tanks and heavy weapons. some fear that the syrian army could be aut to move in to wipe out the resistance. stay with cnn throughout the day for updates on this developing story. and maine's republican voters wrap up their week-long caucuses today. gop front-runner mitt romney, you can see right now, is addressing the caucus goers in maine. ron paul visited the same location earlier today. your bottom line starts right now. one-third of all americans live in house holds receiving some government of government assistance. is the america is land of

opportunity or the land of student loan checks? and we show you how returning soldiers are honing their work skills for the civilian workforce. and forget about the box of chocolates, the best gift for your honey is getting out of debt. we're going to help you have the talk. let's start with the youngest victims of this youngest downturn. many three and 4-year-olds aren't going to preschool. studies show shah a poor child who has not attended a quality preschool enters kindergarten 18 months behind their peers and what's worse, many will never catch up. research shows they're more likely to need special education services and more likely to drop out. sam wayne is the coauthor of a book called, welcome to your child's brain, how the mind grows from conception to clemg. sam, do we need to rethink the k through 12 public education model to be more like crawl through 12? >> i think that's quite possibly

the case. i think the big picture here is thinking about how research and the knowledge about the developing brain can influence how we think about how children learn from crawling through high school. pre-k years are certainly very important for that. >> your research has found that it is. we think of sending your kids to school when they're 5 years old. what is going on in their brain well before they're going to school? >> it's important to think about birth through age five as a time of churn. it's a time of great learning. also, the brains are social learners. and those babies, even when they're sitting there looking at you being cute and not saying anything, they can understand what you're saying and they are absorbing information. >> we have a nation falling behind because we fail to recognize the urgency of education and we've gone down

dramatically from the income one country in america for those graduating from college now to eight or nine. we're seeing much decline especially in the science, technology, engineering and math areas. so we have a lot of work to do in the country, but it doesn't start at the college level. it starts with our kids. and if you have a resource that's so valuable, oil or coal, you see the efforts that people go through to get that resource fully cultivated. we have to put that same effort, that same determination with our young people at the earliest of ages. those investments will pay dividends to our country for generations. >> sam, that's an interesting comparison. our children as natural resources. the bottom line is spending money earlier saves money later, right? >> that's right. so, for instance, the number of words a day a child hears before the age of three is predictive of school discuss. children are social learners. they learn from grownups, they learn from children around them. that means social engagement is more important for a child's

development in the early years and beyond. >> i bet it's very different across the country, isn't it? >> that is very much the case. serm features of pre-k are known to be more effective. one is, for instance, tricks of teaching self-control. if a teacher or a parent says, honey, when you're holding this picture of an ear, it's your turn to listen. this picture of a mouth, it's your turn to talk. certain kinds of education instills self-control. that self-control can pay off for many years afterwards. >> quick question as a parent, say you're watching this program and you can't get your kid into one of these programs orr you can't afford one of these programs. what can somebody do at home to feed word count and feed that brain before kindergarten? >> a simple step is to simply have more than one adult in the household or have people over if you're alone in the house with a child. the number of words a day seems to be important. conversations between grownups, talking to the child, getting excited when he or she says things to you. the social back and forth is a big driver of learning in the

school and in the home. >> thank you so much. up next, did you get your check in the mail? one-third of americans sheriff will i have in a household receiving government assistance. [ beep ] [ mom ] scooter? the progresso chicken noodle you made is so good. it's got tender white meat chicken. the way i always made it for you. one more thing.... those pj's you like, i bought you five new pairs. love you. did you see the hockey game last night? [ male announcer ] progresso. you gotta taste this soup.

