on the policies that foster that growth. 

Chairman Hassett, we welcome you here today. Some very good 

things have happened since you testified before this Committee in 

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October of last year. We have passed historic tax reform legislation, 

the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and the response of businesses has 

been overwhelmingly positive, exceeding expectations. 

Consumer confidence is up. Americans are seeing more takehome pay. Many will spend less time preparing their taxes next 

year, and businesses are paying special bonuses, giving their employees a raise, repatriating offshore earnings, and investing more 

in the United States again. 

The unemployment rate is 4.1 percent, the lowest since the year 

2000, and the number of new unemployment claims is the lowest 

since 1969. 

Regulatory reform is cutting back on market-choking regulations, 

and is encouraging the private sector, and contributing to the surge 

in business optimism since November 2016, especially for small 

businesses. 

Economic growth in each quarter of last year substantially exceeded growth of the corresponding quarter the year before reaching as high as 3.2 percent in the third quarter, a number that the 

last Administration had led us not to expect to happen again. 

We are in a better place every day, as this economy has moved 

upwards, and it is not because government fixed it; it’s because 

government finally allowed the American people to fix it. 

We are trusting the American people to keep more of their 

money and to spend it as they see fit, rather than micro-managing 

their lives. America’s economy isn’t getting overheated, it’s just getting started. 

Figure one, which is on the screen, uses the phrase ‘‘Constrained 

Potential.’’ The potential is everyone in the audience here in their 

capacity as productive members of American society, and the constraint part is, well, unfortunately potentially everyone here on the 

dais in our capacity as elected officials. 

This chart does show something very interesting. The color lines 

show how the Congressional Budget Office has lowered its projection of the economy’s output potential each successive year since 

2008. 

In other words, this is a graphic representation of the American 

Government lowering expectations year by year. The black line at 

the bottom, however, represents actual production as rising, closing 

in on the bottom potential line only after eight long years. 

Potential GDP should not change much from year to year, yet 

this chart shows constant revision. And why? The answer is: The 

continuous addition and tightening of policy constraints from 2008 

to 2016. Removal of these constraints is a return to normalcy, not 

an artificial boom. 

What happened for the last eight years was a regulatory crackdown that diverted and constrained Americans from their pursuits. 

And those expectations should never have been that low to start, 

because we should have had confidence in the American worker. 

I would be remiss if I did not mention the President’s concerns 

about our trade policy and discussion in recent weeks about tariffs. 

We are all deeply concerned about unfair trade practices by bad actors in other countries, and I know American workers want to compete fairly. That is because—and I know the President knows this 

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as well—our workers are the best in the world. And when they 

compete internationally, America wins. 

I look forward to hearing from you, Chairman Hassett, how these 

tariffs might be crafted so they address specific distortions caused 

by unfair trade practices and how we are going to avoid these tariffs simply becoming a tax increase on consumers and American 

manufacturers. 

Chairman Hassett, we thank you again for appearing before the 

Committee today and extend our thanks, as well, to the Council of 

Economic Advisers for preparing the Economic Report of the President. 

I will now yield to Ranking Member Heinrich for his opening 

statement. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Paulsen appears in the 

Submissions for the Record on page 34.] 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARTIN HEINRICH, RANKING 

MEMBER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO 

Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman. 

Before I get started, I want to welcome our new Chairman, 

Chairman Paulsen. We have known each other for a few years now, 

and I am really looking forward to working with him this year. 

Chairman Hassett, thank you for being here today to discuss The 

Economic Report of The President and the State of the Economy. 

And I wish I were as optimistic as the Chairman about the policies 

put in place since you came before this Committee in October. 

I am going to be pretty direct. The Republican tax bill serves special interests and will cost our children dearly for generations to 

come. Rushed through with no bipartisan input, the GOP tax law 

jeopardizes our fiscal position and further tilts the scales in favor 

of large corporations, and especially wealthy individuals. 

While the law’s impacts on economic growth are debatable, the 

impact on inequality is clear. Independent analysis shows that 

within 10 years more than half of working families will pay higher 

taxes than they would have before the new GOP tax law. And 

meanwhile, the wealthiest 5 percent walk away with an astonishing 99 percent of the tax benefits. 

Chairman Hassett, you and the President have promised again 

and again, most recently in The Economic Report of The President, 

that tax reform will increase average family income by at least 

$4,000. But that is simply not what we are seeing. 

If we wanted to reform the Tax Code to help the middle class, 

we could have simply cut taxes for the middle class. Pretty 

straightforward. And it would have directly given working people 

in New Mexico and around the country much-needed resources to 

pay the bills, put their kids through college, and save a little something for retirement. 

Instead, Republicans chose to cut taxes for large corporations 

and for the super-wealthy, and left Americans hoping that those 

cuts would somehow trickle down to workers. 

History has shown again and again that is not what happens. 

And the early evidence this year confirms who the big winners are. 

So far, corporations have announced more than $210 billion, with 

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a ‘‘b,’’ dollars in stock buybacks, benefiting executives and wealthy 

shareholders. 

While there have been some bonus and wage announcements, 

they total just $6 billion. Six billion to two hundred and ten billion. 

A fraction of the money going to executives and the investor class. 

It is not just the immediate impacts that are concerning. The whole 

strategy is misguided. 

The massive increase in deficits constrains our efforts to tackle 

the problems that we should have been focused on in the first 

place, like fixing our broken infrastructure and making more accessible and affordable a whole range of post-secondary education options, from apprenticeships and vocational education, to community 

college and four-year universities. 

Think about how we could have invested $1.5 trillion dollars 

spent on the tax bill. We could have erased every student loan in 

this country. Every single one. One recent study shows that canceling student debt for the 44 million Americans who hold it would 

boost economic output and create up to 1.5 million new jobs in a 

single year. Of course we could have invested that $1.5 trillion in 

infrastructure. 

The Administration’s infrastructure plan commits barely any real 

money to the cause. They say they want to spend $200 billion in 

Federal dollars, but its budget makes more than $200 billion in 

cuts to existing infrastructure programs from transit to highways 

to water. 

In other words, the long-awaited plan invests no new net Federal 

dollars. The $1.5 trillion hole dug because of the tax bill could have 

actually funded our infrastructure plan. 

Instead, the Administration is hoping that somehow State and 

local governments and the private sector will pay for roads, for 

bridges, ports, schools, VA hospitals, and on and on. But the private sector has little interest in investing in sparsely populated 

low-traffic rural areas that desperately need infrastructure investment. And the tax law further limits already cash-strapped States’ 

abilities to raise new revenues by capping State and local tax deductions. 

It is less a plan and more a hope. You often hear that budgets 

are a reflection of values. That is true. But the massive tax giveaway, maybe even more than the recent White House budget, reveals Republican priorities. 

My Republican colleagues could have joined with Democrats to 

invest in children, to invest in workers, education, our long-term 

economic success. Instead, they handed out goodies to large corporations and the uber wealthy, and risked our long-term economic 

health. 

Chairman Hassett, my focus is on what we can do now, and moving into the future. I am interested to get your insight today on 

how the Administration plans to work with us in making the investments that will help families succeed in today’s economy. 

I look forward to hearing your perspective. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Heinrich appears in the Submissions for the Record on page 35.] 

Chairman Paulsen. Thank you, Ranking Member Heinrich. 

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I would now like to introduce our distinguished witness, Chairman of The President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Dr. Kevin 

Hassett. 

Dr. Hassett earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University 

of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the Administration, Dr. Hassett 

was the Director of Research for Domestic Policy with the American Enterprise Institute. He has served as an economic adviser to 

multiple Presidential campaigns. In addition to prior experience 

working as a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Board of 

Governors, Dr. Hassett has been a visiting professor at New York 

University and as an Associate Professor at Columbia University. 

Chairman Hassett, we appreciate you joining us today, and you 

are now recognized for your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF HON. KEVIN HASSETT, CHAIRMAN, COUNCIL 

OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS, WASHINGTON, DC 

Chairman Hassett. Thank you, Chairman Paulsen, and Ranking Member Heinrich, Vice Chairman Lee, and members of the 

Committee, for inviting me to discuss the Economic Report of The 

President. 

Our Report outlines the economics of an agenda focused on improving growth by reforming the Tax Code, eliminating unnecessary regulations, investing in infrastructure, addressing cyber 

crime, and improving the conditions that made it hard for America’s middle class to recover from the Recession. 

First, on taxes and growth. A review of the literature and our 

own modeling finds that the average household could get a $4,000 

wage increase from the new law once the law’s full effects get absorbed by the macro economy. 

We have already seen that 4.7 million workers have received 

raises, bonuses, or improved benefits as of today. By our calculations, companies have already announced investments of over $191 

billion. 

We also have now modeled the effects on the individual side, 

finding they could increase GDP by 1.3 to 1.6 percent in 10 years. 

I also want to mention share buybacks. 

Monies previously offshore are being sent back to the U.S., a onetime adjustment of the stock of trillions of dollars of old profits that 

were locked in foreign subsidiaries. One would expect this. No 

economist would make the case that the American economy would 

be better off if these monies were still locked offshore. 

Share buybacks today are not mutually exclusive to long-run 

wage gains that accompany American capital formation that will 

accumulate this year and in the future. 

Second, on deregulation and growth. There have been demonstrable harmful effects on the economy of over-regulation. For example, business dynamism has suffered a decline. 2009 marked the 

first time that more firms died than were born in the United States 

since the Census Bureau began compiling its Business Dynamics 

Statistics. It is likely that regulatory zeal slowed both dynamism 

and overall growth. We find that if the U.S. had OECD product 

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late further to the level of the Netherlands, we could get growth 

at 2.2 percent per year. 

Third, we examined why the middle class cannot seem to get 

ahead. The labor income of the typical household at the middle of 

the income distribution is still below where it was at the start of 

the 21st Century. 

The last Administration’s tax and transfer policies worsened the 

wound through their effect on the labor market. The median American’s inflation-adjusted household income from working took nine 

years to recover to its pre-Recession level after the Great Recession, the longest this type of recovery has taken since at least 1979. 

Government policies decrease the incentive to work, contributing 

to the historic decline in Americans participating in the workforce, 

and the continued stagnation of wages, along with the Baby Boom 

retirements. 

But in the end these government policies hampered the economic 

success of the very middle class households they are intended to 

help. Changing course can help address the low labor force participation rate, we believe. 

I would also like to touch on immigration. The President’s immigration policies focus on a merit or skills-based approach, bringing 

in immigrants who are highly productive and skilled, as opposed to 

those who simply arrive through a family relationship and who 

may have low or no skills, shows why a head count is not the way 

to think about the impact of immigration on growth. 

Former CEA Chairman Eddie Lazear has written about the relationship between the education levels of prospective immigrants 

and the economic effects their admission could rationally be expected to have. I agree with this analysis. 

Looking at infrastructure, another of the President’s priorities, in 2014 total congestion cost peaked at $160 billion, wasting 6.9 billion hours in delays, and 3.1 billion gallons of fuel. A $11⁄2 trillion investment in infrastructure could add .1 to .2 

percentage points to economic growth over the next decade, and improve productivity and the quality of life. 

The President has focused on the high cost of drugs. Among 

members of the OECD, Americans pay more than 70 percent of 

patented biopharmaceutical profits that fund drug innovation. This 

is very asymmetric. There are also several factors that affect health 

and health care costs, such as smoking, obesity, and opioid abuse, 

which have contributed to the decline in American life expectancy 

for the second year in a row. 

We also looked at economic policy issues on the horizon like 

cyber, as we were charged to do in the Forty-Six Employment Act, 

Mr. Chairman. Our analysis finds that malicious cyber-attacks inflicted over $100 billion of damage on our economy in 2016, on top 

of the threat this poses to our national security. 

There is a market failure that leads private firms, which we document in the Economic Report, many of which face risks correlated 

with one another to invest less in cyber security than would be economically optimal, and to not report crimes that are targeted towards them. 

And perhaps the topic of the day, which I know that we will go 

into more in the question and answer period, trade. Trade has been 

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beneficial, for sure, but it has left some American communities 

worse off. 

The Administration is seeking to improve America’s position with 

respect to international trade. Other countries at times violate 

market principles and distort the functioning of global markets. 

American firms face higher barriers to selling their products 

abroad, and fewer barriers to selling their own products here in the 

United States than their peer firms in the group of high-income G– 

20 countries. 

For example, let’s just look at cars. We put a 21⁄2 percent tariff 

on our imports into the U.S. And for countries that we have free 

trade deals with it is even zero. Whereas, China puts a 25 percent 

tariff on our cars that we ship to China. And even the EU puts a 

10 percent tariff on cars that we try to sell into the EU. 

Brazil puts 35 percent tariffs on U.S. cars. Or look at monitors. 

We have a 2 percent tariff on monitors. China has a 241⁄2 percent 

tariff, and the EU has a 14 percent tariff on our monitors. 

There are lots and lots of examples of these asymmetries that we 

document in The Economic Report, and I think that that is why the 

President is right when he emphasizes that our trade deals need 

to level the playing field. 

I would like to conclude with the overall economic outlook—2017 

growth and real gross domestic product exceeded expectations and 

increased to 21⁄2 percent, up from 1.8 percent during the four quarters of 2016. 

We are the first Administration, I would add, to miss the forecasts in their first year by having an estimate that was too low in 

many years. The unemployment rate has fallen to 4.1 percent, the 

lowest since 2000. 

Now our baseline forecast is that we will have 2.2 percent growth 

through 2028. But if all of the President’s policies are enacted, the 

policy inclusive forecast is that we will have real GDP growth of 

about 3 percent a year, although it is less than that in the second 

five years. 

So we are conservative relative to previous Administrations that, 

on average, have had a median forecast of 3.1 percent. And as I 

have testified before, I believe in the importance of transparency 

about the forecasting methods. And I know that as we begin our 

conversation about The Economic Report that we will have plenty 

of points that we disagree about, but I hope you will agree that we 

have got a very transparent report; that we describe the model that 

we use to do the baseline; we describe how we get from the baseline to 3 percent with lots and lots of chapters on economic policies 

that review economic literatures with something like 60 pages of 

references, and give you a range of the balance of the predictions 

from the literature. 

