>> production assistance for "inside washington" was provided by allbritton communications and "politico," reporting on the legislative, executive, and political arena. >> i have applied for pretty close to over 300 jobs in the last year. >> this week on "inside washington," it's all about jobs. millions of americans are

looking for jobs, the president wants to hang onto his. >> i expect congress to act immediately. >> the republican front-runner as the definition of dumb -- the president's handling of the economy. >> we must get america working again. >> mitt romney quits the tea party in new hampshire. it is not love at first sight. -- courts to to in new hampshire. it is not of adverse side. is a higher authority sending us a message? >> an earthquake, a hurricane. are you listening? captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- >> the president of the united states is worried about the job

situation. can you blame them? the report reports no net jobs created in august. the unemployment rate unchanged at 9.1% rate without something to spur the jobs market, it will stay there for the visible future. the president has eight jobs plan and he wanted to put it with the american people at a joint session of congress, but it turns out that republican presidential hopefuls had a debate scheduled exactly the same time, the same night. the white house says that was just a coincidence. >> whatever the computing opportunities on television are, whether it is the wild life channel, a cooking channel -- i wish i could say that -- [laughter] >> that is jay carney, white house press secretary. theker boehner turn president down on his request. he offered thursday night, denied the first nfl game of the season the why. has said moquette -- the white

house said ok, thursday did jay carney says it is just a sideshow, but you have to worry about the message it sends, mark. >> at a time when congress is between 8% and 12% in confidence. -- at fault% and incumbents, the president's approval could to need to drop, this the last thing washington needed to get in touch with the country. it diminished everybody involved -- the white house, the idea that they did not know there was a debate on the seventh and did not care, and john boehner looked petty himself, which is not his style. let's get over it and get to the main event. but it was a lousy interlude. >> charles? >> wildlife channel? if this had happened in the bush -- thetration, the presiden

headlines contribute "president's spokesman calls democrats animals." look, i think it was silly all around. i think john boehner should have let it happen on that night of the debate. it would have heard the president, because had republicans simply changed the time of the debate an hour later, you would have had eight guys and gal on the stage is slamming and rebounding him in a way that has never happened after a speech. >> interesting. colby? >> it is a continuation of where they left off after the debt ceiling debate. it is a reminder to the country that the bad chip we are in -- it raises the question, do we want to four or more years of this, republicans playing this game, the president kind of a floundering? now he has set up a big draw for his speech. what are we going to hear from him to capture the nation's

attention? that is a question, does he have anything to say? >> nina? >> i have to say, when you get what each said here, somebody is not telling the truth. john boehner talked to the white house. his people say, if we had only known ahead of time, we might have shifted to the white house says we told them and they said they did not want us to do this. you can only conclude that somebody's not telling the truth. duh. >> colby, on page 5 of our friday's "new york times," it says it bites that question of whether the president will highlight differences with republicans or try to get votes. >> you cannot do both. to ask for a day to speak, he

has to decide exactly what he is going to say it that says that this the thing is based suppression politically. -- superficial politically. he has got to lay out his ideas of what needs to happen to move the country forward, not what he thinks the house will accept, because they will accept nothing. he has got to tell the country where he wants to go and show that he has the capacity to move the country in this direction. that is the big question -- his leadership is at stake now. >> what can he say to republicans in congress that he has not said before? >> he is not speaking to republicans in congress, which begs the question why he is doing it in a congressional address. other than you get a larger audience and more attention. i think the question that even the president's supporters have

is what will he fight for? where will he draw the line? what are the three principals -- principles he is going to base -- he wants to it based the debate about the economy in 2011 and 2012 on? we never got it on health care, never got it on the debt ceiling. just exactly what is it? people want to be with the president, what you stand with him and support him. they want to know where he will lead them. >> you talk to democrats and republicans, off the record, he does not have anything to lose at this point by not attacking republicans for putting out a plan. it does not matter what it is. putting out a plan making clear, and that if republicans don't support him in some measure, which it they well, making that debate the campaign and doing it a la have

determined. -- a la harry truman. >> why would he call for this -- >> they are props. that is what he wants them for. >> in his own personal history, great speeches, a great moments that created them, the one at the convention in 2004 treated him, and that he had the jeremiah out right problem and he delivered the speech on race, and i thought it was an awful speech, but it was welcomed like lincoln at cooper union. he has these speeches were he has rested its of work treated himself. he thinks and his own mind that he has an unlimited capacity to do this again and again. i think he has debased the currency, the same way the federal reserve is debasing our real currency. he is the basic the currency of the presidential authority and presence. think of all the speeches he made on health care. every time he made one, the numbers on obamacare declined.

