here is wall street journal's dan henninger. the middle class? >> i may be one of the few people who is still listening to the speeches the president delivers. i get paid. i have been struck, doing this for a long time, talks about a grand bargain for the middle class and i have some ideas and saturday radio address a couple weeks ago it was the same thing. always in every one of the speeches includes getting into the wind and the sun by which he means windmills and building solar panels. sort of like remember the movie the graduate where dust and hoffman's father in law said plastic, it is like obama telling people wind, sun come and i thought this is a guy so abstracted from the lives of real middle-class people out there in the country that he just doesn't get it. he is proposing this utopian environmentalism to people who have been out of work for four years. the other thing i was struck by was looking at the recent gallup poll that comes out, his approval rating keeps hobbling around 50, down 45%. disapproval or approval of

we're back with dan henninger, wall street assistant editor and elisa finley also joins the panel.e years i have been listening to the president say he's making college more affordable and now he's saying its unaffordable. >> he's got to pay more attention because he's done the big tour saying how he's making college easier to afford. now he's saying we can't afford the trillion dollars of student loans out there. he p >> so what's going on with the politics here? >> i think people are hoping that basic economics will, now that it's asserting itself will also be appreciated by the white house. you have, for years now, a situation where the government subsidizes college education and now is shocked that prices are rising, haven't done so much to pump them up with these grants and loans. i hope there's a market solution as opposed to beating up colleges. >> the administration said that since 1983, fees tuition and four year college has gone up 257% basically in 30 years. much faster than inflation or middle class incomes. why is that happening? >> well, the government keeps on pourin

we are back with dan henninger.wall street journal" assistant editorial base editor james freeman and editorial writer alicia finley join the panel. jails, for five years i have been listening to president say he is making college more affordable and now tells us it is unaffordable. >> got to pay close attention. he has done the big tour saying there's a plan dash plan making college easier to afford and now we hear that we can't afford the trillion dollars of student loejs out there. of course, you remember three years ago he put law a plan to increase federal balance sheet bay trillion dollar. >> with student loans. what's going on? what's the politics here? >> well, i think people are hoping that basic economics will -- now that it is asserting itself will be appreciated by the white house. you have for years now a situation where the government subsidizes college education and now is shocked that the prices are rise. i haven't done -- haven't done so much to pump them up with grants and loans. i think that the h

. >> paul: joining us this week, dan henninger. james freeman and washington columnist kim strassel. dan, this marco rubio strategy, what do you think of it? >> other than the fund-raising possibilities for all the principals, as a strategy, wait we're describing it. we'll have a lot of detail in it. the problem is this is about the budget. okay? funding the whole government which is invariably a complex subject. if they pursue this strategy about funding obamacare, yeah, they think they will get some support for it. they will get the support of 43% of the country. the rest of the country watches this, it will roll forward toward the shutdown. then i'm convinced all the media coverage will immediately start, every tv station will talk about the effect of a government shutdown. this is tsunami of coverage is going to wash the republicans out to sea one more time. people won't be able to focus on the complex details of this strategy. >> paul: it will be budget and funding the government and not about obamacare. james? >> i think it's

dan henninger will answer that. >> a mere three years is all it has taken. the problem is, a part-time jobs economy, part-time jobs at a record of twenty-eight million. part-time jobs are rising, and six million jobs, in 2007. and so many part-time people being hired and full-time employment at pre recession cliff and it has to do with policies specifically the affordable health care act which we call obamacare. and provisions of that what on the length of the work week and number of people where we have to comply with the law and employers to hire more part-time employees or move people out of full time work and into part-time work. connell: of obama moving forward from here, if this is more part-time workers, and the overused phrase, and the new normal. >> it would be a new normal. they lay the employer mandate for a year and during the year they work out some of these disagreements and say we cannot have a 30 hour work week under obamacare. normal businesses, there are at a higher level. and part-timers. dagen: the president on the campaign trail and the

dan henninger with year earlier and heard the story, the next surge of as three years old right now.d never have fought in the days of the opposition party in britain that he would emerge to be the great decisive leader. even after world war ii was thrown out of office. you never know. there doesn't seem to be much of a hint of that. the global community seems to be getting a piece of cold feet on intervention. we were talking earlier about british prime minister david cameron throwing the parliament because of the pressure he is getting within his party, the opposition party we don't want to look like the pull of the united states, the rapid tony blair became that george bush. there is growing consternation of we risking another iraq? the president's people are saying let's make darn sure the evidence we are presenting, vladimir putin michelle ng is rejecting that they really are chemical weapons being used and assad is the guy using them and not his brother. what they seem to be saying is if it is his brother who is in charge of this province that was getting all the chemical attac

dan henninger is the editorial editor of the "wall street journal."former staff director for the house government reform committee. gentlemen, welcome. >> good to be here. >> thanks for having us. >> what does it mean for the indust energy industry in general if the president does this without congress? >> it's been commonly called the obama war on coal. it would basically mean the end of the utility industry that depends on coal and the idea is transfer them turnover part coal and part gas. coal fueled utilities would basically be put out of existence. this creates tremendous political problems. you have a lot of coal either being used or produced in states all across the midwest and in the south. you're talking about a lot of employment in those utilities. gina mccarthy, the epa administrator says it's a false choice between economic growth and climate control. but she's given no evidence whatsoever that there is -- that the epa can avoid massive layoffs across the electric utility industry if they pursue this war on coal. >> julian, before you answ

gregg: colleague dan henninger calls it creeping authoritarianism. >> yeah. look, 18,000 plus pages associated with obamacare which one expert told us is just, nobody could possibly understand it. it is impossible to understand. >> right. gregg: dodd-frank, is it even worse? >> yeah. i've tried to read through some of these regulations. i'm not a lawyer, gregg, so it is very difficult to really understand what these regulations are saying and they use all sorts of kind of murky terms are a field day for lawyers and lobbyists. that makes it very difficult for businesses to comply with. if you want to look at the total cost, gregg, of all those 150,000 pages of regulations cost american businesses and consumers, there is good data, about 1.5 trillion, $1.5 trillion a year, gregg, which is almost the cost of the federal income tax system. gregg: yeah. and the epa is now writing and inventing all kinds of rules. that would probably be, you know, stephen, the poster-child for regulation nation? >> no question about it. you know, the problem is, congress has blocke