secretary ray la hood ts pressure on congress. >> we say to congress, you come back from your vacation, you're getting paid, and help us pay these american workers. this is not the way to treat the american worker, particularly when we have such high unemployment. we want to bring the unemployment numbers down, let's put 70,000 plus people back to work. >> the financial impact is already hitting home. >> 2-year-old daughter's birthday's coming up right now, and it's added a lot of stress. the question has come up from my wife, do we need to cancel her 2-year-old birthday party. it's embarrassing to me that this is the position congress has put me in. >> in chicago, president obama raised campaign cash and celebrated his birthday, sort of. >> it's true that i turn 50 tomorrow. which means that by the time i wake up, i'll have an e-mail from aarp.

asking me to call president obama and tell him to protect medicare. and chicago's mayor rahm emanuel, former white house chief of staff, has the president's back, going after mitt romney for attacking chicago and the obama jobs record. >> when he was governor, massachusetts was 47th out of 50 in job production, in case he forgot that, i would like to remind him of that. breaking news. fears about the faltering economy at home and abroad are sending stocks into a free-fall. the dow is down more than 250 points. keep in mind, tomorrow we will be getting the july unemployment report. with me now, cnbc's chief washington correspondent, john harwood. the white house can't be happy about this. what's going on? what are the economic drivers today? >> reporter: i would put this in the category of the last thing president obama wanted for his birthday after getting past the debt deal, only to have these jitters on the state of the

global economy. i just walked out of the white house briefing where jay carney has been getting peppered with questions, what are you going to do about growth, what are you going to do about jobs. he falls back on what the president said yesterday at that cabinet meeting, extend the payroll tax cut, enact trade deals, infrastructure bank. all of that, as we've seen in this standoff over the debt and standoff over the faa, is hung up in this incredibly contentious, dysfunctional congress. the bottom line is, it is a very uncertain economic environment and a brutal political environment for the president as he approaches his re-election year. >> there are reports today in "new york times" and elsewhere that tim geithner will stay for the long hall. the chief economic advisor's last day is tomorrow but geithner at treasury is something the white house wants to see. >> reporter: absolutely, they want him to stay. i think he has not made that decision yet. i also expect that he will stick around through the election. he doesn't want to leave

president obama in a lurch even though he does have family pressures. you would have confirmation fights, who knows exactly who they could get through for that position. tim geithner is somebody that the president has come to rely on very heavily within his economic team and especially at a moment like this, when the markets are going haywire, his counsel is something today and tomorrow and going forward the president wants to keep. >> john harwood, thanks for coming out from the briefing and filling us in on all of that. for more on the global economic fears, i'm joined by the u.s. managing editor of "the financial times." good to see you. let's talk about what's happening in europe and how that is affecting us. >> the situation is frankly very ugly indeed. the last few weeks sitting here in new york, there's been a temptation for many people to forget about that and focus on all the drama around the u.s. debt ceiling talks, but the reality is that while everyone was watching the u.s. treasury

market, the situation in europe has been deteriorating and now this is actually colliding with a new outbreak of concern about the outlook for the global economy. early this week we had crucial surveys which showed that manufacturing activity was slowing down in many of the large economies across the world and we have also had some big american companies like honeywell or emerson electric coming out and saying although their earnings have been quite good in recent months, it's the future, the next few months, they're getting really worried about. >> at this point, in this global economy, we're seeing the interactions between what's happening here, the fears here, the fears overseas. jim cramer first started talking about the fears of a double-dip if we default. now economists are talking about the possibility of a double dip here at home even though we avoided default. >> you have two things happening. on the one hand, it is entirely

normal after a big debt bubble to have a slow economy during a period of deleveraging. the other problem is if you think back to what happened in 2008 when the financial markets went into free-fall on the back of the lehman brothers shock, that caused a really nasty hit to the global economy, because many businesses panicked and credit was squeezed. now the risk we're seeing right now is something similar, could potentially play out later this year. the good news is that actually, the direct exposure of most american financial institutions to the euro zone problem is not perhaps as high as it might have been. the interconnectivity is not as high as some people fear, perhaps, but the potential damage to confidence could really be yet another blow to an economy that's already pretty fragile. >> more worries and of course, we get the jobs report tomorrow. don't know whether that's going to be a good or bad one. that's still to be seen.

thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you. now to that breaking news out of the virginia tech campus in blacksburg, virginia, where the campus remains in lockdown after three high school students attending a summer camp told police they saw a man with a gun. police have just released this composite sketch of the alleged gunman posted on the virginia tech website. justice correspondent pete williams is following all of this. pete, understandable that even without knowing or confirming anything, at virginia tech of all places, they would respond quickly and go into lockdown mode, the alert went off. what do we know? >> reporter: right. well, andrea, the initial call came just after 9:00 this morning, campus police went to a building where some high school students, three 14-year-olds attending a summer camp for high schoolers, reported that they saw what they thought was a gun being carried by a man. they gave a very vivid description of the man, said he was wearing vertically striped blue and white shirt with shorts and brown sandals, clean-shaven,

glasses. this is the description they gave and based on that, the police generated this composite sketch that came out just a few minutes ago. but they talked to the young people about 9:00 is when the call came in, around 9:30, about half an hour later, the campus police and the university decided to issue this lockdown order which remains in effect, even though a thorough search of the campus and interviews with other witnesses have yet to turn up any other sightings of this man or a weapon. so it still isn't clear and there in fact is some doubt about whether there ever was a gun in the first place, but nonetheless, the university is operating on the assumption that there was. at some point, the school is going to have to make a decision. if there's no further evidence that there was a gun, will they lift this lockdown order. that's the choice they'll have to face at some time this afternoon. interestingly, if in fact there was someone carrying a gun on the college campus, that would be potentially alarming but under virginia law, according to

a recently written opinion by virginia's attorney general, it wouldn't be illegal. the other thing is these young people told the campus police that they didn't think the man was operating in any kind of threatening way, that he wasn't pointing the gun, he didn't seem to be menacing, and that is all they have. also, they said that the gun, what they thought was the gun, which they described apparently as a long barreled gun with a short potentially pistol grip handle, was concealed partially, covered with a piece of clothing or some kind of piece of cloth, and they said they didn't know whether the person was trying to conceal it or what. so they still don't know whether there was a gun in the first place. >> it's of course alarming and i can tell you that schools around the country, you know this, pete, went into overdrive after the horrendous shootings in virginia tech back then, and in fact, most of them do have alarm systems now to properly notify,

immediately notify students. but as you just have been pointing out, in many states, it's not illegal to be carrying a weapon, either concealed or in the open. >> reporter: that's right. >> pete williams, thank you very much. up next, the faa's funding fight costing thousands of workers their paychecks. on wall street, stocks take a steep dive as investors express concerns over europe and the jobs report tomorrow. stay with us. anybody home? ♪ yes! ha ha! ♪ [ clicking ] dad, what happened? power went out, want a hot dog? [ female announcer ] oscar mayer selects are made with 100% pure beef and have no artificial preservatives. they're a great way to re-connect with your family. dad, how come the nelsons' lights are on? ♪ it doesn't get better than this ♪ but it's our job to make them say something interesting.

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believe it or not, congress is in another partisan showdown, a big fight, people's jobs are on the line, anger building over lawmakers' failure to extend the faa's operating authority. transportation secretary ray la hood told me this morning it is particularly frustrating because it's so easy to fix.