With that, I know that there is a long, long history of this Committee and the Council of Economic Advisers working together, and 

I am pleased that I also have a personal history with this Committee that goes back more than a decade, and I look forward to 

taking questions from so many of my friends and acquaintances. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Hassett appears in the Submissions for the Record on page 37.] 

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Chairman Paulsen. Thank you, Chairman Hassett. We will 

now begin the questioning period. I would just remind members to 

keep their questions to five minutes. 

Chairman Hassett, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is the most important economic legislation that we have seen enacted in years. By 

lowering the corporate, pass-through, and individual rates we have 

created a more even-handed, simple, and pro-growth tax system. 

Can you give a little bit of an expansion, or talk a little bit more 

about some of the improvements that you believe this legislation is 

actually bringing to our economy? 

Chairman Hassett. Yes, and thank you very much for that 

question. And it in part allows me to address comments made by 

Mr. Heinrich that I think that, as an economist, as I modeled the 

Tax Bill that we just looked at, I think of there being a corporate 

side and an individual side. And I know the individual side contains small businesses, and so on, too. 

But on the corporate side, we got the rate from 35 percent, which 

was the highest rate in the developed world, down to 21 percent. 

But also, we introduced a whole bunch of rules, some of them quite 

technical like deemed tangible income, and I know the members of 

this Committee have studied them all and know them well, that 

make it so that firms can no longer reduce their U.S. tax burden 

easily by moving their activity abroad. 

An example that I find really stunning that I studied extensively 

before as we were debating the Tax Bill, is that if you and I, Chairman Paulsen, had a company that made say hockey pucks, because 

you’re from Minnesota, then if we had been making hockey pucks 

in the U.S. forever and ever, then what we could do is we could 

say, hey, let’s start making hockey pocks under the old code in Ireland. Then what we would do is we would make our hockey pucks 

in Ireland, and then sell them to the parent in the U.S. and say 

we sell a hockey puck for $10. We would pay our Irish sub $11 for 

the hockey puck. The U.S. parent would post a loss. There would 

be massive profits in Ireland not taxed by the U.S. And then we 

would take that loss and carry it back and get a refund on our past 

taxes from the Paulsen-Hassett hockey pucks. 

And so we had created this world where we were subsidizing 

with tax refunds the offshoring of jobs. And I think that we have 

fixed that. And I know that President Obama had a proposal that 

did many similar things in the tax bill that we did. On the individual side, that is the majority of the cost of the tax bill. And I 

think that about $700 billion of the cost on the individual side is 

from the refundable child credit. 

And I, as an economist, can say that, you know, we can disagree 

a lot about redistribution perhaps and what the top marginal rate 

should be and so on, but I think we all agree that our society 

should equalize opportunity. And I think that the refundable child 

credit was a very costly thing in the bill, but that it does—it is one 

of the things that is really targeted towards the best way to address opportunity. And that is to get money to families with kids. 

Chairman Paulsen. Chairman Hassett, let me also talk to you 

a little bit about free trade and tariffs, which are issues that have 

now dominated the discussion here on Capitol Hill since the President’s remarks just last week on possible Section 232 action. Like 

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many of my colleagues, I am concerned about the proposed tariffs 

on both steel and aluminum. 

I do believe that if these tariffs are implemented with a broad 

brush it will have the potential to backfire and cost us jobs at 

home, force consumers to pay higher prices for goods, and ultimately hurt our economy. 

Can you talk a little bit about the direct negative effects of these 

proposed 232 tariffs, as well as the possible downstream effects 

that could occur depending on how the international community reacts, should these tariffs be applied to all steel and aluminum imports? 

Chairman Hassett. You know, Mr. Chairman, you know that 

my solemn job as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers 

is to provide the President with objective advice about the economics of his decisions. And I can assure you that I take that responsibility extremely seriously, and that we do that. 

If we are going to analyze—and, these actions that have been in 

the news over the last week or so of course are still in development. There is discussion about how to treat Canada and Mexico 

that is an ongoing discussion. 

But looking back at the academic literature, President Bush had 

steel tariffs that I think the academic literature agreed was a big 

positive for the steel industry, and then caused some harm to 

downstream steel-using industries. 

I can say that the 232 is a national security matter. I am not a 

national security expert, but even if you were to take those relatively small net costs to society from the analysis of the Bush 

steel approach, then it would be easy to envision national security 

benefits that would exceed those costs. And more importantly, 

though, I think let’s think again about cars. 

So we have a 21⁄2 percent tariff on European cars shipped into 

the U.S. They charge a 10 percent tariff on our cars going over to 

Europe. That kind of asymmetry is something that has been the 

focus of I think every trade representative that I’ve ever known 

trying to fix it, and they’ve failed. 

President Trump is very, very serious when he says that he is 

a free-trader, and that he is pursuing symmetry and reciprocity. 

And, you know, I think that having—taking strong action is a good 

way to start negotiations and to try to move other countries towards a more free-trade equilibrium. If we could succeed at doing 

that, then the benefits of that for us and for the global economy 

could be enormous. 

Chairman Paulsen. Thank you. With that, I now recognize 

Senator Heinrich for a period of five minutes. 

Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman. 

I am just going to jump off your question there. I am curious if 

the President is interested in reciprocity and proportionality, so 

much of our challenge there in terms of abuse has been with China 

not with Canada. Why make the first move with regard to Canada, 

instead of tackling the problems that we all have recognized exist 

in our trade relationship with China? 

Chairman Hassett. You know, I am not the person who sets the 

schedule for which moves that we make when. I can assure you, 

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nomic Advisers has taken very seriously our responsibility to measure things like the intellectual property theft from the U.S. by Chinese firms and the Chinese Government, and quantify it. So we’ve 

got numbers in there of more than $100 billion. 

And as you know—— 

Senator Heinrich. Prioritize where we have seen the worst 

abuses. Going on to wages, the Council of Economic Advisers has 

estimated that the corporate tax cuts just passed by my Republican 

colleagues would lead to a $4,000 increase in average household income. 

We have seen a few companies that have announced one-time $1,000 bonuses, but we have not seen anything really approaching 

a $4,000 permanent wage increase that’s been predicted. So, Chairman Hassett, if you want to guarantee families $4,000 in their income, why not just cut out the middle man and give them a $4,000 

tax cut in their income taxes? 

Chairman Hassett. You know, I think that the problem from 

the point of view of modeling the economy is that ultimately you 

have to have a theory of where wages come from. 

If wages are being supported by high productivity, then we can 

give people a pay raise and sustain it for many, many years. Productivity basically only comes from two places. One is that we give 

workers more capital to use. Or, two, we give them training so that 

they have more human capital. 

And by chasing our hockey puck firm overseas to Ireland, what 

we basically did is we removed capital from the economy. And we 

mentioned in the report, by the way, that capital deepening’s contribution to wage growth in the second four years of President 

Obama’s term actually went negative for the first time in U.S. history, back to the Second World War. And it wasn’t a policy that 

President Obama pursued. It was the absence of a tax reform that 

fixed this problem where everybody was moving everything offshore. 

And so I think if we want workers’ wages to go up—and you 

know that I do—then we have to either train them better, or give 

them more capital to use. And what we were doing before we 

changed the tax law is we were chasing the capital offshore. And 

without capital there was no productivity growth. And without productivity growth, there was no wage growth. 

Senator Heinrich. So talking about tax reform, for years we 

heard the mantra of tax reform being about lowering corporate 

taxes, but broadening the base. This certainly lowered corporate 

taxes. It’s why it comes with a $1.5 trillion price tag. Where was 

the broadening of the base? 

Chairman Hassett. Oh, on the corporate side, Mr. Heinrich, I 

think that the net cost after the international changes was about 

$300 billion. And so imagine if we started with a 35 percent rate 

and moved it down to 21 percent, if we didn’t have any base broadening then we would have lost a heck of a lot more revenue than 

$300 billion. 

Senator Heinrich. I am looking forward to seeing how this 

models out over time, or how the models match up to reality. 

As you know, shareholders are receiving about 30 times as much 

as workers through stock buyback. That is just from the public 

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11 

numbers of what has been released with regard to the ratio of bonuses, the ratio of raises to actual buyback announcements. 

Is there anything the Administration is planning to do to encourage that corporations use more of this new windfall to build that 

capital in their workers? 

Chairman Hassett. Yes, thank you very much for that question 

because this is a very, very important thing to have clear in all of 

our minds. There was a whole bunch of previously earned profits 

sitting offshore. Some estimates were as high as $3 trillion, but say 

$2- to $3 trillion that was offshore, and was offshore in December. 

And now that $3 trillion is coming home. And a lot of that money 

is for firms like Apple, and Microsoft that have enormous profitability. And, you know, they just had it parked in their foreign sub 

and they’re bringing it home. The wage growth that the models put 

out, that we talk about in The Economic Report, comes over time 

from capital formation. 

Now some of that money coming home will be turned into investment. Some of it will be turned into bonuses. Some of it will be put 

in the bank. But there is a cumulative stock of about $3 trillion 

that is coming home right now. And it is better that it is home 

than we leave it over there. 

But the wage growth comes from the capital investment. But not 

just the firms that made profits in the past made, but the firms 

that are going to make profits in the future make as well. 

Senator Heinrich. I am over my time, Mr. Chairman, but I 

would just make the point that I think Apple is seeing that real 

money. My constituents are still waiting for their real increase in 

wages. 

Chairman Paulsen. Vice Chairman Lee, you are recognized for 

five minutes. 

Vice Chairman Lee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And 

thank you, Mr. Hassett, for being with us again today. It is always 

a pleasure to have you in front of the Committee. 

In your report, one of the many things that you discuss that I 

think is interesting and helpful is that a mounting body of academic and economic research indicates that excessive regulation 

negatively affects productivity growth by misallocating labor and 

creating restrictions on entry. 

These are things that weigh heavily on the economy. When I first 

started following this a couple of decades ago, the drain on the 

economy was about $300 billion annually. It is up to $2 trillion annually now. So this has not simply grown with inflation. There has 

been a very significant uptick in the burden imposed on the economy by the Federal regulatory system. 

The Administration has made some significant strides to roll 

back ineffective, duplicative, and intrusive otherwise excessively 

burdensome regulations. In fact, Director Mulvaney has announced 

that OIRA accomplished a staggering ratio of 22 regulations removed or rescinded for every new one promulgated, which I think 

is a fantastic development and one that I hope will continue 

throughout this Administration and moving forward into the future. 

Shrinking the regulatory footprint of our Federal Government, 

and encouraging agencies to spend their money more wisely is 

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12 

something I have long cared a lot about, and it is something I have 

focused on ever since I came to the Senate over seven years ago. 

In the 114th Congress, I introduced the Regulatory Budget Bill 

that would have required the President to submit in his annual 

budget request an analysis of the cost of compliance with Federal 

regulations that each agency is in charge of implementing and enforcing. And also to do that with regard to proposed regulations. 

My bill also would have prevented agencies from issuing certain 

guidance documents setting out policies or interpretations of statutes unless they had provided adequate notice and opportunity for 

comment, as is required under existing law. And it would have required the GAO to provide reports and estimates for specified regulations. 

Tell me, Mr. Hassett, how could improved agency-wide cost/benefit analysis help the economy to continue to grow? And how could 

it provide more opportunities for more business owners to invest in 

hiring new workers, rather than in spending so many resources on 

complying with existing regulations? 

Chairman Hassett. Thank you for the question, Mr. Lee. You 

know, I think that one of the surprising things for me about the 

movement in consumer and business sentiment last year was how 

quickly it went up really, really fast and enormously, even though 

it wasn’t even clear that the tax bill would pass and so on. 

And digging around, I understood better than I have in the past, 

because I’m not a regulatory economist, how regulations squash innovation and entrepreneurship. And one of the main problems is 

that when you have new regulations, then firms have to sort of 

stop what they are doing and hire a bunch of lawyers and engineers to figure out how are we going to comply with this new regulation? And it can be really quite costly. One estimate from Doug 

Holtz-Eaken’s think tank suggested that there were literally millions and millions of man-hours that were saved last year because 

people were not looking at all these new regulations and figuring 

out what to do. 

But old regulations, firms figure out how to deal with them. But 

then it becomes kind of a barrier to entry. And so if you are a big 

rich firm, then your guys figured out how to deal with the regulations; but somebody who might want to enter and compete with 

you has to navigate this really complicated thing where maybe 

there’s 10 regulations in your space, and half of them disagree with 

one another. And so I think the benefit from deregulation are clear. 

And regulations were growing—it is really hard to measure regulations, but I would say over the last decade about 8 percent a 

year. In other words, faster than the economy. And so if you are 

wondering why people were depressed about the future of the regulatory costs that they might be facing, it was because there were 

so many more regulations. 

Now of course many regulations are important, and they are 

good, and we want clean air and clean water, and so we have to 

expose them to, as you say, the cost/benefit analysis. 

Vice Chairman Lee. But they are not cost free, and the costs 

that they impose, as you point out, some regulation is appropriate 

and indeed necessary, but it is not as if those regulatory costs can 

simply be deemed to be borne by big, wealthy corporations. 

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Chairman Hassett. It is the startups that don’t happen very 

often that you can think of as bearing the costs of those. 

Vice Chairman Lee. The startups that don’t happen. The jobs 

that do not arise, since we know that most if not all net job growth 

occurs within startups. But it also gets paid for by consumers. Disproportionately speaking, we are talking about poor and middle 

class consumers who pay higher prices on everything they buy. 

Thank you. 

Chairman Paulsen. Thank you. And now Representative Beyer, 

you are recognized for five minutes. 

Representative Beyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. 

And, Chairman, thanks for being here. 

