Hello listeners. It is Thursday, December 21st, 2017. I'm Scott Bland, your host, and you are listening to

Politico's Nurdest. We are going to wrap up the great tax reform saga of 2017 in our first segment this week.

Nancy Cook's going to walk us through what was in and what was out of the final bill that passed this week.

We're going to talk about some of the early effects and what people can expect to see through 2018.

And then also just recapping some of the political

fighting that's going on about this.

Obviously going to be a huge deal

in the 2018 midterm elections that are less than a year away at this point.

And speaking of those midterm elections, we're going to talk a little bit about the future

of Speaker Paul Ryan.

There's a big story in Politico just this past week about how Paul Ryan may not have a future

in Congress that this may be his final year of a 20-year career.

We're going to talk a little bit about what that would mean, what's going

into this and what the aftermath of such a decision would look like in the House of Representatives.

A few housekeeping notes before we jump into all of that, remember you can email us your questions if you have them at nerdcast at politico.com.

And don't forget to subscribe, rate us, and write written reviews of the Nurdcast on Apple Podcasts or

your preferred podcast platform.

One other housekeeping note, I'm going to be taking a few months off at the beginning of 2018 to go on

paternity leave but don't worry the nerd cast is going to be right here in your

podcast feed every week. My colleague Charlie Metessian and Tim Alberta are

going to be taking the reins on most weeks and I will be back

with you before you know it I'm sure. We are here in studio today with two of our

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