i'm joined now by jerad bernstein. mr. bernstein is now a senior fellow at the center for budget and policy priorities. jerad, thanks for your time. >> my pleasure, great to be here. >> standard and poor's has downgraded the united states. moody's and the other agencies have not. what's the importance there? >> the importance there is many fold. first of all, they are one of three and it's easy to think oh, my goodness, u.s. has been downgraded, end of story. no, as long as the other two have us at aaa, which they do, and have asserted they'll keep us there for awhile. lots of things probably won't happen. if all three downgraded at the same time a lot of pension funds would have to divest and get rid of their treasury holdings. >> they have rules you can only invest in aaa. >> those rules don't necessarily apply when it's just one of the three takes a stem at one notch. >> in terms of why s&p did this, as i mentioned, howls of protests in washington today that they got everything including the math wrong, they were off by

bernstein is now a senior fellow at the center for budget and policy priorities. jerad, thanks for your time. >> my pleasure, great to be here. >> standard and poor's has downgraded the united states. moody's and the other agencies have not. what's the importance there? >> the importance there is many fold. first of all, they are one of three and it's easy to think oh, my goodness, u.s. has been downgraded, end of story. no, as long as the other two have us at aaa, which they do, and have asserted they'll keep at least for a while, there are lots of things that probably don't happen. if all three downgraded at the same time a lot of pension funds would have to divest and get rid of their treasury holdings. >> they have rules you can only invest in aaa. >> those rules don't necessarily apply when it's just one of the three takes a stem at one notch. >> in terms of why s&p did this, as i mentioned, howls of protests in washington today that they got everything including the math wrong, they were off by trillions of dollars in calculations, white house announcing it as ama

the politics are completely upsidedown telling us the opposite. >> jerad bernstein, senior fell low, msnbc contributor, hitting the nail on the head with the last comment there, thank you very much. >>> still ahead, the shutdown of a major government agency for fun and profit. what the heck is still going on with this thing with the faa? we've got details ahead. but i d. they said i couldn't fight above my weight class. but i did. they said i couldn't get elected to congress. but i did. now i'm trying to make it in music. ♪ sometimes when we touch ha ha! millions of hits! [ male announcer ] the new hp touchpad. get it now for $100 off, starting at $399.99. ♪ what if we designed an electric motorcycle? what if we turned trash into surfboards? whatever your what if is, the new sprint biz 360 has custom solutions to make it happen, including mobile payment processing, instant hot spots, and 4g devices like the motorola photon. so let's all keep asking the big what ifs. sprint business specialists can help you find the answers. sprint. america's favorite 4g network. trouble hearing on th

jerad bernstein, thank you for being here. fairly characterize the idea behind the fast infrastructure investment proposal? >> absolutely, and you heard mr. rubio talking about roads and bridges, one of the things that recommends fast, and i was there during the recovery act. i traveled around the country with the vice president and went going to work sites, and we saw lots of great roads and bridge projects, but one of the things we saw there is that work has become considerably more capital intensive. we want to make sure we're creating jobs for people, not for machines. fast, fix america's schools today, which would repair the country's schools, that work is labor intensive, insulation, boilers, windows, maybe even greening up these schools with solar panels. that kind of work puts a lot of folks back on the job. don't tell mark rubio about that part, but it does work. >> the idea this is a scalable problem that you can do this on a small level as one school or a big level as all the schools in the country, depending on wha

the politics are completely upsidedown telling us the opposite. >> jerad bernstein, senior fell low, msnbc contributor, hitting the nail on the head with the last comment there, thank you very much. >>> still ahead, the shutdown of a major government agency for fun and profit. what the heck is still going on with this thing with the faa? we've got details ahead. thank you for calling esurance. man, we give out so many car insurance discounts. safe driver discount, homeowner's discount... multi-car discount. i wish we could get discounts everywhere. body like a greek god discount at the gym. best moves discount at the disco. you guys are so funny. really? best actress discount. uncalled for discount. whatever discount. [ female announcer ] tons of discounts. see for yourself at esurance. technology when you want it. people when you don't. [ male announcer ] these days, even your trash can be a gold mine for identity thieves. ♪ we don't believe your garbage should be used against you. [ alarm blares ] we're lifelock. go to lifelock.com and join the fight against one of the fastest grow

joining me now, msnbc contributor jerad bernstein, former chief economist to biden and robert greenstein, the founder and president of the center on budget and policy priorities. thank you both for joining me tonight. >> sure. good to be here. >> bob, i have been waiting eagerly for your analysis of this bill. i know this is a hard assignment for you because it came out so quickly. it's the most rushed giant package i've ever seen, especially in deficit reduction territory. give me your take on what we're looking at here. >> yeah, we put out our take an hour or two ago. you know, lawrence, i'm reminded of the 1950s sitcom "the life of riley" where the main character says what a revolt and development this is. the tea party, i think, did very well here. this is a package with large spending cuts and no revenues. now, to be sure, the joint special committee, which is charged with coming up with $1.5 trillion in savings by thanksgiving could raise revenue, but speaker boehner has already said he will not name a single republican to the committee who would vote to raise any revenue. i think