>> it's easily done. they've done it on 20 other occasions. there's a procedure for doing it. come back to washington, pass the bill, let's get american workers back to work. >> the stalemate has already stopped paychecks for 74,000 workers. it's costing the government some $200 million a week in lost tax revenue. kelly o'donnell is nbc's capitol hill correspondent and joins me now. the anger that people already had before this point at congress and now this, and this is a classic fight. as i was trying to dig down and study it, this is republican against democrat, house versus senate, there's a union issue thrown in. it's an ugly stew. the bottom line is, they left town and it's not fixed. >> reporter: and it's hard to imagine to have two of these really contentious issues back-to-back where some of the same outlines are present that we saw in the debt crisis, but this is much more personal to people because real jobs and people's real lives are at stake

here for something that doesn't have the sort of impact of the cataclysm of going into default. this is something that's pretty standard for congress and we were saying to members before they went back to their home districts and states, once the debt ceiling was resolved, what about faa, what about faa, and we got a lot of shrugs. there is enormous pressure being brought on members of congress to come back into town to resolve this. what you have in the fight between the parties is that democrats would like to see what's considered a clean extension. we've heard that term when it came to the debt ceiling, just raise it without anything attached, and republicans have been trying to use this as an opportunity to bring about more savings and they have been targeting some of the rural airports that get a lot of subsidy from the government, because there isn't enough business there to make the ticket prices competitive so the government helps to pay some of that to keep them in business which of course is jobs in rural areas and is a lifeline there. so you've got regional divide as well as the whole budget mess.

>> it just so happens they just happen to find these rural airports in places where harry reid, jay rockefeller, the democrats certainly -- >> reporter: funny how that works, right? >> one quick question here, because i was talking about this earlier with the secretary. the house didn't go into full recess, long story short, they didn't want to let the president make recess appointments so they come back every couple days, do the prayer, say the pledge and go back out again. they are here enough, if the senate were to find unanimous consent, they could get back from vacation, do it in an hour or two, then get back out of town. >> reporter: well, you know, this is part of their job. they have to get back when there are votes required and they will always say it's not vacation, they're doing work in their districts, they have events there, they're raising money there, meeting constituents there. you can judge that member by member about what they're actually doing with this time. but they could be pulled back and we have talked to leadership

in both parties who say ready for this maybe tomorrow there will be a resolution. we'll just have to watch closely and see if they can come up with something that will dole with this, because it is jobs, it is money to the government at a time when there was so much squawking about trying to cut budgets, now you've got airlines able to simply pocket the taxes that were being charged to ticket holders and to put that in those private industry pockets instead of it going to the government. there are so many different levels of an issue here and they may be pulled back. we will keep on this and let you know as soon as we see some kind of break. a somali terror group is blocking relief agencies from getting food to victims of the horrendous famine there. nbc's rich engel joins us now. the state department claims in the last couple days that they were waiving the guidelines to permit rescue refugee groups and rescue groups and other aid and relief organizations to work with al shabab even though they

are listed on the terror list. i was told that's not really happening. what are you finding on the ground? >> reporter: there's only one aid organization here, islamic charity that is actually working in the al shabab areas. this is a terrible famine. it is a tragedy. but it is a tragedy that is happening across the horn of africa and there is a drought and people are starving across africa, but in this country, in somalia, three million people are in imminent risk and they're at risk of losing their lives. according to aid groups, it is directly politically motivated. all of these three million people, particularly two million plus of them live in al shabab controlled areas. i'm in mogadishu on the southern portion of somalia, on the coast. the areas al shabab control, aside from areas they control in this city, are south of here. that is where the people are starving. that is where the people are dying. that is where people are

escaping in coming to places like mogadishu. al shabab is not allowing aid to go into those places, not allowing people to leave those areas to come to safer parts of the country. the reason they don't want the people who are starving and dying to leave al shabab controlled areas is because if all the people leave, the al shabab will lose power. they have power because they have power over people in their districts. if the people suddenly went into kenya or government-controlled areas like this small pocket where i am right now, then they would just be ruling over empty desert areas. they don't want that to happen. they are hanging on to the areas they have, holding the people hostage and not letting the aid in. >> richard, is there anything the u.s. could do? >> reporter: the u.s. has tried this before and the u.s. in 1992, when there was a major famine here, intervened and

