they were involved with affected initiatives which is. later, it the ceo mary barra holding her own news conference after her testimony. joining us as jason furman. thank you for being with us here on "newsmakers." joining me is damian paletta and james tankersley. senatebegin with the debate. john boehner says the senate bill does not do enough to create jobs and it is a dealbreaker for house republican. do think you a compromise? you why i think extending unemployment insurance is a job creator. it is not just about providing relief for millions of people who are working really hard to find a job. it has two real economic

benefits. getis you cannot unemployment insurance unless you're looking for a job. looking for a job means you are in the labor force. in the labor force means you're keeping the people connected so when the economy continues to will get they jobs. in addition, the purchasing power of the unemployment , they haveenefits all said this would add to growth and create jobs. >> what happens at the house fails to act on the senate bill? i do not want to speculate. two weeks ago most people would tell you this would not pass the senate. now it looks set to pass the senate with a real bipartisan vote. i do not want the thing we should be doing next as the

house. the number of long-term unemployed is actually coming down. eating it would be a good sign. have you looked at the numbers? is it because of people losing their benefits in december? >> i have been looking at those numbers. i have not seen it there. we have generally seemed pretty small moves in the household survey. i think what that tells you is that there is eager forces going on in the economy. is bigger forces going on in the economy. we are creating about 200,000 jobs a month. > >> we have heard a lot about the minimum wage.

last year the president proposed raising the minimum wage to nine dollars or $9.50. democrats are hung up on the $10 10 sent level. could the white house envisioned .10 level.nd could the white house envisioned a compromise? >> it is clear he is going forward with $10.10. see is the number you states like connecticut passed, that you see some employers to organize their efforts around. .hat is our focus here is >> minimum wage has been such a heavy focus. why isn't this something he pushed in the first term when he

had the majority that could have passed it? >> the minimum wage was raised 2009, 2010.er 2008, i may be off by a year. it was going up. focused on turning the economy around. the economy was hemorrhaging jobs in the beginning of 2009 and getting that recovery back on track. now the recovery is proceeding well. we are not all the way there. we're getting closer. his focus has been even more on wages and income. he talked about minimum wage. he pushed the issue forward last year. he has intensified it this year. it is an effort to persuade congress, state, localities, employers and the country's largest employer is doing that with the contractors.

iteven in those years when was going up, the median income was going down. do that need to be going up faster? does that tell us anything about the minimum wage hike to effects and comes? yout is a promise that if work hard or full-time you should not have to raise your children in poverty. 28 million people is a large, meaningful chunk of the labor force. those are the people that would directly get a wage. it is not all you need in an economic strategy for higher wages and higher incomes. the middle-class families will have a spouse that works part-time at the minimum wage. this would give him or her a raise. we need to be doing more to raise middle earners. that is everything from short run policies to create jobs to tighten up labor market to

longer run policies to improve education and productivity growth. >> you guys sprinted to the finish line on the affordable care act implementation. there is still a lot of work left to be done. we heard from robert gibbs saying he thinks the employer mandate may never be implemented. it has been delayed twice already. it is causing a lot of the uncertainty as businesses try to figure how it will work. what can you tell us about the employer mandate and whether it will be postponed again? >> the characterization you gave is wrong. they mandate for employers was delayed in the first year. in the second year it is being phased in. employers with fewer than 50 employees are exempted. for next year we're taking that exception up to 100 employees. we are phasing it in.

this is common when you're bringing a new program into place. it is consistent with what you see on the individual side. the vast majority of employers offer coverage. if you get rid of the employer responsibility entirely, you are going to increase the deficit, reduce the number of people covered and that is not the way we think we should be dealing with the affordable care act. presidentst week the committed the affordable care act it does need improvement. he said he is willing to work with democrats and republicans. can you envision the political environment would be any different in 2015 that would create cap bipartisan effort to fix or change or amended the affordable care act? i am certainly not going to forecast what congress looks like in 2015 and what it means. new admission. he has basically, since i make

it into law, consistently said if you can find a way that brings cost down more, improves coverage more, that improves the budget impact of it, that he would work with you. you look at something like romneycare, there were a lot of improvement after it passed. we have been implementing it in a flexible, sensible, sound way. we will continue to do that. if congress has any ideas, we are happy to work with them. >> why has it been such a difficult sell to work with republicans from day one? >> you are talking about a party that has voted over 50 times to repeal the affordable care act. that is not a dialogue that we can have. if you get beyond repeal and start to accept that the basic principles of the affordable care act builds on ideas from

the heritage foundation, aei, , that sets ane individual responsibility. are conservative ideas. just like conservatives who originally came up with this idea decades ago, they are working. once it amid their working, you can get to the next age of saying "can we tweak them to make them work even better?" >> what is your best estimation about how the law is affect and for good, bad, or otherwise the labor market? budgetcongressional office said that right now, and they define that as roughly 2014 -2016, the main effect it would