In both the CEA Report and in your testimony you stressed the 

benefits of deregulation for growth, per your conversation with Senator Lee. But I want to focus slightly different. Because we know 

from both historical and unfortunately recent events that very few 

factors can impact growth negatively more than a financial crisis. 

Hence, the downturn—that’s upside down here, I’ve got to get it 

rightway up—that dark black line was the financial crisis. 

Is there any evidence that the deregulation of the financial sector 

improves the stability of the financial sector? 

Chairman Hassett. You know, you are right to point to the fact 

that there is a big academic literature on the history of financial 

crises. Rineheart and Rogoth looked at 700 years of that and found 

that it is typical for economies to grow slowly after that for up to 

a decade. 

If you dig into their data a little bit more, which I have done, 

then you see that a lot of big, negative growth comes in the first 

half. And that usually by, you know, seven or eight years in you 

start to go back to normal growth. 

That did not happen in the U.S. And we have to look at the 

causes for why growth started to disappoint, and we did not go 

back to the old normal. And I think that one of the factors is—and 

this is something that I think there is bipartisan support for, is 

that our financial regulations made it a little bit too hard on community banks. A lot of community bank closures, and the community banks tend to be the ones that are financing the entrepreneurship and so on. 

So I think that financial regulation to preserve stability is important to avoid the next financial crisis. But after we have done it, 

it is important to study the costs and benefits of those regulations. 

And again I think that there is, very much bipartisan support, for 

the current measures to try to help the community banks. 

Vice Chairman Lee. You talked a lot about buybacks already. 

It is increasingly clear that firms are using, as Senator Heinrich 

said, almost 30 to 1. And I confess, massive stock buybacks weren’t 

part of the Administration’s messaging on this tax cut bill. I appreciate your notion that it is better to have the $30 trillion home. 

But if it is not being used for R&D, and it is not being used for 

investment, and it is not being used for worker things, and in fact 

I think most of what we see is that they are used to artificially inflate the value of the shares, both by competing for share price and 

restricting the number of shares. And the person that helps the 

most are the CEOs whose pay plans are based on stock price and 

LAP51NQ082 with DISTILLER

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overall market value. Aren’t we really in trouble here with a great 

leap of faith that somehow putting a lot more money in the share 

buybacks is going to lead to greater wage growth? 

Chairman Hassett. You know you and I agree about a lot of 

stuff, but on this buyback thing I just disagree. I wrote a paper 

with Alan Auerbach who has come as a Democratic witness I think 

before this Committee in the past, on what drives buybacks. And 

we have this very special one-time thing going on where there are 

at least trillions of dollars offshore that are suddenly—they’re suddenly able to bring them home, and firms are investing them. They 

are giving bonuses. They are putting money in the bank, and they 

are buying back shares and increasing dividends. And that is how 

capital markets work. 

But imagine if I own a share, and then a firm buys it back. It 

says if they gave me a dividend, they’re giving me some money and 

it’s coming because I made an investment in their firm, well then 

I as an investor will presumably go out and buy some other equity 

in some other firm. And so what that will do is that if you have 

a big firm like Apple say that has already done all of the investment plans that it plans to, and does not need the money that it 

is sending home to build a new factory, then it might buy back the 

shares. And then the people who owned Apple will go out and buy 

equities in firms that are new and innovative. That is how capital 

markets work, but churn in capital markets is what drives growth. 

Vice Chairman Lee. Let me try one more question. The President keeps talking about, he has repeatedly recently claimed that 

there is a $17 billion trade deficit with Canada. And yet your report talks about actually a new trade surplus with Canada and 

with Singapore. 

So can you educate him on our Canadian trade surplus, please? 

Chairman Hassett. The President is very well educated on 

these matters. He, I think—I haven’t looked at his specific reference that you’re talking about, but some people for some purposes emphasize the goods trade deficit, and some people emphasize the goods and services trade deficit. And I think in The Economic Report to the President we looked at both. 

Vice Chairman Lee. Is a good surplus or deficit more important 

than the services surplus? 

Chairman Hassett. I think it depends on, you know, what the 

conversation is about; that it is pretty common for jobs producing 

goods to have higher salaries than jobs producing services. And so 

there are definitely many conversations where the goods surplus is 

the more relevant metric. 

Vice Chairman Lee. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman Paulsen. Thank you. Representative Handel, you are 

recognized for five minutes. 

Representative Handel. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, Chairman Hassett, for being here. 

I would like to go back to the tax cut bill, if possible, because I 

think I need to get some clarity from you. I hear the critics saying 

that the lower tax rates are going to disproportionately benefit the 

most wealthy earners out there. Yet what I hear in my District in 

the Sixth District of Georgia is something quite different. 

LAP51NQ082 with DISTILLER

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Kim, a single mom who works for a construction company, she is actually seeing an additional $260 a month. That is more than 

$3,100 a year in her paycheck. And for a single mom with her 

daughter in college, that is really significant. 

So can you give some clarity around how the tax cuts really are 

affecting in a real-life scenario across the different income brackets, 

particularly for low- and middle-income earners? 

Chairman Hassett. Sure. I think that I have already addressed 

one thing that I think is very important, which is the big increase 

and refundability of the child credit. Also, the Treasury was really 

quite efficient at changing withholding, so that already in February 

people saw their take-home pay go up. 

The individual side of the tax cuts affected almost every taxpayer, and there are many, many of them. And I think one reason 

why the polling about the tax cuts changed so much in February 

and March is that people began to see what is real money to them. 

I think that we have to remember that the tax bill just passed 

in December, and our estimate of the wage effect is really something that happens after the investment, the capital accumulation 

has occurred, and that is something that will be spread out over 

years. 

I think that if history is a guide, then as popular as the tax cuts 

are now because people saw their take-home pay go up, they are 

going to be even more popular in a few years because of all the new 

capital that has come online pushing up productivity and pushing 

up wages. 

Representative Handel. Great. Thank you. I want to move to 

something that you said in your testimony about the real need to 

educate and train better the U.S. workforce so that we will have 

enough people to fill these jobs. 

As you know, about 6 million jobs are left unfilled here in the 

U.S. and employers really are very concerned that applicants lack 

the necessary skill sets. So what is your perspective about the balance between the emphasis of a traditional four-year college degree 

versus vocational and technical education, and how we can better 

marry that up to meet the demands of this growing economy? 

Chairman Hassett. Well I know that this is something that is 

a big focus of many in the Administration, especially Secretary 

DeVos, and I think that as an economist what I would always side 

with, you know, markets should speak and people should choose 

the professions that they want to do, and that we should help them 

finance their investments in human capital. But that we shouldn’t 

pick winners and losers. 

And, you know, I think that you might choose to have a low-paying job because it is something that you love. And one of the beauties of America is that we don’t assign people to this or to that. But 

I think that our education policy could do a much better job at 

helping people acquire specific technical skills. And, you know, 

there are ways that one could think of to help encourage that, by 

making more monies available for such investments. 

Representative Handel. Thank you. Let me move very quickly 

to the debt and get your quick thoughts about the impact of the 

pro-growth policies in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Bill to help us be on 

a better fiscal footing. 

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Chairman Hassett. I think that the President prioritized the 

tax bill in the first year, understanding that the game that we 

played with our hypothetical hockey puck example was harming 

America’s workers, and that they desperately needed their help, 

our help. 

Then, you know, in the fullness of time I think every economist 

will tell you that the entitlements are exploding and that we 

haven’t, you know, in present value we haven’t yet worked out a 

way to pay for them. 

I in my prior life even testified before this Committee on fiscal 

consolidation and the potential growth benefits of that. But I think 

the President and the team were right to prioritize the tax bill because we had this gaping wound that was harming American workers that we had to fix. 

Representative Handel. Alright, thank you so much, Mr. 

Chairman. I yield back. 

Chairman Paulsen. Thank you. Senator Klobuchar is recognized for five minutes. 

Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much, and congratulations, Mr. Chairman, and welcome, Mr. Chairman. 

I wanted to follow up on the last questions from the Congresswoman. We have a relatively low unemployment rate in our State, 

in Minnesota, and the Economic Report shows that even with overall low rates across the country the prime age male participation 

rate remains still lower. But the Federal Reserve noted earlier this 

year that there was a shortage of qualified workers across job sectors, particularly in manufacturing. 

Last year, 68 percent of our manufacturers in Minnesota said 

they were having trouble finding workers. And I know you just responded that it would be good to try to encourage different education programs to do that so we have people going into these 

areas. But could you comment on that lower number with men, and 

then what you think we should do about it? 

Chairman Hassett. Sure. I think that one point that we try to 

emphasize in The Economic Report, Senator, is that the retirement 

of the Baby Boomers is not the whole story. There are many reasons why labor force participation, especially from prime-age males, 

has declined. Some of those involve higher marginal tax rates discouraging work especially among older people. 

We talk about the prevalence of substance abuse. I think you 

might have seen our reference in the report to our big study in the 

fall of the impact of opioids on the U.S. And I think that there are 

many, many things that we are going to have to do to improve 

labor force participation. 

But the thing that I thought was a good news part that was really bipartisan or nonpartisan good news in that part of The Economic Report was that labor force participation does respond some 

to policy. And so when we see potential GDP estimates that were 

sort of doomed for low growth for a really long time, they often 

come from the fact that the decline in labor force participation is 

expected to continue, and we in The Economic Report highlight a 

number of things that we think we can do to help with that. 

And I am not trying to filibuster you, I promise—— 

Senator Klobuchar. We do that in the Senate—— 

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[Laughter.] 

Chairman Hassett [continuing]. But I think that the biggest 

thing that will do that is just the wage increases. 

Senator Klobuchar. Okay—— 

Chairman Hassett. If they happen the way we say, then that 

will draw people back to the labor force. 

Senator Klobuchar. On the opioid side, I just hope—I was 

there when the President signed the Order, and Senator Portman 

and Whitehouse and a few others and I have introduced the CARA 

Bill, and I just hope that the Administration gets behind some of 

these solutions. Senator Manchin has an idea of funding treatment 

with a per milligram tax on opioids. We have issues with prescription drug monitoring and other things. So that would be helpful if 

we get action, in addition to the report. 

Chairman Hassett. We have all hands on deck on that problem. 

Senator Klobuchar. Okay, good. Okay, then a second topic I 

want to focus on was just immigration reform. Again as I look at 

this low unemployment rate, the Administration’s decision to end 

DACA has created tremendous uncertainty for dreamers. 

In looking at states across our Nation, one recent study esti- mated that ending this policy would cost the country over $400 billion over the next 10 years. I was part of the Common Sense Caucus Group that came up with what we thought was a solution. I 

would prefer just to pass the Dream Act, get this done, and then 

we would not have the economic impact of having all of these hundreds of thousands of kids have to leave, 97 percent of them who 

work or are in school. 

Could you talk about the economic repercussions of losing this 

part of our workforce? 

Chairman Hassett. Well, Senator, as you know my job is to objectively advise the White House on the economics of things. And 

I know that there is an ongoing negotiation now—— 

Senator Klobuchar. There is, but there are still economic hard 

facts about dreamers holding jobs, or in school. 

Chairman Hassett. Right. And I think that the economic literature is clear that immigration has in many ways been a big benefit to the economy; that immigrants are often more likely to be entrepreneurs—— 

Senator Klobuchar. Twenty-five percent of all U.S. Nobel Laureates were foreign born. 

Chairman Hassett. But I think that also—and this is something before I joined the Administration that I wrote extensively 

about—and yet because of perhaps the bad enforcement of existing 

laws, and the existing chain migration as opposed to skills-based 

migration, we’re probably not getting the maximum bang for the 

buck out of immigration. 

Senator Klobuchar. I know but I was just specifically asking 

about dreamers and their economic impact, and the fact that they 

are here in a different category and have been working legally. 

Chairman Hassett. And I have not done a specific estimate of 

the economic impact of dreamers, but I would be happy if you 

would let me table it to get back to you—— 

Senator Klobuchar. That would be wonderful. 

Chairman Hassett [continuing]. With specifics. 

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Senator Klobuchar. I would really appreciate that. Thank you. 

Chairman Paulsen. Congressman LaHood, you are recognized 

for five minutes. 

Representative LaHood. Thank you, Chairman Paulsen, and 

congratulations on your Chairmanship. 

Chairman Hassett, thank you for being here today. I think you 

bring a valuable voice to this Administration when it comes to the 

free enterprise system, the support of capital markets and for free 

trade. I want to read a quote that you had last year regarding the 

economy of the U.S.: 

‘‘The success of the United States has come not from our natural 

resources or its large population, but from its free market system. 

Liberalized trade in broadly multilateral, regional, and bilateral 

agreements is a key ingredient in the recipe for prosperity.’’ 

How does pulling out of NAFTA coincide with that statement? 

Chairman Hassett. You know, I think—thank you for the question—and I think that the President has said over and over that 

he believes in free trade, and that he wants to negotiate better 

trade deals. I am not participating in the negotiations over NAFTA, 

but I know that there is a great deal of hope that NAFTA—that 

the negotiations will be successful. And I think that you would 

agree that if you look at like the asymmetries that I mentioned, for 

example, for autos, that it would be great if we could fix that. 

And the President is a very good negotiator, and he is intent on 

making the trade deals more symmetric than they are. 

Representative LaHood. And you mentioned earlier your job is 

to give advice. I mean do you think pulling out of NAFTA is a recipe for prosperity? 

Chairman Hassett. I think that there are a lot of benefits that 

can be had from improving the symmetry of the treatment of all 

of our—we have about the lowest, almost the lowest tariffs and 

nontariff barriers on earth, and our trading partners very often do 

not. And it would benefit American workers, and also the global 

economy if people would just move towards American policies. If 

they copied our policies, it would be a much better economy. And 

I think you would agree with that. 

But previous Presidents have tried to move foreign trading partners in that direction and failed, and I think the President is intent 

on trying to do that. 

Representative LaHood. And it seems to me there is obviously 

a strong debate going on on these issues, and we had Secretary 

Mnuchin before the Ways and Means Committee and asked him 

this, and he thought it was a good idea to renegotiate and not pull 

out. 

