we've got on our hands it a dead shark. >> joining us now, peter morici for international trade commission and kevin hassett, economic studies director at the american enterprise ins student and a former mccain adviser. welcome, gentlemen. peter start with you. do we have a dead shark and how how do we get it moving? >> absolutely. i keep talking about a man riding too slow on a bicycle. he just fell off pt the economy is absolutely in neutral and in danger of slipping into another recession, which would bring us 15% unemployment without much problem. >> kevin, what's your perspective? how do you view the jobs report and more importantly, what would you do? wuv you've been? the room, advising presidential candidates. what do you make of it and what should we do concretely? >> yes that this jobs report was a shock, a big negative and the downward division suggests the odds of recession, peter suggested, uncomfortably high. it's time to act. i think the thing i would have

done different, looked for longer term maybe even medium to longer term changes to policy we could have made that wouldn't give us this kind of hangover. we know from studies what happens after a financial crisis, often a long decade of really slow growth. jack things up a year or two with the stimulus, the hangover comes a at a time we can't afford it. i say we're getting that hangover right now. >> stay with you one second. what do you say to those who thought we van aggregate short faal and need a stimulus? deeper payroll tax cuts or corporate, worry about the deficit in a few years. do you not think there's a shortfall we need to cure? >> sure. don't forget, average demands comes from lots of places. people decide to buy cars. firms decide to buy machine, that's aggregate demand too. now there's so much policyand

tax hikes to come, all of those things are making people sit on their hands and if we were to have a cut in the corporate rate pared with prudent changes in government spending in the medium and long term the budget is closer to balance maybe people could be optimistic. a one or two-year fix, temporary tax cut won't work, because we're in for a period of slow growth for a while and need to not take the hangover at a time we can't afford to have it. >> peter, pieces of kevin's diagnosis i agree with. it seems incomplete. if you've still got this tremendous debt hangover we know exists at all levels and the government has taken out a bunch of debt to help avoid something much worse a couple years ago, you still have household debt that unbelievably it's at high levels. something like 90%, 100% of gdp, the debt levels, as opposed to half that when working our way out of the reagan recession in 1982. don't we need some kind of either mortgage relief, principle relief?

something on the aggregate demand side and we have governments who keep, being forced to cut back at the state and local level that's costing thousands and thousands of jobs. those are paycheck, too. >> in terms of aggregate demand two things we could do right away, mortgage relief. i'm a fiscal conservative. a conservative economist, but we bailed out the banks, not the homeowners. offering them low interest loans doesn't do any good if they can't refinance because they owe more than their homes are worth. at some point we have to look at mortgage relief or we'll never get the housing segment going. other ways to do this. spent money on oil but shut down energy production. we could easily lift energy production from six million barrel as day of oil to about ten. also -- >> peter, that's not going to happen in the next six months? right? isn't that long-term? >> neither is building bridges. you can't build a bridge in six months either. don't fool ourselves. the only thing that's shovel

ready is political rhetoric. if we're going to start infrastructure programs, then let's start when it's real, makes things that are made abroad now that could be made here that make sense to make here so the money stays here and creates aggregate demand in the united states. using concrete, steel, all of those good things democrats love about construction and stimulus spending. let's do that. those are two areas we could move on pretty rapidly and we could get the economy going again. business regulation, that's easy to cut in theory, but -- we just have a president that doesn't believe in it. >> kevin, are there pieces of -- i guess i want to hear more what you would actually do. say a republican president in the white house or if the republicans really wanted to enact an ambitious agenda on your side of the aisle, apart from this critiquing, i understand the republican critique of uncertainty and various other stuff from obama. what affirmatively now would you say we should do, and what if it both parties agree on starting

next week or are we doomed to 15 months of charades and bickering? >> we might be doomed to that anyway. the first hearing in the house budget committee, the testimony, cbo director after that. i went on laid out what i thought would be a reasonable republican plan to stimulate the economy. we need to address entitlements. one thing, proposed in the testimony, change the indexing formula for social security and gives you $7 trillion in trent value, takes the budget balance a little better. >> how is that stimulus? >> take a trillion and trim it back with permanent tax cuts. you don't have to pay for it down the road and get the stimulus of a tax cut. problem, if you're doing something one year really what we'll do is give you $100 this year, take it back next year and you're not going to change consumption very much. that's the obama approach. we need to stop this we can ignore the nation's problems and