there was a humanitarian mission and intervention, and that ended badly with the blackhawk down incident, dead american troops. i don't think anyone is contemplating a major u.s. intervention. the u.s. is trying to get some aid but who do you give the aid to? the u.s. doesn't want to empower those holding any aid that it has as leverage over the people. in some areas that they control, they won't give you -- they will take your children in exchange for aid. the u.s. is in a difficult position here. >> richard engel, thank you very much for all the dreadful news out of somalia. breaking developments continuing on two fronts here. virginia tech remains in lockdown amid reports of a gunman on campus. it's not confirmed. this is the police sketch of the alleged gunman just released from what they were told by those teenaged campers. on wall street, stocks plunging, down sharply, amid

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the 2012 republican field, they've got more drama than a soap opera today, from a shadowy company that funnels money to a super pac supporting mitt romney to in-fighting gone public in the huntsman campaign. more problems for tim pawlenty, nine days away from the iowa straw poll. we are joined by the national affairs editor for "new york" magazine. hey, john, first of all, romney versus huntsman, two sort of peas in a pod, if you will, from the state of utah trying to differentiate themselves from each other, and they each have problems in their campaign. >> they do, andrea. the bonds go back really deep, long time between them. they are actually distant

cousins and their families are two of the kind of royal families of mormonism in the state of utah. the problems that are besetting them are very different, though. mitt romney is clearly the front-runner in the republican nomination fight. he's being attacked by huntsman and others for being too withdrawn from the race and from not stepping up and leading on questions like the debt ceiling vote, coming in late with his ruling on what he felt about the deal that was cut, not taking a position earlier, people wondering whether he's being too cautious in how he's running his campaign. now this situation going on with the straw poll also, something that people didn't really think mitt romney was necessarily caring that much about iowa. maybe he cares more than we thought. jon huntsman's campaign, we had jonathan martin with the great story today in politico showing that of internal turmoil, factionalism around the strategist, john weaver, lot of bad feelings. apparently both the candidate and candidate's father, jon huntsman, senior, who is a

billionaire industrialist, both apparently concerned about the level of organizational disarray that are surrounding jon huntsman, junior. >> have you been in touch with the huntsman camp about some of these reports? >> i'm in constant touch with all campaigns, as you know. >> i know that. but the huntsman folks are denying the reports of all the disarray, correct? >> well, they are. they are certainly playing it down. the guy who is the source for -- primary source for jonathan martin's piece in politico who gave a bunch of internal e-mails, including e-mails from jon huntsman to politico, they are trying to paint that person as someone who is an outlyel, someone who was forced out of the campaign and is trying to extract retribution. they are trying to say this is not a symptom of a systematic problem. it is true there has been some

organizational difficulty, the question is exactly how much and whether they can move on now. they've had a very slow start, the huntsman campaign. lot of people thought they were stalled even before this. it's hard for him because he's a guy who is not that well known in the republican party, let alone the country. his image is being shaped right now and these are not the kind of stories you want to fight if you're jon huntsman trying to make an introduction to the republican nominating electorate. >> tim pawlenty's campaign acknowledging they are pulling ads down, they say because they are going to spend more on organization for the straw poll. bottom line is if they had enough money to do both, they would. they have lost al hubbard, a well-known, well-regarded economic advisor and top policy advisor, coming out of the bush white house. what's going on there? >> not the kind of stories you want to have coming out on the eve of the straw poll, for sure. look, tim pawlenty's campaign has been troubled, especially on the financial side, from the very beginning. he has worked really hard and has gained very little traction, including in iowa, where the

most recent polls put him in sixth place. he spent a lot of time in iowa. for him, the straw poll is becoming a key test. they are trying to play down expectations there but everyone believes if he doesn't finish first or at least second, he may be gone from the race, so for them to be pulling down their ads right on the eve of the straw poll and having to channel very scarce resources in this way, it just raises the stakes further for him, because people recognize how -- what a tenuous situation he's in. >> thank you very much. breaking developments right now on wall street. anxieties over a global economic slowdown have sent stocks diving. and classes have been canceled for the rest of the day at virginia tech, where the campus remains in lockdown as police searched for an alleged gunman. stay with us. been stuck in thee while i took refuge from the pollen that made me sneeze. but with 24-hour zyrtec®, i get prescription strength relief from my worst allergy symptoms. so lily and i are back on the road again.

