. job number one, create jobs now. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews. time for jobs program. one day after a nerve rattling loss of more than 500 points on the dow some encouraging news that jobless rate dropped in june and more jobs were created than expected. the stock market lurched this way and that and president obama tried to reassure americans we would get through this. his presidency depends on it. but is there anything he can do

right now? i say yes, there is. people need work and jobs and private industry won't do it, it's time for the government to step up the country's falling apart. old roads and crumbling bridges. the best of america was built during it hard times, let's remember. things like the empire state building, the hoover dam and golden state bridge. let's do it again. also, rick perry's religious jamboree tomorrow in houston. is it gathering of the faithful or the fringe? one of the participants calls the statue of liberty a demonic idol right in the middle of new york harbor. and we get a report from our own richard angell in somalia, a devastating famine that has preyed largely on the largest, the weakest, the most defenseless. let me finish with a new idea. time for good old action. let's begin tonight with wall street jim cramer, the host of cnbc's "mad money." jim, first, the unemployment dropped from 9.1 positive 9.2. the economy added 117,000 new jobs in july. what are your thoughts? >> okay.

i thought this was just plain unadulterated okay news. i didn't say good news. okay news because we were looking for something that was completely un-okay, we were going to actually, a thought maybe there would be no jobs created at all. look, chris, there's a lot of bad news out there, this wasn't one of them. this was actually something that was a relief. >> what do you make the fact the dow ended up 61 of ahead from where we started? not the second fear run. i thought a run on the bank today after yesterday. >> i want to make a point it was really not our fault this time around. the 500 yesterday, down 200 at one point today today after up 176. it's europe. it's europe. it's europe. it's europe. they're falling apart over there. they don't have any leadership. there's nothing coming out of europe that makes any sense. if they don't develop a plan sunday night to take care of the the their country, including italy

we'll be back down 200 monday morning right at the opening. >> tough question. take a moment to pause on this one. it may not conform to your speed of answer usually. is the federal government spending too much money this now, right now, or too little? right now? more or not enough? >> i have, i had eric cantor on today. look, obviously you're going to extend the unemployment, right, i said? no. huh? i mean, we are about to have a retail collapse in this country if we don't get some people to have these unemployment benefits. on the one hand, he's talking we got to help the unemployed. then he's like what are you kidding? help the unemployed. >> doesn't make sense. back from the theory to reality. if we hear that they're going to reopen and hire 500,000 new people, everybody in south philly would go crazy. this is dynamite. small business, everybody, all the places, every clothing store, everything would be booming down there. it's not going to happen, but it would be job creation. if boeing doubled its contract with air force planes, that would be great news in seattle and somewhere elsewhere they're operating.

in houston it's space. in the south, west virginia, it was bobby bird. it was jack murtha in johnstown, pennsylvania. why do people have a disconnect? they know the government creates jobs. every time in our life from world war ii, economically, all our experience locally and historically the government create jobs, and you hear eric cantor with this new cant of his, a religious notion of some kind that somehow this belief in small business means the government shouldn't do anything. when small business is the area of the economy that does best when the government spends money. what is he talking about? >> they're the companies that get started around the big project that the government funds. that's how it works. >> sure. >> it's a feeder system. small business doesn't start first. >> so why do they keep saying that government spending is bad when we know we need to have somebody spend and the consumer's scared, the investor's scared. if government's got the nerve to do it, don't they have to do it?

we studied this in school, learned it from history, learned it from our parents talking about jobs reopening in the neighborhood. defense contracts being let, yet the right wing sold an ideology of do nothing? >> look, it's a great way to elect a president. isn't it? i mean, if you get the unemployed so that they're so disenfranchised they don't have enough money to spend, you get the very -- negative poll readings for president obama by being obstructionist. it works, chris. that's the part of the ledger. not good for country but it works. >> thank you much. by the way, one last question. this is the city on $2.5 had trillion, not hiring anybody. kids going to movies, and unless it's got a robot, they don't want to see a movie. we've become a robotic nation. is that where we're headed? rather have robots? we believed the secretary this morning. >> we had the labor secretary on this morning. do a deal, repatriate the money and people have to hire in return -- we're thinking about it. hey, listen, both the democrats and republicans are not doing their best to create jobs. i mean, you bring back that

trillion dollars. you get some people hired, even if it's just dividend money and make people feel better, but that's money's got to come back and the president has to say i want it back and i want it back now. >> i want you secretary of the treasury. >> i'd take the job in a flash. >> "mad money" on cnbc. for more on the politics of the economy, turn to a longtime democratic consultant, bob shrum. seems like the two have met on the road to somewhere. the latest "new york times"/cbs poll shows 62% of americans say the country should give higher part to the job creation versus 29% it should be cutting spending. you just heard from cramer. i don't know his politics. i like him but don't know his politics.

