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Matt Wagner, Chair, U.S. Public Affairs
 
Good morning everyone and welcome to the latest instalment of our 2016 Washington Trust Forum
series, or as we like to call it, “WTF 2016”. For those of you who've joined our previous calls throughout
the election, welcome back. For folks who are joining us for the first time, welcome to Edelman. Today, we're going to explore what the Trump administration means for the 2017 policy agenda, how the 115th Congress will work with the new President, and what this will mean for business. To help us explore these questions, we're joined by two of our senior counsellors: Senator Saxby Chambliss from Georgia, who served three terms from 2002 to 2015; and Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who served from 1992 to 2011. Mr. Chambliss served on the Intelligence, Armed Service and Agriculture committees, while Senator Dorgan served on the Energy and Commerce committees. I know we have a lot of clients in the room and on the phone who are interested in these topics, and we encourage people to ask questions of our panel. We're also joined by CBS News Correspondent Julianna Goldman, who has been covering Congress, presidential campaigns and the White House for the last 12 years. We
re really glad that Julianna can join us here today. We'll have Julianna guide discussion with the Senators for about 20 to 25 minutes, focusing on questions that we've been hearing from clients and that are on our minds, and then we will open the floor for questions. If people on the phone want to ask questions, you can push *1 to get placed in the queue and Ashley, our operator, will help us get to them. We are also recording this event and will have a transcript available for people following the call. With that, I'll turn it over to Julianna to start.
Julianna Goldman, CBS News Correspondent
Thanks very much. Thanks for having us. Senators, just painting a map, a big picture here. When you look at the next six months, what do you see as the top priorities of President-elect Trump and his administration? And obviously, right off the bat, we're going to have a Supreme Court battle. How does that shape the landscape?
Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
 
Well, I think the Supreme Court battle will begin very quickly. My guess is that the President-elect will want to send the name to the Senate. He's already described a number of different names during the campaign. When that happens, it just takes a lot of air out of the room, because that is a big, big discussion. I mean, the nomination that has existed for the last eight or nine months, there's been some bad feelings because there was never even a hearing. This Supreme Court nomination is going to hit the Senate and it's going to cause a lot of consternation, a lot of discussion. Then, I think, quickly, they move even behind that, they move on an infrastructure bill. I think they're going to try very hard to do some tax reform. They're going to want to try to repeal the  Affordable Care Act, but you can't repeal that quickly. I think they're going to try to do something that
says, “We've done something that moves towards repeal, but we're going to attempt to delay the
consequences of it, probably, for two or three ye
ars.”
 
 
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Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
I think this is particularly going to be an interesting initial 100 days, or 180 days, however you want to look at it, for the administration. I can't remember, Byron goes back a little further than I do, but I can't ever remember a Supreme Court nominee hanging in the breeze like this one is and he's exactly right. Once you have a Supreme Court nominee, even though you're not on Judiciary, everybody's going to be focused on it, everybody in the Senate is going to be focused on the Supreme Court nominee. Here at the same time, you've got all these cabinet appointments that have got to go through the hearing process and they're going to have to be confirmed. Well, it looks like he hadn't named anybody that is super-controversial yet. As we all know, there is usually one that has a harder time than the rest of them do. So, there's going to be a lot of energy in the Senate and I have seen this in talking to my former colleagues over the last couple of weeks, that there's a lot of excitement, there's a lot of enthusiasm, there's a lot of opportunity and hope. I think the incoming President has a lot of juice right now, if he takes advantage of it in the right way. There are certain issues that Chuck Schumer is just as interested in as Mitch McConnell, whether it's infrastructure, or the healthcare issue, or tax reform, which has been very much at the forefront of conversation on both sides. There are just a number of issues out there that are going to be in play. But gosh, trying to get through a Supreme Court nominee and confirmation of all these cabinet appointees, I think that's going to dominate, certainly, for six months and the timeframe of getting his cabinet in place is going to be delayed, just because of the Supreme Court situation.
Julianna Goldman
When you look at areas where the Democrats have a big incentive to work with Republicans, as you would say: infrastructure, healthcare, what else?
Senator Saxby Chambliss
Well, tax reform. There may be differences of opinion as to how you get to the end of the day. There are going to have to be
 –
 "compromise" has gotten to be a four-letter word in this town, but they're going to have to be compromises. If we're going to get real, meaningful legislation on any of those issues, but certainly, those are going to be at the forefront.
Julianna Goldman
How concerned are you that the Supreme Court battle and the confirmation risk could poison the well on those other issues? Or can they really separate them?
Senator Byron Dorgan
 