jack things up with cash for clunkers and we'll be okay. we have to address the problem. >> a creative idea. i missed that testimony. i hadn't heard that. my guess, you couldn't get republicans to go for the mega entitlement reform? they've walked the plank on the paul ryan plan. ryan didn't put social security on the table. my guess, republicans would find even the outside the box kevin hassett plan beyond the realm of politically viable. am i wrong? >> you could be right. we're all frustrated with washington. look at the jobs. we can't afford to joke around anymore. we have it look for ideas that serious, address our big problems and fix the big problem ps we've been ignores big problems trying temporary fixes and can't afford to do it. we're in for a long, tough haul to get out of this mess. >> peter, you folcused on china. everybody agrees their currency, playing games with occurrence any a way that definitely is

costing u.s. jobs. estimates of half a million even up to a million from credible sources. why couldn't the president and both sides decide to say, you know what? we'll do some kind of compensatory tax or some kind of entry into the markets ourselves in the currency market, something that says, china, we applaud their growth. we know it's good for the chinese people but they can't monkey around with currency in a way that undermines u.s. jobs any longer? >> absolutely. weren't of the best selling vehicles in china are buicks. we can't make them there and let them in. subsidizing. we can intervene with an attack both for the purpose of importing to the united states and investing in china. it would give us prices better prices if china floated its currency. if we did that with the energy invoefting policy we could crazy 5 million jobs over three years without much problem.

a fantastic effect on the u.s. economy. get us growing again. energy, bank regulation and principle reform for homeowners. those are the four legs of the stool that could turn this economy around. but that requires a president that would think outside the box, let go of past ideology and both the republicans and democrats along with president obama simply aren't willing to do things like that. >> the federal reserve is going to meet again in a couple of weeks. there was nothing that came out of this jackson hole speech the other day in terms of further action. do you expect the fed, should the fed try to do something and do you expected fed to somehow get involved in any european bailout for fear of what a collapse there could end up doing in terms of our own economy? >> no question that the bad jobs numbers put a lot of pressure on the fed. t the fed has been creative

innovating the economy. if europe starts to go down it will take a lot of fed money to fix things. the fed will absolutely have to weigh in in the next few months or decide they have to. whether they should is another question. if you go back and look at chairman bernanke's speech, he's saying, guys, politicians in washington, you got get fiscal policy in order because monetary policy is running out of ammo. almost crying for help. maybe we'll see with obama's speech he'll start to get it, but i'm not so sure. if he doesn't we'll see more quantitative easing. >> kevin and peter, thanks for your outside the box thinking on jobs. obviously we'll look with you eyes on the president's proposals coming up next thursday. thanks for joining me today. coming up, battle of the super rich. how much should wealthy americans really pay in taxes? warren buffett and my next guest are duking it out in the press. and i'll square off with others

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what i propose incidentally would not touch the taxes of 99.7%. i'm talking about 3/10 of 1% of the american public. the people from $1 million on up i think should be asked to share in a little of the sacrifice we're all being asked to share. >> that was warren buffett on his "new york times" op-ed saying it's time for the

government to stop coddling people like him. he wants washington to raise taxes on the rich to stem the tide of debt. democrats cheered. it made my next guest mad as hell. a wealthy man as well. last week responded in the "wall street journal" calling buffett dead wrong. he deeply resented the idea he was coddled. saying top earners pay the lion's share of federal income taxes and half the workers pay nos at all. and uncle sam should raise revenue for fairly and spend it more wisely before asking him to pay more. after all, i did earn it. wrong on taxes and missing the bigger picture. i don't know if i'll persuade him but appreciate he was willing to engage me today on it all. >> thank. >> here's the context i want to suggest for the broader tax conversation. right now we're in a period, for a decade we've been at war as a nation and the first time in a period of war where we cut taxes

for the folks of society and made it a priority to keep taxes lower on the wealthy. we're on the eve of the baby boomers retirement. we'll double the number of seniors on social security and medicare. taxless have to go up on all americans, on the middle class, something politicians won't fess up to and third also in a situation where in the last few decades, the income for those at the top has really been surging, almost doubling, as a schaffshae national income, from the lower upper class, beneficiary of lots of changes in the global economy. given that context, why should folks like us, plea to alesser extent, you as el, be contributing to the fiscal adjustment we know the country needs when wee racking up trillions of debt over the years? >> there are probably several reasons why that argument is erroneous. the first thought -- and i think

