good morning. welcome to "squawk box" on cnbc. we're live from washington, d.c., i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin. we're happy to be on u.s. soil after our whirlwind 72 hours that had us in davos to start the week, now we're here to kick off the inauguration of donald trump. our guests this morning, arthur brooks. right now just about everyone in washington is stuck in traffic and he is, too. getting around the capitol becoming more and more difficult as we get closer to the ceremony. things are on lockdown, roads are shut down. there's a red zone all around us here. as we wait for our guest, we'll get a check on the markets. let's look at u.s. equity futures. yesterday you saw a selloff in the stock market. this morning some green arrows.

s&p futures up by 6 1/2. the nasdaq up by 18 points. if you look at what happened in asia overnight, equity markets there showing the nikkei up by a third of a percentage point. mixed markets when it comes to china with the shanghai co composite up. let's look at what's happening in the early trade in europe. relatively flat. looks like the cac in france is the biggest gainer, up by a third of a percent. when it comes to crude oil, the energy markets, you'll see crude oil this morning, looks like it's up by 1% to 51.95. brent up by about 62 cents to 54.78. >> as we said, we are here in d.c. for a reason, because we're hours away from the inauguration of donald trump as the 45th u.s. president. cnbc has full coverage all day of this historic event. we start right now with john harwood who is here. welcome. good morning. >> good morning. >> you're welcoming us.

we're here this is your home. >> i'm glad you're here. donald trump and you and all the rest of us are very lucky with this weather. we were talking about the lack of zero degree weather. we have had cold rain for inaugurals, ronald reagan's second inaugural, it was so cold, they were worried the marching bands would get frostbite, so they moved it indoo indoors. for barack obama's first inaugural, it was frigid. >> did you say 7 degrees? >> 7. >> that sounds cold to you? >> minus 45 windchill. >> you keep talking. this is what we woke up. we woke up to accuweather, it would say minus 10. real feel minus 14. i kept going, that's celsius.

no, it was really minus 10 when we would wake up. that will get your attention. >> i'm sure you guys had all sorts of heated everything to take care. >> we were outside. we had something under here where your leg would be on fire and the rest of your body -- >> it's true. >> it was okay. >> one leg would be on fire. the other would be an icicle. >> who handled it the best? >> we all have to handle it. >> we're all professionals. the leg hurt so bad you forgot you were cold. >> good trick. >> well, there's always extra drama when you have a change of power which we've had very frequently since world war ii, because only in one case has a two-term president been succeeded by a president of his party, that was with george h.w. bush in 1993. but we have pomp and circumstance yesterday, we had a concert t concert at the lincoln memorial, dinner for dope nors, and he

invoked a football coach to say how he got elected. >> they predicted this would be the greatest loss in political history. not even modern political history. they said in political history. and i'll tell you one thing, i outworked everybody. i think i outworked anybody who ran for office. i learned that from belichick, right? >> the real work begins today. the question is how much of it gets done. he potentially has executive orders lined up. we don't know which ones he'll do today or save for the weekend or monday, which he called his first real day in the oval office. you have potential orders on ethics, ruling out any of his appointees from becoming lobbyists any time in the future. orders on immigration, related to president obama's deferred action for certain immigrants who came illegally but have been in the united states and performed well. potentially on the border wall

as well. there's one cloud hanging over the president-elect, which of course is the investigation, the continuing turmoil about russia, the links to russia. the new york times is reporting today an fbi investigation that involving intercepted communications that could involve associates of mr. trump, paul manafort, roger stone, a periodic stone for years. dent know where that's going. if it's going to yield anything. that's swirling around as the senate considers his appointments. >> so people close to him and who? russian -- >> the intercepted communications involved russian officials. and the question is what is the content of those? the report is a little vague. we don't know exactly what those communications are. >> and the suggestion in the piece is that they wanted this story out there now so that it can't get shut down. >> yes, because the

president-elect is going to be in charge of the investigators after the stroke of noon today. >> when manafort left uns, that telling at the time. the rug was pulled out, he was gone. there were some other things swirling about at that point, not this specifically, but -- >> there were some things that manafort -- leave aside russia, some things that manafort had done that donald trump didn't like. things he was saying to donners. >> but also business relationships in russia. had he or had he not gotten -- had it finally made it into his company's bank account. they were saying it hadn't. >> one thing donald trump has to hope is that the mood of the inauguration, which is a ceremonial one propels the senate to faster confirmation of his appointees. he will have a confirmed defense

secretary, a confirmed secretary of homeland security, but he does not yet have the rest of his cabinet. he has not made a lot of appointments yet. so the government is incomplete. >> i have one practical question for you. does donald trump sleep in the white house tonight? >> absolutely. >> absolutely? i saw images of the white house last night. completely empty. they literally move in and put everything on -- linens on the bed? >> they do it very fast. >> everything? >> did obama sleep there last night? >> yes. >> just trying to understand. >> that's a fast turn. i'm trying to understand how this happens. >> you have a whole lot of manpower boxing up stuff. pictures of empty frames all over the place. >> right. >> fascinating. >> but they will do it. so that when donald trump goes to the white house, goes to the oval office, they're ready to go. >> there's never an empty white house. that's the key. >> never. >> thanks, john.

on today's market agenda, the fed is in focus. really? maybe some other stuff happening. philly fed, philly cheese steak president -- whenever i see that, don't you think philly cream cheese? patrick harker will give his latest outlook on the economy at 9:00 eastern. at 1:00, remarks. on the earnings front, procter & gamble, schlumberger will have results. ibm recorded its 19th consecutive quarter of declining revenue. but ibm's core businesses like hardware and services, while struggling to keep up the pace, the company is pushing into new trends like cloud computing. it has not offset the declines, but the stock has been a good

performer. back to where warren buffett is thinking i feel good about this. it has overshadowed earnings. that top analyst estimates and revenue, and a better than expected profit outlook. we will talk about another dow component, but what would -- used to be called the not so -- what was the news? not so real news? >> the not necessarily the news? >> yeah. >> my contribution today from market watch, which is not really fake news necessarily, but some opinions that -- >> they're a real -- owned by dowment. >> every day. today is trump's inauguration set to unleash a cascade of stock market anxiety. this has been the -- it's really since before the election it was going to unlish stock markeash market anxiety, during the election, after the election.

and now that it actually happens, now is maybe the 5,000 point selloff, i think. that's what i'm predicting. >> are you? >> no. but i'm glad they're doing this. every day it's like this can't be happening. >> the wall of worry. >> we didn't think this could happen. it want be happening. so we'll say it's not happening. then it happens, yeah, but now -- >> just wait. >> sugar high. >> we'll see. >> we'll see where we land. american express trading lower. the credit card company posting an earnings miss blaming an increase in spending on markets and promotion in order to keep up with competition. the loss of the costco credit card business also weighing on results. we talked about this company. it's been a tough challenge. revenue falling from a year earlier. amex hiked the range for the full year price. >> cramer was right on this. >> it's climbing?

>> the demise of the merp expree american express credit card is rising. you're still worried. >> i am. >> it still has some type of business -- >> it's a good business, but costs will continue to rise because of the competition. >> i'm so confused now between -- >> paypal and vemo -- >> i'll send you some money. >> do i need my wallet? >> no, because you can put your amex card or visa in a pay pal wallet or. >> what happens when your phone runs out of battery? >> that's a problem. >> that is a problem. maybe you have one of those cnbc things. >> instantly charge it? >> extra battery power. my wallet is so fat. >> you have to get slim. >> not because of the money, but the credit cards and everything else? >> all my personal contacts are written down on cards in there.

is there a better way to do that? >> there is. we'll show you. >> we have a big-time guest. >> so there's a way of doing that electronically? >> yes. >> soon to be president trump has vowed to reform healthcare, trade and regulation in his first 100 days. joining us now is arkansas governor asa hutchinson. thanks for being here. >> good to be here. >> what will you be watching for? what are the things you hope rise to the top in terms of priorities? >> how he's going to do it. the details of it. as a governor coming up, talk about the healthcare, the affordable care act which will go away what it will be replaced with. i met with senate finance committee yesterday, as well as the house commerce committee, with other governors expressing we want to go, we're willing to work with you in partnership and make sure there is a smooth

transition into a system that assures care at the same time that is affordable and gives states the flexibility needed. we are waiting for details as president-elect trump carrying out his agenda. >> what did you get back from the people you talk ed ed to on hill? >> it's exciting when governors can come here, meet with senators and they're takie inin notes on what you're saying. we got out of it a pledge to work more. they want to know our views. they want to make sure they have simwith sill within our time frame. they're asking how quick can we do this? how much time do you need? >> what is your answer to that? >> i told them we can do it quickly. >> as long as there's something to jump to. >> as long as we continued the federal partnership. we're an expansion state. we have 330 arkansasans on the

expansion role. we are ready to shift. we don't need two years, one year, we can do it in 90 days to six months. that was my message to them. continue the federal partnership, give us flexibility we'll get the job done. >> how different do you think whatever program we come up with will look compared to the current one? >> the differences will be substantial. no individual mandate. no employer mandate. those are significant changes for americans. that will be the challenge. >> if there's no individual mandate, how do you make it affordable? >> like i said, that is a challenge for it. you have a number of different aspects of it. you're going to be able, for example, on the exchanges, convert that to a tax credit system which gives -- exchanges may be here, may not be here. but the system of giving support

can happen through a credit system and direct subsidy. that's manageable. the second aspect of it is the expansion. that can be handled through more flexibility of the states, block grant type of approach. putting in responsibility, work requirements that actually are meaningful. >> maybe more choice, allowing younger people not to buy cadillac plans? the way it's explained, also getting large groups that will be able to cover so many people that the ones with pre-existing conditions are cover and you don't need the forcing of the healthy people -- which didn't work any way. >> you have to have market capacity in there to help define what the rates will be. we want to devolve the insurance responsibility that the federal government sees back to the

states. >> do you think the ultimate price tag for the federal government -- whether we pay it or it becomes a deaf kficit iss do you think that will go down meaningfully? >> health costs rise, you cannot say it's going to go down, but you can say we'll have more competition, more competitive pricing. hopefully that will put constraints on the pricing of insurance and healthcare. >> let's talk about the trade issue. that's one, when we look at the border tax, some people call it the walmart tax. walmart and your hometown is going to be the one that bears the brunt of paying big tax on things that they're importing, that are made overseas what do you think about the border tax and what we could do when it comes to corporate tax reform? >> i'm concerned about it. i understand the need to rebuild manufacturing in the united states, have a tougher trade

policy. we cannot jeopardize our place in the global marketplace, and whether you call it a border tax or a tariff, if you put a cost on the -- bringing in goods to our country, it's going to be a challenge, raise the cost to consumers, and also invite retaliation. in a state like arkansas, not only do we have walmart, but also tyson's, and agriculture. if you have states, it will cost us in agricultural exports. that's something we're concerned about. >> okay. >> glad the agriculture guy's first name is sonny? >> i am. >> a guy who knows about agriculture, sonny. get sonny perdue.

