YouSaid · the spoken record

Jason Smith

lines on the record: 31
first: 2025-05-29
most recent: 2025-05-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I didn't originally plan when I came to Congress that I would be chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and I've had such a great honor to do this. I just want to make a difference in the lives of the people who have trusted me and sent me to Washington. And so I haven't really planned ahead of anything other than let's pass this one big, beautiful bill.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Please don't. What I do want to say is we have a 300 and almost 400-page bill. And I'm sure there's things that we may have not saw all the facts in. And when you hit one domino here, it can really mess up some other dominoes. I want any American who feels like that's an unintended consequence of what we're trying to do, that we may not be aware of, please let us know.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I changed how we run the Ways and Means Committee from my very first committee hearing. My first committee hearing as chairman was not in Washington. We did it in Petersburg, West Virginia at a lumberyard, and we brought in a restaurant owner, a coal miner, working moms, and farmers just to hear of the issues that they were facing in today's economy. I set up 10 different tax teams where I picked 10 different members of my committee to chair for over the last year where they traveled to more than 23 different states themselves, had more than 120 site visits. They met with stakeholders to listen to all items within the code. And then we brought that all back.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm sure they will make changes. We've been working with Senate Finance. I've been meeting with numerous senators. Senators have been calling me, telling me their priorities. We put a lot of the senators' priorities in this bill.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tell everyone I've said this before the bills were out there is that pretty much everything's on the table because we don't know what is needed to thread that needle to get the votes. People would talk about different tax brackets or whatever and I would just say everything's on the table.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was about to say you, David, you and President Trump are exactly agreeing on that issue. And I think there's a lot of members of both parties that view the debt limit as like... Very poison pill that individuals have to worry about. And when you think about defaulting on U.S. debt, that can create a big problem.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you're right, the debt limit David expired at the first of the year. We're operating under extraordinary measures right now is what they refer to. And it's projected that will last us sometime in July. And so we have to address that. Part of the bill that we voted out of committee increased the debt limit. It increased the debt limit $4 trillion, which was in the budget instructions that we were required to do. The Senate instructions is higher with a higher debt limit. And so that's one of those things that I'm sure that is going to be figured out throughout the process.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was the house number was you could not exceed four and a half trillion. And then they had this ratchet item that if you didn't make $2 trillion worth of spending cuts, it would ratchet down to $4 trillion. And so our bill actually comes in below $4 trillion.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, multiple things. We have to get this bill signed into law, delivered for the American people. But after it's signed into law, I'm going to hold Treasury accountable to make sure that they're implementing the tax bill, how Congress passed it. It's not always been fun. That's going to be a big priority to make sure that the tax code is implemented as the priority that we're passing Congress. But trade, trade is super important. 96% of the world's consumers are outside of the United States. I represent a farming congressional district. We're dependent on trade. We grow rice, corn, cotton, beef cattle in my district. And so we need more markets. We need to eliminate those non-tariff barriers.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most time when I call him, he answers. He is the most accessible executive I've ever worked with. I'll wake up in the morning sometimes from a text message from the president at 5.30 in the morning and it's sent to me at like 2.30 and I'm like, oh no, he knows I was sleeping. So he's always working. He'll text you. I can text him. He is so productive in regards to talking policy.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She doesn't. People don't care. My friends and neighbors don't care. It's so funny. I woke up this morning with the text message from a high school classmate who's a school teacher in my hometown. She's like, why is your face continuing to pop up on the TV? Are you important? I was like, no, not at all.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I truly believe that our party is not the party of seniority or who's next in line, but it's the party who's best for the job. And I felt like I was the best person for the job. That's why I was running for it or I wouldn't have done it. And I said that if you elect me to be the chairman of this committee, that the policies that's within the ways and means jurisdiction, tax, trade, healthcare, social security needs to be the policies that reflect the priorities of the working class. I'm a product of the working class. I grew up in a single by trailer. Most of my life, and then we upgraded to a double wide. My mother was a factory worker just so that we had health insurance. That's how we made it by, but I am so grateful for how I was raised because it doesn't matter what family you're born into. If you get a quality education and you're determined to work hard and not give up, you can accomplish.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did. I've been elected twice now as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. I worked really hard. I traveled to 42 of the 50 states campaigning for my colleagues and for candidates in 87 different congressional districts. I did more than 300 TV appearances trying to push the Republican message. And I met with every one of the 30 plus members of the steering committee multiple times, giving them the pitch of why I should lead the Ways and Means Committee and under what leadership I would lead on.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's all about relationships. I go back to that first day that when I was sworn into office, my senator at that time was Roy Blunt, and Roy Blunt pulled me aside and he said, Jason, there's two ways you can be effective in Washington, D.C. One, you can be here for 20 years and just build natural seniority, or two, you can build relationships. And so I made it a focus to schedule five to 15 minute meetings, coffees, teas with every member of Congress that would meet with me whenever I came up here, because they all knew who I was being the new special election kid, but I didn't know who the other 434 were. And so I just started going through, getting to know them, not asking for anything, but just figure out where we have some common ground.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was June of 2013. I will never forget my first day I got sworn in. My predecessor was Congresswoman Joan Emerson, and she led me down to the floor. She was there when I got sworn in and tired with the Missouri delegation. And she's like, do you know how to get back to your office? Which my office was her old office at that time in the Rayburn House office building. And I was like, yeah, I can do it.