it would have to deal with questions of whether or not it would work, and secondly, basic elemen elements -- the assumption that one could raise the rates on people earning $1 million or more and collect the money that is estimated could be clebted, collect the, cbo estimates about $50 billion a year. assuming people did not change behavior. $50 billion a year on $1 trill and a half is a rounding error. >> why do you have to solve the problem to have a fair sharing of the burden of -- >> let me try to finish the question. second issue is the money would not actually be raised. people would change their behavior. they would seek to make investments in ways that would not result in paying that kind

of income tax. every tax cut that we have ever put into effect, tax margin's -- ever put into effect, has increased the amount of money we raised through taxation. and every time we raise the rates we reduce the amount we collect. >> yeah. these are some -- some of these are almost matters of ideology where we may disagree. i worked in the clinton white house. clinton raised taxes on the top tw two percen 2%. an economic boom. it was a good time for the economy. the idea a few more marginal points in income tax at the margin for the best off of society i think guys like pete peterson and other business leaders you respect would say it's not going to have an impact on economic growth, the things you're earn concerned about. i want to put up some pacfacts. a lot of people get their information from the "wall street journal." focusing as you did in your piece, the share of federal

income taxes shared by the people at the top. look at the tax federal burden, doesn't include just income tax, payroll tax, state and local tax, property taxes, we've got a chart i want to put up. look at the total tax burden in the united states, the top 1% average until about $1.3 million, earn about 19.4% of the income and pay about 21.5% of total taxes. slightly more than income share but not something the slippery slope to sweden. the middle 20% average income around $55,000 earned 13% of the income, pay around 10% of taxes. bottom 20%, struggling. $17,000, just 2% of the taxes. we don't have a remarkably progressive tax system. you could make an argument we should actually have something somewhat more progressive. i don't understand what's not fair about that and why those who are best off, especially in

a time of war, shouldn't be asked to pay more to contribute to the fiscal adjustment we know the nation needs? >> all right. that's a very long question, and there's premise. >> part statement. part question. >> and there are premises in the statement that i would take issue with. >> like -- >> most of the money that is paid in -- in federal taxes are the -- are the medicare taxes and the social security taxes, which directly tie to the benefits that equal -- >> that's not actually true. medicare give much back than they put in. >> so do people in social security. but it is time to the individual and not too general -- general purposes. the income tax raises about $800 billion a year and the people who are in the top 10% which is a group of people that are over $300,000, pay the vast bulk of

that. >> but also earn the vast bulk of the income. that's the point. >> nots the vast bulk of the income. >> they do. >> no. you put together payroll taxes and medicare taxes and separated that from income taxes. payroll taxes are more per capita tax than they are an income tax. >> it's the total tax of average americans. >> and the president did not suggest raising anything other than income tax on what he calls millionaires and billionaires anybody earning $4 million or more a year. that is the issue. my objection is not pay more taxes. i pay plenty of taxes now. and i would not object if i were paying more taxes if, in fact, the process for collecting the tax was an equitable one and i could define what that means. >> but are you, as well-off ceo

you're not going to -- >> let me finish the question. if the money was spent prudently, but it is not. we spent a trillion dollars on a stimulus program most of which went to state and local government to delay laying off people that had to go for a year. there was no economic benefit from that activity. >> tell that to the people who didn't get fired because the state budget holes were being plugged. >> they got fired a year later, matt, and we have -- and we had, and we increased our debt by $2 trillion. >> harvey, we're not going to agree on all this. maybe a chance to continue the conversation somehow, because i do think, and i urge you and other business leaders to consider as part of the fiscal adjustment we need in a nation at war the idea that folks who are civic leaders and business leaders like yourself think there's something wrong being asked to contribute more when so many americans are taking it on the chin. >> matt, we're not being asked.

