gwen: sotomayor at the senate. health carereform lurches rward. mixed news on the economy. and keeping secrets from congress. tonight on "wahington week." many senatorhave asked me about m judicialphilosophy. it's sile. fidelity to the law. gwen: sonya otomayor speaks. -- sonia sotomayor speaks. and so do senators, firefighters, suppters and detractors. after four ays of judiciary committeeearings, were any nds changed? >> rmarkable. she gets a 10 fr judicial temperamt.

as judge stomayor tookher turnn the hot seat both publicans and democts played heir assigned roles. the republicans, skeptica >> y said a wise latina woman would reach a etter conclusin th a male counterpart. judge sotomayormade her now famous remarks about a wise latina woman mang better desions than other judges. i am disappointed that we still have a lt ofmuddled testimony ad lack of clarity. ally a person going o the sreme court shouldbe clearer in my view. gwen: an the democrats in ull embrace. >> y look at sonia sotoyor's story and he noble experimenttoday. >> she's a udge in which all americans can have cnfidence. gwen: in the middleof it all, a nomineewho consisttly sidestped any questions bout aboron or gun rights or

campaign nance reform or any other hot btton issue tht might come efore the court. >> senator,would you want a judge or a nminee who came in re and sai i agree with you this is uconstitutional, before i ha a case beore me, before i had both sides discsing the issue with me? i don't know that tt's a stice that can be. gwen: interesti point. so aft four days of pretty detailed testimoy, where do we stand on this nomination, joa don't surprise me. , really. >> well, there's o question she's going to be cofirmed. but what exactly did w see? we did see se things. there was pnty we didn't see. i'll get to that but what did we se? she presented erself much mre as a modate. very cautious in her approach to the senators and o the law itself. she really kep in check the reputed iensity. andhe is quite a itense

person. she's ambitious. shs driven. she's from t bronx. she's a new yorker. anshe really kept it inheck no matter how prooked she was. we found outhat she likes baseballwhich some of us already knew, especily the yankees she lik perry mason and told funny storie about her mother. so we saw much more of her, more of judge sotoayor's personality. on the law, you name an ise, i catell you how she demreektedhe questioning. - deflected e questioning. sort oin cooperation with the nators as she dflected it. gwen: it seemed ike the democrats an republicans were ther in more interted in criticizing er for her personal belefs or speeche she gave or tgging her wh em and democrats were intested in talking about her personal gooqualities. but very few tked about her jurirudence. >> i thinkthe democrats felt it wasn't in their interes to have president obama first appointeput on the hot seat by anyoner taken down a pat that might ut her in a bo as she rsponded then to

republins who would asksome followup questions. you did play the cl about the wise latina comment that she did say tt in many ofher speechesthat she thought a wise latina wan would come to a better dision than a white male bcause of theexperiences of the wan had. d she said, ook, tht was a comment that iade to my audiencesto try to inspire them to become ke me, to become a jdge and- gwen: she didt say that just once. she sa that 20 times. >>he said it many ties and said iwas many times inthat ve and -- gwen: idon't mean n her speeches but in the aring. she waasked about it overand over aga. >> rht. she was. and then the othe thing she d along those lines, e pulled back fro the president's n references to empathy. she said, wll, that wouldn't be my pproach to judging as many of you ow, president ama had famously said e woulbe looking for someone wi empathy. and e basically said that him, not me. >> a the end of all this, we had pretty big development in theepublican senator, sessions, saidthey're not going to ilibuster. what's the betting ere?

so she's going toget confirmed. is igoing to be a big confirmatiovote or a narrw on >> going into it, ifelt that a lot of republicansdidn't want to give her agood of vot or as poor of a vote as john roberts did when chief jutice, now chief justice john roberts, went before the senat in 2005, the vote was 78-22. and i think ot of republicans el that thatas unfair that he gothat many, 22. because as some of y might remember, in 199 and 994 whn ruth bder ginsburg and stephen breyer came rough as democratic apointees, they got plus votes. that sticks in peple's craw, the republics' craw thathere were 22 democrats against jhn roberts. so i think there'sa chance that so might vote ainst her just tsort of remedy that. but by the end f this hearing, there was a little bt of a love fest thg going on and we'll see probably the eek of august 3, she'll have h vote on the oor. and, ou know, it ouldn't surprise me if man of the reblicans on the mmittee

