. >> and up next maria, gene sperling is here. earlier today, the gop-led house passed a bill, a debt limit bill, that did not make the white house happy. we will get the details and mr. sperling's reaction. >>> then banks pushing back against tougher regulation, but which side of the coin is best for you. we will find out, coming up. >>> and later, is this bull rally that we've been watching here for months real and sustainable? larry kudlow says yes and he will face off against our resident stock skeptic, jeff cox. that and much more when we come back on the "closing bell." are you still sleeping? just wanted to check and make sure that we were on schedule. the first technology of its kind... mom and dad, i have great news. is now providing answers families need. siemens. answers. ♪ [ female announcer ] you're the boss of your life. in charge of long weekends and longer retirements. ♪ ask your financial professional how lincoln financial can help you take charge of your future. ♪ is its own reward. but there's nothing wrong with

gene sperling, you are the last word here on this. my privilege.re on the white house side of things meaning you know you are aware probably of where the levels of conversation are and i will start basically with the same question i started with everybody else. what is the status of talks? have a truly begun between the president and senate republicans? >> that seems to be where this is headed. >> is it fair to say this is formally begun? >> i would say when you have seen a president do is do everything he can to create conditions for a bipartisan agreement. you see that by the fact that he was willing to keep his offer to john boehner on the table. even put it in his budget, even if the speaker had pull it back. you see it in the our reach he has done to senate republicans and anyone he thinks would be part -- >> and furrowing gains. is that what is come down to? >> if people ask are we doing enough i think the fact the we are arranging for republican senators to get holes in one. >> amazing from power. >> don't know what you expect us to do. it i

joining me now is gene sperling, the president's top economic adviser. good afternoon to you, sir. >> good afternoon. thanks for having us. >> it is interesting. this has been one of the overlooked stories of the week is the dow 15,000. and a lot of various economic indicators are moving in the right direction, except the jobs numbers. there is still a stagnation feeling. is this a -- is it fair to say we're in the midst of a jobless recovery? do you accept that premise? >> not at all. indeed, we have been averaging over 2 million jobs a year. the way i would put it is to say that we are creating jobs at a very solid pace, that would probably be good enough in most situations. but because we are coming back from the deepest recession our country has had since the great depression, solid is not good enough. we want to see more momentum, more strength, and we really believe we're capable of that. i think one of the reasons that the president is, you know, fighting so hard on his economic policies is that we believe that if we could have more sensible polic

gene sperling just talked about the ideas the president put on the table.hat is ironic, they talk about how the president has changed -- chain cbi, it was their idea and it is not in the republican budget. even though this was their request. look, this is why i think it is important to have a structure, to force the conversation. and we should not be using the debt ceiling, for example, and playing around and negotiating with our full faith and credit fullyne sperling said. clothed. to start. you have jeff sessions, other republicans on the budget committee in the senate. obviously working with paul ryan in the house. so it is a for him for that conversation take place. a bit of an action-forcing mechanism. number one, it happens in public. that does not mean people cannot continue to have conversations, but i think it would be a useful way to finally get people's minds focused. >> but they are so far apart. how does it even begin? >> let's say we went to conference. you said there, to use the clich?, one budget is from mars and one is from venus. it does n

patty murray, paul ryan, rob portman, and gene sperling.hank you to the peterson foundation to let me do this. oh, i have one more. [laughter] this was new to me this morning. we have one more democrat on board, a veteran of the budget wars. my apology. maryland congressman chris van hollen. democrat. [applause] the ranking member on the committee with paul ryan. >> how you doing? you thought you could get away? >> no, this morning you got an invitation to join the budget committee. there was a proposal a couple -- right before the last recess -- that said the committee between the two budgets was going to be paul ryan, a republican of his choice, you, patty murray, ron wyden, and jeff sessions. and the six of you would start getting together. that stand? is that even a plausible beginning scenario for how the house and senate begin this reconciliation process? >> we would like to do that. meaning patty murray, who was asked to go to conference. democrats in the house, on the budget committee, we want to go to conference. that is the next.

murray, republican congressman paul ryan, the director of the national economic counsel chairman, gene sperling. >> unfortunately at this point, the republicans are objecting to us going to conference, so i find myself in a very difficult position. you're in a ez cloed room and there's two of you, you're not going to get a deal. >> i don't think we're going to get a grand bargain. that implies you fix the problem, but when you have the majority in washington unwilling to embrace the kinds of reforms that make medicare solvent, i don't see a grand bargain happening. >> if you look at what the president has done, he has put forward two of their explicit requests. >> if we're going to ping-pong game here, you've done your shot. cpi, they owe you something in return. >> i think that some of them re recognize that to some degree, the ball is in their court. >> debt ceiling looks like september, october. is it going to be a crisis when it comes up and if so, is it going to be needed at the trigger to force the talks? >> yes. >> so, it is going to be a crisis and it's needed. >> yes. >> every single o

. >> you should have seen gene sperling earlier on the program, larry. he definitely disagreed with that. >> they've done whatever they can to stop the sequester. wrong. limited government. >> larry kudlow and jeff cox, thank you, gentleman. up next, the nasdaq is snapping a five-session winning streak. bertha coombs is breaking down the big winners in today's tech check. >> we have the nasdaq coming down today, but for the last nine sessions, we've seen fresh 12-year highs on the nasdaq composite, as tech continues to grind higher. today, it was really a lot about media. that's where the mojo was coming in terms of the nasdaq 100. you had news corp., the best performer and actually adding the most impact after putting in earnings that were better than expected. cable was a real factor there. news corp. at an historic high today. netflix also with a cable deal with disney in terms of some exclusive content today, also moving higher. and amc spun off from cablevision is doing fantastically with the walking d dead. but my favorite walking dead story is gro

furman, who is right now in a separate advisory role at the national economic council chaired by gene sperling deputy to between sperling. "the wall street journal" saying that the president will nominate him to take over for alan krueger. back to you. lori: latest personnel shake-up. thank you, peter. >> you bet. melisssa: fuhrman, rubenite, bob ruben school of economics. won't be much of a change there. >>> senator john mccain slipping into sir -- syria for a meeting with as saut rebels. he is the high raestest ranking official to visit the country since civil war broke out a few years ago. now we're learning the white house had a head's up on all this. what is the endgame? time for lou dobbs. >> wouldn't it be stunning if they had not known that senator mccain would meet with the head of the free syrian army, the rebels but knowing what they do and did, what is the difference? here is a meeting that takes place over the course of several hours in syria, i.e., may be about a bit of a boost for the syrian factions fighting against assad. surely this not, as this administration is fond of sayi

>> the answer to your first question is, yesterday, i talked with gene sperling. >> did you make any to give this up. >> i felt bad earlier when you were saying -- wow, he's such a well -- how do you get up every morning and do this when it seems like we're spinning our wheels with a lot of this. >> because i'm not going to be the first generation of americans to leave this country worse off. >> thank you, erskine. i'm very glad you're doing this. i think we need to -- >> got to get it back out. >> we're going to continue this conversation in a couple of minutes. but first, we're a few minutes away from the adp numbers. we'll continue this conversation with erskine. with ideas, with ambition. i'm thinking about china, brazil, india. the world's a big place. i want to be a part of it. ishares international etfs. emerging markets and single countries. find out why nine out of ten large professional investors choose ishares for their etfs. ishares by blackrock. call 1-800-ishares for a prospectus, which includes investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. read and consider it ca