if people asked me, i had a choice. if you raise the tax rates, i'm not being asked. i'm compelled. i go to jail if i don't pay it. >> taxes are something we do as a price of the civil society. >> of course it is. it's not being asked. >> it's a proposal. >> it's not a proposal. it would be a command. >> once it become as law. >> once it becomes a law, right. >> all right. we'll be on opposite sides of views. i'm not giving up on the fact you might see the light. look at the distribution table. people like us, lower upper class end, you at the higher. looked at the distribution ta e tables and it doesn't change your argument, we need to get a set of economists to agree on. if i persuade you, you'll eat your op-ed or i'll eat it here. we'll leave it there. thank you for engaging on this.

our mega panel, krystal and -- let me start with you. what did you make of the contours of this tax jasion hoop right? >> a great conversation. very interesting. i, of course, come down much more on your side, matt. the thing i can't understand is this. how can you have an ideology on the one hand says it's not fair. i'm getting taxed too much as a wealthy american and on the other hand is saying we have 50% of americans who don't pay any income tax. we need to raise taxes on the poor and the lower class -- i can't understand this. and if you look at it, if you take head-to-head warren buffett and harvey and you take the broader perspective, look at 1992. the top 400 income earners paid about 29% of taxes in income

taxes compared to 2008. they only paid 21%. we've had a historical reduction in tax breaks for the wealthiest americans and a situation where everyone is talking about deficit reduction. primarily that's impacting the lower class, the middle class and we're not asking the wealthiest americans to do anything, and that is fairness. that's what's fair. >> and the one thing i did think, both harvey and the republicans generally. one strong talking point in their messaging now is due to in part republican supported poemses liked earned income tax credit ronald reagan supported. a lot of folks off the tax roll. i wonder if democrats wouldn't be well advised to say everything needs to pay something. $100, $200, $300 even at the lower income level to take that peg of their argument away and have a better conversation about tax fairness that isn't easy to have, you can tell, with the other side? >> a politically wise suggestion and what we do at church or

school raffles. the idea, everybody contributes a little bit so you have full participation. but i thought, matt, the really key point that you made that i think is not understood in this discussion is the fact that the structure of the economy is changing. we are living in more of a winner take all society than we have lived in since before the great depression. the last peak was 1929. and even as the income distributions have shifted to favor the super rich, we've actually proportionately been taxing them less. so i really think they don't have a leg to stand on. what worries me is, i think we're also starting to live in two very different societies. and in terms of the world they live in, with private jets, private schools, gated communities, but also their own economic activity. economic activity which is focused on it's emerging markets, maybe focused on luxury

goods. i think we're increasingly in a place where the super rich don't need the middle class anymore, and i think that's very dangerous for the political culture. >> david, i want to get you in. chris, you're working on a book on that theme. we'll give that the promotion it deserves. >> you know it's my hobby horse story. >> perfect fit to what exactly to encounter. david goodfriend what do you make it of it all? >> sorry to pile on harvey but i think he's suffering from some form of economic amnesia. when you have statement from him like i've neve e seen a tax cut do anything bus raise revenue. two data points. when i former boss and yourself, matt, came to office, bill clinton proposed an across the board budget cut and tax increase to balance the budget that passed without a single republican vote and what happened? revenues went up and the economy approved because people's long-term interest rates and mortgages went down.

then george w. bush. what did he do? not one, not two, three tax cuts. what happened? a bloated deficit with medicare part d, added expense cher exp an iraq war. harvey is wrong. data shows when clinton was president, when truman was president, you had examples. kennedy. you have examples of where the tax code, reagan -- reagan the tax code higher than today. why don't we go back to reagan's tax code and we'd actually have a better budget. the fact of the matter is, this religious adherence to tax cuts solving the problems have been proven wrong and they're not willing to admit it on it's facts. >> we'll come back to more of those facts as we continue to pound on the economic issue. next, back to the economic story dominating the day. we talked about the unemployment problem. after the break, a member of the president's jobs council on how to fix it. the outside looks good... let's see the engine.