would i be a third of americans live in house holds receiving government assistance. more than one in three live in house holds receiving medicaid, food stamps and the like in 2010. add in social security, jobless checks it's nearly half of american households. that's 148 million people. so it raises the question, is america the land of opportunity or the land of student debt, jobless checks and food stamps? with me now, arianna huffington. also with us is cnn contributor will keen. arianna, is this a sign of weakness in the american economy or a sign of strength? it was designed to catch and maybe it's doing what it's supposed to do. >> it's a sign of what a terrible state our economy is in and how the impact of the financial disaster is still being felt widely. because when you look at food

stamps, for example, they are no longer just for people who are out of work. a lot of people are supplementing their income with food stamps. people go to food banks to supplement their income. poverty is up in the last ten years by over 50%. so there's something front door happening, which is the downward mobility trend in america, which is the exact opposite of the american dream. >> now, will doesn't really buy into 100% that there's a big income equality and people are getting hurt so much more or not that -- >> no, it's not that i don't buy into the existence of inequal y inequality, but that ip ee zalt a problem. what i agree with, as arianna just said is that we have had a hard couple of economic years, but this problem is baked longer in the cake. it's been something that's been baked in the cake since the 1970s.

we've had jobless recoveries going for 40 years now. now, i think arianna and i've read the book would suggest there's been an increase in greed. we've had jobs that have supported middle wage income into some new kind of economy and we have to figure out this tradition. >> we also had a housing collapse. and i want to state of ohio quickly because late this week we got word of a landmark settlement, the biggest settlement between an industry and states. a lot of you are asking me who gets money and how. i want to show you executively, under water home orthopedics who are behind on their payments, they could get about $20,000 in principal write-down peps so under water homeowners who are current on their payment, there's about $3 billion in this plan to help refinance at lower rates. and for people who, because of shenanigans of the servicers faced foreclosure and weren't supposed to be or they weren't helped when they were in foreclosure, this is the time

period, september 2008 to december 2011 they're going to get $1,500 to dz,000 in cash. 1 million under water homeowners are what the states and governments are trying to help. there are 11 million people with under water homes. >> i think this is one of the major trad tragedies. we have had four million homes in foreclosures and we have 11 million homes under water. the problem here is that all the tricks and traps beyond people's lack of financial accountability that got us into this problem. and there has been been real accountability. nobody has really gone to jail for all the fraudulent ways of dealing with home mortgages. >> and i want to bring up something that carmen wrote in money magazine. she said, consumers were enjoy ing huge increases in their perceived wealth between 2001 and 2006.

housing prices in the u.s. rose by more than they had in the preceding 130 years. now we're talking about giving people $to,000 in write-downs on their mortgages. a lot of people took a lot of money out of their houses. >> they were using their houses as piggy banks. massive market liquidations and defaults which we underestimate that it could suck the entire economy down. two, big principal reductions. big. but this is not that. and this is the third way. you muddle along. this is $26 billion. the home market is $17 trillion with 11 trillion in mortgages. muddle along and you hope that three years in now houses are worth more than they are today. that seems optimistic. will houses be worth more in three years than today? nobody can make that prediction. >> and thier down 24% from their peak. even as we talk about fixing the housing market -- >> we're seeing the end of this

life cycle of pushing credit and pushing government assistance. you're seeing the pushing of government assistance coming to an end here. these things have life spans. >> we can talk about whether more people will be in the safety net or fewer people will be in the safety net and how america grows from here. growth is the most important thing. how we get there is the big argument. thank you so much. have a great weekend, you two. coming home, we're going to introois introduce you to some veterans that served our country in iraq and afghanistan. they're now retraining for civilian life. calories or less per serving and are now weight watchers-endorsed. try green giant frozen vegetables with sauce. 8% every 10 years.age 40, we can start losing muscle -- wow. wow. but you can help fight muscle loss with exercise and ensure muscle health. i've got revigor. what's revigor? it's the amino acid metabolite, hmb to help rebuild muscle and strength naturally lost over time. [ female announcer ] ensure muscle health has revigor

and protein to help protect, preserve, and promote muscle health. keeps you from getting soft. [ major nutrition ] ensure. nutrition in charge! isn't some optional pursuit. a privilege for the ultra-wealthy. it's a necessity. i find investments with e-trade's top 5 lists. quickly. easily. i use pre-defined screeners and insightful trading ideas to dig deeper. work smarter. not harder. i depend on myself the one person i do trust to take charge of my financial future. [ bell dinging ] like splenda® essentials™ no calorie sweeteners. this bowl of strawberries is loaded with vitamin c. and now, b vitamins to boot. coffee doesn't have fiber. unless you want it to. splenda® essentials™ are the first and only line of sweeteners with a small boost of fiber, or antioxidants, or b vitamins in every packet.

mmm. same great taste with an added "way to go, me" feeling. splenda® essentials™. get more out of what you put in.