I know Secretary Purdue has said the same thing at the Department of Agriculture. Gary Cohn had said the same thing. Ambassador Branstad in Iowa. Do you have an opinion on that? 

Chairman Hassett. I think that the best possible outcome is a 

reciprocal symmetric trade deal that increases the freedom of 

trade. Yes, so I think that is correct. 

Representative LaHood. And then you mentioned earlier in 

your statement about the President supports free trade. When we 

look at the last 14 months here, what can we look at in terms of 

policies or things put forth that support free trade? 

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Chairman Hassett. Well I think that what is happening now is 

that there is a massive amount of work negotiating trade deals and 

trying to improve them, and to make them more symmetric and reciprocal. If those deals are successful, then they would certainly improve free trade. 

Representative LaHood. Well again, with all due respect, I 

look back over the last 14 months. And when Ambassador 

Lighthizer came in he talked a lot about bilateral trade agreements. And I think we are all in agreement those are positive for 

the U.S. 

But as we sit here today, we have not seen a model or a format 

or a mechanism for bilateral trade agreements. And that is very 

frustrating as somebody that represents a strong agriculture district, where Caterpillar tractors are made, and John Deere equipment. And 40 percent of the corn and soybeans grown in my District go somewhere else around the world. 

And here we are with not one bilateral trade agreement put 

forth. 

Chairman Hassett. Well I think that if you and I were negotiating trade deals that we would have no difficulty writing a deal 

right away. We would have a two-sentence trade deal that says we 

are going to have free trade between our countries. The trade deals 

that are being negotiated have thousands and thousands of pages, 

and it takes a long time to fix them. But we are intent on doing 

so. 

Representative LaHood. And I guess two other points. I know 

you mentioned particularly on steel and aluminum that this is a 

national security issue, and that is what it has been categorized as. 

But I know Secretary Mattis has disagreed with that and said it’s 

not national security, so I would just point that out. 

And I know you referenced President Bush and his steel tariffs 

that had gone on. But again, back when that happened, I’m 

quoting from an article here in Business Insider, ‘‘Manufacturers 

that depended on cheap steel during that era for their supply chain 

were hurt. The Institute for International Economics estimated 

that as many as 26,000 jobs were lost in this country after those 

were inputted.’’ 

And I guess my last comment would be: Who wins in a trade 

war? 

Chairman Hassett. I think that the global economy will function better if everybody—if our trading partners move their trade 

policies towards ours. And I think that American workers would be 

better off if the high tariffs on our products, like the 25 percent tariff on U.S. autos shipped into China, the 35 percent tariff on autos 

shipped into Brazil, if those are brought down. And the President 

is very serious about being a tough negotiator and putting America’s workers first. 

Representative LaHood. Thank you for your service. 

Chairman Paulsen. Representative Maloney, you are recognized for five minutes. 

Representative Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and congratulations on your appointment. 

And, Mr. Hassett, welcome back. 

Chairman Hassett. Thank you. It’s great to be here. 

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Representative Maloney. As Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, you have to straddle two very different worlds, the 

economic profession and the Trump Administration. And I would 

like to build on the question of my colleague on the other side of 

the aisle. 

You said in an interview that was published on January 30th, 

and I quote, ‘‘Everybody in the Trump Administration believes in 

free trade.’’ End quote. 

As a free market conservative economist, do you agree with the 

President’s policy of putting large tariffs on imported steel and aluminum? Yes or no? 

Chairman Hassett. My job in the White House has been to provide objective analysis to the President on those policies, and I 

have done so. In the end, the 232 judgment is one that’s a national 

security judgment. I am not a national security expert. You mentioned that Secretary Mattis had disagreed, but ultimately the 

President was elected by the American people to protect them and 

to make judgments about national security, and I support the Constitution and his right to do that. 

Representative Maloney. What are the likely economic effects? 

Who pays the price? 

Chairman Hassett. I think that the likely economic effects of 

say a steel tariff would be that we would have more steel production in the U.S. that would benefit steelworkers and steel firms 

here in the U.S. And to the extent that steel prices are higher, then 

the steel-consuming industries might find that their costs and profits—costs have gone up and profits have gone down. 

Representative Maloney. And in your report you repeat a 

claim you made many times that was a major selling point for the 

tax cut legislation. You write that, and I quote, ‘‘The corporate tax 

changes alone are expected to increase annual income for families 

by an average of $4,000.’’ End quote. 

And in a September report, you call this a very conservative estimate. Now is this based on mainstream opinion in the field of economics about the incidence of the benefits of corporate tax cuts on 

labor? 

Chairman Hassett. Thank you very much for that question, because, yes, it is. And in fact in The Economic Report we have a 

chart, which I would completely be unable to find right now sitting 

here at this stage, but I would be happy to do so and send it to 

you, where we go over all of the academic literature in this area 

and provide estimates of the wage effects from corporate tax cuts 

from any number of papers, including some published in The American Economic Review, which is like The New England Journal of 

Medicine of economics. 

And so critics of our analysis have asserted, falsely, that this 

analysis is not mainstream. But it is mainstream. It is citing academic peer-reviewed research in the top economic journals, including one by myself. 

And the paper that I wrote had a much bigger effect than the 

one that the economic report honed in on. And I think that that 

also shows my commitment to letting the staff decide what they 

think the literature says. I didn’t put my finger on the scale and 

tell them to use my opinion. 

LAP51NQ082 with DISTILLER

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Representative Maloney. I would like to request to place in 

the record alternative opinions from economist Paul Krugman who 

had an analysis where he called it ‘‘boneheaded,’’ and your predecessor economist Jason Furman said it was ‘‘implausible’’ and a little more than far-fetched. And Larry Summers wrote also a statement in opposition to this economic determination. 

Now if I could put it in? Thank you. 

[The information referred to appears in the Submissions for the 

Record on page 44.] 

And following the passage of the Republican tax cut legislation, major corporations have authorized an eye-popping $200 billion in 

stock buybacks. And of course this drives up stock prices, benefiting stockholders and CEOs, but how does this $200 billion figure 

compare to the total amount of wages and bonuses you believe are 

a result of the tax cut? What is the ratio? How does $200 billion 

in stock buybacks benefit the American worker? 

Chairman Hassett. I think again, Mrs. Maloney, to return to 

the buyback issue, the buybacks right now that are coming from 

the repatriated monies that were previously offshore are a one-time 

thing. 

If the—the papers I cited, which are not boneheaded, are peerreviewed in top journals are correct, which they might not be. It’s 

economics, right? Economics is an imperfect science. Then after the 

capital formation happens, workers will get $4,000 in say about 

five years from now, and then the year after that they’ll get even 

more. 

The buybacks, the $200 billion, are a one-time thing that’s based 

on the trillions of dollars that were offshore in the past. In the future, if the capital formation happens then wages will go up and 

they will continue to go up over time. And again, in a question for 

the record I would be happy to run through some calculations to 

show you what the present value of those wage increases might be 

and how they would relate to these buybacks. But I can assure you 

that it is going to be many, many times the value of the buybacks. 

Representative Maloney. My time is up. 

Chairman Hassett. Thank you. Representative Comstock, you 

are recognized for five minutes. 

Representative Comstock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. 

I wanted to focus on—I was very pleased you included this in the 

report—cyber security and the economic cost of not having the top 

cyber security workforce, as well as being aware of the threats. 

So I am noting in The Report you talk about 75 percent of the 

cyber threat being from the outside coming in, hacking in; 25 percent being on the inside, the people who are trying to get in and 

then are opportunists there. 

And then while we often hear a lot about the state actors—and 

that is 18 percent or so—51 percent is organized crime. So The Report indicates that the government can create education programs 

to ensure a pipeline of domestic employees for the cyber security 

workforce. Could you address some of the things we are doing 

there? And do we need to maybe have some—given the need for 

that within the government to protect against this, how do we compete for the cyber security workforce that we need on the inside, 

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22 

given this very active growth area on the outside? So how do we 

make sure that we have these high-end workers to deal with this 

very, as you pointed out, big economic threat? 

Chairman Hassett. Thank you very much for the question. And 

I think that the cyber chapter in The Economic Report broke a lot 

of new ground. I was very proud of the economic team that did that 

analysis, because it allowed us to quantify the impact of cyber 

crime in the U.S. in a way that has not been done before, by doing 

things like looking at announcements of cyber attacks on firms, 

and then estimating the share price response to the cyber attack. 

And I think that The Economic Report of The President serves 

a useful function for policymakers like yourselves when we provide 

analysis that quantifies things and helps you understand the 

stakes. And I think that I was surprised to see that the cost of 

cyber crime annually in the U.S. is north of $100 billion. I was astonished to see that the cost of opioid abuse in the U.S. is north 

of $500 billion a year. These are extremely pressing problems. 

Some of the solutions will involve training cyber security professionals. But other solutions certainly are the topic of future discussion and research. 

Imagine if pirates were attacking port cities and stealing $100 

billion a year, how we would respond. And it seems like this cyber 

cost that we discuss in the economic report has received a much 

smaller response than that. And our hope is that by quantifying 

the numbers that we help people prioritize their own thinking 

about future policies. 

Representative Comstock. Thank you. And then you actually 

mentioned my second question on the opioid abuse and that cost 

being so significant. And I know as I travel throughout my District, 

inevitably whether I am at a Rotary Club or a Chamber or a business talking about their needs, I hear certainly about workforce development that we have addressed here and I appreciate hearing, 

but part of the workforce development problem is the opioid abuse 

and the drug abuse, and not being able to get employees who can 

pass drug tests. 

So if you might address that, on some of the best ways that we 

can deal with this economic threat. I mean obviously we have task 

forces and we are working on this a lot, but maybe if you can just 

highlight the intersection of all the problems created by that on the 

economic side? 

Chairman Hassett. Right. I think that so far in The Economic 

Report what we have done on opioid abuse is to dig deeply into 

quantifying the problem. 

There is an ongoing effort I know on the Hill, but also in the 

White House, that is a massive effort to come up with solutions. 

On a personal level, I can say that my home town, Greenfield, Massachusetts, was the feature of one of those Anthony Bourdine’s ‘‘On 

The Road’’ shows. And he was talking about how such a beautiful 

town could be a center of opioid abuse, where there was a massive 

amount of suffering and death because of it. 

This is very personal for me, and I can assure you that there are 

going to be focused solutions to the problem rolled out this year by 

a big task force that is working on this at the White House. 

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23 

Representative Comstock. Thank you. And I really appreciate 

on both of those fronts that you have incorporated that and put 

them on the economic costs, because I think it is very important 

for us to be incorporating into our thinking. Thank you. 

Chairman Paulsen. Thank you, Ms. Comstock. Representative 

Adams, you are recognized for five minutes. 

Representative Adams. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank 

you, Chairman Hassett, for being here. 

The Trump Administration is allowing states to impose work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries. Once again, in my opinion 

we are not showing a lot of support for our low-income citizens, assuming that they are not working and they are not working by 

choice. 

Most Medicaid recipients who can work already work. Sixty percent of adults on Medicaid are working, and nearly 80 percent are 

in working families. Of those not working, more than half are family care givers, some in school who are already looking for work. 

All work requirements will accomplish is kick people out who need 

Medicaid the most. 

So my question is: What impact will taking Medicaid from America’s working families have on our country’s health, productivity, 

and economic growth? 

Chairman Hassett. Thank you for the question, and I think 

that we all agree that, that having a job and earning success is an 

objective that is worthy for every citizen, and that there are definitely citizens that have difficulty accomplishing that for many reasons, including the opioid abuse that we mentioned. 

I have not reviewed the literature on the impact of work requirements on job labor force participation, but I would be happy to do 

a technical analysis for you in a response. 

I think in The Economic Report of The President chapter on 

health we talk a lot about the focus of economic policy and thinking 

on health, and how we might not have done the best job of doing 

that. And that in recent years, for example, in the U.S. the mortality has increased. The expected lifespan has gone down. We have 

become less healthy I think mostly because of the opioid abuse. 

But having a policy that measures health and focuses on improving it is something that I think that we should all agree is a worthy objective of policy. And I think the chapter on health in The 

Economic Report should help us do that because we come up with 

and focus on measures of health. 

Representative Adams. There have been some evaluations of 

programs that impose work requirements on welfare recipients, 

and they found that, for example, within five years employment 

among recipients not subject to work requirements was the same 

as or higher than employment among recipients subject to work requirements in nearly all of the programs that were evaluated. So 

I will be happy to share some information with you, as well. 

You know, before I move on to my next question I want to just 

take a second to just express my concerns about the Administration’s repeated attacks on State and local budgets. First, the GOP 

tax scam handicaps State and local budgets. I am a former member 

of the North Carolina House, so I understand when things are 

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passed down. We call them ‘‘unfunded mandates,’’ but budgets that 

drastically reduce the State and local tax deductions. 

Then we have these work requirements and so forth. So the Administration is, in my opinion, hurting our working families by 

making our State and local governments pay for that. 

One thing I want to ask in terms of African American employment, unemployment, and I heard the President say at the State 

of the Union that African American unemployment rose to 7.7, one 

of the largest increases in years. 

So what specific policies—first of all I’ve got to tell you that over 

the past few years the largest increases in African American unemployment, we can see that. But what specific policies is the President considering to address— regarding the rise in African American unemployment? And it has risen. 

Chairman Hassett. In the last month, that’s right. There was 

a reversal of an enormous amount of progress that had been made 

over the past couple of years. 

This is something that, going back to even the peak of the financial crisis I testified about. Because back then when I reviewed the 

literature it was clear that in good times the good news is that society has made an enormous amount of progress, and the odds of African Americans and Caucasians being hired are about the same. 

But that in bad times, there was still clear evidence that African 

Americans disproportionately bore the brunt of layoffs. And going 

back into during the financial crisis. I testified about policies that 

I would advise that we pursue back then because I saw this thing 

coming. 

