WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Here are highlights of a Reuters interview on Wednesday with U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan. ON ESTIMATES THAT THE REPUBLICAN TAX PLAN COULD INCREASE FEDERAL DEFICIT BY $1.5 TRILLION “The $1.5 (trillion) – without getting too deep into the details – represents incorporating the bill that we’ve always intended writing in the Ways and Means Committee in the House, which does have macroeconomic feedback. We are convinced that the models are really clear, people will change their behavior, businesses will change their behavior if taxes change.” “That $1.5 (trillion) number is sort of in the midrange of the growth we expect of the models we’ve seen.” “We believe that we’ll get faster economic growth, that will exceed this $1.5 (trillion), so we do not anticipate a big deficit effect from this tax reform.” “The Obamacare taxes will have to stay. We passed this in the House but it didn’t get through the Senate, so as a result of that, we can’t get rid of those Obamacare taxes in this tax reform.” “I think there is a way of addressing the concerns that our members have for middle-income taxpayers in those states so that they are net winners in tax reform as well.” ON WHY REPUBLICANS AIM TO PASS A TAX PACKAGE BY YEAR’S END “The reason we’re trying to do it with this timeline is we want to get a 3 percent (GDP growth) economy. We’re sort of limping along, growing between 1 and 2 percent, and that is so far underneath our potential as a country.” “I really believe getting this done now means we are going to have a very good 2018.” ON WHETHER THE HOUSE WILL PASS LEGISLATION TO PROTECT ‘DREAMER’ IMMIGRANTS THIS YEAR “I don’t know when we’re going to do it, we’re having lots of discussions on how to do it and the timing is something that’s just open debate.” “I want to do it ... the goal is: we want to fix this and we’re working on it, and we want to make sure that we do it in such a way that we don’t have the same problem down the road - that means border security and interior enforcement.” 
Highlights of Reuters interview with House Speaker Ryan