2 million men and women have served in the iraq/afghanistan wars and tens of thousands of them have been streaming home at a time when the jobs market has been barely beginning to recover. for those veterans, translating battlefield experience to the civilian world. >> you guys are working in groups, you have a project, you have a deadline, you have defined responsibilities and someone is being a problem. >> a typical workplace issue,

but this isn't a workplace. it's a class for veterans. making the switch from military to civilian work life. >> it doesn't show up for meetings, doesn't do anything -- >> workforce opportunities service sess a program that pairs classes with a paits paid temple rather job. so here, and here is where former army combat engineer tom richardson is learning a new language. corporate speak. he served in iraq and came home in 2003. with a military background, and posttraumatic stress disorder. >> you join the military thinking, when you come out, people will be throwing jobs at you, lining up outside of your house and it's the total opposite. >> the jobless rate for iraq war veterans like richardson is 89.1%. for very young vets, many who don't have a college degree, it's more than double that. >> i was unemployed for two years. and it's really hard, i know, for veterans because a lot of

us, you know, came back ptsd and stuff. it's hard to really stay focused and upbeat. >> i think one thing -- >> this program has three semesters in the classroom teaching communications and technical skills, among other things. and it gets the veterans temporary jobs with companies it's reached out to as a potential path to full time employment. brian watson is an instructor and mentor. >> it's very much a culture shock for them. you know, having to get dressed up in the way that they do and working in corporate environments, corporate offices, skyscrapers, whatever it is, they have a lot of skills and a lot of talents that they learn in the service. but one of their hardest challenges is learning how to adapt to the corporate environment. >> richardson is in his third semester. he'll finish at the end of march. from where i was just a year ago to now, it's night and day, you know? it's definitely a game changer. >> and it's why it's so urgent to get veterans like richardson

into the workforce. >> if i hire a vet? that's a hard question. i put everything into in this my job, you know? if something is expected of me, i want to deliver. it's just something that is en gr engregg graengrained in a veter because every day you live the military every day.l]5s >> brian watson is the director of business outreach with workforce opportunity services. he joins us here this morning. chris lawrence is a pentagon correspondent. we're going to show you in part two next week about that company. these big companies want to work with vets. you talk to these corporations about combining veterans who have been trained and getting them trained actually working in their companies. what is the important skill or skill set of a veteran to translate for these companies? >> too oftentimes they focus on what they did in the military from an operational standpoint.

i operated a machine gun. i drove a truck and they don't really talk about the values that they learned. >> and that's the veteran. >> you've got it. >> you have to learn to say, look, i ran a machine gun. but this is how what i learned doing that is going to help you solve problems and save money in your workforce. >> right. what we try to do with them at first do is teach them through what you're going to be doing in the corporate environment. let's start first by how you did it in the military. get them comfortable. help them understand what it's all about. then they start to draw connections. this is the way it works in the corporate world. there's a lot of similarities. there are a few things that are very, very difference about it that you have to. >> there's leadership that you learn in the military. that's something that's important. i want to ask chris lawrence about that. as we talk about drawdowns and reshaping our military and ending potentially two wars here, there must be a lot of discussion in washington and the pentagon about how to transfer these people into the labor

market that's not really robust. >> there's a lot going on, christine. congress passed leverage lags that offers up to a $10,000 credit in some instances for some companies that hire veterans. each branch of the service has its sort of alumnae program to try to teach them some of these skills before they actually get out. but it's been very, very tough. i mean they're constantly going back and looking at some of these programs to see how they can be improved and to do more before the service member actually is out in the work force. >> you also have the issue of ptsd. it's really interesting because you've got people coming home. they've been in war for so long, and now they're coming to a completely different environmental. brian, what is the culture shock like, and how do you kind of help them get over that culture shock so they can interview and be forceful and use the right kind of language? >> it goes back to really kind of try to teach them how to bring out the values they've