he says it's time to spend money. my question again, everybody knew growing up, a contract for boeing or anybody, or bud company, i group up in philly, every time they spent money there were jobs and jobs around job. why don't they do it? why doesn't obama do it? >> i don't get it. he ought to put a real jobs agenda in fronts of the congress, real job creation. even if they're not going to pass it and then fight for it. jfk didn't stop proposing medicare because the congress wouldn't pass it. you've got to go out there and fight for those things you believe in. >> what would teddy kennedy do right now? i'm serious. right now. >> an infrastructure investment bank, which john kerry has been pushing very hard to get all of that money out there into those roads, those bridge, the railroads. get that construction spending going. that's one thing he'd do. you'd certainly extend unemployment compensation and you'd also draw some drieding lines with republicans. old-fashioned democratic. ask the country, who's fighting for the middle class, standing up for jobs and prove you were the one doing it. >> keep going. keep going. >> the another night the president

said, well, i talked about change. you know, we're going to believe in, but i didn't mean change right away. i didn't mean change tomorrow. we have to wait for change. you know, that is a depressing message. that tells people to just endure. what he needs to be saying is, we'll never stop fighting for change, and he has to carry that fight to the country. >> well, let's talk about reality here. you and i grew up in america. we know this country. the president knows this country. when something needs building, i mean, we look at chicago. there's a city that's been run well over years. its public sector makes sense. they've got the best downtown, they got it all figured out. everything makes sense. they got the best museums. everything's there for the people. it works. what is this fear of government? this sense that government is by its nature incompetent? what is obama selling that by his inaction? he doesn't seem to believe it anymore. >> i don't know that you can at this point given all the rhetoric that's out there defend government action as an abstraction but i'll tell you what you can defend.

you can defend putting government back to work. putting people back to work. defend building a bridge. you can talk about the fact the whole interstate highway system in this country was done by government. you know, there was a president that decided we could go to the moon, and that was done by government. government now needs to step into this economy, and to spend more while having a long-term deficit reduction plan tied to the pace of recovery. that's what any economist would say. that's what jim cramer was saying a minute ago. and instead we have this mythology and i think it may be a self-serving mythology. i think the republicans may want to wreck the economy. make it even worse, assuming that that's their road to the white house. >> well, i don't know what their motivation is. i've been told by people they're that their stockholders would kick them out of their ceo jobs, holding back on investments to screw a democratic president. i don't know what motivates people but it seems like, the proper motive isn't working

to create jobs, the government better create jobs or you're going to have an unstable society. the unemployment is not reflective of how many of out of work. we know how many are underemployed. how many people are working at jobs they could do more work and they're being deprived thof that opportunity. my question again, go through the next year. we know that localities benefit when things are built and people are put in jobs not thrown out. why does the public resent that? why have they been led to resent that? >> i don't think the republicans have done very well, tea party republicans talking about big government in the abstract. debt in the abstract. i think the president has done, you know, about as well as he could in a very difficult situation, but he has now got to turn and turn and communicate with the country. he's got to fight for jobs. he's got to go out there and be willing to draw the dividing lines and say, look, i'm fighting for you. niece guys are fighting for the special interests. take financial reform, which they never talk about. he ought to be saying, we want to make sure wall street excesses are reined in.

the other guys want to let the speculation run rife which could describe your homes and jobs all over again. it's a democratic message. >> boshb, as always, a wise man. coming up too many things that need to be getting done. we did in the great depression and we can do it again. the president needs to speak up to any republican that does not say that. the bridge is as fine as it is, we don't have to fick it, let them say that. my contacts are so annoying. i can't wait to take 'em out.

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welcome back. this is the time we start

talking about green jobs. this country is broken. there ought to be a way to fix it. america can put people to work in the bridges out of shape, updating of infrastructure, a fancy word we rely on every day. during the great depression, the great things we see, public sector jobs were done during the great depression. dawna edwards from wharld is here with me and eugene robinson, columnist for "the washington post." two people i trust. let's start with this. why doesn't president obama act like a democrat and start creating public service jobs? the talk of the deficit, reality of adding $1.7 trillion deficit scares democrats out of being democrats? >> well, i think the way we get the government rolling, talk about investing and not just reducing spending -- >> why are we doing the other? >> i'll have this argument and debate with our democratic caucus and with the president. now's the time to spend money. infrastructure, big words, roads, bridges, water and sewage systems. pretty simple. put people to work. we have 151,000 bridges in this country that need's pair.

that's a lot of jobs. >> go down to richmond and look for the bridges below code and all the roads that have potholes in them and all the systems, the water systems and sewage systems out of dates and put them on local television. one name standing beside fixing these things. his name is eric cantor. give it to him. stick it to him. that's what i used to do in the old days. like i did in my old days. my job working for tip o'neill. thinking of thing like that. >> no. look, this is a country where a couple years ago we had a bridge fall into the mississippi river. i mean, it's not as if the work isn't there to be done. it's not as if there isn't a need. there's a huge need for infrastructure improvement. go to almost any developed country in the world and look around at the airport. and look at our airports. >> have you seen l.a. airports lately? l.a.x. it's a dump. penn station in new york? the train station? it's a rat hole.

