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Well, first let me say that I think health care reform is important. It has to be a priority. And our system is broken. The Finance Committee bill is the best effort yet, due in large measure to the efforts of my colleague, Olympia Snowe, but it's not there yet. It falls short.

Financial regulation is the next item on the political horizon, and it doesn't have to be the deathly dull wonk-battle that it sounds like. In fact, if the Democrats do their job, it can just as easily become a platform for addressing the greatest issues of them all.

This country, of course, needs fundamental reform of our financial regulatory system, as I, and many other financial institution executives, have publicly advocated for a considerable period.

I believe that we have to have a new regulatory regime for our financial system.

Tax reform likely will be the first policy action in a Trump administration. A close second will be a thorough repeal and rewrite of Obamacare, restoring a freer market with true consumer choice and competition among providers.

Our current way of regulating the financial system is dysfunctional. Oversight is dispersed among numerous confusing bodies that at times have seemed to be racing each other to the bottom. Setting up One Big Regulator would end that problem.

We need financial regulation that allows businesses and the banks they use to have access to the tools that help keep prices of consumer goods - like groceries and home heating oil - steady, while ensuring that the taxpayers are never again on the hook for the types of wild bets that helped crash the economy in 2008.

Today, we are announcing that agencies are releasing their final regulatory reform plans, including hundreds of initiatives that will reduce costs, simplify the system, and eliminate redundancy and inconsistency.

Increased revenues, meaning higher taxes, will be a central element of any successful long-term budget plan, and President Obama is right to insist that the wealthy - the slice of America that has come through the recession in by far the best financial health - should provide those funds.

My No. 1 priority is growth in the economy. Tax reform will be our first and most important part of that.