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you could save a bundle with ageico's multi-policy discount. geico, saving people money on more than just car insurance. ♪ geico, saving people money on more than just car insurance. we're following breaking news out of blacksburg, virginia, where some students

attending a summer camp at virginia tech alerted authorities to the possibility of a man carrying a gun on campus. summer classes have now been canceled for the rest of the day. students not already on campus are being asked to stay away. police are continuing their investigation but the gunman in question has not been seen again since the initial report. on wall street, markets are tumbling at this hour. the dow is down 285 as global fears grow over economic weakness here at home and particularly abroad. for more on those markets, we are joined by cnbc's senior analyst, ron insana. we are talking about a lot of trouble in the euro zone and that is affecting our markets here at home. what else are you seeing out there? >> reporter: that seems to be the crux of it in a certain sense. it does appear that the focus is on weakening european banks that are greatly exposed not just to greek debt which we assume we've kind of gotten past the greek crisis to a small extent. now italy and spain's finances are both being called into question which is a much bigger

problem from europe. they don't have a pan-european system for the types of bailouts we employed in 2008 so there's worries that the banks are weakening there. we have seen interest rates shoot up in europe and money just flow into the u.s. treasury market, interestingly enough. today, even gold is not catching a bit. it's down. all asset classes are falling together. that's the type of panicky style move we saw a few years ago. may not mean the same thing, but it's starting to look very similar in a certain sense. >> the news could not be worse politically at least for the administration. you have a jobs report coming tomorrow. we don't know what it's going to show. initial claims today, marginally down, a slight improvement there, but we really haven't seen any kind of improving trend. >> reporter: no, and you know, we did see -- we got a private number yesterday from the processing company that does these estimates of payroll growth, and it showed gains in the private sector of 114,000 which is bigger than they're expecting tomorrow.

but the thing here is that, i have made this point on cnbc, is that there is a belief among what i'll call faux-conomists, that austerity in the united states right now will bring prosperity. that is not the case. we are at a very delicate point in this economic recovery where a fiscal policy that is too tight may weaken the economy, not shore it up. we'll get a better fix on that tomorrow, particularly if the employment number is bad. you throw 100,000 government workers or more out on their feet in a job market where there are 4.6 applicants in the u.s. for every job available, that's not going to make the unemployment rate go down. i think people might be looking at europe and saying listen, they need austerity. they don't need austerity either. we need more stimulus. we have a growth crisis in this country, not a deficit crisis, and they have both in europe. add to that the fact that china is raising interest rates, india is raising interest rates. everybody is getting too austere

for this point in the cycle. we are on the brink of a policy mistake that could prove nettlesome for us. >> even the real deficit hawks involved in the debt ceiling talks back-loaded the real cuts. it's only $22 billion in the near term. >> reporter: listen, we both talk to people who know this stuff backwards and forwards. the real problem is entitlement spending and social security, medicare, for future generations, people under 55. they can fix that relatively quickly and relatively painlessly. cuts in discretionary spending right now in my estimation are a very bad idea and hopefully, we don't get to the point where our austerity on the fiscal side is so severe that the fed will have to more than make up for it with still easy money policy for as far as the eye can see. >> ron insana, thanks for the warning. a campaign fund-raiser that doubled as a kickoff for his birthday, which is today, the president tried out a new theme last night. for a friendly hometown crowd in