>> he'll be a great leader. coming up sh, we're just getting started here on "squawk box," find out which hedge fund manager is increasing his exposure to stocks now that donald trump is about to take office. didn't see that market watch piece, apparently. "squawk box" will be right back. a

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we are live in washington, d.c. for the inauguration of the 45th president. welcome back to "squawk box." a bit of news, john paulson speaking exclusively to our own scott wapner during the inaugural vip candlelight dinner. paulson playing a key role to shape trump's economic agenda and he offered an optimistic view about the policies. paulson has increased his firm's long exposure to stocks since trump's election saying his tax proposals will help boost tax earnings. he also listed several issues he would like see enacted. >> he was an early supporter. >> early supporter. >> i spoke to him briefly, too.

took a lot of flack. a lot of flack. >> from friends? >> from everybody. you see him walk by the studio? >> all the time. trump used to criticize so many of the hedge fund managers. during the campaign. >> exactly. >> i don't know if he's making that critique anymore. >> i think we're all jet lagged and tired. i had something good to say, it's gone. our guest host has arrived. arthur brooks, president of the american enterprise institute is joining us. donald trump is, a lot of people last night were telling me he defies either "d" versus "r." he's a hybrid. >> kind of a third party candidacy. >> looking at -- you know, i love everything you have written. whenever i -- when i get -- >> there's a but coming. >> no, when i get an argument -- >> he writes for the "new york

times." >> i paid you a dollar a page to read one of his books. >> i remember that. >> i did appreciate that. did you take the money? >> he did take the money. he charged me for the index. there were 30 pages of indexes. >> did you pay cash or check? >> i wrote you a check. >> did i cash it? >> you ask yourself that question, i did cash it and think what you would do. you know the answer. >> probably cashed it. >> i cashed joe's check to write my book. none of it came to me. this is the thing -- >> just read the first 20 pages of the road to freedom. my question to you is knowing that he's not strictly a conservative, do you see a path with what you have espoused will help us, do you see that path being what -- the way this administration goes? are we on the road to freedom? are we still on the some type of side track -- >> there's a lot of reason to be

optimistic. there's al lot of good policies we'll see. any new administration is danger, you don't know what they'll do, congress will do. it looks like we'll have a good, fast start. good for growth, bad for regulation, which is good for growth. tax policies which are healthy. if they can do half of what they're talking about, we'll like it. >> the stumbling blocks, it's ironic and rich what i'm hearing. a lot of friends on mine are now -- they are died in wolf status. they love government. god, are they worried now about him talking to corporations. suddenly they're the biggest free market people in the world. how can you back this guy that's telling u.s. companies to -- where to put -- put the factories? this is not how we do this? really? you have been fine with this for

the past aigteight years, now y have a problem with it. >> it's called situational ethics. >> it that where, according to the aei, is that where trump could get derailed, by being too statist? >> the tendency for all republicans and democrats in a big country like the united states is the problems is always to be statist. >> republicans and democrats are always trying to do more with the economy, fail to recognize unintended secondary consequences of policy. >> let's talk about how ambitious this first 100 days plan is. at some point, you wonder if he runs into the same sort of problems that president obama ran into. where he was able to get the affordable care act passed, obama care passed, after that he din have much juice because he

used so much and created so much friction with the other side of the aisle by listening to nobody on the other side of the aisle. by repealing obama care, does president-elect trump run the risk of running into a similar problem? >> we're in a polarization moment here. there's so much asymmetry for people being able to see any good from the other side. the contempt was the main theme of this election. mutual content. that makes pem narmanent enemie. but we'll see neimmediate impac that will be good for the american economy. the obamacare stuff will be more contentious, tax reform not so much. >> you talk about raising the lower and middle class capitalism. that's a large part of your message. the question is if trump does

all the things he's talking about, how much do you think that piece of it is going to be improved? the reason i say that is i have every expectation this will be great for profits of corporations, great for the stock market, but dare i say the trickle down, does it trickle down? >> the biggest prop we' efgest had, it's been a wonderful administration for the top 1% of the economy. a prototypical 1% of the economy. the top 20% have had all the growth. the bottom 4/5 have had no economic growth. what we can do -- what i'm hoping is the policies will be concentrating not just on strong growth but symmetric growth in the bottom 80%. that has to happen if we bring more jobs to the united states, if we have a culture more respectful to the types of jobs that don't require college. those are the types of things president trump is talking about. i hope it works. we could see a turnaround in the

next two years. >> people who have owned assets because of the fed and conjuring up the -- trying to improve the underlying economy by raising asset value -- >> the fed was up front. >> the fed had to be there, because none of these growth policies that we can use. >> that's the question. >> now hopefully -- my ultimate question, i'll ask it to you again, do the -- is the risk that democrats stop trump by him trying to do conservative things or that he actually isn't really as much of a conservative as people think. will be self-inflicted or will democrats stop it? that remains to be seen. we'll see whether the good picks for his cabinet, the guys around him, whether they hold it down. >> we'll have more from arthur brooks. i can see it's -- it's like a symphony, when he talks.

he plays the french horn. you're a famous french horn player in barcelona. >> in the barcelona symphony for years. >> everybody who runs a think tank was in a symphony. >> we have more to talk about. when we come back, general electric is set to roll out the results. and warren buffett in the big apple. he hit the red carpet of new york city last night. we'll find out what he had to say about the president-elect and the stock market next.

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good morning. there it is. preparations underway. welcome back to "squawk box." we're counting down to that event. we're coming to you live from the nation's capital. we are hours away from the inauguration of donald trump as our 45th president. u.s. equities future at this hour are marginally higher after -- a bit better than the first time we looked. now up 41. on the dow jones, up 8 and change. on the s&p. earnings just coming in from general electric. the bottom line number was 46 cents a share. revenue of 33.1 billion. slightly below street forecasts. for many big multinationals and ge in particular, it's been years of sort of struggling to -- i won't say struggling, but always the revenue number

presented -- if everything else was going well, it was restructured. has a totally different company on his hands now that people like -- >> the makeup has changed enormously. >> and they've been shrinking revenue, as the financial services arm was shrunk after the financial crisis. it's always been that revenue number. always seems to be a fly in the ointment when we report. stock at 31. >> warren buffett walking the red carpet in new york city last night. he was in town for the premiere of the hbo documentary "becoming warren buffett." while there, he stopped by cnbc's camera. >> the whole thing is touching. it's the story of a little kid in omaha, got lopsided growing up, went off the tracks and everything, my wife came along and started sprinkling water on and finally a few sprouts came up, and she put me together. >> buffett also commenting on

president-elect donald trump. >> certainly he has the most important job in the world. america will work, it will work wonderfully under hillary clinton, fine under donald trump. we have the secret sauce. doesn't works for all the time perfectly, but you look at where we go, milestone after milestone, and never bet against america. >> an, of course he was asked a his thoughts on the stock market. >> i have no idea what the stock market are do in the next year. i know it will be higher 10 years from now, 20 years from now. i try to do things i know how to do. >> that hbo documentary premieres on january 30th. >> i saw the film. i saw it about a month and a half ago. i literally cried. it was -- >> really? >> i called warren after i saw the film.

it is a moving film. >> why is it so -- >> it's his story, his life. about his family. >> give a disclaimer -- >> i know you think i cry all the -- >> commercials. american airlines commercial. >> it's a beautifully done film. if you have followed warren buffett's career, it's just worth seeing. there's something special about how they put it together. >> fruit of the loom, all the fruits working together. remember you would cry. you're very sensitive. >> i'm emotional. >> i'm looking forward to it. >> they did a tremendous job with it. >> i went for disney and "finding dory" i went that i paid $15 to see it. nothing in it made me sad. >> go watch the film. >> "finding dory?"

>> that or the warren buffett film. donald trump railed against the government and its inefficiencies during the campaign, one thing he said he would do on his first day in office was a hiring freeze. our next guest says that would be a mistake. we are joined by aaron klein, fellow in economic studies and policy director of the center of regulation and markets at the brookings institute. you think this is a mistake? >> yeah. >> you don't think it will happen? >> i think will there be a hiring freeze. when ronald reagan did it, he did it in the capitol before he got on the parade route. the question is how broad will this apply? traditionally independent regulato regulators, they have been excluded from these hiring freezes. tradition is not the best mile marker or guide post for a trump administration. he could try to apply this to

the federal reserve. that would be a mistake. >> right. don't mo know if you saw the ne this morning, dave nason is up for a job at the fed to oversee regulation. >> david is a qualified guy. he worked in the paulson administration during years of great stress, he was behind the plan for regulatory restructuring which nominee mnuchin talked about, and the paulson plan i think has gotten better with time. it's like wine. first when it came out, it needed time to season, but paulson planted something thoughtful, for congress to retake and get rid of some of these regulatory agencies or merge them, we have too many regulators flying around. does that change the dynamic for banks? >> completely. >> if you put dan turillo to the

side, overseeing the stress tests, if you put david mason in that place does that change the dynamic? >> somewhat. the fed is seven members. it's not just one person. even bank supervision and regulation is a group of three chaired by the vice chair for supervision. the most important thing is you have a serious person in there who knows what he's doing and can hit the ground running. >> polls we don't believe in anymore, but there have been polls, 40% of federal employees are leaving under trump. it was the -- those are the same -- >> much like hollywood celebrities are moving to canada. >> when reagan was taking off, same kinds of numbers, 40%, 50% of federal employees. then nobody leaves. they can't leave. they can't -- they're addicted. >> it's their jobs, so they just won't quit their job. >> it's their job, and it's a job that -- >> today an every day we should

celebrate the peaceful transition of power between parties, part of that involves an entrenched civil work force that can keep the lights on going tomorrow. at 12:01, at monday morning when everybody comes back to work because d.c. is shut down today, we need a function on government. that will be career people. you don't have political appointees in. those career people are what let us go to bed calm and without a worry in the world on sunday night. >> it is neat. if you were to look at globe and just sort of make it proportional to where things are happening and influence, today washington, d.c. would cover a third -- this is what's happening today in the world. the greatest country. we have a peaceful transition. >> and to see former presidents. >> all the ones that are helping. >> who are able to do it. >> george h.w. bush. >> it's extraordinary. i was talk to somebody the other day who grew up in a country that's not democratic. you have this rancorous

presidential campaign, dripping with content, hated each other, there's no knock in the night, you could be on the wrong side of this thing, it's still okay. it's a miracle. >> aaron, so much of what we've seen in the stock market in terms of the expectations of growth over the next couple years and the way companies are thinking is a function of the idea that the tax rate will come down meaningfully. realistically, given that you're here in washington and talk to the different sides, what do you think the number could possibly turn out to be, also recognizing there's a debate over this border adjustment tax and the idea of keeping it revenue neutral. >> the big issue is revenue neutral. will we tax my children and their children to give tax cuts today to businesses and wealthy folks or balance this thing where you broaden the base, get rid of loopholes that have built up over time. that's a hard thing to do. if you do that, you could lower the rate 25%.

