We enter the government essentially in a hotel that is on fire. We're throwing people from the windows into the pool to save their lives and this is the evaluation of the Olympic diving committee: Well, the splash was too big.

We know there are a lot of people in the unemployment pool that do not match up in their skill set for what jobs are going to be created, and that's an area we've got to keep pressing on.

We've gone through rounds of tax cutting and rounds of tax increases in modern U.S. history. We haven't really had a big igniting of a trade war belligerence since the Depression era, and that's not an era that we want to repeat.

The share of income that small business people are paying in taxes is the lowest it has been in 65 years - since Obama has cut taxes 18 or 22 times for small business.

So more than 8 million people lost their jobs. It's going to take a significant push on our part and time before that comes down. I don't anticipate it coming down rapidly.

The data does not support that high-income tax cuts are the main drivers of growth, so I don't think that uncertainty over what the tax rate will be for someone that makes a million dollars a year has that big an impact on the economic growth rate in the country.