House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday dismissed any notion of friction with the White House on tax reform, saying all parties "see eye to eye" and insisted that they will pass legislation in 2017.
Ryan rebuffed any notion that President Donald Trump has other priorities during an interview on CNBC's "Power Lunch" program.
"We have a shared agenda. The president and Congress, we are eye to eye on this agenda and on these priorities," Ryan told CNBC.
"I've spoken to the president more times than I can remember about how we agree on getting tax reform done," Ryan said. "This isn't one of these issues where you have a difference in priorities between the House and Senate and White House; we're totally on the same page on this.
"I think there's kind of a much ado about nothing there on that point," Ryan said.
He was just as insistent it will get done in 2017.
"So now we're actually getting on common ground on how to move forward on tax reform so we can get this done this fall," Ryan said. "We made a promise, we ran on this, we said this is necessary, this is what we're gonna do. I think we have a word to keep, and I think we all know we have to keep our word."
Ryan does disagree with the Trump White House on one aspect of tax reform — mortgage deductions. They are here to stay, the speaker said.
"I'm not going to get into differences on that, only to say that we recognize, acknowledge and believe you need to maintain the mortgage interest deduction, whether it can be improved in how it works — that's the discussion we'll have in an ongoing basis," Ryan said.
"We're going to maintain some of those critical things because we think they are really important. That is what people tell us they want to see, that's what we ran on and that's what we're going to deliver on," Ryan said.