And I think the fact that we made so much progress is basically 

the result of the boom, and it is normally what one would expect 

to see when the unemployment rate is low, that they would make 

a lot of progress. Because the asymmetry in the job market for African Americans, which is still a very big problem in the U.S., 

tends to be that when there is a downturn that they are the ones, 

the first to lose their jobs. 

Representative Adams. Thank you very much. I’m out of time. 

Chairman Paulsen. Senator Cassidy, you are recognized for 

five minutes. 

Senator Cassidy. Thank you for testifying. My understanding is 

that the aluminum and steel tariffs will not apply to finished products, rather just upon the sheets of steel and aluminum themselves, or the aluminum bars. Is that correct? 

Chairman Hassett. As far as I know on that, Dr. Cassidy, that 

everything is still being finalized. I have not read the final order 

on that, and so I would have to get back to you on that. I think 

it will all be visible shortly, but it is not something that—that specifically is not something I got briefed on. 

Senator Cassidy. And Senator Portman mentions to me piping, 

which is important in the oil and gas industry. In that case you 

may not be able to answer the rest of these, because my question 

was—or my series of questions are around the fact, has the Administration modeled the effect of these tariffs upon companies shifting 

manufacturing overseas so as to make a finished good, and then to 

bring it back across the border, raising their import price if you 

LAP51NQ082 with DISTILLER

25 

will, so therefore it is more profitable to construct overseas. Are 

they modeling that? 

Chairman Hassett. At the Council of Economic Advisers, and in 

the Commerce Department, and at the USTR’s office there’s an 

enormous amount of modeling capability that we provide analysis. 

Senator Cassidy. Do you know the results of that? What I 

would like to know really is if it has been modeled, what is the expected effect of businesses offshoring to use lower—— 

Chairman Hassett. I am not aware of the CEA staff having 

modeled the offshoring part. We have modeled the impact on the 

steel industry. 

Senator Cassidy. Then let me ask—I don’t mean to be rude, I 

just have a short period of time. 

Chairman Hassett. I understand. 

Senator Cassidy. Then I have a friend back home in Morgan 

City, Louisiana, who has a fabrication shop, and he is competing 

against Koreans who have lower labor costs, and probably subsidized steel from China. And they will just ship modular units into 

Southwest Louisiana to be put into a petrochemical plant. 

So he is competing directly with a foreign competitor. His labor 

costs are high, but he’s closer and transportation costs are lower. 

But now with steel costs going up 25 percent. Has that been modeled? The effect upon our domestic fabricators and manufacturers 

who are directly competing with those who will not suffer from 

such a tariff? 

Chairman Hassett. You know, without referencing specific deliberative work that CEA has done for the President, I can say that 

the economics literature has looked at previous episodes like this 

and found that there are upstream or, you know, instream benefits 

to the steel industry, and downstream harm; that the downstream 

harm has been cited in some of the previous questions. But again, 

this 232 is a national security judgment by the President—— 

Senator Cassidy. I accept that, and earlier it was commented 

that General Mattis suggests it’s not the case, and that we actually 

have adequate domestic steel production for our defense industry 

should we ever have to have a problem like that. But I am also— 

you mentioned the previous effect. I am told that under—when 

George W. Bush put in such a tariff, that another effect was that 

dockworkers around the Nation, in the Port of New Orleans, by 

tonnage, a major product shipped is steel. And I was told that 

when George W. Bush put his tariffs in, that there was just loss 

of employment in our ports, specifically the Port of New Orleans, 

the one I am most familiar with. 

Can you comment on that? Is that something—— 

Chairman Hassett. I can get back to you on that. I certainly 

have read the literature. Gary Hufbauer is an economist who 

worked on the Bush steel tariffs and has published papers. But the 

specific question of dockworkers and the experience back then is 

not something that I have studied. 

But it would take me just a moment and I would be happy to 

get back to you. 

Senator Cassidy. And then you mentioned that there is upstream benefit for the steelworkers, and then downstream benefit 

for many others. If you could reflect on when George W. Bush did 

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this, the net effect upon employment in the United States, was it 

positive or negative? Were more jobs created because of the tariff? 

Or were more jobs lost downstream? 

Chairman Hassett. The academic literature found very small 

net negative effects back then. And, you know, I would say that if 

we were going to do a full economic analysis of this, we would— 

I’m not a national security expert and so how it affects national security is not something I have studied or necessarily could quantify—but I think that we should also recognize that American 

workers in just about every industry are disadvantaged by the 

broad asymmetries that we highlight in The Economic Report of 

The President where again if we try to sell a car in Europe, they 

charge a 10 percent tariff. And if we try to sell a car into China, 

they charge us 25 percent tariff. 

And if we can envision a world where our trade negotiators can 

do a better job negotiating reciprocal trade deals, then the benefit 

from that reciprocity would be enormous for American workers, 

and much bigger than any of the negative costs that would 

come—— 

Senator Cassidy. I am out of time, but it would be nice if that 

were—I don’t mean to be offensive when I say this—more than conjecture, but actually have been modeled. And in some of the stuff 

I am listing, it seems like it should be modeled before something 

so broad is put in place. 

I thank you very much and I yield back. 

Chairman Paulsen. Senator Hassan, you are recognized for five 

minutes. 

Senator Hassan. Well thank you, Chairman Paulsen. And 

thank you, Chairman Hassett, for being here this afternoon. 

Mr. Hassett, your report highlights the importance of training 

and retraining efforts to ensure that workers have the opportunity 

to gain skills and earn a living wage. We all know that the effectiveness of these kinds of programs is imperative to employers’ success as they look to fill positions with qualified workers. 

In New Hampshire and around the country we often see that the 

individuals most in need of these kinds of programs face a number 

of additional barriers to success, like accessing child care, transportation, and mental health supports. 

In February I introduced the Gateways To Career Act. It would 

address this challenge by supporting individuals engaged in career 

pathway programs. Grants created in this bill would support workforce partnerships like those between community colleges and State 

workforce development boards by removing these types of barriers 

for students and, in turn, help individuals earn industry-recognized 

credentials. 

As you promote workforce training programs to help individuals 

upskill, do you think it is important that we address how to help 

students overcome these kind of barriers? 

Chairman Hassett. I very much—and apologize that I haven’t 

in advance studied the Gateways proposal—but I very much look 

forward to reading it and giving a detailed analysis of it. I can say 

that since we finished The Economic Report and it gives me something of an appreciation for childbirth. This is a very big effort in 

a very short amount of time. 

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[Laughter.] 

Senator Hassan. Be careful about saying that—— 

Chairman Hassett. Yes. But as we—yes, I know—but I think 

that one thing that we have focused a lot of staff time on lately is 

studying these training issues and focusing on increasing labor 

force participation in communities that are most at risk, including 

prisoners, and so on. And so I very much look forward to studying 

the Gateways To Career Paths proposal and comparing it to what 

we have been learning on our work over the last few weeks. 

Senator Hassan. Well I would love to work with you on that. 

I also have another bill that I want to bring to your attention you 

also get at one of these issues in your Report. You mention in your 

Report that the number of young people starting businesses is 

down, which is something I have been hearing about in my State 

of New Hampshire. 

Many times these young adults have large amounts of student 

loan debt standing in their way from starting a new business, and 

at times from accessing capital that is already a challenge for new 

businesses to acquire. 

So the first bill I introduced in the Senate was the Reigniting 

Opportunity for Innovators Act, or the ROI Act. It would pause student loan interest and payments for entrepreneurs at the start of 

their businesses. And in cases where the business is started in a 

distressed area, allow for some cancellations. Would you agree that 

relieving the burden of student loan debt would help to encourage 

young entrepreneurs to start new businesses? 

Chairman Hassett. I think that you are correct to focus on this 

problem, the fact that the Millenials are the least entrepreneurial 

generation that we have ever measured and is a policy challenge 

that we need to take seriously. Because ultimately if we don’t have 

entrepreneurs driving the economy forward, then what kind of an 

economy are we going to have 20, 30 years from now? 

In that literature, it is certainly hypothetically possible that one 

reason why is that people are capital-starved, more capital-starved 

because of student debt. It is not something I’m aware—I haven’t 

read a paper that has connected the two, but it is certainly economically sensible that if you are capital starved because of high 

student debt you would be less likely to start a business. 

Senator Hassan. I would be happy to introduce you to some of 

the students I have talked with who are studying business and 

want to start their own businesses, and then faced with the student debt they have. We used to say to people, ‘‘Go into business 

early. You don’t have a mortgage yet.’’ Right? But if you have student debt at the level of a mortgage, you can’t. 

I want to touch on one last thing that Representative Comstock 

talked about, and certainly you have talked about in terms of the 

economic impact of the opioid epidemic. I come from a State that 

has about the third highest mortality rate from this epidemic. And 

today over 100 Americans will die from a drug overdose, most of 

that from opioids. 

It is over a $500 billion epidemic impact in 2015 nationally in my 

home State of New Hampshire of 1.3 million people. It was a $2 

billion economic impact in 2014. 

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So when I heard you say the White House is undertaking a massive effort, I have to tell you that to my constituents and to me we 

have not seen it. We saw a President’s Commission on the opioid 

epidemic come up with recommendations that every governor in 

the United States is working on already through recommendations 

they developed at the National Governors Association. 

We do not need a task force to reinvent the wheel here. We need 

resources on the front lines for health care professionals, to law enforcement, to treatment and recovery providers, and we need this 

Administration to stop trying to undermine Medicaid, which is 

where most people get substance misuse treatment and behavioral 

health treatment right now who desperately need it. So I hope you 

will take that message back to the White House. 

Chairman Hassett. Thank you. 

Senator Hassan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Senator Paulsen. Senator Portman, you are recognized for five 

minutes. 

Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So much to ask 

you, Kevin, and thanks for being here and for your willingness to 

step up and serve in this capacity. 

On the Tax bill, I know you talked a little bit about that in The 

Economic Report, and your projections on growth. Two questions. 

One, there is concern about the deficit that might be created. 

And we had to use, as you know, an economic growth number of 

1.9 percent. That is the Congressional Budget Office’s official average over the next 10 years. And the one way to look at it is to say 

if you had .04 percent more growth than the 1.9 percent, then you 

would have enough revenue coming in because you’re going to get 

about $2.7 trillion for every one point of economic growth. 

What is your projection on economic growth, specifically? And 

then more generally, how do you think the tax bill will end up in 

terms of its impact on the deficit? 

Chairman Hassett. Well thank you, Senator. And thank you 

also for agreeing to introduce me at my confirmation hearing. It 

seems like a long time ago. But that was very gracious of you. 

I think that you are right to think about it that if you go out to 

the 10th year and we have—on the baseline of a $28 trillion economy, that if you imagine growth of half a percent a year higher, 

or one percent a year higher if you like to divide by 10, then you 

can see that it is very easy to envision this tax bill generating 

enough growth so that it doesn’t have a negative effect on revenue. 

I think that the Joint Tax Committee gave a dynamic score of 

$1 trillion, but I think they really underestimated the growth effect. I think that if we get the growth that we project in The Economic Report to The President, and again I think in a very transparent way, then that will add almost $3 trillion to the baseline 

level of GDP at the end. 

And that’s, you know, American money, and some of it can be 

paid back in taxes, but all of it will contribute to welfare of the 

American citizens. 

Senator Portman. Which means the tax reform will actually 

end up reducing the deficit relative to what it would have been. 

And with regard to what is most important in the tax bill, you talk 

about productivity. When I talk to companies back home, of course 

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we’re talking about bonuses and increases and contributions to 

401Ks, which is great, and of course individuals are getting more 

tax relief, and withholding tables have been changed. People are 

finding, you know, $40, $50 in their paycheck they didn’t expect. 

What is the most important single thing in this tax bill for longterm growth in wages? 

Chairman Hassett. The most important single thing in this tax 

bill for long-term growth in wages is to make the corporate rate 21 

percent. Because we have ended the kind of scam, the tax scam, 

where you could get a tax refund to locate a factory offshore and 

to increase demand for foreign workers and reduce demand for domestic workers. We fixed that really heinous policy error. And the 

signs of its damage to the economy are all around us and all 

throughout this Economic Report. 

And again, think about it. Capital formation’s contribution to 

productivity growth went negative for the first time in U.S. history 

at a time when we were not in a recession, because we were chasing all of our capital offshore. And I think that we fixed that. 

Senator Portman. And that will result in more investment, 

which results in higher productivity, which results in higher wages. 

And to me that is the most exciting part of this bill, and we have 

yet to see all the benefits of that and won’t for many years, but it 

ultimately will make the biggest difference for my constituents, I 

believe. 

With regard to opioids, we talked a lot about it today. I focused 

a lot on this notion that we don’t really have 4.1 percent unemployment, as good as that sounds, when we look at what the new numbers are on Friday, and they are probably going to be good for the 

month of February, and again we’re seeing good economic growth. 

But if you go back to the labor force participation rate before the 

Great Recession, the unemployment number today would be 8.9 

percent. Think about that. 

People are shocked to think about really we’re living in kind of 

a 9 percent unemployment environment, even though we say it is 

closer to 4 percent, and who are these people who are outside of 

the workforce? And when you do those studies, as you know, you 

find out that opioids play an amazingly large role. 

I appreciate you raising that issue, and the Brookings study by 

you colleague, Mr. Kruger, is one of course, but also BLS has its 

own study out there that’s very similar saying that roughly 47— 

43 to 47 percent of men who are currently of prime working age, 

able-bodied men, are taking pain medication on a daily basis. And 

his conclusion is that about 31 percent of those people who are out 

of the workforce are related to opioids based on his further questions on whether it’s a prescription drug or not. 

This is shocking to people. And we look at the economic impact 

in many ways, but one we have to look at is this lack of opportunity for access to a workforce that we desperately need. Do you 

agree with that? 

Chairman Hassett. Yes, I agree with that. And you mentioned 

Alan Kruger, who was my predecessor as the Chairman of the 

Council of Economic Advisers. I have spoken at length with Dr. 

