you handed a note to bob ruben. he read it. gave the president a brilliant answer. as the president was aing and awing over the brilliance of the answer erskine interrupted and said mr. president, i think i have broken the code here. ruben isn't that smart. it's sylvia. that addresses the issue you raised. that is high praise for a guy i respect enormously. we are grateful you are here. our best to the folks who raised you for doing a terrific job with you. one sister? one sister? you turned out well. i know hinton, west virginia, they are proud of you. so am i. with that having been said, we turn next -- i want to say -- senator johnson, ok. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i apologize i have to go to another hearing. i just wanted to say this is an incredibly well qualified nominee who is well-known to many of us in her previous incarnations. there must be some character flaw that she wants the job, but other than that i think that she is very well qualified. you can -- the witness can see how controversial her nomination is by this packed committee, but this is an exc

. >> and the last two years of the clinton administration, god bless bob ruben. >> yeah, well, look,e had not just a balanced budget, but a budget surplus. amen to that. in terms of the fed, though, there is some suggestion now that they may actually stop the bond buying by the summertime, by year end. that obviously would be a surprise, i would say, to this market, but is that really realistic, do you think? >> well, i don't know. i saw a story earlier today that they're talking about scaling back. you know, it's almost reminiscent, if you think about the ideas of getting people off of drugs, you know, so we are going to go to the methadone dose or something in fed policy. >> baby steps. do you think there's a real significant downside risk to all this free money? i mean, explain to our viewers, what is the downside here? because at this point, we see rock bottom interest rates, everybody's looking for yield. where are you going to get yield when you've got no rate there, with no interest rate, right, in the bank? you're going to come into stocks. so what's the -- is it inflation? w

he said that he was in a meeting in the oval office with bob ruben, the president, leon, erskine, and you four of you. and i think the president was grilling bob on a particular issue. and he was maybe struggling to respond. you handed a note to bob ruben. he read it. gave the president a brilliant answer. as the president was aing and awing over the brilliance of the answer erskine interrupted and said mr. president, i think i have broken the code here. ruben isn't that smart. it's sylvia. that addresses the issue you raised. that is high praise for a guy i respect enormously. we are grateful you are here. our best to the folks who raised you for doing a terrific job with you. one sister? one sister? you turned out well. i know hinton, west virginia, they are proud of you. so am i. with that having been said, we turn next -- i want to say -- senator johnson, ok. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i apologize i have to go to another hearing. i just wanted to say this is an incredibly well qualified nominee who is well-known to many of us in her previous incarnations. there must be some chara

bob ruben, sylvia mathews and the president is having a conversation. erskine notices sylvia and ruben looks at the note and answers the president's requests to great effect. brilliant response. the president was kind of looking at the response. man, i have broken a code here on ruben. he is not that smart. it is sylvia. if inside sylvia, wooing for me, they had think i was as smart as ruben. i was going to talk to bruce reed about him. he and i worked with a bunch of other people on welfare reform, great guy and he's vice president biden's chief of staff today. i asked him to tell me some more about sylvia. she is a real person. she's just a good person. we've all heard the term "good guy." i don't know how you say that about a woman, "good gal" or whatever. but if you were a man, you say really good guy. people just like her. and that's pretty helpful around here. the other thing, incredibly bright. incredibly bright. able to juggle a whole lot of things at the same time. somehow along the way she's gotten married, lucky guy named steven. they have tw