>> lower it by 25% or to 25%? >> to 25%. >> people may decide to blow off the deficit. republicans may care about the deficits when republicans are in power. >> where are you on that? >> the big hole in the broader agenda is there's no talk of entitlements. i'm all for lowering tax rates. even if that has impact on the general fiscal position, but you have to take cost out of it, too. that means entitlement reform. this is the great big thing hanging out there that we haven't figured out. let's lower the top marginal rate on the personal side to 33, lower it to 20, or even 15 on the corporate side. that would be fantastic. but 70% of the federal budget is going to entitlements. >> so trump ran on not touching

entitlements. >> i'm hoping he will relax on that. >> that's a bait and switch then. >> it's not a bait and switch exactly. we have to figure out what it would mean in the out years, what we could do. >> if he doesn't want to touch entitlements and says we won't do a border adjustment tax, we'll take it on the chin. we'll add to the deficit along the way, and i'll deal with the other stuff later. >> yeah. >> would that be acceptable? >> i would have to understand what later means, have some sort of commitment. >> it would be nice to know what gdp is. obama had 10 trillion. 10 trillion. we average 1.6% gdp. let's say we add another 10 trillion over the trump presidency but average 3.3. is it worth it if we average 3.3 and blow out the deficit? not worth it when you get 1.6%. >> so the 10 trillion figure, i

have issues with that. a lot of that is the student loans, the financial crisis. >> we don't need to argue that, he ran up -- >> the key point is what are you doing? are you cutting george steinbrenner's taxes so the yankees can pass generation to generation free. >> if you don't cut on the top 20%, how will you -- if no one is paying taxes, it's hard to cut taxes. even larry summers admitted that. >> but they're not paying taxes, how does the tax credit help for healthcare or child care? >> if you're going to cut taxes you have to cut taxes -- >> we have a huge child care problem. if they could do something on child care payment that would do something for working people. >> what did we average? reagan blew out the deficit what did we average.

4? >> some years more, some years less. >> was that a fair tradeoff? >> it was. >> and we won the cold war. just a few more hours until president-elect trump takes the oath of office. a lot of people are saying oaths in a different way, swearing. but stay tuned. we'll have full coverage. ind getn.

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>> welcome back to a special edition of "squawk box" live in washington, d.c. for the inauguration today. we're also keeping an eye on the markets. the u.s. equity futures right now are in the green. dow futures up by 40 points. s&p futures up by 7 1/2. the nasdaq up by close to 20 this comes after a down day for the markets yesterday. when we return, preparations are underway for donald j. trump's inauguration set to kick off in a few hours. congressman marsha blackburn will weigh in on cybersecurity and trump's relationship with the intelligence community. she will be stopping by at 7:30 a.m. eastern this morning. "squawk box" will be right back with more coverage in a moment.

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♪ welcome back to "squawk box." we're live in washington, d.c. this morning. right now it's time for our executive edge. jpmorgan is going to be paying its ceo jamie dimon $28 million for 2016.

that's nearly 4% bump from the previous year. he made $27 million the year before that. the package includes $21.5 million in performance related restricted stock and $5 million in cash. dimon's base salary is unchanged at $1.5. the value changes based on jpmorgan and dimon's performance. jpmorgan shares rose 31% last year, those the bulk of those gains came after the u.s. election. >> we wish we had a similar deal. like our salary is x and what you make is like 30x. that would be so good. i'm doing okay. so that's my salary. but actually, i'm making 40 times what i just told you. how does that work? it always works that way. why even say you're making a million and a half. that's not even -- how much you making, jamie?

my salary is a million and a half. >> everything else is tied to performance. >> i know. i'm not complaining about it. look at athletes and entertainers and everyone else. i know people don't think ceos -- i think ceos can be great. you can get a market price, but i understand the entrenched board. >> but there are also arguments if you're running an oil company and prices go up, the commodity prices for those. >> the thing we don't do that we should do is do look backs. we give out these numbers. they're based on what the expectation is on what the stock is going to hit later. we rarely ever go back and say, okay, did they make more, did they make less. >> a lot of times it's not just tied to stock performance. it's tied to other metrics. the market can have a down year, an up year, and have nothing related to it. >> it's true, we never look back and claw back a little bit of the salary when things turn out not so great. >> we don't need that here either. >> claw backs on our salaries?

>> teleprompter performance. hitting commercial breaks on time. >> we'd be dinged. >> claw backs constantly. >> our guest host this morning is arthur brooks from aei. one of the question -- you know, you're very positive, as are a lot of people, or at least hopeful and optimistic about what this presidency looks like and the administration. to the extent you have any concerns or worries, they are what? >> joe brought it up earlier. statism. you always worry that somebody believes they're going to be able to run the economy. you can't run the economy. listen to the people who are the free marketeers around this new president. don't have the hubris of thinking you can turn the thing around single handedly. that leads to statism, which leads to decline. you'll run up the debt to gdp ratio and actually see lower rates of growth. >> can i ask you a separate question? you talk a lot about compassion and capitalism and sort of moral center and ethics. that's a big issue for you. . >> it is. >> how do you think about this

president in that context? >> look, the reason that this president got elected is because he brought -- he was a warrior for dignity for people who felt left behind. if we learned one thing from obama, he was the face of dignity for whole communities in the united states as well. it's the one thing they have in common. let's learn from that and fight for dignity for everybody. >> arthur, stick around. we love having you here. you'll be here for at least another hour. coming up in the next hour, we're going to talk to former senator jim demint. later, the first 100 days. representative kevin brady. saw him last night. he'll join us to talk about the road to tax reform. stay tuned. "squawk box" will be back from d.c. that's a beautiful shot. i may cry today. itrav mileho

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the presidential inauguration of donald trump, an historic day for the nation and investors. president trump promising changes that will affect your portfolio. in this hour, special guests, former senator evan bai, congresswoman marsha blackburn. we'll talk health care reform, the deregulation of industries, corporate tax reform, and immigration. all on the agenda for the first 100 days of office. the second hour of "squawk box," live from our nation's capital, begins right now.

♪ good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc. what a beautiful shot. we're live in washington, d.c. it's a big morning in the nation's capital. hopefully you know this by now. as we get ready for the inauguration of the 45th president of the united states, donald trump. the day is here. it's january 20th. that's when it was going to happen. we're right on schedule. i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin. arthur brooks. not that other brooks guy. what's his name? >> there are a lot. >> albert. see, i thought we had albert. >> you know, i met him. i was sitting right next to him. i said, you're albert brooks. i said, i'm arthur brooks. i said, my whole life people

have been getting my name wrong because you're so famous. doesn't even crack a smile. he says, imagine how adam hitler felt. >> ouch. >> you know what, that sounds like -- he's genuinely funny. >> oh, yeah. >> and he's a scene stealer. i remember even in "taxi driver" albert brooks, or broadcast news, the sweating. he's in a lot of other great things. we don't have him. >> we got this guy. >> we got arthur brooks. anyway, arthur is awesome as well, for a different reason, but pretty funny at times. the futures at this hour indicated up about 30 on the dow. the s&p up six. mel brooks pretty good too. >> good last name, yeah. >> nasdaq up about 16 1/2 points. >> let's get you caught up on the corporate headlines this morning. we've been watching shares of dow component general electric after the company came out with its earnings. estimates matched the quarterly profit of 46 cents a share.

revenue did come in a little below the forecast. general electric did see a nearly 36% jump in profit over a year earlier. that came because of growth in its power and renewable energy businesses. right now the stock is down by about 21 cents. earnings just out from proctor & gamble. the consumer products giant earning $1.08 a share. revenue also beating estimates in the company increasing its full-year 2017 organic sales growth guidance. that stock up by about 30 cents. hedge fund manager john paulson increasing his exposure to stocks after donald trump's election win. he told cnbc in an exclusive interview the policies that support growth will boost earnings in stock prices. let's kick off our inauguration coverage this morning with a look at the trump agenda. day one through day 100. eamon javers joins us this morning with that. good morning, eamon. >> good morning, andrew. we're here on the west front of the capital. it's a cool and dark morning out here so far.

no sign of the rain we're expecting later today. they're testing the broadcast equipment behind me. they have some of the seats covered, waiting for the rain. at noon today, president trump will be able to issue executive orders. the question is which executive orders will he begin to issue. we've been told by sean spicer, who will be the press secretary, only to expect four to five executive orders taken today. the bulk of what donald trump promised early in the administration will come monday. what will that be? it's likely that some of the harder edges of donald trump's campaign rhetoric will not make an appearance here in the first couple day, including all those chants of "lock her up" on the campaign trail. the trump team signaled they have no interest in prosecuting hillary clinton. on climate change, they'd like to move cautiously on that one. rex tillerson, the state department nominee, said earlier this week that he does believe

in climate change. also, on naming china a currency manipulat manipulator. that's something donald trump promised to do on day one. that's something they're backing off of as well. the key here is that donald trump has signaled he'd like to talk to the chinese first before he goes ahead and issues an instruction to his treasury secretary to name china a currency manipulator. that might be a negotiating gambit in the opening days. not a lot from the trump team on what exactly he'll sign, but we'll bring it to you when we have it. >> eamon, thank you very much. we're expecting some big news coming out a little later today. as eamon mentioned, at noon today, donald trump begins the work of putting his campaign promises into action. he'll find willing partners in the gop house and senate, but also opposition, maybe even from within his own party. joining us to talk about trump's relationship with the new congress is former indiana democratic senator evan bye. thank you for being with us today. >> thank you.

good to be back. >> you've been through this. you know those first hundred days, what happens and what happens when the white house and the hill start trying to work things out together. what do you expect this time around? >> i expect they'll try and get off to a strong start with some of the executive orders. they'll change some of the rules under dodd-frank and the affordable care act. but the legislative process, that grinds pretty slowly. i think they'll move forward with comprehensive tax reform, replacing the affordable care act. i wouldn't look for those things to take place until close to the august break. it just takes that long. one other thing -- >> august sounds early for people who have been watching this for a long time. >> they have a majority in the senate. they'll use the so-called reconciliation process to pass it through. so i think the chances of tax reform are actually pretty good. replacing the affordable care act, they do need -- they can repeal it without democratic support, at least big parts of it. but to replace it, they're going to need bipartisan cooperation. that's going to be a lot tougher. >> what was the one other thing

i just cut you off? >> he will come down in the next 30 days with a supreme court appointment. that's a big one. there are more than 100 other judicial vacancies. because the democrats changed the rules, he can fill all of those without democratic support, except the supreme cowa court. that may be one of donald trump's biggest legacielegacies. >> in terms of changing the rules? >> correct. the democrats got frustrated and changed the rules so you can fill the vacancies without a filibuster. they didn't for the supreme court. my guess is the republicans will also grow frustrated and say you changed the rules, we will too. >> can we go back to corporate taxes? the big question on the table is whether it is revenue neutral and whether he's able to make that happen. given this question about the border adjustment tax and what kind of rate he's ultimately going to grab, that's what investors are so curious about. where do you think the different lines are in terms of where

people are sitting on this? >> andrew, that's a great question. it's going to set up a debate within the republican party between the supply ciders and the deficit hawks, the tea partiers, who they'll need in the house to get the votes to pass the bill. my guess is what they'll do is they'll nudge gdp expectations a little bit. that generates you more money. they'll push some things into the out year beyond the ten-year window you score the thing on. that will generate some money. eventually, they'll get there. but the border tax is the big question. that generates most of the money. in some ways, it's really sort of a stealth consumption tax. my guess is they'll eventually persuade the new administration to go with some iteration of that just because to make the numbers add up, they're going to have to. >> even though trump has now said he thinks it's too complicated? >> well, it is complicatcomplic. my guess is they'll tweak it. doing the math, it's just hard to get there without some aversion of that. you can change the deductibility of interest, but that causes a lot of allocations within the