endeup being for her. gwen: threerepublicans announcedoday. >> right. >>oan, as mh as thy -- she avoided sutance and the democratsidn't bother with it, either, there we a couple of sues people cared bout. how did he come ou on abortion andow did she manage therichey case which was a embarrassment that he got overruled byhe supreme court right before h hearing? >>'ll take the eas one first on abortion because t's not as complicateas ricci. she said she wouldfollow predent. what does at mean? the court hasgone in two directions. five justices ho say thatroe v. wade, te law of the lnd, vigorousreaffirmation of that. then we have ather set of five ustices with anthony kennedy the swing vote allowingore regulation. she essentially said, i would follow both, ut she did say something that pleased abortio rights avocates. because she said thatshe still thinks it'simportant to he any reguation take account of the mother's healt so err onthe side of the

mother's health in regulaton which is please the abortion rights advocates. in the firefhters case, ths is the one where te second circuit panel on wich she sat endord new haven, conneccut's tossing of promotion rults from th firefighter tests ecause whites dramaticall outscored racial minorities. s said we were ollowing precedent. we were followin the precedent in place atthe time. e supreme curt came in and changed the rules whh frankly is true. >> joan, first of ll, she gets points r being a yankee fan. but more substantely, she's going to be confrmed. what does this tellus, what do the last few daysell us about the ne time, whenever tht is anare there any paraeters that have be set about the next time in ters of the typ of judge that president obma mht pick? and wn might the next onee? >> the ext one could as soon as next ear. we do have five justice who are over 70 upthere. and it makes it easier for th xt one to not say much and it makes t harder for

senators to ay you must answer because they di not demand answers this time round. gwen: tanks for hangi in there all week up on e hill. sotomayor hearis may have been less consequential in the end than the haos break beng out elsewhere on capitol hill over healtcare reform. the prsident sensing lt ground spoke outat the wite house today. >> irealize that the lastfew miles of any race are the hardes to run. but have to say nw is not the time to slow down. tse who are betting against this hapning, thisyear, are badly mistaken. gw: can't have oo many sports meta frs. snificant legislatio moved through bubig problems remain most having to with cost. >> eletions have conseences. this is a aring example of that. we have now, again,committed another actf genrational theft of laying an unsustainable fscal burden o

future genetions of amerans. gwen: the rt of it had to d with a distit absence of bipartisanship. >>unfortunately there are only two numbers you nd to remember fro the enire marku process. d that's 13 and 10. when it was republican amendmen it was defeated, 13-10. when it ws a democr amendment, itwas passed. 1313-so. -- 13-10. gwen: this is very slppery. so what to expect? >> t president is righ this is frther than health care refm has ever gotte and certainly t process is fuher along than it was in 19 and 194 when e clintons trd this. and therwas some big accomplisents this week. the are five committees i all o capitol hill who he to act before the bills can go to the housend senate floors. three of thedid this week. the heth committee in the senate, ways and mea in the house,nd the labor committee ithe house. henry waxn's energy and commerce committee ill pass its bill ot next wednesday

but were still waiting f the sena finance committee. and thi -- gwen: we hea -- we were going to hear om them and last ek, last friday. >> and they will b meeting er the weekend andwho knws? we may hr from them next week again. anin some ways, thi is the most crucial one o watch. because hey are dealing n the senate sde, which is going to be a hardeplace to pass tis bill, with all th touchy, tricky questions of ow are you going toay for this thig? son the middle of all of th, as they are tting ready to congratulate hemselves o all of is progress, the a.m.a. is onbard the house bil, suddenly we have th head of the congressional budget office step into this. and dung estimony, he -- douglaselmendorf is his name, e final abiter on the numbers d gets up and warn that this bill isot going to do much not going to do nearly enough to ring down heath care cost. which of course is ne of th

bas reasons that we are going thugh this exercise he says there is not enough as he p it, we do ot see the sorof fundamental changes thatre really going to brig heth care costs under control. at's a big setback. >> wasone. asons president obama spoke on fday to conter that? he g out there and it seeed like he wanted at least say, look, both - accentue the positive, iminate the gative but ounter all the attention that cameto that report. >> this ws a surprise appearance bythe president. he was not scduled to be making anstatements on this. interestinglyenough, they canceled thregular white house press briefg which would have been robert gis being ounded bout questions about t setbacks. so this, ithink, wasvery much of an effort o the president's part to recapturehe mometum and make sure he'sgot the meage going into what cou be a pretty critical weekend. >> we hed just now tht the president talking abouthere will be a ill this year. and- but there's so ch pressure about augt. about this deadli for agust. and why is that?