Kruger, Professor Kruger, about his study. It is filled with really 

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interesting food for thought and helpful insights that will help us 

address this problem as we move forward. 

And so I think you are right to mention that work. It is extremely important work and very well done, and I have spoken 

with Dr. Kruger about it. 

Senator Portman. I hope it encourages us to do even more on 

the opioid crisis. We’ve got the funding now and we’ve got to make 

sure it is well spent. WeCare 2.0, my colleague, we talked earlier 

to sponsor that. 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Dr. Hassett. 

Chairman Hassett. Thank you, Senator Portman. 

Chairman Paulsen. Thank you, Chairman Hassett. If you don’t 

mind, we would like to just give members a second round of questions. This will be a lightening round, so we will limit members’ 

questions to three minutes per member, if you will. 

I will just begin. You just mentioned, we just had a conversation 

about the lower unemployment rate. Job creation has actually been 

fairly strong recently. Economic growth has improved over the last 

year and was a lot better than expected not long ago. 

If the Administration is undertaking various initiatives to stimulate the economy even further, can you comment a little bit on the 

effectiveness of different approaches to stimulate the economy? And 

I am thinking purely of the supply side versus the demand side 

stimulus. 

Chairman Hassett. Yes, thank you. This is something that I 

have studied at length throughout my career. The one thing that 

I think we know from a massive amount of work both studying the 

U.S. economy and the variation across states and the variations 

across countries is that if we have an attractive corporate tax code, 

then it fosters higher growth, higher capital formation, and especially higher wage growth, which is something that has disappointed enormously in recent years. 

And so I would say that the growth from the tax bill is going to 

be front and center. It is going to be something that we are going 

to experience. It is the reason why, you know, many Wall Street 

firms are now forecasting what used to be impossible, that we 

would have growth above 3 percent this year. But moving forward, 

the President has a very aggressive agenda on infrastructure and 

other things that also have positive growth effects. And I think 

that if the agenda is adopted, that it is extremely defensible that 

we could turn away from the new normal of low growth to just normal. 

Chairman Paulsen. Thank you. Member Heinrich, you are recognized for three minutes. 

Senator Heinrich. Chairman, I am going to go back to this 

graph that the Chairman provided for us. You know, we’ve got two 

different groups of lines here. We’ve got lines that are just projections that are not real data, and then we have got the line that 

really concerns me. 

The part of this line that really concerns me is this part here [indicating], which is the financial crisis from a few years ago. And 

I think we probably do all agree that there is huge bipartisan support for a reduction in over-regulation to small community banks, 

to credit unions, small community credit unions. But this week the 

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Senate is considering banking legislation that would also roll back 

some important safeguards that protect consumers and Main 

Street from risky behavior by large banks. 

Large banks are earning record profits. They just had their tax 

rate slashed, as you know. Why is now the right time to expose 

consumers again to the kinds of systemic risk that got us into this 

financial crisis in the first place? 

Chairman Hassett. I would have to study the specifics of the 

bill that you are talking about, and it is not something that I have 

done. So—— 

Senator Heinrich. You haven’t followed the bank deregulation 

bill that’s on the floor? 

Chairman Hassett. I would have to read carefully where it is 

right now. I have not been updated on that. There’s been a lot of 

other stuff going on. 

Senator Heinrich. If, God forbid, that—you know, I hope I am 

wrong—but if this banking bill were to lead us into another financial crisis, would this Administration want to oppose any public 

bank bailouts for banks that took on too much systemic risk? 

Chairman Hassett. I have not discussed that with the President. 

Senator Heinrich. Well the legislation is on the Floor this 

week. That is why I am asking these questions, because now is the 

time to get it right. If we wait until it is passed, then the words 

are what the words are on paper. So I would look forward to your 

input. 

Chairman Hassett. I would be happy to get that to you. 

Senator Heinrich. Thank you. 

Chairman Paulsen. Representative Handel, you are recognized 

for three minutes. 

Representative Handel. Thank you. I want to touch on infrastructure since we have not really heard from you on that. There 

are a lot of different viewpoints on the subject, that we should 

spend more and do so while the interest rates are low. The Administration isn’t spending enough. The Federal Government shouldn’t 

borrow more. It is no longer the right time, with near full unemployment. 

So can you share with us your thoughts and give us some clarity 

to the debate, and what you recommend, and what your thinking 

is on how we should move forward on infrastructure funding? 

Chairman Hassett. Right. And thank you for that, because we 

have a big chapter on infrastructure here, and the President has 

a very ambitious plan. And I think that we have not been able in 

the U.S. to attract much private capital into the infrastructure 

space in part because of the obstruction of government regulation 

and the fact that it can take, as the President has emphasized, up 

to 10 years to get a project approved. 

And I think there are many things we can do to draw more capital into the infrastructure space. Some of it is direct government 

spending, but some of it is also streamlining regulation and making 

it so that, you know, if you could get approval say in two years, 

and if there was one government agency that was a single point of 

contact, then it would be a lot easier to convince investors to invest 

in expanded infrastructure projects in the U.S. But right now I 

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think the regulatory and government policy uncertainty around 

those investments is so high that it is just very, very hard to get 

investors to decide to participate in such projects. 

Representative Handel. Thank you. 

Chairman Paulsen. Well with that, I would like to thank 

Chairman Hassett again for testifying before the Committee today, 

and remind members that should they wish to submit questions for 

the record the hearing record will remain open for five business 

days. 

And with that, this hearing is adjourned. 

Chairman Hassett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[Whereupon, at 3:33 p.m., Wednesday, March 7, 2018, the hearing in the above-entitled matter was adjourned.] 

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. ERIK PAULSEN, CHAIRMAN, JOINT ECONOMIC

COMMITTEE

Good afternoon and welcome to the Joint Economic Committee’s first hearing of 

2018. 

This is my first hearing as Chairman. I have worked with many of you before, 

and as you know, I’m from Minnesota, where we work hard and we work together. 

In that spirit, I look forward to working with Ranking Member Heinrich and Vice 

Chairman Lee, as well as the other Members of the Committee. I especially want 

to extend a warm welcome to our new member, Representative Karen Handel, from 

the State of Georgia. 

We are witnessing a sea change in the American economy, one that is boosting 

opportunity, supercharging growth, and restoring prosperity to our Nation. 

For eight years, the last Administration struggled to find government-based solutions to a financial crisis that hit American workers hard. Now we have a new Administration with a very different approach, and I think few can deny that things 

have changed rapidly. 

The job of this Committee is to understand what changed, and why. We all want 

more workers to rejoin the labor force, more businesses to invest, and more wages 

to rise. I believe our work here, in gauging the economy’s long-term potential, can 

inform us on the policies that foster that growth. 

Chairman Hassett, we welcome you here. Some very good things have happened 

since you testified before this Committee in October of last year. We have passed 

historic tax legislation—the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—and the response of businesses 

has been overwhelmingly positive, exceeding expectations. 

Consumer confidence is up, Americans are seeing more take-home pay, many will 

spend less time preparing their taxes next year, and businesses are paying special 

bonuses, giving their employees a raise, repatriating offshore earnings, and investing more in the United States again. 

The unemployment rate is 4.1 percent, the lowest since the year 2000, and the 

number of new unemployment claims is the lowest since 1969. 

Regulatory reform is cutting back on market-choking regulations and is encouraging the private sector and contributing to the surge in business optimism since 

November 2016, especially for small businesses. 

Economic growth in each quarter of last year substantially exceeded growth of the 

corresponding quarter the year before reaching as high as 3.2 percent in the 3rd 

quarter, a number the last Administration had led us not to expect again. 

We are in a better place every day as this economy has moved upwards, and it 

is not because ‘‘government’’ fixed it. It’s because government finally allowed the 

American people to fix it. 

We are trusting the American people to keep more of their money, and to spend 

it as they see fit, rather than micromanaging their lives. America’s economy isn’t 

getting overheated. It’s just getting started. 

Figure 1, which is on the screen, uses the phrase: ‘‘Constrained potential.’’ The 

potential is everyone in the audience here in their capacity as productive members 

of American society. The constrained part is, well, unfortunately, potentially everyone up here on the dais in our capacity as elected officials. 

This chart shows something interesting. The color lines show how the Congressional Budget Office lowered its projection of the economy’s output potential each 

successive year since 2008. In other words, this is a graphic representation of the 

American government lowering expectations, year by year. 

The black line at the bottom, however, represents actual production as rising, 

closing in on the bottom potential line only after eight long years. 

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Potential GDP should not change much from year-to-year, yet this chart shows 

constant revision. Why? 

The answer is: The continuous addition and tightening of policy constraints from 

2008 to 2016. 

Removal of these constraints is a return to normalcy, not an artificial boom. What 

happened for the last eight years was a regulatory crackdown that diverted and constrained Americans from their pursuits. Those expectations should never have been 

that low to start with, because we should have had confidence in the American 

worker. 

I would be remiss if I did not mention the President’s concerns about our trade 

policy, and discussion in recent weeks about tariffs. We are all deeply concerned 

about unfair trade practices by bad actors in other countries, and I know American 

workers want to compete fairly. That’s because, and I know the President knows 

this, our workers are the best in the world, and when they compete internationally, 

America wins. I look forward to hearing from you, Chairman Hassett, how these tariffs might be crafted so they address specific distortions caused by unfair trade practices, and how we are going to avoid these tariffs simply becoming a tax increase 

on consumers. 

Chairman Hassett, we thank you again for appearing before the Committee today 

and extend our thanks as well to the Council of Economic Advisers for preparing 

the Economic Report of the President. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. MARTIN HEINRICH, RANKING MEMBER, JOINT

ECONOMIC COMMITTEE

Before I get started, I wanted to welcome our new chairman. Chairman Paulsen, 

I’m looking forward to working with you this year. 

Chairman Hassett, thank you for being here today to discuss the Economic Report 

of the President and the state of the economy. 

I wish I were more optimistic about the policies put in place since you came before 

this Committee in October. 

I’m going to be direct: the Republican tax bill serves special interests and will cost 

our children dearly for generations to come. 

Rushed through with no bipartisan input, the GOP tax law jeopardizes our fiscal 

position and further tilts the scales in favor of large corporations and wealthy individuals. 

While the law’s impacts on economic growth are debatable, the impact on inequality is clear. 

Independent analysis shows that within 10 years, more than half of working families will pay higher taxes than they would have before the new GOP tax law. 

Meanwhile, the wealthiest 5 percent walk away with an astonishing 99 percent 

of the tax benefits. 

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Chairman Hassett, you and the President have promised again and again—most 

recently in the Economic Report of the President—that tax reform will increase average family income by at least $4,000. But, that is not what we are seeing. 

If we wanted to reform the tax code to help the middle class, we could have simply cut taxes for the middle class. 

Straightforward. 

And it would have directly given working people in New Mexico and around the 

country much needed resources to pay the bills, put their kids through college, and 

save a little something for retirement. 

Instead, Republicans chose to cut taxes for large corporations and the super 

wealthy, and left Americans hoping that those cuts would somehow trickle down to 

workers. 

History has proven—again and again—that’s not what happens. 

And the early evidence this year confirms who the big winners are. 

So far, corporations have announced more than $210 billion in stock buybacks, 

benefiting executives and wealthy shareholders. 

While there have been some bonus and wage announcements, they total just $6 

billion—a fraction of the money going to executives and the investor class. 

It’s not just the immediate impacts that are concerning; the whole strategy was 

misguided. 

The massive increase in deficits constrains our efforts to tackle the problems we 

should have been focused on in the first place—like fixing our broken infrastructure 

and making more accessible and affordable a whole range of post-secondary education options—from apprenticeships and vocational education to community college 

and 4-year colleges. 

Think about how we could have invested the $1.5 trillion spent on the tax bill. 

We could have erased every student loan in the country. 

Every single one. 

One recent study shows that canceling student debt for the 44 million Americans 

who hold it would boost economic output and create up to 1.5 million new jobs in 

just one year. 

Of course, we could have invested that $1.5 trillion in infrastructure. 

The Administration’s infrastructure plan commits barely any real money to the 

cause. They say they want to spend $200 billion in Federal dollars, but its budget 

makes more than $200 billion in cuts to existing infrastructure programs—from 

transit to highways to water. 

In other words, the long-awaited plan invests no new net Federal dollars. The 

$1.5 trillion hole dug because of the tax bill could have actually funded our infrastructure plans. 

Instead, the Administration is hoping that somehow State and local governments 

and the private sector will pay for roads, bridges, ports, schools, VA hospitals and 

on and on. 

But the private sector has little interest in investing in sparsely populated, lowtraffic rural areas that desperately need infrastructure investment. 

And the tax law further limits already cash-strapped states’ abilities to raise new 

revenues by capping SALT deductions. 

It’s less a plan, and more a hope. 

You often hear that budgets are a reflection of values. 

That’s true. But the massive tax giveaway—maybe even more than the recent 

White House budget—reveals Republican priorities. 

My Republicans colleagues could have joined with Democrats to invest in children, 

workers, education and our long-term economic success. Instead, they handed out 

goodies to large corporations and the uber-wealthy and risked our long-term economic health. 

Chairman Hassett, my focus is on what we can do now, and in the future. I’m 

interested to get your insight on how the Administration plans to work with us on 

making the investments that will help families succeed in today’s economy. Thank 

you for your testimony. I look forward to your perspective. 

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RESPONSE FROM DR. KEVIN HASSETT TO QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED BY

VICE CHAIRMAN LEE

James Madison said in Federalist No. 10 that different economic interests 

arise in every society and often have sharply conflicting views on government policy. History has shown that reciprocal international trade promotes prosperity for American consumers and producers. In the ‘‘Economic 

Report of the President,’’ you point to the fact that the manufacturing and 

mining sectors lost 9,000 and 98,000 jobs, respectively, in 2016. These statistics, no doubt, have influenced the President’s intention to levy tariffs on 

steel and aluminum imports under Section 232. However, research published by the Trade Partnership Worldwide finds that these proposed tariffs could result in net job losses of nearly 146,000 jobs, notwithstanding 

any employment increases in the steel and aluminum industries. Meanwhile, the Tax Foundation estimates that implementation of these tariffs 

could cost U.S. firms nearly $9 billion—a cost which will undoubtedly be 

paid for by American consumers. In your opinion, Dr. Hassett, do the benefits of these proposed tariffs outweigh the costs to the broader economy? 