paul krugman, "new york times" echoed what i've been saying here on "hardball." the point is that it's now time, long past time, to get serious about the real crisis it's economy faces. the fed needs to stop making excuses while the president needs to cup up with real job proposals and if republicans block those proposals, he needs to make a harry truman-style campaign against the do-nothing gop. this might or might not work. but we already know what's not working, the economic policy of the past two years has been working, and the millions of americans who should have jobs, but don't. my fear about the president getting on that bus, gus, he's going to be riding around the midwest for what purpose? he's not pawlenty. he's not some politician running for the presidency. he's got the job. >> well, i think we have to go to where the roads and bridges are. you don't have to drive to richmond. you could go right outside washington, d.c. or in washington, d.c. and find the roads that in are disrepair. we actually had a water main break, held up had traffic up and down the each

eastern seaboard. we can do this. it's not rocket science. it was done after the great depression to get people back to work. spend $1 billion, a lousy $1 billion on infrastructure and get 35,000 jobs out of that. >> well, why are we not doing that? >> we need to. >> why isn't pelosi proposing a big job spill? why don't they do that? >> wait, chris. we have. it's not just an infrastructure thing. we had a proposal for 600 billion to be spent on building roads and it's stalled. right now the republicans are proposing, $200 billion. the urban institute says we have $2 trillion in infrastructure and they want to spend -- >> i read the papers every day and don't know this. >> you should know it. >> i should. that's my fault. >> no, no. the americans out of work know it, because their construction is the highest sector. >> let me go to an

independent journalist. the democratic party is not selling itself as a jobs party because it's not actually fighting for jobs. they control the u.s. senate. where's the jobs bill from the senate? >> well, good question. i mean, look, there are democrats like representative edwards and others who talk about infrastructure, who understand the need to -- >> that's about as good a word -- i love those words. boring, boring words. >> yeah. bad word. but there are other democrats who frankly are cowled, i believe, by the republican message machine that debt and deficit are somehow a more urgent problem than the deepest and longest lasting, you know, recession since the great depression, but it's a period that we're going to look back on and have to come up with a name for like great depression. if it proceeds. maybe it's not technically a depression, but unprecedented numbers of americans are out of work. >> yeah. i wonder --

>> not just -- not just the infrastructure, which is a huge part of it, but the real estate crisis. >> i know we have that problem. we have that crisis. i believe in capitalism, like we all do generally, but there's a problem with capitalism right now. you can't rely on it to create jobs. big corporate boardrooms are stuffed with money. $2.5 trillion we're told sitting in their wallets, not spending. they're firing people and bringing in robots. that's what's going on. >> replacement economy is exactly why we have to have government. and i know there's been -- so there's been so much beating up on government that people actually believe government can't do anything, but what government can do is hire people, you know, send the money out to the states. get those road crews going again. put the billion dollars to create the 35,000 jobs, another $6 billion in economic activity from, you know, the truck that has to bring the food by the road crew to the cafeteria. people will be working across this economy. this is not rocket science. >> yeah. >> the time to do it is now.

money is cheap. >> thank you both. you're looking at me like, stop giving speeches. i won't. eugene robinson. recent chief of staff was said to "make things up."

♪ back to "hardball." now the "sideshow." first up, fed up. that's how one of michele bachmann's recent chiefs of staff describes his sentiment after repeatedly having to take the backlash of bachmann's tendency to make what he calls or what he considers blatantly false statements. there was the issue of obama's $200 million trip to india last year. not true, and a

staple in many of her speeches that obama has added more to the federal debt load than all the other presidents combined. that's right. all 43 of them. well, the former aide expressed frustration in a "wall street journal" interview saying "it was simply not true, and yet i could never get her to drop that line." well, the piece points out that when it comes to staff, bachmann has an unusually high turnover rate. next up, in the midst of a dismal employment, florida governor is reaching out to voters and taking a trip down memory lane once a month. scott will take a day off from his group that electoral duties and take on the employment at a local business. it kicked off earlier this week when he joined the working staff in a doughnut shop he owned one of them in his earlier days. he plans to continue with one of the voters were not happy

with the wunt of a workday a month, many weren't amused stopping by to hand over their pink slips to the governor in coin for jobs not doughnuts. quick thinking by rick santorum during a speech in iowa last night when the lights went out. let's take a look at his unexpected reaction. [ mumbling ] >> i assume my time is up so -- >> he couldn't use the spotlight there. nothing like a little frank sinatra improv routine to prove that when it comes to the candidate at leeshgs the lights are on in somebody's home. that brings us to tonight big number. texas governor rick perry is gearing up to a big prayer event at reliant stadium in houston. not unexpectedly the i plan to comes is rather low. how many seats are available in the stadium? it can hold 71,500 people? roughly 6,300 -- actually, 63,500 seats still available.

that's a bit ironic since the event is entitled "the response." if that's a response, what do you call a regret? that's tonight's big number. that's "hardball" for you. up next, your business with jj ramberg. [ female announcer ] the healing power of touch

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