what -- wy is the prsure coming from t white house about that? >>well, everyone agrees hat you got toet this bill done this year ort's not going to happen. you can't get smething like this done in anelectionyear. so if these bills re not rough the house and he senate by th august reces, these ngressmen d senators wi go home and te interest grps are going to pounce. and essenally, you know, there's a ry real danger that any prress they've made to date areoing to -- it's gong to be lost. if theyre allowed to go hme in august without haing passed a bill. this deadline,t least in the inds. whie house, is a vey rea one. othe other hand, wee all of a dden hearing senators upon the ll saying wait a minute. gw: of both parties. >> thas right. >> we als heard something o today off the hi. and that was speaker pelosi who ca pretty much worker will in her chamber gien her majorit say she may wait and lethe senate go firs now, what's tat all abut? well, the fear in aa lot of

house mbers --fear that a lot of use members are going to have is they are gng to take big and dangeus vot on thigigantic ealth cae bill, one that has a lotf new taes in it nd a controveral government-run health plan a an option. ly to see it brgained awy in e more coservative nate. we've seenthis happen before. in 193. in washingt, the word b.t.u. is a verb becausehe house got b.t.u.ed f voting fr an unpopular ergy tax only t see it e given away in the senate. nancy pelosi is listeng to her members and she reaizes they are ry nervous about getting t there on this bill before they knw what the senate is going to prepared to produce. gwen: o. so maybe by in time we will be talking about the me thing. if we re, chances e - of getting sometng passed gos down eponentially. the state of the ation's economy is t biggest

underlying drag on the prsident's domestic ageda. today we herd new home construction is up and fourig banks announced big tuaround profits and yt there is wory. why, jeane? >> well, ere are a little bright spo but there's a whollot of darkness out thre still in the onomy. ifyou look at unemployment, we're still shedding hlf a million jobs wek. and there something wrong th the jobless umbers. something that even economists can't que figure out. the unemployment rate is not behaving in a way hat they expect. even t federal reserve has been a littlpuzzled byit. and then you look t foreclosures. gwen: i heard tod the unemploymentate was up to 15% in mchigan. >> and double diits in a numr of states. and nationally, it's gng to go at leas to 10%. and som are nowsaying mybe even higr than that. despe the fact tha the white house hahoped to -- the stimulus would hold it t8%. so that number is becoming a very tough numbernd it scares

people. becae it's a number the understand. then you look at forecloures. another thing consume get. 300,000 month. the scond quarter of his yer broke all rcords in istory. and so the unemploymt and the foreclosuresre now feeding oneanother. the forlosures that we're seeing now are not th people who are czy and bought the big house theycouldn't afford. these are people who e losing their jobs, who hd 30-yar fixe ortgages. so that'scaring consers. syou have consumer onfidence down. so they don'tshop. you got this whole cycl is stl out thee. and the growth nubers, the white house had hoped for that were pretty healthy, now t looks as tugh those nubers aren'really going to com true. gw: they look ike pie in the sky always? >> not always. buthey are now. >> and that's it. was preside obama right to have that confence - that rosy set ofprojections and now they're undmining some of the credibility and the isues like

health care and l that, but were they vaid at the ime? >> well when they issed them in january,most of the economists i talketo cut hem some sck for the timing of when they d to do their forecasts. which was they were eveloping them late last yer, late fall, and in the winter and they issd them in the early part of the yea and they wern't that far off. of what wall street analysts were predicting and wat the cogressional budget fice was predicting. so they were at that lile esier than res -- a - so they were a littl rosier than the rest but in the ballpark. and what's happened i all the other economists he gon back and vised their numbers and e white house is jus getting there. and speaking of areason to pass healt care before the august break,n august is when the white house wil release its new bget forecast. and those nmbers re going to be significantly down. and the defit projections are going to be sigficantly higher. >> gwen menoned another