economy if you do that. my guess is at the end of the day, more aggressive assumptions about the dynamic effects and gdp growth and some version, maybe simplified, of a border tax. >> would you be supportive of that? >> i think a lot of democrats will support the comprehensive tax reform. back in the george w. bush tax -- >> and you're not going to yell and scream about dynamic scoring? >> oh, i think we got to be honest about the numbers. sure, people will complain about that. the congressional budget office will weigh in and all that sort of thing. but i think the one area for possible substantive bipartisan cooperation is the tax cut. under bush, 11 democrats voted for the bush tax cuts. we had a surplus then, a deficit now. particularly red and purple state democrats will support some iteration of the tax reform. >> let's talk about that. we spoke earlier with arthur about this too. if obamacare, the repeal and

replace, comes first, it has to go through the same committees. do you lose that steam, that momentum? is there a risk you don't get tax reform done, which is something i think both sides of the aisle are more likely to come together on if that goes first. >> that's a real risk that they're running. my guess is -- and trying to do both replace and repeal simultaneously means that some of these internal inconsistencies have to be worked out. for example, if you say that 20 million people who got coverage aren't going to lose their coverage but you've repealed the funding mechanisms that allowed them to get the coverage, what do you do? then that exacerbates the math problem on the tax cuts. with the individual insurance marketplace, if you have -- you repeal the penalties that encourage people to get individual insurance, but you keep on the books the mandate they have to get insured. what happens with all that? so you get adverse selection -- there's a real risk of adverse selection. to get to your question, having both of these big pieces of legislation moving simultaneously does make it harder. i think they're going to get

there on both of them. tax reform is a better bet. the obamacare replacement is just going to be a long, hard slog, and it's fraught with political peril for the republicans because some of it is just hard to reconcile how it works out. >> thanks to what was passed in the first place. the republicans are going to own this mess. the adverse selection is already there. >> correct. this could exacerbate it. >> if you really want the republicans not to do anything, they could let this thing just get worse and worse and worse, and then you own it, but that's not good for the american people to do that. how many red state democratic senators are up in two years? >> five red states. then a couple purple states. >> though are the guys. that's the 11 you're talking about potentially. >> correct. >> that's one thing a politician is able to do. i don't know about much else. you're one of the good ones.

>> well, that's kuind of you to say. any state that gave us becky quick has to be a good place. remember, on the tax reform, they don't need democratic votes. but on the substantive parts of obamacare replacement, they need democratic votes. they need eight. >> you would think democrats would want to fix this thing that they shoved down everybody's throat eight years ago. they should want to fix it and make it better. >> it all depends what the fix is. >> governor, thank you for your time. >> great to be with you. coming up, former senator jim demint will be here. then one of president trump's to be technology advisers, congresswoman marsha blackburn. >> she likes to be called congressman. >> okay. congressman marsha blackburn. plus, congressman steve scalise will join us to talk health care reform and what we can expect in the first 100 days of donald

trump's presidency. stay tuned. you're watching "squawk box." look at that. another great shot with the sun coming up. with the xfinity tv app,

anything with a screen is a tv. stream 130 live channels, plus 40,000 on demand tv shows and movies, all on the go. you can even download from your x1 dvr and watch it offline. only xfinity gives you more to stream to any screen. download the xfinity tv app today. welcome back to "squawk box." we're live in washington, d.c.

this morning. president-elect trump has pledged to nominate a supreme court justice within the first two weeks of taking office. our next guest is helping trump screen candidates for that job. let's bring him in, former senator jim demint. thank you for joining us. >> good morning. >> who's on the top of your list, sir? >> well, the list is public. i won't get into the individuals, but the process has been very reassuring. some of the best legal minds in the country. it's really indicative of how trump works. he wants to get the best advice. he's gotten a number of experts to look at these. we've gotten input from all over the country. i think we're going to get a justice much like scalia who is proven to make a good solid constitutional decision. that should come in the next couple weeks. >> and that person you think actually will be in the mold of scalia? he's made that clear. >> donald trump has pledged to pick from a list at the heritage

foundation, the federalist society, and a number of others who have provided input. i think he's going to keep that pledge. i think we'll all be pretty happy with that. >> what do you think that confirmation process is going to be like? >> they got to change the rules. chuck schumer said it doesn't matter. you can pick merrick garland and we're not going to confirm him. >> but this becomes the question. between all the other things he wants to accomplish, whether it's tax reform, and then this, how do you sort of separate the signal from the noise? >> well, a number of different people are working on it. as you see with confirmation all the different committees are working at the same time. there are people now working on tax reform. there are people finishing up how to do the obamacare replace and repeal. i have a chance to work in the house and the senate as well as the administration, and the points are connecting in a good way right now. i feel confident that the congress will work together. in senate, i think they will confirm a justice. >> how? >> people will make some noise,

but trump won big in a number of state where democrats -- >> he said it doesn't matter who it is, we will not -- they want to stay at eight. they're saying you did this to us. what are the chances the filibuster rules could change right now? give me a number. 60, 70, 80? >> i think mitch mcconnell, republicans, and the trump administration will do everything they can to cajole some democrats into helping them. i think once there's debate, it's likely they'll pick a justice nominee who's already been confirmed by democrats for lower court, and it's going to be hard for the democrats to get out there and say, well, we voted for him a few years ago. >> but scalia? there's no way. >> we'll see. maybe i'm a little more naive than you and less cynical, but i would like to give the process a chance to work. i think the 60-vote threshold in the senate particularly for

legislation is important. harry reid did change it for other nominees. >> it was the nuclear option at that point. >> there are other nominees we've been working on with the administration. i feel really good we'll be able to maybe turn the tide on where we've been going the last eight years. >> jim, can i ask you a quick question. after you left the senate, you came to run the heritage foundation. it's been a big success, for sure. there's been some press from the mainstream media, "the washington post" ran an article saying that organizations like yours and mine, aei and heritage, are sort of sidelined in this new administration because we're the ultimate washington establishment. i see -- i mean, they're picking people off like crazy at heritage and aei too. i feel more relevant than ever. what are you planning to do in the next four years as president of the heritage to stay as relevant as you've ever been? >> well, president trump is going to be more practical than ideological. he's going to be interested in research that helps him see what really works. he's going to say, here's where we are, here's where we want to

go, what's the best way to get there, and that's why we've been talking a lot about the budget. there's a lot of research behind each of the things that we've talked about that could be cut. i think he's going to be looking at your e are search and ours to see what is the best for the american people. he wants to make the government work for every american. when i've talked to him since the election, i've really been encouraged that the thing that's on his mind is how to keep his promises. you don't hear that from too many politicians once they're ele elected. >> talking about promises, one of the things he didn't touch during the campaign was entitlements. you've talked a lot about entitlements. do you think he should? >> eventually he has to, but i think he can make them better. you can give younger people better choices for their retirement plans, for social security and medicare. you can let people stay on traditional medicare, or you can use medicare to help pay for someone's previous policy when they retire. so i don't think anyone has to give up here except over a long period of time we have to move

away from the type of system now that's financed by future workers and try to make it more -- >> explain that. how can it be better for younger people? you ultimately have to take something away. >> for instance, with social security. if you told them now we're going to put less into your social security but you own it, i guarantee you over half of the american young people would say, well, i'm not sure i'm going to get social security anyway. if you put it in a 401(k) for me -- >> you're not talking about promising anymore a defined benefit. you're talking about promising, look, you'll be able to have these things and you can take care of yourself. >> i would prefer to be able to keep my private insurance when i retire and let medicare pay some for it to help me. medicare could save and i could get a choice that i prefer. that doesn't take away the safety net that people want to stay on the current system. but i think there are a lot of less expensive choices with

entitlements that people would prefer. >> bottom line is you think that he is going to have to do something about entitlements and we're going to have to see that in the next four years. >> we can't keep spending more than we're bringing in. we've got to do something about the debt. just the debt service is going to probably double over the next five to seven years. so there's a lot we have to do, but i think if we are determined to do it, we can. we can cut $10 trillion over ten years, and i don't think anyone would notice it because most of these programs are wasteful and not working. >> senator, real quick on the tax front, we talk about the corporate rate a lot. would you endorse a tax plan that isn't revenue neutral? >> i think we can cut taxes and actually if you score it honestly, as far as what it will cost, get more growth in the economy, i think we need to cut taxes and we've shown in our blueprint for balance, you can cut taxes and cut some spending and actually balance the budget in seven years. so that's where we're headed.

>> okay. we hope that's the case. senator demint, thank you. >> thanks, folks. arthur, good to see you. when with e come back, congressman marsha blackburn will be here to talk about today's events and the first hundred days of the donald trump presidency. take a look at futures on this inauguration day. dow jones would open up higher about 41 1/2 points. i'm sorry. the s&p 500 up seven points. the nasdaq up about 18 1/2. "squawk box" returns in a moment. time now for today's aflac trivia question. which stock exchange was the world's first electronic stock market? the answer when cnbc "squawk box" continues. e th e real ntyh

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now the answer to today's aflac trivia question. which stock exchange was the world's first electronic stock market? the answer, nasdaq. still to come this morning on this special edition of "squawk box," congressman marsha blackburn joins us after the break. then, steve scalise will be stopping by our studio here, followed up by senator john

barrasso of wyoming. right now, though, as we head to a break, take a look at the u.s. equity futures. we've seen green arrows all morning long. dow futures up by 40. s&p futures would open by seven points. the nasdaq close to 19. stick around. "squawk box" will be right back. e poop' rys

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welcome back to "squawk box," live from washington, d.c., on inauguration day. here now, joe kernen, becky quick, andrew ross sorkin. >> welcome back to "squawk box" as we watch the helicopter there just landing this morning on inauguration day. let's brick you some news this morning. hedge fund manager and trump supporter john paulson speaking exclusively to our own scott wapner during last night's dinner. paulson playing a key role in helping shape trump's economic agenda. he offered an optimistic view about the incoming administration's policies. paulson has increased his firm's

exposure to stocks, saying the president-elect's tax proposal will help boost earnings. he also mentioned several initiatives he'd like to see passed quickly, like lowering taxes and making deals to support manufacturing. and one of the new president's tests during the first 100 days of his presidency will be tackling the nation's energy policy and infrastructure in an effort to spur job growth. joining us on this and the fate of obamacare, border tax negotiations, and much more, republican representative from tennessee, marsha blackburn. she is vice chair of the energy and commerce committee and vice chair of the trump transition team. congressman -- and you like being called congressman. it's not gender specific, so we'll do it. >> sure. >> we can do it your way. energy. over the past eight years it's been a renaissance. it's been a beautiful thing to watch.

however, it came with some downside when prices got to the point where it hurt a lot of producers. i can only imagine if you had a friendly administration in terms of energy development. i could see even lower prices. is that what we want? how do we walk that line? >> i think what we need to do is revisit what damage has been done. i was talking with someone last night who is active in the coal industry. the amount of damage that has been done to the human capital that has worked in the coal industry, to innovation on clean coal technologies and utilization of those. this is a natural resource for our nation. so think about that. think about the gulf coast in texas, louisiana, mississippi, and the number of wells that have been capped, the number of fields that have basically laid

stagnant. there's been no reopening, no lateral drills, no utilization of sonar, any of that type of activity over the last eight years. why? because it wasn't cost effective. why? because of regulations. with this administration, just think, arthur, what would happen if we went to one stop permitting regulations for any type of expansion that needed to happen. in these hydrocarbons with coal and with gas and with oil. that one change alone. >> the market has only recently pushed oil prices back above $50. we've only recently stabilized. if there is all that more production that comes back online, i guess investors start looking at that and thinking, whoa, are we looking at oil prices that are going to come down significant as a result? >> or are we looking at a healthier export market and beginning to pick up -- work with some of our allies. when you go to the uk or you

talk with legislators from the eu, and some of us had dinner wednesday evening with some of our contemporaries from other countries, and they would rather do business with us than with russia. they look forward to returning to that. >> or with opec. talking about the end of opec already. >> and think about this. the energy and the economic issues are so closely tied. who is the third largest holder of our nation's debt? i bet arthur knows the answer. >> third largest holder. >> publicly traded debt. >> china, japan. >> one is japan. two is china. three is opec. >> really? >> yes. so think about the impact it would have if we are able to, with our allies, say, hey, we want to be your trading partner, work with us. port of houston, i bet you they're ready.

