Schwarzman: Tax Reform Rush Could Lead to ‘Health-Care Type Outcome’

During an interview with the FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, Blackstone Group (NYSE:BX) CEO Stephen Schwarzman said tax reform by the end of the year is “an objective” but should not be rushed.

“It’s a complicated area because to lower rates you have to raise revenue from areas and there are a lot of sacred cows that people don’t like to have taken away, whether they are mortgage deductions or charity deductions or deductibility of state and local taxes. And so, threading the needle on say a program that works on the numbers but also works politically is not particularly easy,” he said.

While he expects an agreement, “there are a lot of different alternatives,” in his opinion.

“They all need to be debated before you go into the real time and because what you don’t need to have is another one of the sort of rushed health-care types of outcomes,” he said.

He also said the border adjustment tax is “still on the table.”

“It’s having some difficulties and the difficulties may not be whether it’s a good thing absolutely, it’s getting to a good thing which introduces a lot of uncertainty into the economy and politically if something goes wrong,” he said.

He added: “My own guess, which is all it is, is if anything gets done in that area it will be a lot smaller, it will be a lot more gradual and it would be designed to not have people excited about it either inside the United States or outside.”