Well, they will try to separate them. I think the Supreme Court battle is going to be very hard. I mean, because that fellow sat out there, the nominee, the President's nominee sat out there for many, many, many months without a hearing. In fact, in many cases he didn't get a meeting with senators. As Saxby knows, there's a process for Supreme Court nominations. The president sends the nominee name down to the Senate, and then they call your office. Would you like to meet with the nominee? The answer is always yes. And so, the nominees go around from office to office. They are given what is called a minder by the White House. The minder is the person that accompanies that person and manages the nomination. That process plays out and then, generally they go to a hearing and then from the hearing it's voted on the Commission. That's going to take a while. We just know, you just have to know, given what's happened the last eight or nine months, that this is going to be a difficult situation. But there's so much else to do for our country. We desperately need tax
 
#
reform. We just do. It's hard to do. As a young man, in 1986, I was in the House Ways and Means Committee when they last did a major tax reform, and it was successful. But it was hard to do. Infrastructure, how much does it cost, how are you going to pay for it? Those are the two questions. Both political parties would want to do this, but what's the cost, where do you get the money? As I said, healthcare reform is also going to be difficult. And in the middle of all this, we have a President-elect and I assume a President who, when he takes office, has the ability to tweet and he may tweet tomorrow morning that we're going to colonize Pluto by July. Who knows, because in the last two or three days, he has commanded the front page of the paper with his tweets. So, he's going to make news and he's going to chart, at least a part of what's being discussed across this country with his tweets. I don't know. But it is really interesting to watch the show.
Julianna Goldman
I want to get back to the tweets, and without knowing what company he's singled out today at, what industries do you think have the most to lose or gain in the next six months? Can we draw any connections between that, and who the President-elect has picked for his cabinet?
Senator Saxby Chambliss
 
I think, clearly, international companies that have headquarters or have major presences in the United States are going to be beneficiaries. You just look at what he did with Carrier. I mean, that's not an isolated situation, but I would have to say, without knowing what was discussed in that room, that the
major issue was, “Look, we're going to give you a tax environment in the United States that is very competitive with everybody else, in your case, Mexico.”
But there's a commitment that there is going to be tax reform. I think from an international business standpoint, those companies, I think, are going to be treated very favorably with this Administration. Secondly, it's just natural that if you have a big infrastructure bill
 –
 and Byron is exactly right. How are you going to pay for tax reform? How are you going to pay for an infrastructure bill? There's only so much money and bringing overseas profits back to the United States, is that going to be used with one, both, whatever? But assuming that you get an infrastructure bill, then the Caterpillars of the world are going to do well. I think there is the opportunity, again, to utilize that juice that he has, if he does it in the right way. We both know Chuck Schumer well. Chuck is a dealmaker. If Chuck shakes hands with you, you can take it to the bank. I think the opportunity for a better relationship among the leadership, which there will be with McConnell and Chuck, than what we've had, bodes well for the business community here.
Senator Byron Dorgan
I think companies that make things, companies that build things, produce things here in the United States, as Saxby has indicated, are going to be in favor. If you watch Caterpillar stock in recent days, and other companies
 –
 If we pass a significant infrastructure bill, there will be very large companies that employ a lot of people that will do well. This infrastructure issue
 –
 
I have a friend that, he always likes to say that “we are warmed by the fires we
didn't start and we drink from wells we didn't dig and drive o
n roads we didn't build.” We're living on our
parents' and grandparents' infrastructure. Just driving around this country. We need to reinvest and rebuild America's infrastructure. Both political parties have a stake in wanting to do it. I have some hope that there will be some agreements between the two parties to do that and that will be good for the country.

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