 The former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard and former 2016 GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina joins me live to discuss politics, business, and much more. Carly, it's great to have you here on set. Welcome. It's great to be with you. Thank you. So we have a lot to get to, including your leadership advice for millennials, but I do want to start off with some news-to-day topics, most notably the House of Representatives last week passing their own version of health care. What was your reaction? Well, I think it's the start of a process, and I think that process is important, obviously Obamacare has been a failure for the vast majority of Americans, and it needs to be repealed because of the incredibly complicated regulatory structure that it put in place. So I'm looking for changes to be made, obviously, to this bill. The Senate's declared, actually, they're starting over, but there are a couple principles that I think are important. Pre-existing conditions need to be covered. We need to have real competition for health insurance across state lines. We do not today. We need to get the federal government out of the business of health insurance, which it has put itself into that business, give states more control, and decentralize a lot of this power and decision-making money out of Washington. Now, you mentioned states. This bill actually allows states to allow insurance companies to apply for waivers so that insurance companies can actually charge people higher premiums, those people who have pre-existing conditions. So do you worry that this plan actually makes some of these premiums unaffordable for those who have pre-existing conditions? Well, I think your question is why real competition is so important. It's important to remember, and no one does, how we got into the mess that Obamacare claimed to be fixing. It didn't fix it. It made it worse. We got into the mess because state regulators colluded with insurance companies in limited competition. So we had, instead of a national federal government and insurance companies getting together, we had 50 state governments and insurance companies. They prevented competition. And that prevention of competition has led to a lot of the issues that we have now. So it's why I say we have to actually put real competition back into the health insurance marketplace. It hasn't been there for over 50 years. And what Obamacare did basically was nationalize the state's control over the health insurance business. But why give states even the option to allow an insurance company to charge someone a higher premium if they have a pre-existing condition? I mean, they did set aside $8 billion to deal with this situation, but still $8 billion. I mean, that doesn't seem like it's enough. Well, I think part of what competition means, and you certainly know this working here on the street, is that prices have to bear some relationship to the costs that are being covered. Now, I'm a cancer survivor. So I'm a walking, talking, pre-existing condition. And there is no question that pre-existing conditions have to be covered. There is no doubt that we cannot allow individuals and families to be bankrupted because of a health condition. All of that's true, which is why ultimately high-risk pools need to be funded adequately to your question. However, it is also why there needs to actually be competition. And right now, we have a highly constrained market in every conceivable way, so that if you're in any state in the union, you don't have a lot of choices. And so far, the House bill does not address that central issue. All right. So we'll be watching that. Now, you were critical of then-Candidate Trump during the presidential campaign last year. You went to grade him over his progress in office so far. What would you give him? Well, again, starting out as a business person, I tend to judge people on their results. And so I'm not fond of all the behavior, and I'm not fond of all the tweets. But I will say, based on the results that I've seen so far, I think he is so far doing all right. I obviously am thrilled with his Supreme Court pick. I think the signals that he has sent to some of our foreign adversaries, whether it is Iran or Syria or North Korea, have been appropriate. I think he has shaken things up in a helpful way internationally. I like many of the principles of his tax reform bill. And we are starting to make progress on the right replacement for Obamacare. And meanwhile, he is, through executive orders, beginning to order the cutback of a lot of regulatory thicket that has grown up over many decades. You mentioned tax reform. What would tax reform mean for corporate America as a former CEO? Because we're seeing companies post some great profits since the recession. But their investment, their cat-backs, has been kind of light. Well, you know, companies want to have some certainty. Companies don't plan just every six months or every 12 months. And so they want to know what's the tax climate going to be three years, four years, five years from now? So certainty is obviously very important. It's important to have a permanent fix to the problem of profits overseas that never get repatriated. But it's also very important that we have a competitive rate, as you well know, we don't today, and that we vastly simplify the tax code. Because actually, I don't worry about the big companies having led a very big company. Big companies can hire the lawyers and the accountants and the lobbyists necessary to figure out how to make the tax code work as well as possible for them. But the little companies can't. The entrepreneurs can't. And so all this complexity that we've put into the tax code, the regulatory structure, legislation like Obamacare, it hurts the small more than it hurts the big. And it hurts the powerless and the middle class far more than it hurts the wealthy and the well-connected. All right. Now, you and President Trump ran for