House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., self-proclaimed "deficit hawk" and "growth advocate," feels "very good" about passing tax reform before Thanksgiving, saying the work had to start with the tighter vote and rules in the Senate, and added he is "ticked off" with the Democrats in the revelations Hillary Clinton had the "deck stacked" in her primary.
"I feel very good about it," Rep. Ryan told "Fox News Sunday" about passing the tax reform bill in the House before Thanksgiving. "I think our members are very excited about this. We're pleased with what we've rolled out, and this is what we said we would do when we ran for office in 2016.
"We have to have tax reform, we have to have tax cuts for people in the middle. This delivers that, and we really are convinced this is going to help get out economy growing and reaching its potential."
Speaker Ryan said he expects the Senate to be a week behind in passing the bill with their narrow 52-48 majority, but praised the "very coordinated" tax reform work between the House and Senate beforehand to streamline a process that proved to be very difficult this summer in healthcare reform.
"The lesson learned was, coordinate with the Senate and then move together," Speaker Ryan told host Chris Wallace.
Pressed by Wallace about the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" raising the deficit, yet being supported by fiscal conservatives, Ryan said "we are absolutely convinced this will help grow the economy."
"Paul Ryan the deficit hawk is also a growth advocate," Ryan added to Wallace. "Paul Ryan the deficit hawk also knows that you have to have a faster growing economy, more jobs, bigger take home pay, that means higher tax revenues.
". . . You're going to say this is a $1.5 trillion dollar tax cut – we are, we are convinced that this is going to give us faster economic growth."
Democrats are pointing to the hypocrisy of fiscal conservatives in supporting an increase of the deficit to cut taxes, but the $1.5 trillion is just a figure used to cap its bottom-line impact and allow the Senate to pass the bill with 50 votes under budget reconciliation.
"The reason we did it that way is because, we believed that the Senate parliamentarian won't let us use what we call dynamic scoring [factoring in projected economic growth]," Ryan told Wallace.
Concluding his appearance after supporting Robert Mueller's investigation into 2016 election interference, Ryan denounced the revelations Clinton's campaign "rigged" the Democratic primary against Bernie Sanders with a "deck stacked" in the Democratic National Committee.
"I’ve never seen anything like that," Ryan said. "I mean, we all said that the Clintons thought they lived above the rules, but this takes the cake. I mean this is pretty amazing, for them to basically be running the DNC in a primary. To see such a deck stacked is really pretty jaw-dropping to me. No wonder the Democrats are ticked off. I would be, too.
". . . It’s amazing to me how the Clintons, just lived above the law or above the rules in this thing. I understand why Democrats are mad about this. They should be mad about this, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this, frankly."