developme this week which is the annuncement of some vestment banks, inluding goldman sachsthat their profs were just throgh the roof. and goldmanachs also announced that it was goi to go ba to paying gigantic ounts of comnsation to their executives. how does ts -- as peple are out there sufferi, how does this kin of news ffect the white house's potical calculations? >> well,i think some pople are startled by it. especially godman sachs. because all othe executives both in t bush white house and th obama wite house who have been leading up thes recoveries have been rom goldman shs. and so in terms of a ppulist argument there, pieces there thatsomeone could seize pon. but those are t little bright spots that are out here. les face it. if we're goingo recover, then those guys are going tstart getting bonuses again. bu i still thik from what ecomists tell me, we re on a rollcoaster. anso some of those profits are based on the fat that previsly, they had writn down the value of thir assets

because theyexpected the and the recession to drw down those assetsvalue petty substantially. it wasn't as bad as they thought. so they revalued th. and so nothing reallychanged. but their umbers ent up. so the wil be little brght spots and maybe this i a sign of wall street comng back. t it may not be, to. it may bejust one bright ment and what is liky to be a mu longer recover >> and o what we're seeing now is a last fall, e heard about was the bas and the banks are going o fail. and now the baks are doin bett. and clearly it's no having -- there's a difrence between wall strt and main street and we're seeing at right now. d so there miht be this sort two tiers o two tracks for quite me time? there could be. there could be an uneven recovery. and the are some banks that are doing well. butear in mid that there e several othebig banks that still aren'tdoing very well. but absolutely the unemployme rate and the pressures on he

tail sector and the mai street area of the enomy are t abating at thi point. gwen: ok well, ther were alsonew questions this wek on exacly what t c.i.a. was an was not telling congre about a secret ogram to assassnate suspected terroris. but that dbate is trning out to be the potential ieberg that cld undercut t obama adnistration's efforts toget past th past. mark? >> for ational security reporters, it ki of feels like the nnth year of the bush ainistration. we're ju continuing to look back. and there'sa few thngs happening. fit of all, thee was the news over th past week tat the c.i.. had the ecret program, that lee --leon panetta, the c..a. director, learned about itnd when he heard abt it went tocapitol hillnd held emergency meetings and said i caneled this program and you hen't been told bout it for eight years. gwen: maybe he sould have reought in retrospect.

>> a lot of drama. and that part of it of course adding to the dramawas that at the earl period vice president cheney advisedhe agency not to notfy congres as it came out, and we'e still tryi to learn the parameters of this program, but i seemed like it was a progm to assassinate senior al qaeda leaders wherever they may be around theglobe. of course, as w know nd as it has been repoed for years, the gency hasbeen killing a qaeda lders. they jut haven't been doingit with humans. they'vbeen doing it with drones flying oer pakistan. there are still qstions about what exactly ts program was all bout. and it w announced today that the hoe intelligence committe is going to be examining this program and others sort of -- opning the door a it for a wider investigation. and we'll see how this plays out. because i hink the house sort of thinks don't know what we n't know. so we might as ell start instigating to find out

gwen: it unds like a pandora's bo >> a call to the jern -- to the attorneyeneral, deciding whether to lauh an investigation to the interrogation progra possibly to bring charges against ome interrogators in the c.i.a. who may have gone beyo what the justice depament allowed them to do in terms of the harsh interrotions. >> mark, a lot othis recalls the earl 1970's when we und out about assssination attempts by e c.i.a. with fidel caro and others. d then the church commite onthe hill really tk a lot hand. fact, some of the legislation that gr out of the church committee now -- gets us to present interms of prohibitionon assassinatg foreign leaders. are we talki -- when you talk about te new hillcommittee investigations, are we -- trying notto get too much into anythi that might distract democrats from e -- >> there's lot going on. there e some who would like to see something likethat. i interviewed rush holt, a

member of the hous intelligence mmittee and he is looing along those lies. about having some kid of an inveigation like church and pike that happened n the 1970's. back then, t was -- there were so manyevelations, tat peopleidn't know much about what had happened. from the dawn of the c.ia. and there has been th slow trickle of revelations so maybe there's not a much to atually come out of one ofhese coittees because it's en dribbli out for eight years. so i think hey're going to wei that. gwen: asisay, pando's box, you're goi to be busy covering theninth year of the bush administration for some time to come. thanks, everody. we got to go. but the conversatn continues online. we'll ta your questions in our web exclusi washingt weekq&a. jo in by logging in at pborg/washingtonweek. keep up with daily development on the newshour wih jim lehrer on monday jim sits dn with president obaa and on wednesday, the preside holds a prime time news confence.

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