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20%. one in five, no mooter how you slice the numbers, america's real unemployment rate proving what dire straits we're in. the president's jobs speech next thursday. the next person says he has got to go big. getting advice from serving as bill clinton's top economic adviser in the white house. welcome. >> thank you very much, matt. >> very disappointing. what do we need to do? what should the president be calling for next thursday? >> well, the point of this report, i think, underscores the fact we are suffering from a lack of demand. the fundamental problem is a lack of demand in the economy. we have consumers who aren't getting income because they're not employed. we have consumers who can't spend because they're trying to bring down their debt. we have consumers that are hurting because their mortgages are under water. we can't grow fast enough to

absorb the unemployed without additional support from the government. now, one of the things we focused on this week, the jobs council focused on this week, a very immediate way the government can create demand is through infrastructure spending. that is going to be part of what the president talks about next week. it's what he talked about this week. there's -- i was just at a conference about that the council had in dallas. there was business, labor, local government, state governments, republican, democrats. there was overwhelming agreement that we needed to have a significant increase in infrastructure investment. not just to create jobs but truly it does, but also to deal with the competitiveness of country. so there's an obvious place where there's huge bipartisan support and labor management support and if the congress can't see their way to approve this, i would be extremely disappointed. unfortunately, not that surprised but extremely disappointed. >> our mega panel is back.

krystal, christya and david, you're up first. >> thrs, matt. doctor tyson, larry summers looked president obama in the eye and said early on if you spend $800 billion you hold unemployment to roughly 8%, 8.5%. that's proven wrong. have they redone this to accept we're at a different kind of global economy and those assumptions mr. summers promulgated are just wrong? >> i would explain this in two ways. number one it is true the relationship between output and employment, which all of the macromodels in the world assume, that relationship has changed. probably because of globalization in part. probably because of technology. so those predictions turned out to be wrong. based on the very best evidence. on the other hand, what wasn't proven wrong, this this is really important that larry summers and kristy romer said to

the president, we believe a stimulus of $800 billion will create somewhere between 1 million and 3 million jobs and add a significant amount to gdp growth. go to every report of the krcht ea, every report of the cbo who looked at this, the stimulus has worked. so the unemployment level that we went to was higher than expected, but the effectiveness of the stimulus actually was more or less what was expected. >> christya has a question. >> the probably is compelling, but easy to see how it might not be politically achievable. >> yes. >> if the president can't do what you suggest, is there there any way america can pick up the slack or is america doomed to weak economic growth even with a double dip recession? >> the fed indicated in its

minutes and bernanke indicated in his comments at jackson hole there are more things the fed can do. if you look at the history of the 1930s when you had a combination of fiscal policy and monetary policy working to bring the economy out of depression, then when they began to pull back too soon in 1937, the economy went back into a recession, the federal reserve had plenty of room in terms of rate of growth of the money supply to do much more. they have made it clear, and i think it's a very important statement, that it would be best to have a fiscal support as well. very interesting monetary authority saying we need fiscal support. they have said that. but i do think the fed can do much more. >> that's the thing. david before i get you, sorry. christya, before i get you in. looking at what could be 15 months of gridlock on the washington fiscal side and ben bernanke is saying, please, don't make me do this again.

you know, it's not something that inspires a lot of confidence. krystal's got a question. >> looking at job numbers. one of the things i noted is once again the public sector is shedding thousands of jobs over the past 12 months. we've seen an 400,000 state and local jobs lost. is there anyone advocating for once again maybe sort of an extension of the stimulus? helping state and local governments again? because that's something we really have direct control over. >> well, you're right to point out the loss in public sector employment. had you looks at this recovery what is very distinctive, a number of things that are distinctive, standing out right at the top is in recoveries from past recessions the public secretary hasn't grown employment. a big help in the rate of recovery. this time the private sector has added, i think it's 2.4 million jobs over the past 18 months, but one of the reasons we can't get out of this unemployment problem is the public sector is

contracting. this is a huge problem. now, do i think -- my concern here is a political concern. the cbo has, again, scored support for state and local governments as having one of the very biggest multipliers of anything you could put into the economy to generate demand. much, much more than the tax cuts for the top 1%. the mute pmultiplier is less thn one. there's a huge empirical economic environment for using state and local governments as a way to support job creation and the economy, but we are living in a world in which the congress is not paying attention. the republicans, i want to say, the republicans, are not paying attention to the empirical evidence. i just read this morning christya's piece on impeer ittism and pragmatism. there's a lot of evidence democratic and republican economists would agree with, but the people who are making policy, many of the republicans

making policy, are not paying any attention to that whatsoever. yes, support for state and local governments have a big malt plighter effect. it would be a big help. >> we leave it there. thanks for thinking outside the box, laura tineyson and pushingr leaders to do the same. thanks to or mega panel. christya, krystal and david we'll see more of later. just ahead a week ago we were bracing for mean irene. now tatia and the lee are on the radar. woman: downloading music can be expensive.