>> you've seen people say that pipelines don't matter anymore. that doesn't make sense. we're doing it through rail. we don't need it. what is the true narrative there? we need to do all this stuff? >> you need all of the above. talk to people from oklahoma and tell them that pipelines don't matter. i think you'll get a different answer. >> so keystone gets done immediately? >> listen, i'm all for keystone. i know there's a pipe yard in oklahoma where the -- arkansas, out at little rock, where that pipe is sitting, waiting to be delivered. i hope by the end of the month they're loading those 18 wheaters. >> do you have legislation on the blocks to get stuff done? >> yes. >> so we'll see that within the next two, three weeks. >> yeah, in our committee, energy and commerce, you're going to see us looking at the steps that can be taken through executive orders. you know, epa, the clean power plan, all of that. getting that out of the way. >> so this is not necessarily

just wiping the executive orders off the books from president obama, but putting new ones on the books. >> i think that what it is is you get rid of everything you can through the executive order elimination process with the president and then the cra, which congress can exercise. then you look at how you open up exploration and innovation and drive this. >> i don't mean to poke the bear. that's joe on this. how do you think about the questions about whether clean coal can ever really be clean, about how you're going to think about the environmental issues and components of this and the environmentalists out there that are clearly going to push back? >> and people thought we would never have truly clean water and truly clean air. we have innovators work in the clean coal space. if you were to come to me into east tennessee and go to oak ridge and look at some of the work that is being done there, whether it is nuclear, whether it is clean coal technologies,

yes, absolutely, they are looking for new ways to do it. there are nations that want this. look at what india and china are doing. they want our technology. >> can you -- will the order that the epa -- it's still controversial. classifying carbon dioxide as a p pollutant. will that be rolled back? >> i hope there will be something done there. even if you're looking at parts per million, things of that nature. i think you need to revisit that. >> it's 0.04. >> but you have to look at what is necessary for life to exist. >> just to classify it as a pollutant is, you know, that's fallacious. >> i'm with you on that. you got to have a certain amount to even live and grow plants. >> the president with the arctic, taking all that out of

the mix, that's probably not feasible at $50 a barrel anyway. will that be revisited, whether there's a way of reversing some of those moves? >> i would hope there is a way to reverse some of those moves. we're going to be well served to look a little more holistically at energy policy. we need to look at the links between economic security, energy security, and national security and think more comprehensively. not just in silos like this administration has done. >> let's take a quick look -- and thank you, congressman. does this end at 11:00 or 12:00? the tweeting. it's still going on as of now. the president-elect tweeting, it all begins today. i'll see you at 11:00 a.m. for the swearing in. the movement continues, the work begins. >> we had a guest on who pointed out that ronald reagan signed

some of these things in the capitol before the inauguration parade even began. you wonder about something like that. >> that's right. thank you. >> thank you. when withe come back this morning, our cameras catching up with billionaire warren buffett in new york city. what he's expecting from a donald trump presidency. that's next. plus, congressman steve scalise on what's ahead for the trump administration. that's all here on this special edition of "squawk box" live from washington, d.c. on inauguration day. rcrsat m m yf g s

♪ that's a look at the united states capitol just hours ahead of the inauguration of donald j. trump. welcome back to "squawk box," everybody. this is "squawk box" on cnbc, a special edition. last night in new york city, warren buffett walking the red carpet. he was in town for the premiere of the hbo documentary "becoming warren buffett," which will air on january 30th. while he was there, the cnbc cameras caught up with him. he had this to say about investing philosophy. >> we're almost always a buyer of stocks over time.

i mean, i have no idea where they're going to be in ten days or a year or two years, but over time we'll do very well. there will be hiccups from time to time in the economy, that sort of thing. go back to 1776, and we've come a long way. >> on the election of donald trump and the future of america, buffett had this to say. >> certainly he has the most important job in the world, but america works. it will work -- and i've said this before -- it will work wonderfully under hillary clinton. i think it will work fine under donald trump. i mean, we've got the secret sauce. it doesn't work all the time perfectly, but you just look at where we go milestone after milestone. never bet against america. >> again, the documentary premieres on hbo on january 30th. we've been watching what's been happening today here in washington, d.c. joining us right now with what's ahead for congress under the new trump administration, republican representative steve scalise

from louisiana. he is the house majority whip. he's also a member of the energy and commerce committee and former republican study committee chairman under which he proposed alternative legislation to obamacare. congressman, thank you very much for being here today. >> morning. good to be with you. >> obviously the first 100 days, the plan is very ambitious. it's going to be a lot to handle. we wonder where you prioritize some of these things and how you think it works its way through congress. >> yeah, we are already two weeks in, and it's been busy so far. there's a lot more good things to come. the real focus is getting the economy back on track, creating jobs, just getting all of these regulations in washington that are crushing the middle class out of the way so that we can open up the opportunity to get the economy moving again. of course, we started with obamacare, which has not only been bad for health care, dramatic increases in cost, millions of people have lost the health care they liked, but what you've also seen is an erosion of jobs because of obamacare. it's actually hurt the ability for small businesses to hire. so i think you're seeing a lot of movement already.

you're seeing a lot of excitement about it. not everybody is as excited as i am, but i think it's a real good opportunity for the middle class to reinvigorate. >> how do you fix health care, and what's the alternative that is put forward? >> the first thing that we're doing is getting the mandates of obamacare out of the way. obamacare is not just bad because it's something that we disagreed with philosophically. the mandates have jacked up costs and hurt the ability for people to choose what they want. >> you're talking about mandates that you have planned that offer reproductive rights, all kinds of things that were put in that not necessarily everyone wanted. >> if you look at it, when obama said if you like what you have, you can keep it, and then millions of people weren't able to keep it, it's because the federal government came in and said, even if you like your plan, we don't think your plan is good enough. we're going to make you buy something different. that's not the role of the federal government. let's open up real competition. let's let people buy across state lines. let small businesses and individuals, if you're in a

church group, you should be able to pull together and get the buying power of a large business. those are the things that will create real choice and lower costs and protect people with pre-existing conditions so they can't be discriminated against. that's in our plan. >> the question becomes, how quickly can you come up with these alternatives? people who lost their health care insurance, those plans are gone. you can't turn around and re-create those things overnight. >> that's why we have a transition. obamacare is something that took years to develop. so what we said -- and we put a bill on barack obama's desk that he vetoed, but we're going to put a similar bill on donald trump's desk that he'll sign that will say this law is going to go away. there's going to be a transition period. we're working with people to create a real marketplace so that families, middle class, businesses have the options to go out and create products, sell products that people want to buy for health care so you can choose with your doctor what your plan is going to be. >> steve, you're known in the congress as being an incredibly effective whip because you're a people person, because you believe in relationships. people like you. democrats say behind your back

they really like steve scalise. why do i bring this up? not just to tell you all kind of good things about you. >> there's a setup coming. >> there is, which is look, you're talking about some really controversial stuff here with the repeal of obamacare, the replacement of obamacare. democrats are very emotional about this subject. it's something where they get really choked up when they talk about it. i've gotten e-mails from democrats that say i worked my whole career for this moment, and now it's all going to be unwound. what can you tell your democratic colleagues right now, or democrats watching us around the country, why they should be less worried about what's about to come? >> what i tell them is to focus on people, the people who elected us. fwhooe we're not here to preserve a legacy. i understand some people say, it's obamacare. he wants to preserve this. but if it's literally destroying one of the most personal things for people, that's something that's much more important than having an ability to say, i created this law.

the law is not working for families. let's get back to focusing on patients. >> there are americans who have health care for the first time. that is not going to be a message that makes them feel any better. barack obama brought this in, and this was an entirely democrat package. every bit and piece of it. it the replacement going to be every bit a republican plan, just two opposed views that will never merge? >> you know, we've offered to work with anybody that wants to help us. i will tell you this. if you look at all the medical doctors in congress, and after obamacare we have a lot more because so many doctors left the practice of medicine. we've got a lot of really smart people that understand what it's going to take to put people back in charge of their health care decisions. i'll say this about obamacare. if you have an insurance card, or maybe you didn't have health care before obamacare, if you've got an insurance card and no doctor is seeing you, it's maybe a $10,000 deductible. you don't have health care right now. >> congressman, just real quickly, i asked marsha blackburn this. so classifying co2 -- you're on

the energy committee. classifying it as a pollutant, this ubiquitous gas that's essential, what do you need to do to take that off of the pollutant list? is it possible to do it? is it already too ironclad in the epa? >> co2 is a naturally occurring -- >> but how do you nonclassify it at a pollutant? >> you get back to what the basic t bas basic tenants of the clean air act. a lot of things you can do administratively. the epa has way overstepped its boundaries under the clean air act. you've seen a lot of these laws abused, whether it's the national labor relations board, epa, the irs. every federal agency that's been using existing law going way beyond what existing law was to write policies on top of that that are destroying jobs and the economy. >> will it happen in the first week? >> some of these things might happen today. i know donald trump has said he wants to sign a lot of executive orders to undo a lot of president obama's executive

overreach where he went beyond the law. >> i'm not a scientist, but do you believe the scientific community that seems to have a majority on this is wrong? >> a lot of scientists disagree with what some people say. whether or not the climate of the earth changes, 10,000 years ago it was warmer than today and there was no combustion engine. to think man can control mother nature is the big fallacy in all of this. >> congressman, thank you for your time today. >> thank you. coming up, as i pump out 40,000 parts per million co2, pollution, as i pump it out, senator john barrasso joins us to discuss president trump's first 100 days. later in the show, the chairman of the house ways and means committee, texas congressman kevin brady will join us. as we go to break, check out shares of bristol-myers squibb. the company expects approval in the second half of 2018. "squawk box" is back in a moment. ningoues

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anything with a screen is a tv. plic stream 130 live channels, plus 40,000 on demand tv shows and movies, all on the go. you can even download from your x1 dvr and watch it offline. only xfinity gives you more to stream to any screen. download the xfinity tv app today. welcome back to "squawk box" on this inauguration day as president-elect donald trump prepares to take the oath of office, his cabinet nominees have endured much grilling on the hill. our next guest has participated in some of that grilling.