chicago. change that takes a long time? >> change we can believe in, i would say change we can believe in tomorrow, not change we can believe in next week. we knew this was going to take time. >> bob shrum and david winston. bob, if you were a campaign advisor to this campaign, is that what you would come up with? we never told you it was going to come quickly. >> look, i as you know have defended the president all along. i think he's done a very good job under very difficult circumstances but no, that's not the theme i would go to. look, if you look at what the markets are doing today, ron insana's exactly right, one of the ironies of this debt deal, we had to have it because a default would have really crashed the markets, is that the market is worried that we are cutting spending too soon and too fast. i think economically in terms of policy, that means the fed is

the only thing we got left, because we don't have fiscal policy -- >> they don't have a whole lot of weapons left, if any. >> well, they can go to a q-3. but politically, that's the question you're asking, i think the president needs a message with an edge. he needs to go out there and cast this election in terms of who's standing up for the middle class, who's standing up for you. that's what fdr did in 1936, when unemployment was high. that's what the president has to do now. he's proved he's the reasonable person in the room. he now has to prove that he's the passionate person in the room and he's passionate about ordinary americans, hard-working americans, and out of work americans. >> the debt ceiling agreement is not popular. a new poll shows that overall, you've got a disapproval of all americans, maybe 46% approve, independents, only 33%. 39% approve, 46% disapprove of

the independents the president was really playing to by talking about deficit cutting. 33%, only 33% approve of what they did. >> well, look, first off, the way this whole thing played out, sort of right to the last minute, was not a process the american people appreciated. having said that, the president is clearly struggling as a result of that. the numbers that came out today, his job approval is 41% approve, 51% disapprove. i have to say that given what he said last night, what he's basically saying is hey, what i did for the past two and a half years hasn't worked, so give me a little more time. in this sort of situation where we've had the 19th straight week in a row where we've had 400,000 applicants for unemployment or more for 19 consecutive weeks, asking the american people to wait a little bit longer while you think up something new that might work this time is not a really good political message. not a good message, period. >> thank you, david winston. thank you very much, bob shrum. on the republican side, jon huntsman trying to get new hampshire voters to know him

better. >> who? >> jon huntsman. >> i heard about it this morning, as a matter of fact. >> i hope it was good. >> well, it was just a small tweet, if you will. i do know there's competition between you and romney. >> we're all candidates, right? we're all candidates. >> you got to love new hampshire voters. first of all, so polite. today, huntsman's campaign organization and his campaign disorganization is certainly in the news. jonathan martin is senior political reporter for politico. he wrote all about it. john was giving you props for having pulled back the cover over all of this going on behind the scenes. john weaver, we all know, certainly there's a lot of drama involved. is this just a press fixation we all have, or is this hurting huntsman in his attempts to catch up to the front-runners? >> i think anything that

distracts from the actual process of running for president and of getting his message out is obviously not helpful. i think in the two months that he's really been running for president, he has grappled with some internal drama, to use the word that governor huntsman himself has used. and i think that he's got to try to get his eye on the ball. he's in new hampshire today, they've got this very new hampshire-centric strategy. they will really target romney. i think he's got a real possibility there because new hampshire, as you mentioned at the top of the segment, has these famously direct and independent voters and i think they will give him a fair hearing. to me, andrea, the big question, i touch on this somewhat in my story today on politico, is will the financial resources be there. we don't know how much money he has because he hasn't filed a report yet. he has taken out a line of credit for his own campaign and there is some uncertainty about

whether or not he will put in more of his own personal money. he comes from a very wealthy background. now, my source on the story says huntsman has made it very clear to folks on the campaign he's done putting in his own money. huntsman's campaign, though, says they may still put in more cash. we'll see. >> david fisher was a long-time friend who spoke to you after having been let go basically by the campaign. huntsman today in new hampshire responding to the controversy that you reported on. >> what about john weaver and david fisher? do you have confidence in john? >> john weaver is a critically important part of our team. he's our strategist, has been from day one, and he will be. he's a great friend and he's indispensable. >> what about -- >> let's say this campaign is moving in the right direction that will allow us to win new hampshire. >> that tells you all you need to know. >> it sure does. >> john weaver is the man. david fisher is not. so to a certain extent, this