this will be a chance for him to show he still has the magic. i will be extremely surprised if he dies. -- if he does. >> this is my second flight in five years. >> over 600 homes destroyed, six towns inundated. 150 major highways damaged. 22 state bridges closed. >> that is a new jersey resident, and in new york gov. andrew cuomo. towns and cities in new jersey, upstate new york, vermont, along the places wrecked by floodwaters created by irene. as a consequence, fema's disaster relief fund reportedly has less than $800 million t. what about long-term projects ? eric cantor this week -- the

left is jumping over him for saying this -- "when there is a disaster, there is inappropriate for will and we will -- an appropriate federal and we will find money for that. these need to be offset by cuts elsewhere." this has upset a lot people, charles. why? >> if you interpreted as we need office to date, nobody in new jersey will get help -- we need offsets today, nobody in new jersey will get help. that is not what he said. we ought to offset it, the way we offset anything when we are bankrupt. that makes sense to me t. >> we don't offset wars, apparently did the fema money has been appropriated in a somewhat similar fashion to war preparations. i want to say one thing before we get back to fighting this.

we spend a lot of time trashing government. all the people involved in this -- government folks, bureaucrats, politicians in the affected state plan to this well, executed well, starting with fema, down to the local level. an extra to of the hat to governor christie in new jersey for saying "get the hell off the beach." >> president bush took a beating after katrina. how about president obama? >> i agree with nina -- there was no way nagi -- ray nagin. there was a political price to pay for the human calamity and crisis and pain suffered. it was a terrible response. nobody at fema could match michael brown.

but the selective principle of eric cantor cannot go un commented upon. eric cantor is pay-as-you-go. now when is a matter of a flood assistance, people knocked out of their homes, talents that are devastated. but he is not as a go for afghanistan, iraq, -- tax,. he is now -- at -- he is not pay as you go for afghanistan, iraq and tax cuts the prescription drug program. >> he was not pay as you go in 2004 when the money was going to virginia. >> one reason for the selective nist was in 2003, we did not have a $14 trillion in debt. another thing, it's not as if you cannot predict that we will have disasters in the country. we have further gains, earthquakes, tornadoes.

it is not as if it comes out of nowhere. it is quite an objection -- we are spending $6 billion a year on ethanol. offset with 1/6 of what we spent on ethanol. >> at the beginning of the program we heard michele bachmann suggests that god is trying to send a message. she was clearly joking. was what paul joking when he told -- ron paul joking when he told anderson cooper that he would do away with fema? does that make sense? >> he was joking -- sn't joking -- >> no, no. >> cantor also meant it. the important thing with this disaster -- irene did not ask whether she could come or not. she just the thing is, we did have a good federal, state and

local response. we were warned about it. that is the good side of this. >> where is the money is going to come from? >> we can borrow the money -- >> i just told you, $6 billion of ethanol. >> the market tells us -- right now the treasury -- we can still followed treasurys in the market -- >> we don't have -- >> enough obama's $860 billion stimulus -- in obama's $860 billion to this, there was a guarantee to a smaller company that was entirely uneconomical and went bust. you can start -- i will tell you it does -- you can study of sets with the $30 billion thrown at the clean energy industry, it

completely economic and unsustainable. >> just to set the record state, mr. cantor and house republicans who supported told $0.7 billion for first responders in afghanistan in the american treasury and want to cut money for first responders in this country. charles mentions 2003 and the war in iraq -- that war in iraq has been going for eight years, the war in afghanistan at 10 years. do we not revisited after that? >> we have a new president and his extended the afghan war 2.5 years. >> i am a conservative businessman. i spent most of my life outside politics. dealing with real problems and the real economy. career politicians got us into this mess, and they simply don't know how to get us out. >> that is a shot to carry -- shot at rick perry. mitt romney is trailing him in the polls right now. he was talking to members of the

party in new hampshire. -- tea party in new hampshire. why would he put himself through this? these are not his people. >> he needs to make some inroads. i don't think he is in a panic mode. what is going to happen here -- 3 debates in september. perry is untested in debate, and that will tell us a lot. it seems he is on a rocket ride, out of nowhere. 13 points in the last poll. let's see how he does when he is attack. i honestly have no idea which way it will go. that is going to be the first real hurdle. >> if i were debating rick perry, i would go to his book "fed up." >> i think he will be, he will have to answer for them, and he is doing that from the stump.

watching mitt romney move harder right, which is what he has after-- he came out rick perry's emergence and said he was revisiting his position on climate change, that humans were not involved that extended -- to that extent. mitt romney ran to the left of ted kennedy when he was running for the senate, on gay rights and abortion. when it comes down to what one of mitt romney's major opponents, mike huckabee, said about him in 2008, he has more positions than the kama sutra. [laughter] >> colby? >> kama sutra? >> we will save that for another program. >> there are children watching. mitt romney is the panderer.