here now with us is republican senator john barrasso of wyoming. >> thanks for having me. great to be with you. >> should we talk some of the grilling? there was grilling, but nobody got grilled. >> no. i'll tell you, donald trump has nominated quite a few patriots to be in the cabinet. these are wonderful people. i believe they're all going to get through. we have a lot of people to thank for this. number one is donald trump. number two is harry reid, who changed the rules of the senate. you only need 51 votes to be confirmed. we have 52 senators. we're united to make sure donald trump has his cabinet in place and can change fundamentally the direction of this country. >> you think there's no chance on anybody getting -- >> well, you know, it's interesting. >> -- dinged. >> chuck schumer started by going after eight different cabinet members. they're trying to slow down the process. you look at the hearings. what we've heard are people that are committed to fundamentally changing the direction of the country, getting the country growing again, focused on the things donald trump's talked about. jobs, the economy, the working men and women of the country.

we've seen that with the epa. we've seen it with secretary of energy and interior. then from the standpoint of national security and defense, i think we have an incredible team. >> it's, what, eight total in history that the cabinet members -- i don't know how many years. it's very rare. usually nanny gate. >> has the bar changed at all? if t used to be if you had a nanny problem, a tax problem, any of these little mistakes. yesterday steve mnuchin was dinged during his grilling, if you will, over some of the disclosures that weren't made originally. historically when things like that happened, it created real problems. this time not so much. >> well, what we've seen in the past when people -- tom daschle for secretary of health and human services. >> justice ginsburg, it was pot, wasn't it? now it's legal. >> the issues change over time. the country changes. electorates make their decision.

i think that the president coming in for his first time ought to be able to have the cabinet. he won the election. he ought to have who he wants surrounding him. >> senator, you're a doctor. we've been talking about obamacare. your thoughts on a solution and how quickly something to replace it could be brought in. that's the question. >> i want to fight for people, not against things. i want to fight for patients. that's who i focus on. i really focus on the word care instead of coverage. president obama was so focused on coverage. i want to get it right. i'm committed to getting and finding long-term solutions that actually help people. a quick fix isn't going to do it. i do believe today we're going to see executive actions specifically related to obamacare. >> two years from now, will there be more coverage? how many people won't have that coverage? what do we do about that group? >> well, right now after six years of obamacare, we know that there are more people that don't

have coverage than that do under obamacare. those that have it, even though with the subsidies, they're not very happy. they rate it as poor. i want to fight for those patients to make sure they can get affordable coverage and good care. >> senator barrasso, thank you. >> thank you for having me. coming up, senator david perdue. much more ahead as we are here on inauguration day. in the meantime, take a quick look at the dow. s tr ihealomer ty, ve ouch mesndva edt ,moit

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the inauguration of donald trump. in just a few hours, the nation enters a new era. >> and we are going to make america great again. and i'll add, greater than ever before. >> what making america great again means for the economy, the markets, and your money. a special hour of "squawk box" live from washington begins right now. ♪ good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" here on

cnbc, live from our nation's capital. is it the world's capital? kind of. maybe i'm overstepping. but today it seems like it. if you were to look at a globe, everything else would be -- it's like one of those things. >> it's one of those times when all eyes may actually be here. >> you know that map that shows manhattan -- >> the old "new yorker" cover. >> yes. today the entire globe, there would be a big thing of washington. it really is monumental. it's because of the peaceful transfer of power, which happens every single time. who were those guys that thought this up? >> up with of the few times was adams and jefferson. adams did not show up at jefferson's inauguration because of the bad blood between the two of them. that's only a handful of times. >> pretty amazing. so much foresight. they had some failed things to look at. 2,000 years of failed attempts.

they had to get it so right. i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin. you cried at the buffett movie. this is what gets me a little -- >> teary eyed? >> doesn't it? looking at what's going to happen. we have this here. it's great. it's a historic day here in washington as donald trump will be sworn in as president at noon eastern before he heads to the capitol building for the swearing in, he'll attend a prayer service at st. john's church. president-elect trump and his wife will then head to the white house for coffee and tea with president and mrs. obama. i think they're traveling over together. that right there sums it up. we do things differently here. >> thisin a better way. >> george w. bush will be here. >> 41 would be here if he could, i think. >> he sent a very nice letter that donald trump has been talking about as well. cnbc will have complete

coverage of today's festivities. our team of reporters is fanning out across the nation's capital. kayla joins us now from lafayette park. that's across from the white house and along the parade route. what can you tell us about what's already setting up there? >> reporter: well, good morning from across town. this is lafayette park, where the public will be flooding in later today. it is where the parade route will be ending later this afternoon. we're overlooking the white house, which is where president-elect trump and the outgoing president obama will be taking coffee this morning. from there, they'll go to the capitol. for all of the traditions being upheld this morning and throughout the day today, the president-elect has made it very clear that in washington, it will not be business as usual. here's what he said last night at the lincoln memorial. >> we're going to do things that haven't been done for our country for many, many decades. it's going to change.

i promise you, it's going to change. >> referee: and things have already been changing. he's the first president-elect to go to hand-to-hand combat with corporate america since teddy roosevelt sought to bust up the railroad monopolies nearly a century ago. trump will be the first president without prior government or military experience. he's approaching this office with a business background and perhaps that is why his cabinet, 60% of which, also has never held office nor run for office. there are already commitments to shake things up hire in washington. moratoriums on new regulation, a hiring freeze, and also potentially the ability to fire government employees on demand. that's something that hasn't been able to happen for quite some time. but yesterday on the hill during steven mnuchin's confirmation hearing for treasury secretary, the treasury secretary designate was asked about what some of these hiring freezes will mean for the continuity of

government. here's what he said. >> i can assure you that the president-elect understands the concept of where we add people and make money. he'll get that completely. that's a very quick conversation with donald trump. >> reporter: but he wants to get into the office and see what's what and see what decisions need to be made from there. of course, we know this afternoon there could already be executive orders that are signed. the president-elect has said next week many more executive orders will come. first, the pomp and circumstance from here and now back to you. >> okay. kayla, thank you for that. of course, we'll see you throughout the day on the network. in the meantime, let's get to our next guest as we count down to the inauguration of president-elect donald trump. we are joined by republican senator david perdue of georgia. i was saying before during the commercial break, i've gotten to see a lot of you. down in georgia, we were talking about being a swing state. i saw you again here recently. when you think about the one, two, three of the things that are going to happen over the next hundred days, do you think

there is going to be a sort of ladder to this? or do you think it's all at one shot? >> you'll see some regulatory changes with possibly executive orders, some congressional review acts we'll do. job one is getting the economy going again and getting people back to work. you'll see all this work on obamacare first. then there will be the tax package that will follow that. following both of those will be the work to get the economy going. >> and you think it's obamacare before the tax piece? >> i do, yeah. i think so. we're working on that right now. >> when you look at what the market and investors have looked at over the past couple of months, it's a tax story. everybody expects the taxes to come down. steve mnuchin who was on our show the day he announced he was becoming the treasury secretary, he committed on the set to 15% on the corporate rate. >> he did. >> he did. what do you think the rate ultimately is, and how do you get there? >> well, you can't talk about nominal rate. you have to talk about effective rate. in we're going to reduce our corporate tax rate, which most of the world has already done, you have to talk about corporate welfare and get deductions in balance too. stop the federal government from

picking winners and losers. personally, i think 15% to 20% in the 16%, 17%, 18% range will make us competitive with the rest of the word. >> given your experience in business, where do you stand on the border adjustment tax? >> i'm concerned about it. i applaud the work the house is doing on that. i know you'll have congressman brady on later today. in my view, it's regressive. it just hammers low-income and middle-income consumers, and it really doesn't foster growth. frankly, it's a schumer tax. >> what's the alternative ? if you don't have it, the math makes it much more complicated to get to the 15% rate. >> it makes it difficult in this town. this town looks at that modeling quite differently than the rest of the world. i trust the free enterprise. that's what the rest of the world did. the uk got rid of their repatriation tax and their economy boomed. i believe that's what we need to do here first.

>> you're talking about scoring it based on economic growth. >> absolutely. >> that's a dynamic issue which i don't think in this case anyone is going debate about given the republicans control the house and senate. the other issue then becomes whether you think it's going to be revenue neutral long term. >> well, i do personally. >> even at those low numbers, there are people i know inside the administration who think that's tough. >> well, here's the problem. if you put an individual tax change and clean up that tax code f you go to the corporate tax rate, do the repay reeuattr yarks and now this border adjustment tax, we're putting four things in one. but we need to look at it. >> is there support for that way of thinking on the hill? >> i hope so. there's only one fortune 500 ceo in all of congress. i'm trying to make that argument right now to slow this thing down to where we can really look at it. we have past precedent to this

around the world. in europe, for example, i lived there when they were putting the v.a.t. in. it caused bigger government. it's a tax grab basically. >> that's the one area where there's not a lot of cohesion among republicans. >> that's right. well, we'll get to that. this is an open debate. that's what we should be having. we've got time to do that. i just met kevin brady in the green room. we're going to get account to and talk about that. there are a lot of other knowledgeable people about this topic. >> to the extent you are generally optimistic about where all this goes, what are you worried about? >> i worry about interest rates. i worry about our debt. if we're successful, we'll get the economy going. right now the bond market is already anticipating growth. interest rates are bubbling up. what's going to happen is with this debt size we have, we'll be paying much more interest. that really concerns me in the short term. >> and so why is that not a concern for you when we get to the dynamic scoring issue? >> oh, it absolutely is. if you have to look at this over a planning period and make sure that it balances out. repatriation tax is a big deal. we have almost $7 trillion not at work in this economy because of overregulation and

uncertainty coming out of this town. you free up some of that capital -- and by the way, that's equity. it will get leveraged up a little bit. it will be much bigger than we're thinking about right now. that's what's not being considered in this equation. >> senator, i can hear people at home that maybe have different political views saying, talking about getting this economy going again, talking about getting people, you know, back in the employment sector, we're at 4.7%. we've had an eight-year, seven-year recovery. they think it's disingenuous to say the economy is not -- >> you're stealing my line, joe. >> look, this is a hard-nosed business guy observation. the compound annual growth of this economy over the last eight years under this president is 0.61%. compound on a per capita basis, which is the way you look at it. that's the lowest growth of any president in our history. number two, right now if you take unemployed underemployed, and people who are just giving up looking for work, it's a big

number. that's what just happened in this election. republican turnout in the primary season was up over 60%. that's never happened before. what drove that is this disenfranchisement of the work force. >> how do you measure success? >> success is getting people back to work. i want to see a 3% or 4% gdp growth, but it's not going to happen in year one. that's the other worry i have. we have maybe a built of an overexpectation. this is a heavy lift. we have to undo a lot of regulatory things that are killing this economy. >> at 3.5%, wages go up. there was a period where we grew at about 3.2% and europe grew at 2 for 30 years. the average american was 40% better off, richer, able to spend because of that. we've lost that. we've lost the advantage. we're growing like europe now. the question is whether it's demographics and productivity and other things that are different now. >> technology. >> and we're unable to get back there. >> it's a combination of those things. one of the biggest things, the rest of the world created an

unlevel playing field while we were asleep at the switch, politically. they became much more productive. >> very quickly, you point out that interest rates are bubbling up. do you worry that the fed is behind things and will have to raise rates more quickly than the market is anticipating at this point? >> that's what happens when you start growing. when you have $20 trillion, we're the largest borrower. we've got to start giving the private sector some hope that we're going to finally address that debt question. >> producers are going to kill us, but what do you make about donald trump's comments about a strong dlarollar, or lack of a strong dollar? >> he wants to get exports up. i do too. >> but this is one of the first times you've ever heard a president or anyone in an administration say that. >> we talked about this. this guy is an outsider. he's a business guy. he wants results. when you break eggs in a place like this, it's not going to be pretty. >> senator, thanks. >> thank you, guys.

we do have a big hour ahead on "squawk box," as we continue the countdown to the inauguration. up next, senator mark warner will be joining us. and later, pro-marijuana protesters are lining up at the inauguration today. we have more details after this. plus, the road to tax reform. we'll talk to house ways and means committee chairman kevin brady. stay tuned. you are watching a special edition of "squawk box" right here on cnbc.