already under. when it comes to ptsd, there are a lot of different mechanisms. >> are companies worried when their hear "veteran ats kwnld worry about ptsd? >> absolutely, absolutely. >> when they think about it, they're talking about transitioning skills. >> that's not their issue. >> at the end of the day, there is this stigma around ptsd or other mental health issues or physical disabilities which is another one that comes up a lot. a lot of times it's really educating them and try to get them to understand that you can be a fully functioning person and have post-traumatic stress. >> chris, you're somebody who's transitioned back and forth. you know communicating is the language, speaking the language of the office when you've been speaking the language of the battlefield and the military it's great point. when you're in the military, you're taught to give short, terse answers. that's probably the last thing you want to do in the interview

when you want to expound and flesh out what's there on the page in front of the resume. also in the military, you're not taught to praise yourself. you're taught to be a part of the bigger group, you know. people who raise themselves and look for, you know, individual awards, that's not valued in the military. whereas in the civilian world you've got to break out of the group think and bear down on the individual. and i think another good point about this is look who's going into the military. where are they coming from? they're coming from small rural towns, rust belt areas. when they get out of these deployments, where do they go? >> they go back home and some of them are the last to recover in a bad economy like we have now. >> thanks for talking about this. we'll be discussing this all year. next are you cheating on your spouse financially? it's time to come clean.

how to get out of debt but stay in love. that's next. ah, welcome to hotels.com. i get it...guys weekend. next are you cheating on if you're looking for a place to get together, you came to the right place. because here at hotels.com, we're only about hotels. yeah! yeah! noooo. yeah! finding you the perfect place is all we do. welcome to hotels.com

that is better than today. since 1894, ameriprise financial has been working hard for their clients' futures. never taking a bailout. helping generations achieve dreams. buy homes. put their kids through college. retire how they want to. ameriprise. the strength of america's largest financial planning company. the heart of 10,000 advisors working with you, one-to-one. together, for your future. ♪

all right. when it comes to money, my friend ali velshi and i speak two different languages. that's okay because thankfully we're not married to each other. we just work together and wrote a book together called "how to speak money." couples, it's a big strain on our relationships. ali is here to talk about it. i want to talk about jeff due. he said whiives who had no doub were likely to be more happy than those who were in debt. husbands, they're happy no matter what. >> they don't care. >> look. one thing we've talked about is that a lot of couples aren't honest to each other. i want to ask you. is it ever okay to hide spending, ali, or to hide debt? >> is northbouanybody listening answer? >> when you said men don't care,

there's two issues. one is do you care about your habits on spending? a lot of guys don't care. and then are you completely honest about what your debt situation is? and both of those are important. you can't just know about your partner's debt. have to know about how they answer that question, how comfortable very r you with debt? one of the issues is people pay off credit cards with cash they've got available. how many times have people asked you that and then they run up the credit card. >> we know he's a great researcher on this love and money stuff. he said again and again when they poll people, no matter how much money many you make, if you don't have any debt, you're happier. the next thing i want to ask you, is it okay for one person to handle the finances in the relationship? >> yes, absolutely. let the better person do it. in my -- believe it or not in my family my wife is better at this stuff, and so she sort of takes the lead on it and it gets done

better. look, there's an issue about responsibility of money. the other partner should have involvement in it so they know about it but i think it's better for the smarter one to be organized. >> how do you have the money talk? i personally think that student loan debt is so big that young people who are courting -- i sound like an old lady -- you can use student loan conversation to get -- find out how much do you have, how are you going to pay it off? >> you've got a built-in excuse. >> you're totally right. have it early, have it there. this is where we do disagree. i don't know if the dating process, if you start off -- if you're older -- >> you're telling me you would dump me if i told you how much student loan debt i had. >> no, i would -- >> you would tell me for other reasons. >> i would get into the second or third or fourth date and say this is working really well but i've got to tell you. you've got to have it when you talk -- >> do you have separate checking accounts?