you have this other person, rick perry, who is at least candid with language. this is the kind of thing that makes the white house feel they still have a shot. with these two individuals as possible opponents, there is reason to think you can hold your own. michele bachmann has been kicked it occurred. >> -- kicked to the curb trade . >> she is off the radar screen. >> she might come back in the debates. >> the leading candidates in the republican party, and one of them will get the nomination -- perry or romney -- colby says romney is a panderer, but perry's record is contradictory. he endorsed hillary's health- care proposal.

i understand that politicians is a dance that, but there is more than the usual zigging and zagging here. it is material for the opponents, whether they are in the republican party or eventually obama. >> zig or zag? >> zag has always been a problem for me. rick perry has 110 at the elections. -- has won 10 elections. this is somebody not to be underestimated. just ask the billy hutchinson, an invisible campaigner -- ask kay bailey hutchison, an invincible campaigner, crushed in the primary. >> jon huntsman says he knows. >> we are going to win this state. we are going to win this primary, because this state, along with our entire country, is crying out for a common-sense discretion on how we are going to get this country moving again

economically, what we are going to do about job creation. people are sick and tired of sideshows, sick and tired of the circus environment in politics these days. they what substance. >> do you really think he has a shot of winning? >> he is a believer, he really is. he is such a believer that they just change their campaign manager to put in a new campaign manager, which seems to be the pattern in the jon huntsman campaign. jon huntsman is getting a lot of mileage out of saying "i believe in evolution, scientists on global warming, call me crazy." that has made him a moderate. his tax plan eliminates deductions of all kind, which is bold and brassy and quite an orthodox by any standard. forget all mortgage, chocolate -- for that home mortgage, child

credit. it is all gone. >> what is so interesting is that what he just proposed is exactly what simpson-bowles commission has proposed as one of its three options in tax reform. it is the most radical one, the one that would probably have the most positive effect on jobs and growth. nobody will come near it. >> unfortunately, that is not what the republican base wants to talk about were here. as long as he is talking that way, he might win the general election but he is not going to get the nomination. >> chuck hagel -- interesting interview with him on "national journal" on friday, that he does not understand why the president did not just embrace simpson- bowles -- buthat is charles' anthem, i want to say something about jon huntsman. i spent a lot of time in new hampshire. i don't think he has a shot at

being the nominee, but i would not write him off in new hampshire. his biggest problem right now is that he is not considered a serious candidate, but because independents can vote in new hampshire, you don't have to be republican to vote in the primary, and it is a state with a more moderate republican history, i would not write him off entirely if he spends all his time in their. he is not going to be the nominee, but he might redeem his political integrity. >> if that happens, then it mitt romney is really in trouble. >> that is exactly right. >> let it be now that governor huntsman wants to eliminate all taxes on capital gains and dividends, which is used towards the very best off in our society against people who earned it with their hands and heads and hard work and tired feet. he wants people with coupons to pay no taxes, just sit there and

wait for him is to come in from the program. that is the kind of politics that underlies this -- >> there is something in his plan to offset just about everybody. >> i think it is to cover those who are well-off -- >> this is conservative trait. that is dogma. i think he is being true to the cause. >> the comfortable. >> the comfortable. that's what it's all about, charles street get government off the lights of the comfortable. >> i don't want to interrupt this prgroup hogg over liberal mantras, this anthem. i think it is the kind of philosophy that will be rebutted next week. [laughter]

>> this is the 1966 s seceded price picture of house pages -- associated press picture of house pages down the capitol. the program's last day was august 31. the house saves $5 million a year. penny wise, pound foolish, nina? >> it has caused them problems because of members' misbehavior. but it is not really save money, because the pages, many of whom have gone on to important s -- the pages association said they would pay for this. there is enough money to pay for this. there is a bit of a hidden agenda here. >> june years in high school, out for, what, 70 days?

they deduct room and board. they learned a lot about how their place works. >> nobody learned more than john dingell, tom davis, a very gifted republican congressman --om virginia, russia rush holt, roger wicker. i think this was a defensive move on the part of the house under the guise of the 3/10 of saving money -- did gui -- the guise, pretense of saving money paid the humiliation of republicans in 2006 when it was revealed that mark foley was making overtures to mail pages became an issue in the campaign of 2006 and hurt republicans. i think the bank thought there was no upside. -- i think it they thought there was no upside. >> mark friehling, standing, the bank are keeping pages in the

senate -- mark foley not withstanding, they are keeping pages in the senate. >> we can wax -- >> silly convention. >> you can wax nostalgic about this. i'm not sure is a major issue facing our country. pages were around in the day when you send messages by hand. we have e-mail now. you might even try the u.s. mail. i guess is nice to have a & pouring coffee, but i am not sure it is essential for the state of the union. >> great experience, and electricity cannot bring you a drink in the late afternoon. >> give you a shock. >> last word. see you next week.