Could these new taxes actually counter the positive effects of the historical 

tax cut we just passed in December? 

CEA provides objective economic analysis based on the best available evidence, 

and assists with the evaluation of the economic tradeoffs implied by a set of current 

or prospective policy decisions. The purpose of the present Section 232 actions is to 

prevent imports from impairing U.S. national security [by ‘‘weakening our internal 

economy’’]. That determination by its nature requires, in addition to the economic 

costs and benefits intimated in the question, the consideration of national security 

concerns. But national security consideration are not CEA’s core expertise, and it 

is ultimately up to the President to weigh both the economic and national security 

implications of policy choices as he formulates policy. 

In the long-run, however, the distinction between national security and economic 

concerns can blur more than in the short-run. It is tough to understand the history 

of the U.S. economy since World War II, for instance, without some reference to the 

Cold War and its aftermath. But CEA is not well-positioned to assess impacts of 

the Section 232 that accrue through national security driven channels at this point 

in time. 

The Opioid crisis has taken not just a social and medical toll on the country but has been an economic drain as well. In November 2017, the Council 

of Economic Advisers calculated the cost of opioid overdose, abuse, and dependence in 2015 at $504 billion. A nonprofit group estimated that the 

Opioid Crisis has cost the United States more than $1 trillion since 2001. 

That number is likely to increase by $500 billion in 2020. The crisis continues to grow unabated across the country. How has this crisis affected 

labor-force participation, productivity, and overall economic output? 

The likely direction of the effect of the opioid crisis on economic activity seems 

unambiguous: it is likely to be negative, and drag down labor-force participation and 

economic output. Its effect on productivity is less easy to develop an intuition for, 

but also likely to be negative. 

That said, the paucity of high-quality data on the subject complicates attempts 

to discern the magnitudes as well as the direction of this effect. But one empirical 

analysis on this subject comes from Alan Krueger of Princeton University and 

former CEA Chair under President Obama. Using data from 2010, 2012 and 2013, 

Krueger estimates the number of Americans aged 25–54 who took pain medication 

on the previous day, separately by gender. Pain medication includes opioids, but is 

not limited to opioids as it also includes over-the-counter pain medications. These 

rates are far higher than that for illicit drugs. (Pain medication also is not an illicit 

drug if it is accompanied by a valid prescription.) These numbers show less variation across labor market status. Nearly 50 percent of men who were not in the 

labor force took pain medication on the previous day over these years and nearly 

20 percent of employed and unemployed men did the same. For women, the rates 

are higher among the employed and unemployed, but lower for those not in the 

labor force. Krueger’s estimates imply that 862,000 prime-aged persons (aged 25 to 

54) were out of the labor force in 2015 as a result of opioid dependence growth. We 

note that these estimates should be considered as first approximations with a large 

standard deviation. 

In the chapter of the Report that focuses on the labor market, the Council of Economic Advisers notes a shift in the way that teens and young 

adults are spending their time outside of work and school—notably, a reduction in time teens spent on ‘‘organizational, social, and religious activiLAP51NQ082 with DISTILLER

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ties’’ and an increase in time spent on activities less important to human 

capital development, such as ‘‘personal care activities, which include sleeping and grooming.’’ Even though the data cannot specifically answer 

whether time spent on social media and the internet might play a factor, 

would you infer that this shift in teen time use over the past decade is connected to the rise of smartphone and social media use, and what implications might that have on how adolescents form connections and relationships pertinent to developing social capital and engaging in associational 

life? 

As noted in the question, one cannot infer the effect of smartphones or social 

media from the data we have. Nor does there seem to be research that allows one 

to make a causal inference about the effect of the use of smartphones or social 

media on labor market outcomes. The intuition that the increasing attraction of activities like smartphones and social media competes for limited time and attention 

with activities that increase engagement in associational life does seem fair. And 

there is interesting research on the effects of social media in disciplines beyond economics, which are beyond CEA’s area of expertise. 

Evidence on the effect of increasing time spent on smartphones and social media 

that meets the standards of the economics profession for causal inferences about its 

effect on outcomes like those in the labor market, then, does not yet exist. But CEA 

will continue to follow the cutting-edge of research on this and other topics in order 

to provide the best possible analysis of this important topic. 

In the chapter focusing on the labor market, the Council of Economic Advisers notes geographic immobility as a factor in labor force participation 

rates, whereby workers are unable to move to stronger job markets due to 

issues like occupational licensing requirements, land use regulations, or inability to sell a home. For those mired in high unemployment areas and 

lower levels of labor force participation, do you believe that there may be 

a ‘‘brain drain’’ effect taking place as well, whereby those going on to receive higher education aren’t coming back? 

There is some evidence for a ‘‘brain drain’’ of the type described. The data do suggest that Americans with more education are more likely to move. This relationship 

between education and probability of moving manifests in the data both between 

2001–2010 and between 1981–1990, even as the overall rate of migration for all education groups has fallen over time. 

But the relationship between geographic mobility and economic prospects is one 

for which it is easy to imagine many possibilities. For instance, one would also 

imagine that those who are most-distressed in a given area would be the most-motivated to want to move. 

There is some evidence for the ‘‘brain drain’’ described, and CEA looks forward 

to continuing to analyze the important issue of geographic variation in economic 

outcomes as well as geographic mobility in particular. 

In the chapter focusing on health, the Council of Economic Advisers identified five ‘‘determinants of health in industrialized countries: health behaviors, genetics, social circumstances, environmental and physical influences, and medical care’’ in the context of poor health and premature 

death. Scholars Anne Case and Angus Deaton note in their research on 

‘‘deaths of despair’’ that premature deaths such as these are ‘‘about much 

more than economic circumstances’’ focusing on ‘‘ . . . the decline in labor 

force participation, the decline in marriage rates, the rise of cohabitation, 

the rise in out of wedlock births, and of parents living apart from children 

that they barely know. We discuss the decline in the quality of jobs, the increasing lack of opportunity for people without a bachelor’s degree, as well 

as changing religious practices.’’ Would you agree that social factors and 

shifts in work and family life among more vulnerable Americans have 

played a significant role in their declining health trends? 

The economics literature documents that economic factors, like unemployment, 

can have non-trivial effects on health outcomes. Sullivan and Von Wachter (2009), 

for instance, is just one of the economics papers that employs a methodology with 

the econometric rigor you need to make causal inferences about the effect of economic fluctuations on health outcomes at the individual level. And they document 

that such effects can exist: for instance, one of the effects documented is the effect 

of job displacement on the probability of suicide. Though job displacement may seem 

like an economic rather than social factor, job displacement’s consequences (including the probability of suicide) are such that the effects documented in the paper are 

plausibly also interpretable as relevant to the relationship between social factors 

and suicide as well. 

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But, unlike Sullivan and von Wachter (2009), the seminal Case and Deaton research on the increase in ‘‘deaths of despair’’ does not come from any attempt at 

causal inference. Instead, Case and Deaton have identified and described a trend 

that previously was not documented. The social value of the documentation in 

trends in ‘‘deaths of despair’’ by Case and Deaton is difficult to overstate. But the 

task of documenting a trend in society is different in nature from the task of identifying its underlying causes through a methodology that allows causal, rather than 

only descriptive, inference. And Case and Deaton have documented the trend rather 

than identified its cause. 

That said, the type of causal econometric analysis epitomized by Sullivan and von 

Wachter (2009) suggests the possibility that the social and economic causes identified can explain some nonzero fraction of the trend identified by Case and Deaton. 

But Case and Deaton’s findings are fairly new, and research has so far failed to 

identify explanations for the trends in mortality in a particular place (the United 

States) across particular moments in history (the last few decades) that have been 

so meticulously documented by their path-breaking work. Given the gravity of the 

issue, it is important that research correctly identify the causes of the trend rather 

than proceed on the assumption that the types of social and economic mortality effects identified in other contexts is necessarily what explains the particular phenomenon Case and Deaton documented. 

RESPONSE FROM DR. KEVIN HASSETT TO QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED BY

SENATOR HEINRICH

1.) As discussed in the final minutes of the hearing, the Economic 

Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (S.2155) is making 

its way through the Senate and is expected to be taken up by the House 

soon. The bill would exempt many banks with $250 billion or less in assets 

from stricter regulations, even though many banks in this asset range received taxpayer bailout money during the financial crisis and some, such 

as Countrywide and IndyMac, were even at the center of the crisis. 

As a senior economic advisor to the President, do you believe there is no 

risk in unwinding these regulations that have kept our financial system 

safe? 

As an economist evaluating a prospective change in regulation, it seems unwise 

to reduce the question of whether the costs outweigh the benefits on a net (rather 

than gross) basis to the question of whether any particular gross cost or benefit is 

zero. As an economist, there is no reason to think S.2155 would be an exception to 

this framework. Even in a world with risks to repealing regulations that exceeded 

zero, the benefits to repeal could still very plausibly outweigh the costs. 

In the context of banking regulation, the tradeoff tends to be between compliance 

and other costs of regulation on the cost side and financial stability and other intended goals of risk-reducing legislation on the benefit side. It is important to get 

this tradeoff right. As the Treasury Department wrote in their recent report ‘‘A Financial System That Creates Economic Opportunities: Banks and Credit Unions,’’ 

financial regulations should be tailored to accomplish the objectives of clear and 

transparent standards that do not impose undue burdens and that are based on the 

size and complexity of the bank’s balance sheet and businesses. Insufficient tailoring 

results in bank regulators misallocating staff time and resources by focusing on 

firms that do not present the greatest risks to the financial system. Further, the 

magnitude of regulatory requirements applicable to regional, mid-sized, and community banks that do not present risks to the financial system requires such banks 

to expend resources on building and maintaining a costly compliance infrastructure, 

when such resources would be better spent on lending and serving customers. 

2.) In 2007, banks with less than $250 billion in assets collectively held 

more than $1.6 trillion in assets. Collectively, these small and medium sized 

banks were larger than all but one bank at the time, and received more 

than $46 billion in bailout funds. 

In your opinion, what sort of risk does $1.6 trillion in assets pose to the 

financial system and the economy if those assets suddenly become junk? 

The failure of smaller banks, while potentially having an impact on local economies, typically does not pose a risk to the financial system. The focus of banking 

regulations for many decades has focused on such institutions applying proper prudential standards to their business. The proposed legislation does not change this 

focus. In addition, the proposed legislation contains measures that would attempt 

to target regulation such that only banks which pose a risk to the financial system 

bear the additional costs of additional regulatory compliance. And as an economist, 

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targeting regulation such that the incidence of any additional costs correspond with 

an increase in expected benefits is difficult to oppose. 

3.) You recently acknowledged that corporations are using repatriated 

earnings to buy back more of their stock and increase dividends to shareholders, not investing in their workers as you had previously predicted 

would occur right away. While testifying before the Joint Economic Committee you suggested this is a one-time buy back that will eventually translate to downstream wage increases. However, history has confirmed that 

this is not the case. Moreover, in a recent survey, only two percent of workers surveyed have received a raise, bonus, or additional benefits attributed 

to the tax bill. 

How do you reconcile what history has confirmed and what workers are 

saying with what you have promised working families? 

First, tax cuts are being used for wage increases and investments in the workforce. As of April 3, 2018, employee bonus announcements attributable to the TCJA 

affected almost 5.5 million workers, according to Administration tabulations. 

Second, the TCJA passed only months ago. As the economy adjusts to the new 

long-run equilibrium, then, you’d expect the benefits to grow. 

To the extent that you would expect to observe the effects of the TCJA in a new 

long-run economic equilibrium within a few months—and there is no economic reason to think this would be the case—you would expect only a fraction of the effect 

to yet be visible in the data. The developments since the TCJA’s passage, if anything, are what you would expect to see if the long-run equilibrium was what CEA 

described: the effects appear to be in the expected direction, and their full magnitudes will take more than a few months to appear in the data. 

Third, it is a mistake to think of the wage and investment effects of the TCJA 

as mutually exclusive: investment effects complement wages, as increased investment today is a harbinger of higher wages in the future. Chapter 1 of the Economic 

Report of the President (2018), along with other research from CEA, documents the 

mechanism that relates investment to wages: productivity. Testifying to the relationship between capital and wages, the link that runs through productivity, the Report also documents the historic slowdown in capital deepening that has accompanied the historic slowdown in wage growth observed in recent years. In the light 

of the complementary relationship between investment and wages, the $201 billion 

in new corporate investments announced since the passage of the TCJA attributed 

to the legislation seems like a harbinger of TCJA-induced wage gains in the future—not evidence of their absence. 

Finally, I would note that it is not clear that there is much of a historical analogue for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts (TCJA). There were other instances of changes 

to tax legislation enacted under George W. Bush that are sometimes invoked as parallels similar to this question but that differ economically from the TCJA 

4.) In the hearing, you mentioned that immigration and immigrants play 

a significant role in growing the economy, emphasizing the importance of 

immigration on entrepreneurship in America. Yet, the 2018 Economic Report of the President remains completely silent on the matter. 

As Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and as an objective 

source to the President, please outline the economic benefits of both high 

and low skilled immigration and its importance to the economy in great detail. 

There are as many ways to discuss the effects of immigration on economic activity 

as there are ways to measure economic activity. 

In the U.S., the debate about immigration has tended to focus on the volume of 

immigration rather than the skill-level of prospective immigrants. But a look at immigration systems around the world suggests that the skill levels of prospective immigrants are one topic that could, from the perspective of the U.S., appear as an 

interesting area for analysis. 