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a live picture of the nation's capitol just hours ahead of the inauguration of donald trump. president-elect trump's first 100 days will require him to be working very closely with congress. joining us right now is a member of that congress, democratic senator mark warner. he servings on the finance, banking, budget, and rules committee, as well as the select committee on intelligence. senator, thanks for being here this morning. >> thanks for having me. >> wall street is focused very much on what to expect when it

comes down to the budget, when it comes to taxes and regulation. what can you tell us about where you see things headed? >> i have that same kind of question, what to expect. yesterday in my questions of mr. mnuchin, i did hear some things i liked. i heard the fact that he, unlike the president-elect, is not going to play chicken with the full faith and credit of the united states. he says we have to make sure america pays its debts. he rejected the notion that there would be any kind of prioritizati prioritization, the idea you could somehow slip past the debt ceiling, go into default and somehow prioritize paying off bondholders but not state governments or other obligations of the federal government. that would be absurd. i think he pushed back appropriately on that. i do question whether the president-elect when he made comments about a strong dollar. that's unprecedented. is this president going to continue to intervene by his comments or his tweets in the

market in ways that i think would be disruptive and not predictive. so there are a lot of questions about the behavior of the president going forward. again, i did hear some things from mnuchin. >> let's talk about some of those comments. you brought up donald trump's talk about saying, yeah, he'd like to see a weaker dollar. that's very unusual. you never hear administrations do that. but a lot of them will say that behind the scenes. they say, yes, we'd rather have a weaker dollar. >> you guys have folks in from the markets all the time. do you want your political leadership having that kind of interference in the markets? that's generally been left to the central banks, generally left to other ways. i mean, we're entering into awe in phase, but when we're talking about the level of disruptions the market might see by this president's actions -- >> same with twitter. a lot of it is unprecedented. we're going to see how it works, i guess. calling out general motors. >> wouldn't that be called in

the old days industrial policy? when a political leader picks an individual winner. >> democrats are so worried about statism. i love that though. suddenly it's like the government shouldn't be doing these things. it's like, wow, things can change on a dime, can't they? it used to be you'd leak that maybe you're okay with a weaker dollar. it used to be you leak. just put it out there. >> are we saying executive leadership by tweet? i'm not sure that's the way. >> it certainly was done successfully in the campaign, obviously. >> but the words of the president of the united states, whether you're talking about the markets, whether you're sitting where i sit on the intel community, the words the president-elect have an enormous effect. i think they need to be a little more tempered. i want the president-elect to do well. >> you're talking about words, whether it comes out in a tweeted or maybe a speech. we saw things at the beginning

of the last administration about ba banksters and companies should be able to make a certain amount of money but not too much. >> that stuff is domestic. what happens if they actually label china a currency manipulator, as is part of the plan for the first 100 days? >> i think in the past there have been actions by china have not been above board. i think it's been better recently. again, you're talking about something which is in uncharted territory. i think putting china on warning about currency manipulation makes some sense. but we are also looking when we talk about some of the other things. i know dave perdue was on earlier. we're talking about border adjustments and questions of the tariffs or whether you go to a v.a.t. one of the things that's remarkable is i hear some of my colleagues say we're going to get this done in a rational way. so many of the folks then try to say we're never going to look at the revenue side, even when we look at the fact that out of the 34 industrial nations, america ranks 31st in terms of total tax burden, total rev news as a

percent of gdp. so democrats historically have not been deficit hawks. >> i've got the scars to prove it, having to advocate for simpson-bowles, got hits from the left and right how we have to get this deficit and debt under control. >> so there's going to be a conversation about what dynamic skoe scoring means and what rate we're talking about. i'm beating a dead horse because i've talked about it all morning, since the market has moved in large part on whatever the tax cut is. what do you think it will become? >> first of all, it's ironic that some of these guys are now trying to say the old scorekeeper, the congressional budget office and joint committee on tax, now that we got controls, we're going to change the referee status and use this so-called dynamic scoring. there's some formulas around dynamic scoring. some of them are just plain h hocus pocus. you can cook the books whatever

way you want. anybody that drives up the deficit right now, and we're already at 19 to 20 trillion. when interest rates go up a hundred basis points, which they will, adds $140 billion in additional debt payments every year. if you have a tax scheme that's going to add 5, 6, 7 trillion to debt. if it adds that kind of debt, i sure as heck will go back to my republican colleagues who were debt hawks under obama. i want to have that same kind of fiscal focus. >> it wasn't effective against obama. if it was $10 trillion of added debt. >> we've seen both parties be irresponsible about debt for a long time. >> the last 10 trillion, what did we get in terms of gdp? 1% growth. >> based upon what bush and obama did, we managed to avoid what could have been a much greater recession. >> senator warner, i want to

thank you for your time this morning. >> great to have you in d.c. >> you've seen the private sector unleash. you were around. you're going to just love this. >> i would love to see that kind of growth. when you suddenly say america magically is going to have 4% to 5% growth, i only wish. >> three to four. it's not magic. it's just unleashing the animal spirits of the private sector. you've done it. you're loaded. you're the richest guy in congress probably. >> i'm all for trying to make the private sector work, but it's got to have rules. >> thank you, senator. >> can't get rid of all of them. not immediately. coming up, a lot of protesters heading to the inauguration. walking around in a tux last night, some people yelled at me "dump trump." one protest will be a little more fiery than the others. i'll tell you why more than

4,000 joints might be in the crowd today. gosh, maybe we should hang out. that's next. stay tuned. "squawk box" live from d.c. will be right back. l kie? 14 tspor?

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in just about four minutes. now you're looking at blair house. when we come back, the first 100 days, soon to be president trump has promised to tackle tax reform. house ways and means chairman kevin brady is one of the people helping lead the way. he'll be here with us next in just a moment. alitmeenasdso gept worrrty dsyoy ns t

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good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc, live from our nation's capital. as we speak here, legal marijuana advocates are taking their fight to the inauguration. who better than hampton pearson. i don't know why, hampton. i don't know how to intro you on this. it says here you're in the weeds. how are you doing? >> reporter: i'm doing spectacular, joe. this will be the inauguration event like no other. the d.c. cannabis coalition, if you will, about 25 minutes ago started giving out free marijuana. now, it's legal here in the district, but their point is that we want to have the federal

laws lightened up, especially when it comes to access to banks, if you will. behind me, you're seeing there are at least 2,000 people here. there's a line about a half a mile up the block for the free weed being given out. they started out saying we're going to give away 4200 free joints. now they've doubled it, saying they're going to give away at least 8400 joints. the idea is for folks to at some point light up around the time that donald trump is inaugurated as president. also, the so-called message, if you will, politically is ostensibly they're against jeff sessions as attorney general because there might be a crackdown on legalized pot. but look, this is nothing short of almost a '60s type happening. huge crowds, free weed, free krispy kreme donuts, especially making america more mellow again. >> hampton, where exactly are

you? let me just -- >> joe wants to know how to get there. >> where exactly? >> reporter: oh, still time. come on down. we're at dupont circle, 21st and p. maybe about 2 1/2 miles. >> you have a big smile on your face. how long have you been there? >> reporter: well, you know, we did come early to make sure begot our logistics in place. we were here before the sunrise. the crowds are still coming. like i said, this is the inauguration day event like no other. later on, we're going to move downtown to take a look at other planned protests, both against donald trump and in support of. again, these folks have a smile on their face. a different air about today's festivities. >> hampton, with our luck, knowing you and our lifestyle now, a krispy kreme could either one of us that same look.

there doesn't need to be anything -- doesn't need to go beyond that for you to be that happy. i would be. andrew, you too. donuts, right? >> reporter: there you go. come on down. >> okay. that is blair house. >> trump is leaving. >> leaving with the future first lady. is it the first lady elect? >> future first lady. >> they're headed to st. john's for the prayer service, which i believe is supposed to begin now. i imagine they'll be there probably in the next 10 or 15 minutes. >> okay. in a republican dominated washington, d.c., that wants to inject more adrenaline into the economy, some of donald trump's biggest allies could come from the powerful house ways and means committee. representatives there deal with issues of taxes, international trade, and health care. we're joined now by not just some schmo underling of the house ways and means, but the

chairman of the house ways and means. there's no schmoes anywhere. >> no, a talented group. >> texas congressman kevin brady is here. >> appreciate it. hampton tried to play that straight despite all of you, just so you know. >> so to speak. a lot of double entendres. he's down there in the weeds. you know, i think one of the things that's come out this morning is that there's a lot of things that are going to happen really quickly. the question is, can it be done simultaneously or is it better to do one at a time? i'm talking about obamacare and tax reform and regulations. just do it. >> so you can't do it all the same afternoon. these things have to be paced. these are big, bold changes. but a lot of work has been done sort of in tandem, you know, for a number of years. tax reform will be a great example. we've really worked five years to get to this point, with the real intensity last year under

paul ryan's leadership. so yeah, i think the hard work is occurring now. house ways and means republicans, we came back during the holidays here to work on tax reform, the affordable care act, just to be ready for this president. >> you've had plans under way for a long time, but this is one area where the republicans don't have a cohesive plan with all republicans, when it comes to the tax reform. it's not like paul ryan's plan is going to be picked up and passed right through. >> we have to welcome all those new ideas. i know in developing the blueprint, we not only incorporated ideas from 50 lawmakers in the how, but a number of them in the senate as well. here's a chance to move forward together, find those sweet spots and all the pro growth elements. where we agree is this chance only happens once a generation. we have to go bold. if we want to both design a code built for growth, literally designed to grow jobs, wages, and the economy, and leapfrog back into the lead pack of the most pro growth environments on

the earth for that new business investment, we really have to go after that in a big way. >> critics of these plans are anxious that way may happen is the border adjustment tax gets taken off the table, you lose that revenue, but what ends up happening is the math gets redone with some more aggressive figures in terms of how it gets dynamically scored and gets passed nonetheless. >> i think you will see that corporate rate rise significantly. you don't tax imports and exports equally. you'll still have a tax advantage for foreign prunoduct. no one wants that. it will complicate the code further. >> but the president-elect himself has said it's too complicated and confusing. >> we love his feedback. we're having great discussions. the truth s the code is complex, but it's complex today because

we give a tax advantage to chinese steel over u.s. steel, mexican autos and beef over american autos and beef. we want to end that. >> what feedback has he given you? >> very positive. he's learning more. i will give him big kudos. he and his team have dove into this tax reform. we admit we're throwing big, revolutionary changes to get us back in the game. they're just focused on it. >> who's running point on this for trump? in terms of the conversations you're having within the administration. >> so right now he's got all of his economic team in the various efforts. there's secretary cabinet nominees, transition economic team are all in this in a major way. not just one person at this point, as you would imagine. >> top three? >> take the top three. >> obviously -- i'm not going to answer that. gee wiz. >> got to try. our audience knows those names.

