House Ways and Means Republican Leader Kevin Brady (R-TX) today joined CNBC’s Squawk Box.

CLICK HERE or the photo above to watch the full interview.

Rep. Brady emphasized that we must continue the bipartisan work started under the Trump administration to defeat this virus and reopen our economy.

“The focus right now, there’s only two: one is defeating this virus, obviously focusing on the production and distribution of vaccinations. The second is rebuilding this economy, and to do that, the focus has to be on helping Main Street businesses survive and getting the jobless, and those who are temporarily jobless, back into the workforce.”

Rep. Brady stressed that one of the ways to rebuild our economy is to make the 2017 GOP Tax Cuts permanent:

“Just making those tax cuts permanent for families, small businesses, and companies will create another 1.5 million jobs. One of the big worries, obviously, is President Biden wants to raise taxes on businesses, especially our corporate rate. We need to understand that we lowered the corporate rate to be competitive, to bring jobs and manufacturing back to the U.S. Ten countries have already lowered their corporate tax rates since we did. If the President thinks the rest of the world is sitting around while we tried to become competitive, they aren’t. I think it’s a major mistake to raise those rates.”

Brady warned that if President Biden fulfills his campaign pledge to repeal the TCJA, workers will ultimately pay the biggest price:

“Economically, this would be controversial in good economic times. It makes no sense when trying to recover from this pandemic.”

The Texas Republican stressed that House Republicans are ready to work with this new administration, but that we must prevent bad ideas – like tax hikes – from being signed into law:

“The culture I put to work in Ways and Means Republicans is wake up every day and work hard to stop bad ideas, and there are lots of them in Washington, but work equally hard to find common ground. I’m going to take that same approach with this President.”

“Unity doesn’t mean thinking as one brain; it is just a commitment to debating these things civilly and trying to find that common ground. I’m hopeful we can do that.”