have is to lower the unemployment rate. that is because the affordable care act is putting more money y's pockets. each can take some of the money you have saved on health insurance and spend it on other things. it helps the economy. and,the medium and longer the most important question for the economy is what does this do to the growth of health cost? i think it is contributing to the slowdown down. it helps wages and jobs. >> we have seen a slowdown in health employment. do you worry about that in terms of overall job creation? my focus is on overall job creation in the economy. you have seen the overall job creation rate pick up someone in the last 12 months as opposed to the 12 months before that. it is consistent with a rate that brings the unemployment

rate down. when you look at health care, our main goals are what you can do to improve the quality of the cost of care, to give patients a better outcome. that is the goal of health policy. >> stepping back a little bit, the stock market is at a record high. record highhere a of 50 million people. aboute this new book whether the stock market is rigged. are we in an economy now where there is just winners and losers? it seems if you're in the market you can make a lot of money but there is a lot of people getting left behind. what can the white house do about that? > raise a really important issue. it is an issue that goes down several decades. inequality.rease in

part of that is labor income. part of it is that a larger share of our national income going to owners of capital. capitalit is the more you have, often the higher returns you can get. i think all of that presents a challenge to us. there is a range of things you can do about it. you can try to make it more equal. you can try to improve the share of income going to labor with him like a higher growth rates. when it comes to capital income, one of the things the president is doing is a starter savings account. they are able to make them bringing new fee, people into savings. this will help people accumulate a way and do it in without spending much these. >> there have been a number of reports saying it is declining

precipitously. is there a fundamental flaw in the economy today that is creating this shrinking middle class? think there is a fundamental challenge in the economy for several decades now. we have made some progress. we have seen a real wages for something like the median worker rising over the last year or two. as the unemployment rate continues to come down, i would be hopeful that we would see more of that. it has not been anywhere close to enough to make up for all of the lost ground in the previous decade. i think slowing the growth rate of health costs will help the middle class and middle class income. i think strengthening the overall economy will. i think education will. there's no question that the president when out in december and called this issue the defining challenge of our time. he do that for good reason. >> a lot of liberal economist

say the policies are deficit spending. would we have that are labor market outcomes right now if we were running higher deficits? >> it is the time passed that really matters here. proposing at is growth opportunity and security initiative. that would spend an extra 86 billion dollars next year and invested in areas like infrastructure, education and in our national security. it would also be paid for over a ten-year year time frame. it is win-win in terms if you get extra support for the economy upfront. you get additional deficit reduction over the medium and long run. it is that type of orientation for fiscal policy that we need. >> to be clear, you think

something in the order of a $50 billion short run deficit would be good for the economy? giving you one example. we would like to extend unemployment insurance. a four-year, 300 billion dollar plan. i think all of the types of measures are good for the economy. cutting the deficit over the medium and long run is good for the economy. i think you see a real contrast it with the budget that the house is advancing. it would actually cut growth in the next couple of years. incur brand-new cost over the medium and long run. >> one of the challenges has been how do you get 20th century workers ready for a 21st-century economy. there has been this big focus on job creation. on viceident called

president biden to look at all the programs and figure out a way to remake the way they work federally. can you give us an update on how we can get this going? dozens of things and discussions with business leaders, labor leaders, experts and others. the we have a lot of programs and the government right now. they do a lot of good. to be oriented toward where the jobs are, preparing people for the jobs. he is moving forward to do exactly that. quantitativee easing. is it being done so from your perspective at the right place? any concerns moving ahead? ofone of the strings

american economic policy is that officials in the white house and the executive branch more broadly do not reduce this by commenting on monetary policy. as important as it is, you'll have to find another guest to discuss it with, unfortunately. about in ag to ask the ministry to decision. , this first term administration went ahead with a bailout for automakers. knowing what we know now about the recall problems at gm, was a still a good decision or is this a company the market should have let fail? >> the overwhelming motivation did is the president what needed to be done for our economy and jobs. nothing since then has changed the number of jobs that were saved, saving the american auto industry. it is not just the company. it is not just the two automakers that were involved.

it was the hundred of suppliers. it is the dealers. it is the entire network and ecosystem of the economy supported by all of that. >> did you have any going of the recall problems that could be facing gm when you made these decisions? >> a lot of these issues were being dealt with i independent regulatory authorities. the keystone pipeline is one of the economic issues that a lot of republicans support it. it is the kind of things that seems like they could get a lot of momentum. i know this is in the state department hands. can you give us an update is as far as the white house involvement? you are right.

it is in the state department hands. the president has spoken publicly to the fact that he expects the criteria they will be using is whether it is significantly increases carbon emissions to build the pipeline. i think there is a reason why the president said that criteria out. keystone just is not a major economic issue. there is a miniscule number of permanent jobs associated with the keystone pipeline. appropriate that the president is focused on the criteria that he is. >> to go back now to the long-term, we are talking about the long-term unemployed. those 3hink that all of million long-term unemployed workers will eventually find jobs or is there some class of workers who will be left in the lurch permanently by this recession?