>> five really good folks. obviously you had treasury, commerce. you have the national economic council. you've got the political team and strategist at the white house. >> you got everybody there. >> so mnuchin, ross, cohn. >> as they should be. >> how about noncabinet people? >> how about bannon? >> obviously you've got the chief strategist for the president deep into this because why? he's focused on the economy. >> realistically, what's the time frame we're looking at? it's got to go through you. >> the focus of 2017, obviously this is when all the elements have come together. we have a lot more work to do. that's our focus, to deliver it this year. >> we just got back from davos, switzerland, where we met with all sorts of ceos, all of whom are scared to death of donald

trump on twitter and waking up one morning. >> one of them actually said it's caughted f.o.t.t., fear of the tweet. >> do you think it's appropriate for him to call these companies out the way he has? >> i think it's appropriate for the president to lead on economic issues. he's really hit a real hot spot for the rest of the country. communities are tired of seeing these jobs go overseas. they're wondering why. he's calling them out. more importantly, i know in our space with him, he's focused on how do we solve this problem. obviously fixing this broken tax code is a big part of it. >> you can always pivot to that, andrew, when you think about it. pivot to the carrot, not the stick. you know what i mean? we're just going to use the stick symbolically before you're president. then we are going to go to the carrot. >> no ceo wants to get called out. it's got to have -- >> you know something, between that and the house republican ideas and overall on tax reform,

boardrooms are asking how soon can we bring our suppliers back to the united states. it's been a long time sense we've had that question. >> an interesting piece in "the wall street journal" that actually tallied up the number of jobs that have been created. about 130,000 jobs. the question that was also posed in the piece was how many of those jobs were already sort of planned, in the works, how many are being done in anticipation of this president and how sustainable in terms of that type of growth continues just as a function of the bully pulpit. >> we're asking and adding how many new jobs are coming into the u.s. pretty good. i think with tax reform, if we go bold, if we become competitive -- because again, leapfrog up to that lead pack, you're going to see a lot more stories in that direction. >> we've spoken with a number of congressional leaders today. congressman, senators. we've been trying to figure out how do you prioritize all of this. you're probably the best person to ask. what comes first, the tax reform or obamacare. >> so i think we move

immediately on obamacare. obviously because no entitlement in american history once established has ever been repealed. the repeal itself, the affordable care act is pretty historic. the replacement starts immediately as well, step by step. you won't see a big 2,000-page bill that no one knows what's in it. you're going to see a step-by-step approach so people can understand it. >> right now we're watching president-elect donald j. trump and first lady to-be melania trump walking into st. john's, where the prayer service will be held momentarily. >> wearing a solid red tie this morning. >> going for the red, white, and blue. blue last night. striped blue. >> ivanka trump walking through. again, we'll be monitoring all of this, coverage throughout the day here on cnbc. >> congressman, thank you. >> thanks. >> great to see you. keep us up to date.

we need to talk to you a lot this year. >> let's tackle all the big stuff. >> thank you. it's time to slip in a quick break. in the meantime, full coverage of the inauguration. it continues all day here on cnbc p cnbc. coming up, howard wilbur will join the gang at 9:00 a.m. eastern time. "squawk box" live from d.c., we return in just a moment. n h c d

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good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc live from washington, d.c. on this inauguration day. president-elect trump and his family and friends are now inside st. john's episcopal church. it's known as the church of the presidents because every president since james madison has attended services there. president-elect trump and his wife will then go to the white house for a tea with president and mrs. obama. then after that, president obama and vice president biden will escort their successors to the capitol for the inauguration. >> then go into the house. they sleep there. >> trump there sleep in the white house. >> when did they install the tvs in the oval office? linden johnson had tvs in the oval office. they were ripped out by nixon. knowing trump, i assume he's going to do a wall of them. there's no tvs in there now.

>> do they have xfinity? are there going to be cable boxes? >> is this a comcast town? >> i hope so, for the president's sake. do you think they get, we'll be there between 12:00 and 4:00. there might be a staff of cable people. . >> all vying. >> do you think he goes premium? >> i don't know if he gets the bundle. >> he may just have "the apprentice" channel. just "celebrity apprentice." or trump tuesdays on "squawk box." we used to have those as well. >> do repeats. >> again, we're watching the inauguration process begin. we'll be watching it through the morning. in the meantime, stocks to watch. two dow components with general electric coming out with its earnings this morning. the company matched estimates are fourth quarter profit of 46 cents a share, but the revenue

number was a little short of what the street was expecting. that appears to be weighing just a little bit on the stock. you can see that stock is down by about 1.5% this morning, $30.75. and proctor & gamble beating estimates by two cents with quarterly profit of $1.08 a share. p&g also beating on the top line and raising its full-year organic growth forecast. that stock is up by 2.75%. bristol-myers squibb has decided no the to seek accelerated approval for a new lung cancer treatment that consisted of a combination of two of its therapy drugs. that news pressuring the stock, although the company said it expects approval in the second half of 2018, but still check that out. bristol-myers down by 7.5% this morning. aig has struck a reinsurance agreement with a unit of berkshire hathaway. aig will pay $9.8 billion in return for 80% coverage of future accident-related claims stemming from incidents in 2015 and before. when we return this morning,

we're going to head back to new york and check in with jim cramer. in the meantime, take a look at the futures. gains have built through the morning with dow futures now indicated to up by just over 55 points. s&p futures up by 8 1/2. the nasdaq up by 19 1/2. stay tuned. you're watching this special edition of "squawk box" on cnbc. our coverage of the inauguration is just getting started today right here on cnbc, all morning. d

let's get down to the new york stock exchange and jim cramer joins us now. jim, you are not one to hide your emotions or your feelings. and it's kind of cool today, isn't it? >> peaceful transition. >> yeah. >> and democracy. what happens even when you have people who are polar opposites, a peaceful transition i think makes people feel optimistic that something can happen. i know all the tenor of your show this morning, i keep hearing a level of optimism about business. look, that's my strength to talk about other stuff is not that helpful. but it's certainly been met with a lot of the same commentary on

a lot of the conference calls, which is that there's something happening down there that's not in the way of good business or is helping good business. and i think that's kind of where for my bailiwick, that's the wrap. >> i was just going back along the wires, jim, just to try to find because i mentioned the market watch piece that said, watch out now, after the inauguration, these markets are ready for a big dive. and i looked down at one point on news edge, there were six very similar stories, all of them the same that this is not what the economy needs at this point. there were six different takes on this is the sort of on a sugar high and the day come up it's going to happen and this could be the excuse, inauguration itself might set off the downdraft. >> the problem is if you're stuck with the four walls of the companies you talk about, look, i had ppg on last night. is there any more basic industrial company? they say business pretty good. getting better. business is good, business getting a little better is the theme. now, does that go up with the

sugar high? it's anything but a sugar high. it says there's incremental positives happening. it's not a sugar high, but it breaks through the log jam. these people are all stuck i think at the top never looking down into what the companies are saying. because if they did they could never say sugar high. >> i think so too. anyway, this is a great city. every time we take a different shot you realize, wow, we've got, you know, the washington monument, the capitol, the lincoln memorial. >> i know. >> jefferson memorial. >> jefferson memorial. >> my daughter lives down there and one of the greatest moves she ever made. i think it's a fantastic place. >> what's that song? proud to be an american. at least i know i'm free. see you in a couple minutes. lee greenwood was part last night. >> yeah. >> toby keith. stay tuned to cnbc all day for full coverage of the inauguration. you know, i mentioned "apprentice," there is some

vintage "celebrity apprentice" on cnbc. stay tuned. we'll be right back. miv

welcome back to "squawk box" live from our nation's capital today. donald j. trump will soon take the oath of office and become our 45th president. right now trump, vice president-elect pence, known at st. john's episcopal church, in the next hour the president and vice president-elect will attend a tea at the white house. then be escorted to the capitol for the inauguration. this is the peaceful transition that always takes place in the united states. at noon pence and then trump will take the oath of office. then president trump will deliver his inaugural address. >> there's a lot going on. going to be a very, very big day. let's continue to tell you what's going to happen because then this afternoon after the inauguration program trump will attend a joint congressional inaugural committee luncheon that happens at the capitol. there's a military review at the east front of the capitol. and then one of the great

traditions, a parade down pennsylvania avenue directly to the white house. the night concludes with the inaugural balls. there are now at least a dozen of them this evening. >> uh-huh. let's check on the markets one last time. it's 8:58. take a quick look at the futures which have been getting a little more positive as the morning has progressed. we're now up 51 points. nasdaq indicated up 18.5, the s&p up 8. take a quick look at europe and asia and then do the oil board and then we'll have a little parting conversation. do this fairly quickly. not much happening in europe. quick look at asia. oil board, we're going to go through everything. they're giving us plenty of stuff to do. and there's asia. and then the oil boards. so you're going to -- we haven't been home since davos. y you're going to get home at least in time to put the boys to bed. >> that's the plan. >> and i was kidding you that you're going to, you know, calm

them down, allay their fears and get them in a safe place after. that's not true. but there are certain people that actually probably are not -- i didn't consider that while we're getting all excited how great this is. >> it is a country still divided. >> there are some people probably out there trying to explain to their kids this is not the end of the world. which is sad to some extend. because i think it's -- it could be something very positive happening now. and let's hope for the best. and i have seen some people pretty entrenched on the other side say if he succeeds, we succeed. >> that's always the case, right. with the american president, you want success. this is the nation's president. >> but being the part -- it's always hard for me to get out. if you're going to succeed with the wrong policies, i don't want some success. it does come down to that. >> we all want success. >> we do. >> we want the country to succeed. >> as long as everybody else, you know, benefits and we don't go backwards. >> nonetheless, going to be a very big day. looks like it's starting to drizzle outside a little bit.

we can only hope that the weather holds off for the parade later. >> he said if it rains hard he doesn't care because it will finally lay to rest -- he can't have an umbrella, it will finally lay to rest that his hair's real. >> they say you want it to rain on your wedding day. >> thank you for being with us. good to be back. make sure you join us on monday. "squawk on the street" is coming up right now. ♪ history will be made in three hours, that's when donald j. trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the united states. good friday morning. welcome to our special coverage of the inauguration of donald trump. i'm carl quintanilla live in washington. jim cramer, david faber at the new york stock exchange in new york. take a look at the premarket this morning. pretty steady futures as well as the ten-year and crude oil. the president-elect and mrs. trump are attending services today asou