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I practice law for just about a year and then got elected to the Missouri State House when I was 24. was one of the youngest members in the Missouri State House. I became the majority whip, the youngest speaker pro tem in Missouri's history, and then ran for Congress at 32.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“University of Missouri in Columbia graduated with two degrees at 20 business administration emphasis finance and agriculture economics and then I went to law school three days later”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Agriculture, agriculture without a doubt, in manufacturing. I grew up working on my grandparents' farm. My father was an auto mechanic. And so where I lived was we had a single wide trailer right next to his auto repair business, which was just a Tube unit. And my grandparents' farm was three miles away. And so I always spent the weekends, the summers, the evenings working on the farm. And now I own that farm. I purchased it when my granddad died.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the congressional district that I represent, David, my family's called at home for seven generations. My hometown is less than 5,000 people. It's called Salem, Missouri. It's the county seat. The population of my county is only about 16,000”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My goal is July 4th. I want the president to be able to sign into law on July 4th. That's my goal. And that's the president's goal.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's 30,000 if you make less than $400,000 a year and then it starts phasing back down to $10,000. So we've tried to find what is that good spot. Even talking to my ranking member, he's like Salt's just. Salts and obstacle for both parties in that sense. And so we've checked numbers. Like I've got numbers from Treasury and the IRS of the different salt congressional districts within our conference. And this 30,000 dollar cap that we have under 400,000 will provide more than 90% of every one of our SALT members districts coverage under this. It's a balance. It's not everything that some of the salt members want, but I have members of our conference that doesn't even think you should be able to deduct $1, let alone $30,000, but it's a fair and balanced approach.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you're going to be fine. You're going to be fine, David, because you've purchased the team before it takes some effect. So it's only new owners I was thinking”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So throughout this whole process, David, I've had to thread a needle. We have one of the smallest majorities in the history of Congress, both in the House and the Senate. And so I can only lose three people in passing this tax bill. And so trying to thread that needle where people are in the extremes in all areas, whether it's the green credits, whether it's salt, whether it's other various tax provisions, just trying to find that balance has been what I've been striving and trying to do in this bill. In regards to carried interest, I got a letter from 35 different members of our Congress for being committee chairman that was saying do not put this in the bill. We can't support the bill. It was a priority. The president wanted it. The president had a lot of priorities and I delivered on most of them.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that equates to anyone who makes less than $75,000 per person. So $75 for an individual or $150 for a married, that they would not be paying any taxes on their Social Security because of the tax cuts from the income code.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So within the rules of reconciliation by statute, you cannot touch Social Security. And so we wanted to make sure we delivered on this priority in reconciliation. And if you want to know about the Social Security tax, in like 1981, it was created that you were tax-free off your first $25,000 for an individual or $32,000 for a married couple. And that hasn't changed in 40, 44 years. And so there is an item within the tax code that you get an added standard deduction if you're a senior, if you're 65 years old or older. It's currently about $2,000 that could be added on top of your guaranteed deduction. And so we've increased that $4,000 per person so that their deduction would be”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We did. We eliminated no tax on overtime. It affects about 80 million workers across the country. And we put special guidelines, both in no tax on tips and overtime that it can't be high-compensated employees. For example, by definition within statute, a high compensated employee is someone who makes more than $160,000 a year.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The idea of the no tax on tips to the president was he was actually having dinner at one of his properties in Nevada during the campaign. And the waitress said, can you not tax my tips? And that's where the idea came from, from a waitress in Nevada to the president. And so what we've done within this bill is to eliminate the tax on tips altogether.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly right. The first thing and his first priority was permanency of his expiring 2017 tax cuts. And some of the main items that were expiring was all the individual rates would go up. This makes the current rates that you're paying taxes right now will stay the current rates, regardless of what tax bracket that you're in. The child tax credit was going to be slashed in half. It would have gone from 2,000 to 1,000. We made permanent the $2,000 child tax credit. The guaranteed deduction, which 91% of Americans use to file their taxes, that got doubled in 2017. It's roughly $15,000 per person right now. And we made that permanent as well.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do our president is very accessible and he calls me when he wants to talk tax or trade or some other items that's within our committee's jurisdiction. And so I've met with him several times on this tax bill twice in the last two weeks in the Oval Office. I shared with him the main priorities that he asked us to deliver on and what I could deliver on and what I couldn't deliver on.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we had the big six meetings, which was referred to as the Speaker of the House, the leader of the Senate, so Mr. Thun, also Chairman Crapo of the Finance Committee, myself. It had Kevin Hassett, economic advisor, and then also the Treasury Secretary Besson. And so the six of us met quite often. Typically, it's about every week to two weeks, and we've been doing that for several months right now, discussing different tax provisions. But in regards to my counterpart, over on the Senate side, Chairman Crapo, we talk, our teams communicate nonstop. And we've been working pretty well hand in glove.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pretty close to that since we're using the rules of reconciliation, which is a tool to help the Senate get the 51 votes to pass any legislation, there's certain parameters that we have to fall under. We had to pass the budget resolution. The budget resolution was passed by both the House and the Senate, and it gave us specific instructions. And within that budget resolution, it instructed 11 different committees in the House of Representatives. 10 of the 11 have marked up the last one is finishing up right now. The Ag Committee. Once all 11 are done, their bills that they marked up, it goes to the budget committee.”
2025-05-29 · The David Rubenstein Show · Jason Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source