In comparison to other countries, the U.S. does not maintain a skills-based immigration system. DHS data show that, of the 1.2 million green cards issued in 2016, 

60,000 (5 percent) were ‘‘employment-based’’ and granted on the basis of the recipient’s future labor market contributions. Foreign-born U.S. residents contribute less, 

on average, to U.S. GDP than the average for native-born Americans, although the 

gap has been shrinking over time. In contrast, Australia maintains a skills-based 

immigration system in which more than two-thirds of visas were awarded based on 

recipient skills and their potential contribution to the Australian economy. A shift 

in U.S. immigration policy towards a more skill-based approach would provide a 

boost to U.S. GDP and reduce any pressure incoming, lower-skilled migrants might 

place on the incomes of lower wage Americans. 

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RESPONSE FROM DR. KEVIN HASSETT TO QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED BY

SENATOR KLOBUCHAR

Over 97% of all Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients 

are currently working or attending school. One recent study from the Center for American Progress estimated that ending DACA would cost the 

United States over $400 billion over the next 10 years. At your hearing, you 

stated that you have not conducted an estimate of the economic impact of 

ending DACA but would be happy to conduct such a study and report the 

results. 

Please provide an analysis of the likely economic impact of ending DACA 

and terminating work authorization for DACA recipients. 

The net economic effect of any change to the status quo with regards to DACA 

and work authorizations depends on the policy that follows the change to the status 

quo. It is all but impossible, then, to forecast the effects of a scenario that entails 

the end of a specific policy but offers no information on the policy regime that follows the end of the status quo. 

Nonetheless, any analysis involving DACA illustrates the complexity of the economic analysis of immigration, and the importance of the composition as well as the 

volume of immigration in determining the expected economic effects of immigration. 

RESPONSE FROM DR. KEVIN HASSETT TO QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED BY

REPRESENTATIVE MALONEY

1) In the Economic Report of the President, you project real GDP growth 

over 3.1 percent in 2018 and above 3 percent annually through 2020. In contrast, the President has said many times that he expects GDP growth over 

4 percent, and on Dec. 6, 2017, he said at a Cabinet meeting that ‘‘I see no 

reason why we don’t go to 4, 5, even 6 percent.’’ Do you think this is realistic? You said at the hearing that your job is to give the President objective advice. What objective advice did you provide or would you provide 

to the President about his statement? 

Historically, when the economy achieves growth of 3.0 percent over the four quarters of a calendar year, very rarely does that occur through repeated quarterly observations of 3.0 percent annualized growth. Rather, in any given quarter, we tend 

to observe growth rates that are higher or lower than 3 percent in a given quarter. 

If growth rises to 3.0 percent at an annualized rate, then, it seems very likely 

growth in some quarters will exceed 3 percent. There is no reason to doubt that 

growth in such a year could rise to the values the President mentioned in at least 

one quarter. That said, however, growth would have to be lower than 3 percent in 

at least one other quarter of the year if it were higher than 3 percent in at least 

one quarter in order for it to average to 3 percent for the year as a whole. 

2) During the campaign last year, Donald Trump said that the U–3 unemployment rate published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is ‘‘phony,’’ 

‘‘false,’’ ‘‘fake,’’ ‘‘a complete fraud,’’ and ‘‘total fiction.’’ Do you agree with 

him that the U–3 is a bogus indicator of unemployment in the United 

States? A year later, he now takes credit for the same U–3 unemployment 

rate—pointing to the fact that it continued to drop during his Administration to 4.1 percent. Which time was he wrong about whether the U–3 is a 

reliable indicator? 

Reasonable people can disagree on when the U–3 is an appropriate measure of 

labor market performance. There are good arguments in favor of using it in some 

circumstances, and good arguments against U–3’s relevance in other circumstances. 

It is not the case, then, that there is any contradiction of logic that necessarily 

arises by doubting the U–3’s relevance as a metric of labor market health at one 

point in time but not at another. No labor market statistic is a perfect measure in 

every set of circumstances. 

To dive into the weeds: the U–3 measure of unemployment is defined as (number 

of unemployed) divided by (the number of unemployed plus the number of employed). This measure misses a potentially important part of the population who are 

‘‘not currently looking for work’’ but, under certain conditions, could and would 

work. So in that sense it has some limitations in measuring tightness in the labor 

market—during recessions it fails to show the importance of movements out of the 

labor force from employment by discouraged workers. And, during recoveries, it fails 

to acknowledge the potential movement back in the labor force of these discouraged 

workers to employment. Looking solely at U–3 unemployment rates, then, misses 

these ‘‘discouraged workers’’ and the true impact of the Great Recession on employment. Likewise, the low current unemployment rates that have resulted from our 

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long but slow recovery may understate the number of ‘‘potential workers’’ who are 

currently on the sidelines but who are likely to come back in the labor force by 

‘‘looking for work’’ and/or finding it and becoming employed. 

3) In the Economic Report the President, you write extensively about the 

economic benefits of deregulation. I’d like to consider the case of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has written new rules concerning predatory payday lenders, established new mortgage standards, 

banned forced arbitration, written rules to protect users of pre-paid cards, 

and proposed regulations to protect consumers against other predatory 

practices. Is there an economic rationale for such regulations? What is the 

cost to consumers and to businesses that don’t prey on their customers 

when there is a lack of such regulation? How do fair and strong regulations 

help markets and the economy as a whole? Which of the regulations listed 

above would you roll back? 

There can be a rationale for regulation in most sectors of the economy, including 

consumer financial regulation. But the possibility of a rationale for regulation does 

not preclude the possibility that the costs of a regulation exceed its benefits. As an 

economist, the task at hand when it comes to any specific regulation promulgated 

by the CFPB or another agency is figuring out whether the benefits in fact outweigh 

the costs in practice, rather than to imagine circumstances in which the benefits in 

principle could outweigh the costs. 

The economic rationale for any regulation depends on whether the benefits, in aggregate, outweigh the costs, in aggregate. CEA would demur from commenting on 

specific CFPB regulations. But CEA would point out that, even abstracting away 

from the distinction between producers and consumers, even a regulation that 

harms some consumers could benefit other consumers. Regulations, in consumer finance as elsewhere, have unintended costs in addition to the intended benefits intimated in the questions. And, from an economic perspective, as the Economic Report 

of the President explains, the challenge is to weigh the totality of these costs and 

benefits in order to ensure only those regulations for which the intended and unintended benefits exceed the intended and unintended costs remain in place. 

4) Nearly years ago, we experienced what former Federal Reserve Chair 

Ben Bernanke called the ‘‘the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.’’ This led to a devastating recession that 

Barack Obama inherited from his predecessor. 

From the worst of that recession until the end of the Obama administration: 

• Unemployment dropped almost in half from its recession peak of about 

10 percent to under 5 percent. • African-American unemployment was cut nearly in half, from over 16 

percent to approximately 8 percent. 

• Hispanic and Latino unemployment was cut more than in half, from approximately 13 percent to under 6 percent. 

• We experienced 80 consecutive months of private-sector job growth, 

and saw the creation of over 15 million jobs. 

• Household wealth increased by more than $35 trillion 

• Housing prices recovered overall, and 

• The Dow rose 12,000 points. 

How would you compare the economy Donald Trump inherited from his 

predecessor to the economy Barack Obama inherited from his predecessor? 

Do you agree with President Trump’s claim that the economy was a disaster at the end of the Obama administration? 

One reasonable way to benchmark the performance of the economy under any 

President is to look at how their policies influenced the performance of the economy 

relative to a counterfactual in which the President’s policies did not happen. Invoking statistics that show declines from recession peaks to make an inference about 

the positive the impact of President Obama’s policies, however, does not seem to be 

an exercise that is grounded in the economics literature. The economics literature 

shows that deeper recessions tend to be followed by faster recoveries. And so statistics documenting the upturn in the economy relative to recession troughs, it seems, 

do not necessarily show that Obama’s policies had a positive impact on the recovery. 

In fact, in the Economic Report of the President (2018), we find that Obama’s policies in fact slowed growth in the recovery years relative to what it would otherwise 

have been. 

Chapter 3 of the Economic Report of the President (2018) focuses on two indicators of macroeconomic performance and their trajectory during the course of the recovery period under Obama: GDP per capita, and median income. More importantly, 

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in measuring longer-term trends in economic growth, the economics profession focuses on a peak to peak measure of a given business cycle rather than fluctuations 

(peak to trough to peak) within it. Doing so, the growth rate of real GDP from the 

beginning of this business cycle until President Trump took office (2007–2016) averaged 1.4 percent per year, the slowest growth of any post-World War II business 

cycle. The same is the case for GDP per capita. Moreover, the post-recession recovery in the median American’s total household income after the 2008 downturn was 

the slowest on record. It is this slowness in the economic growth of this business 

cycle and the lack of progress of the ‘‘middle class’’ as measured by median income 

that includes years when both President Bush and President Obama held office 

which motivated President Trump’s economic policies in his first year. 

It is worth noting that the evidence that Obama’s policies slowed growth appears 

the strongest for the years towards the end of President Obama’s second term. 

RESPONSE FROM DR. KEVIN HASSETT TO QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED BY

REPRESENTATIVE LAHOOD

According to NOAA, the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was the first time 

that three Category 4 hurricanes—Harvey, Irma, and Maria—made landfall 

in the United States and its territories in one year. It was estimated earlier 

this year that the insured losses from these three hurricanes came in at 

$100 billion. 

In terms of the tragic California wildfires from last fall, Aon Benfield es- timated insured losses at $8 billion late last year. 

While it is not discussed a lot, our property and casualty insurance sector 

and our State-based insurance regulatory regime has been very effective in 

terms of having solvent insurance companies pay out the promises made 

via their insurance contracts with their policyholders. We all remember the 

2007–2008 housing bubble burst and the negative impact of that bubble 

bursting on homeowners and the Federal Government’s response through 

creation of TARP and enactment of Dodd-Frank. The conservative solvency-based regulatory regime here in the U.S. does a pretty good job in 

terms of ensuring that property and casualty insurance companies have 

the wherewithal to pay out claims as a result of a hurricane, wildfire, or 

other covered loss. 

Chairman Hassett, would you care to comment on the importance our domestic property & casualty insurance sector plays in terms of playing the 

role of an economic ‘‘shock absorber’’ in a post-natural disaster scenario 

and any suggestions for improving our insurance regulatory regime? 

The U.S. insurance industry is the largest, most competitive, and most diverse in 

the world. The industry provides important retirement planning tools for individuals, and its products allow both commercial and individual policyholders to obtain 

protection for a range of risks. Relying on the financial security provided by this 

risk transfer, policyholders are able to direct resources that they otherwise would 

have to reserve for such uncertainties to productive economic activity, such as capital investment. 

The complexity of the tradeoffs involved in insurance policy seem difficult to overstate, and property & casualty insurance seems to be no exception to this rule. Regulations to increase the ability of insurers to withstand ‘‘extreme’’ scenarios, for instance, may have the unintended consequence of harming consumers who are 

among the most-vulnerable and least able to withstanding property damage by raising premiums to levels they would find difficult to afford. 

As you point out, the domestic property & casualty insurance markets in the U.S. 

appear to have withstood recent events without experiencing distress at the industry level. Policyholders received what they were promised in exchange for their premium payments. Given the implications that the affordability of property and casualty insurance can have for households, and the nonrandom distribution of households’ ability to absorb financial shocks, an assessment of expected costs and benefits that does justice to the complexity of the subject at hand would be required before—as an economist—it would make sense to offer recommendations to improve 

a system that appears to be functioning well in the status quo. 

RESPONSE FROM DR. KEVIN HASSETT TO QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED BY

REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEIKERT

How will uncertainty in the access to foreign markets affect the ability 

for U.S. companies to plan long term, specifically in the circumstance of 

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NAFTA, where companies are having to build and plan for complicated 

capital investment intensive cross border supply chains? Given the environment of uncertainty surrounding the NAFTA renegotiations, what are 

the short-term consequences to the economy of companies being unable to 

plan for the future? With major portions of the economy unable to plan 

long term, what is the potential for this instability to freeze up capital investments domestically? 

The economics literature documents that, holding everything else constant, policy 

uncertainty decreased economic activity across a range of margins of adjustment. 

One of these margins is capital investment. But, in a historic trade negotiation, focusing on the short-term effects of the negotiation itself is tantamount to focusing 

on a transaction cost while ignoring the intended long-run consequences of the 

transaction itself. 

While I cannot comment on any specific ongoing trade negotiation, the President 

intends to deliver long-term benefits by reducing the asymmetries between U.S. 

trade barriers and those of our foreign counterparts. And the economics literature 

would certainly support the notion that there would be long-run benefits to the U.S. 

economy if foreign counterparts lowered their barriers to U.S. exports. It would be 

difficult to make much sense of the net effects of any ongoing trade policy issue, 

however, without situating the short-term costs in the context of the long-term benefits the trade policy in question is intended to deliver. 

Tariffs on aluminum and steel based on Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (19 U.S.C. 186c) could lead to the protection of several 

thousand jobs, at the expense of tens of thousands of jobs being lost. How 

would a trade dispute that cost tens of thousands of American jobs affect 

the U.S. economy and economic growth? 

CEA provides objective economic analysis based on the best available evidence, 

and assists with the evaluation of the economic tradeoffs implied by a set of current 

or prospective policy decisions. The purpose of the present Section 232 actions is to 

prevent imports from impairing U.S. national security [by ‘‘weakening our internal 

economy’’]. That determination by its nature requires, in addition to the economic 

costs and benefits intimated in the question, the consideration of national security 

concerns. But national security considerations are not CEA’s core expertise, and it 

is ultimately up to the President to weigh both the economic and national security 

implications of policy choices as he formulates policy. 

In the long-run, however, the distinction between national security and economic 

concerns can blur more than in the short-run. It is tough to understand the history 

of the U.S. economy since World War II, for instance, without some reference to the 

Cold War and its aftermath. But CEA is not well-positioned to assess impacts of 

the Section 232 that accrue through national security driven channels at this point 

in time. 

Æ 

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