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carolina and it just going to spread north. >> at this time last friday the east coast was bracing for hurricane irene. some got lucky. hundreds of thousand, still without power or under water. vermont declared a major disaster zone with entire towns cut off due to flooding. access slowly getting better, but one officials says it could be years before the state's roads are back to what they were. not helping, more heavy rain flooding the region. in connecticut a call to investigate utility companies as more than 200,000 people are still without power. my mother lost power there for days. i know how folks are hurting. it's like a third-world country today in connecticut. in new jersey, floodwaters beginning to recede, residents are still without power and feeling the pain. president obama's visited hard-hit paterson on sunday. while the east coast cleans up, the gulf coast holds its breath. tropical storm lee is threatening to dump two feet of rain in parts of the region over the labor day weekend.

finally, off in the distance another storm is lurking. the latest mold so the east coast not totally out of the woods with hurricane katia swirls in the atlantic. we'll, of course, keep an eye on it all and have more next week. and next, delaware governor tells us why his state weathered ire nene response to the political storm of relief funds. n with ginkgo to support memory and concentration. plus vitamin d to help maintain healthy blood pressure. [ bat cracks ] that's a hit. one a day men's. it's like hardwiring the market right into my desktop. launch my watchlist -- a popping stock catches my eye. pull up the price chart. see what the analysts say. as i jump back, cnbc confirms what i thought. pull the trigger -- done. i can even do most of this on my smartphone. really, it's incredible. like nothing i've ever experienced. unleash your investing

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? from natural disasters to fiscal calamities you have to break

quite at few storms to be a governor. this week, lashed by hurricane irene. this week, homes under water and working to get power turned back on. joins me, democratic governor markell. welcome. >> thanks, matt. >> talk first ar the delaware cleanup. delaware in the path of the storm not as bad as oh other areas. what's the status down there? >> everybody's pretty much got power back, thank goodness. especially listening to your reports about some of the other states. we did have some flooding. it took a few days to get power back. all in all, we were fortunate. unfortunately we did lose two people, two lives which is tragic. my heart absolutely goes out to those families. but compared to some of the other states, we fared pretty well. we also had an amazing response team. our first responders across the state, clearly the unsung heroes

in delaware and across the country. >> eric cantor you wouldn't say was an unsung hero. he's playing games with disaster relief. let me play it and then get you to react. >> the house fund acted and funded over a billion dollars, offset by savings elsewhere. yes, we're going to find the money, yet there's a federal role. we have to make sure there are savings elsewhere to continue to do so. >> governor, is this unprecedented? ever heard people say you have to offset disaster relief? >> first of all, i really think shows how totally disconnected so much of the debate is in washington from what's going on in the country. i mean, the nation is on the brink of a financial disaster, and folks like representative cantor and others feel like they have to appease the tea party. then so many people are in the midst of a natural disaster and

essentially send the same message. and i think the debate, or the presentation that i'd like to see are folks who believe what representative cantor believes. go up to places in connecticut and elsewhere, where people have been, as you said, without power for five, six days and then make the case. we have to cut out of medicare to pay for your restoration? that's not the way this country is. again, i think it shows how disconnected so up of what happens in washington is from what goes on in the rest of the country. >> let's shift gears to talk about a different but still important brand of current republican anamty. you had an interesting piece in politico contrasting the model rick perry followed in texas to what you're pursuing in delaware. i want to put up a quote from that piece so folks can hear it. you said the model favored by perry is fueled by low-wage jobs creating a race to the bottom. middle-class model involves

competing with other countries in a race to the top. perry and his foley oh travelers in the tea party are so dedicated to the philosophy that government cannot improve the lives of people, in which it would indeed be unable to make the necessary investments in education and infrastructure. speak more about where perry is trying to take the country as compared to where leadership like yours is? >> this is really the debate for 2012. governor perry apparently being at the leading side of the republican nomination, it's very legitimate to take a hard look at his economic approach compared to others. and essentially, many of the republican governors particularly these days are saying it's all about three things, and those three things are about litigation, taxation and regulation. and certainly we want to make sure that we've got appropriate taxes, that we have an appropriate level of regulation, but the problem is that if you look around the world, there are plenty of places with no litigation, no taxation, no