is one of the most important economic questions we face. wo facts areo clear. the long-term unemployment rate is significantly elevated. i think it is our largest economic problem. it is more than twice the rate it was historically. the second is the long-term unemployment rate has been coming steadily down. is a major challenge. it is one that we have made a lot of progress on. they figured out how they could commit to making more progress. i certainly would not write those people off. i would not give up on them. can bring themwe back to the labor force. it will be a challenge to do so. from the newt

chair of the committee said that they would agreed to this but it would be the last time, presumably it would be front and center next year and the next congress. from your perspective, what should it include? the comments were good news. if you look at the president's budget, he is proposed to take a limited set of tax extenders that support clean energy and make them permanent and also pay for doing that. that would be one of the things he would do with tax reform. more importantly, we would bring our tax rate down so we were at a competitive level. whileld do that broadening the base and making other structural reforms so that we are not adding to the deficit. the other thing i would add is that it is not just corporate tax reform. he thinks of it as it is ms. tax

reform for all businesses, small and large. it is a real opportunity to simplify and simplify for small businesses while we broaden the base and lower the rate for corporations. of americans are trying to figure out their taxes before the deadline. it is so hard for families to do this when they are juggling other inks. progress.been no newbaucus was the ambassador of china. there seems to be no momentum to get any tax reform done. what kind of assurances can you get to the public that there will be a priority for the white house in the final two years of the obama administration. president put this issue

firmly on the agenda. in state of the union was january 2011. he was the first president in decades to call out the problem of the need to lower our corporate tax rates so we do not have the highest or per tax rate of any country in the world but to also say we could do this by broadening the base without adding anything to the deficit. there has been some forward movement. there is a lot of complexity. we would love to have partners in congress that help continue to push that forward so we can get it done. >> could tax reform further reduce the deficit? >> when it comes to business tax reform, our proposal raises some money when you transition to a new system.

we propose to take it in the nation's infrastructure. competitiveness in terms of infrastructure and reforming. when it comes to the individual system, there is a substantial scope for cutting back on some of the tax benefits that the highest income will houses go. >> the basic question that most americans keep asking, despite the jobs report which aren't urging a better than the ones we saw earlier in the recovery, more than half the country still thinks we're in a recession. recoveryt about this that so many americans do not feel things are getting better? what is iter is about the great recession?

it is the worst recession since the great depression. it was not just the amount of jobs we lost, nearly nine onion private sector jobs lost. bad made the recession so was that it was a systemic financial crisis. horrible to your way out. that wentcountries through the crises, only to have that covered. the united states and germany. do not think grading on a curve and sing we are better than a lot of other countries is going to satisfy people. i do not think it should. what will is continuing to steadily or increase jobs. we have come pretty are. we had our fill. >> how are we doing 50 years

later on the war on poverty? what they did a comprehensive report. give that to your viewers. the focus of our report is that there has been nature meant his success in bringing this down over the first 50 years. it is entirely to to public areas. the place where we have not been as successful is raising wages for families. part of that is the minimum wage has lost one third of the purchasing power in the last 50 years. that is a big push to raise the minimum wage. >> let me conclude on this question based on a recent bio. difficult, juggling numbers are being a semi

professional juggler? >> what is difficult is showing up at your sons birthday party, designing you will impress the children by juggling flaming torches and not having practice with flaming torches in five years. was they going up in flames. >> on that note, we will leave it there. thank you for being with us. we appreciate you being with us here. first on the jobs numbers. this economy is in a space where the numbers are not good or bad. we are not getting the escape velocity we need. it seems like weeks are stuck. there is a lot of people that are not looking for jobs. this is a bad monthly number. couple of questions about

tax reform. this to an appetite for come up? is there an appetite for washington to do anything? tax-free form is they were everyone is for it in principle but everyone is against him practice. there are huge groups that lineup. until you have a plan to actually take on the groups and really push through these broad proposals that everyone talks about, very difficult for me to see how congress and the president will agree on the plan. >> we had a policy discussion right now. is this a driving issue for 2014? have the one hand you democrat and kentucky running against mitch mcconnell. she thinks this is a good issue

that will get people to the polls. then he had people like mark prior in mary landrieu who seem a little more hesitant. and arecrats are risk not sure how to come down. 10.10 levelor the it might alienate businesses and backfire. >> the single woman is a key part of the electorate for the democrats. is not so great that they can run on that and say happy days are here again. on the other hand, they need an issue, even though they have controlled the white house, where they can say it is not our fault that the bad guys are blocking a good inc. from happening that would help you. the minimum wage appears to be the best of those issues that

hit both of the spots. it is aspirational and casts the democrats as an underdog. >> what did you learn today? >> jason furman has a lot of numbers but they do not have a path forward. in the first term they were a lot more aggressive in getting it passed the finish line. i think the white house feels like it they get too involved it will just scare republicans away. they're counting on democrats on the hill to get things done. >> i think they are much less defensive than they used to sound on the affordable care act. they're talking about bringing down costs and the benefits of the law and engaging that in a way that is not putting them on the defensive of a bad website. he just sounded a lot more confident talking about it than i have heard from white house officials in previous years.