president on the notion that a businessperson should be in office. And now that we have a businessperson in office, do you think those skills are still more valuable than, say, the skills that an elected politician has? I don't think they're more valuable, but I think they're equally valuable. We were not intended to have a professional political class. There are many, many, many, in fact, most people in politics have done nothing but run for office. It's not that that's a bad experience. It's that it is an extremely limited experience. Mars was intended to be a citizen government. So yes, I think the experience of managing a large organization is incredibly useful. I think the experience of actually having to make ends meet is incredibly useful. I think executive decision-making is an incredibly useful experience. All of those things come from doing something other than being a politician all your life. So with that, there is a Senate race next year in Virginia. Are you going to run? I don't know. And it's not a timely decision. You know, one of the things you learn in business is you make decisions when they're timely. It's not timely because we have very important elections in 2017 in the Commonwealth of Virginia. So we have a governor's election. I'm endorsed in that election. We have a lieutenant governor's election, attorney general. So we need to pay attention to those races and get those done. And then when the time comes, I'll make a decision. All right. If you do decide to run, you're going to come back on the street and announce it right here. Oh, of course. All right. I want to switch now from politics and talk about your advice for millennials because students are graduating this month. What is your advice to them when they enter the workforce? Well, the first thing I would say is get a job. And don't worry about whether it's the perfect job. I started out as a secretary in a nine-person real estate firm. It was a dead-end job. But as with any job, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about the world around me. And I learned skills that helped me get the next job. So don't fixate on the perfect job. Get a job. Work hard at that job, whatever it is. A lot of young people spend their time thinking about the next job. And the truth is, most of the time you are noticed when you do the job you have really, really well. So get a job. Work hard at it. Do it well. Work for people who are going to give you a helping hand and lift you up. And when opportunity knocks, and it will, don't be afraid to walk through the door. Now as CEO of HP, I mean, Carly, you were in charge of, what, 160,000 people. So when kids are going into these job interviews, I mean, what kind of qualities are you looking for that they should be aware of before they go in? So of course there's a skill set that perhaps a young person has trained for. And that's important. But honestly, what I look for, whether I'm hiring an executive or an intern, are beyond the skills. I look for character. Is this someone who is going to be honest and straightforward and tell the truth to anybody? Is this someone who will collaborate well with others? There are a lot of people who want to be the star, but the truth is there's nothing worthwhile that happens by someone working alone. So I want someone who can collaborate. I want someone who has courage because to solve a problem means you have to challenge the status quo. And when you challenge the status quo, people are going to criticize you. And so I don't care if you're doing that at a very small level or really big level. To solve a problem, you have to challenge the way things are. And that takes courage. But probably most importantly of all, I look for people who see possibilities in a situation. There are people who will look at a set of circumstances and see constraints, problems, barriers, hurdles, and all those things are real. But there are also people who will look at exactly the same set of circumstances and see possibilities and think, you know, I could do this. And maybe we ought to try that. Those are problem solvers. Those are leaders. Those are the kind of people I look for. And are schools doing a good enough job of teaching those problem solving skills? No, I don't think so. And it's one of the reasons that I focus a lot of my time and energy now on how do we teach problem solving skills. Because I believe after decades of experience that leaders are made not born, that leadership can be learned, that it can be taught, that it has nothing to do with title and position. So it's not necessarily an innate trait. No, it's not an innate trait. It is a God-given gift, but it's something that everyone has. And I also worry that I think schools, in some ways we are training people to feel like they're victims all the time. And you know, if somebody offends you, you're not a victim unless you let yourself be a victim. Victims are people who are starving or sold into slavery. Those are victims. If somebody says something you don't agree with or that offends you, you're not a victim unless you choose to be. And Carly, I want to end on this note because I was like asking super successful people this one question. What is the worst piece of advice someone has ever given you? Don't take that job. People would give me advice frequently in my career. Don't take that job why, because the job is too risky. The job is too challenging. You might fail at the job. Nobody's ever done that job before that looks like you or has your background. And all those reasons, the challenge, the fact that yes, there's an opportunity to fail, but boy, there's a tremendous opportunity to succeed as well. Those are the things that make a job worth doing. So don't take that job because it's maybe risky. That was bad advice, and I usually ignored it. All right. Well, all good advice from Carly Fiorina. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Thanks. It's been fun. And you're watching The Street.