could be someone who is disgruntled after being let go. >> well, there's uncertainty actually as to whether or not he was let go or he actually quit. the e-mails that i obtained actually have him saying he was stepping back himself. now, governor huntsman made no effort to stop him, to say no, stick around, but there is an e-mail i've got where he says that he himself is making this decision about two weeks ago, actually. but there's no question that you see in that clip that governor huntsman thinks john weaver is really the key to this campaign when it comes to new hampshire. john weaver of course helped senator mccain win new hampshire in 2000 in that primary, so i think governor huntsman very much wants to sort of keep john weaver around because he thinks that therein lie the keys to the new hampshire primary and if he wins the new hampshire primary, that gives him a big bounce going into south carolina and florida. that's obviously the choice he's making to stand by his man. >> must read on politico,

jonathan martin, thanks so much. we are following breaking news at virginia tech. police have released this sketch of an alleged gunman after three teenagers reported seeing a man on campus with a gun. classes have been canceled, police have told students and employees to stay inside and lock their doors. but no one has confirmed that initial sighting. we'll be right back. i love that my daughter's part fish. but when she got asthma, all i could do was worry ! specialists, lots of doctors, lots of advice... and my hands were full. i couldn't sort through it all. with unitedhealthcare, it's different.

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coming up on "news nation" at 2:00 eastern, nasa will hold a news conference where the agency is expected to give us more detail on what it is calling a significant discovery about mars. intriguing. also ahead, leon panetta holds his first news conference since becoming secretary of defense. this news conference comes on the heels of his harsh comments about defense budget cuts. plus sean kingston gives his first interview since he nearly died in a horrible jet ski accident in florida. why he believes he survived that crash. all of that and more, 15 minutes away.

the debt debate that consumed washington is a frustrating sideshow for 14 million americans who are still out of work. the president and congress now say it's all about creating jobs. but how? the national journal's cover story, the real problem, gives congress a road map to getting the economy back on track and we have an exclusive first look with the editor in chief, ron fornier. first, your article talks about trade deals. obviously that's one way that many argue could produce jobs, but congress left town and didn't approve korea and the other trade deals that are on the table already. how do you get around that political gridlock? >> well, we broke a little news on the website, nationaljournal.com last night, reporting that both the leaders in the senate seem to have found a path forward on many of those trade deals. but as the cover story points out, that's the easiest way. the lowest of the hanging fruit to start creating some jobs. the others will be much tougher. going to really need some

creativity and guts. >> one of the other ones is housing. that's the biggest single drag on the economic recovery. >> right. jim's urging congress to look at creative and gutsy alternatives, things like there are some homeowners out there who no matter what happens, even if they are able to get a job, they won't be able to get themselves out from under water. they just bought too big of a house. maybe they need to be moved into a rental situation by the government. others, if they had, once they get a job, they will be able to pay their mortgages, maybe they need a bridge loan until they can get the job. the overall point of the piece is that since may when we first hit this debt ceiling, the dow jones has gone down about 1,000 points, about 3,000 people have lost jobs, about 5,000 homeowners have lost their homes and the whole time, washington let this happen beneath their nose and did nothing about it except finally raise the debt ceiling, but did nothing about jobs, nothing about what we call the real problem. >> that's one of the reasons why

the president and others have been so frustrated with the debt ceiling debate, because everything else on congress' agenda just got completely stuck. >> with all due respect, the president may be -- the president is frustrated, republicans say they're frustrated but the truth of the matter is neither side did anything about jobs. why wasn't there meetings at the white house over the unemployment situation? why isn't there an unemployment limit in this country? jim raises in his story the possibility why doesn't the president right now call leaders to the white house tomorrow to start working on some of these solutions to get people back to work. >> what about immigration? that's one of the other points in the story, is that something could be done to make it easier for people to come to this country. the question i would ask is, you've got battles that go back decades against immigration and since 9/11, you've got the patriot act making it much harder for people to get visas and a huge fight over the visa