regulation, and they tend to be places where all the wealth is concentrated and very few hands, and that's a really poor model for building a strong middle class, which, from my perspective is really where the economic debate has got to focus on. >> now, just a little bit of time left. what are you looking for from president obama in his big jobs speech coming up next thursday? will he be able to get anything done with this congress in the next 15 months? >> well, a come things. first of all, not everything has to be legislated. this is a big part of it. i believe the role of us in executive offices in government, what we've got to do is put ourselves into the shoes of the people who create the jobs and the prosperity in the first place. we're not go to create the jobs. we can focus where it's most important. again, this really relates back to the contrasting perry way different approach. those things, when we had great

schools, reasonable taxes, a really strong work force and that requires job training, a great quality of life. having nice parks, good infrastructure, excellent institutions of higher education, when we have a responsive government. when we do all those things we're going to win more than we lose. the problem is the threats we face now from around the world are so keen, are so huge, that we just can't afford to waste all the time with so much of the bickering we see going on from one side to the other now, and in my mind we've got to focus in on the handful of issues that are going to facilitate the jobs in the private sector. >> governor markell, one of the rising stars from delaware showing you can combine economic sense and business sense with social justice. thanks for joining me today. >> thanks, matt. good to see you. coming up on "hardball." leader of the pack. rick perry on top of the polls and now taking heat. first, when the lobbyists come calling. david goodfriend with his "daily

rant" on the proposed merger between@aetd and t-mobile. [ male announcer ] this is lara. her morning begins with arthritis pain. that's a coffee and two pills. the afternoon tour begins with more pain and more pills. the evening guests arrive. back to sore knees. back to more pills. the day is done but hang on... her doctor recommended aleve. just 2 pills can keep arthritis pain away all day with fewer pills than tylenol. this is lara who chose 2 aleve and fewer pills for a day free of pain. and get the all day pain relief of aleve in liquid gels.

you saw him on the panel and now he's back for a "daily rant." david, the floor is yours. >> thank you, matt. dylan often explains how money infects politic. actually it's good for american business. contrary to the corporate funded talking points skewed by conservatives. along comes a story this week that ties it all together. at&t's quest to gobble up team mobile. no better example of money in politics than spending by at&t as it sought to the asquicquire

t-mobile. $11.7 million this year alone and a whopping 72 lobbyists hired. to win over the hearts of demming, civil rights and environmental groups backed the deal. shocker to me as a progressive, though, when 72 democratic house members signed a letter in support of this merger. i goods i shouldn't be shocked by anything anymore but this one is personal for me. see, i'm a progressive who believes that the heart and soul of american business is entrepreneurship, innovation, the little guy with the guts to take on the behemoth. and tell you something else. i work with the coalition of competitive companies and public interest groups that oppose the at&t merger. i stand with the folks who want a shot at building a wireless business, or a software program, or a cool handset and take on the industry giant. i stand with consumers who want to pay less and get more.

now, for a while, i was thinking that maybe our coalition was no match for those 72 at&t lobbyists who got 72 democratic house members to support the deal. but then -- the united states department of justice announced this week that it was blocking the deal. they got it right! the merger would hike prices on consumers and kill jobs. kill investment, and kill innovation. the facts are coming out. the merger actually would cut tens of thousands of jobs rather than create new ones. and prices probably would spike for all u.s. wireless users. so what's going on here? why are democrats, civil rights groups and labor unions backing this dog? money. it's all about money. those 72 house member whose supported the deal? at&t contributed almost half a million dollars to their campaigns. those civil rights groups? one of them faced the

resignation when at&t's contributions came to light. and the labor union, room hear the communications network is dependent on at&t to stay solvent and that's why they backed the deal. i hoe now that the truth is coming out and antitrust laws enforced for a change, my fellow progressives who backed this deal will reconsider. i hope for once principle will outweigh cash and i hope we do the right thing for the american economy. the dismal jobs report means we shouldn't be allowing any dismal job killers right now. it isn't to roll everybodier. the best thing for the american economy sometimes is to tell the big boys, no. >> david goodfriend, passionate, as always. i'm sure you're entirely right. my quick question. i was hoping somehow someone would be able to fix the at&t cell service where i live in