situation for the experienced workers who industry is crying out for. >> you're exactly right. there's a couple reasons why we need more immigrants in this country. one, they buy things. they buy homes, they buy products. we need more consumers in this country. two, as you just alluded to, if we have well trained, well educated immigrants, they can help companies that are buying for folks who are better trained, better educated to handle the new economy. jim lays out a couple creative solutions that maybe would break the logjam that we should be looking at to somehow get more immigrants into this country in a way that this broken political system might be able to handle. >> thanks so much, ron. thanks for sharing. what political story will be making headlines in the next 24 hours? that's next. be sure to follow the show online. le announcer ] this is the network. a network of possibilities.

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and global markets are continuing to tumble right here in the u.s. the dow is down more than 300 points at about 11,568. big changes reflecting concerns about what's happening in europe. and of course we've got enough problems here at home. which political story here will be making headlines in the next 24 hours? the markets are certainly going to influence that. chris cillizza joins us now. we have a jobs number coming out tomorrow. and whichever way it goes, we saw the initial claims today were just marginally improved but not really great. we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. but still there's enough anxiety to make tomorrow perilous times. >> looking at the numbers, the word that popped to mind was

ominous. we have the dow down. if it stays down, this will be nine out of the last ten days it's lost. we have a job report that people will probably say was better than last month's. last month's was so dismal. it's unlikely to be as bad as it was a month ago. these fridays have become moments of real trepidation for the white house. if that first friday of every new month when we get the jobs report from the last month has become a time, really, where it's a measuring stick. we look to it and say, are things getting better? remember, every presidential election comes down to a simple question -- are you better off today than you were four years ago? the economy is so tied into that. barack obama needs people to getting people saying "yes". >> austan goolsbee was described

as giddy as a schoolgirl about getting out of dodge tomorrow, his last jobs report at the white house and then he goes back to becoming a fulltime professor at the university of chicago. >> and has made no secret of his disdain for washington and hez his readiness to leave. it's an incredibly tough job, particularly in the economic circumstances we are facing, which i think democrat or republican would agree are historic. >> one wonders why anyone even wants these jobs. thanks very much, chris cillizza. that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." tomorrow hilda solis will be with us. up next is tamron hall. breaking news from wall street where the stock market is not looking good. you see the plunge there. 347 points, a sell-off and

experts say any gains americans have seen in their stock portfolio this is year, likely gone. plus, the latest on the stand-off over the faa. 4,000 agency employees and 70,000 construction workers have been furloughed because congress can't agree on how to fund it. i'll talk with an faa employee who's out of work and say congress threw him and others under the bus when they went on vacation. i'm jon haber of alto music. my business is all about getting music into people's hands. and the plum card from american express open helps me do that. you name it, i can buy it. and the savings that we get from the early pay discount has given us money to reinvest back into our business and help quadruple our floor space. how can the plum card's trade terms get your business booming? booming is putting more music in more people's hands. [ kate ] can't believe i have high blood pressure. what's that thing? another medication.

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people at risk for stomach ulcers who take certain other medicines should talk to their doctor because serious stomach problems such as bleeding may worsen. people with certain heart conditions may experience slow heart rate. [ woman ] whenever i needed her, she was there for me. now i'm here for her. [ female announcer ] ask the doctor about your loved one trying the exelon patch. visit exelonpatch.com to learn more. hi, everyone. i'm tamron hall. we're following breaking news on wall street. stocks have been plummeting all day long. at one point, the dow dropped 350 points, wiping out not only its gains for the year but most likely any gains you've seen in your stock portfolio. the reason analysts say investors are becoming more worried about a double-dip recession here in the united states and the debt crisis going on in europe. you see the dow down 335 points, just this morning. the latest sign of the weak job outlook.