our agenda panel, maria teresa kumar, bill scher, igor volsky, thanks to all of you. setters. the website being thomasroberts.msnbc.com. >>> real quickly a market alert we want to pass along. we're watching the douw jones industrial which is closing in on 16,000. investors cheered by the notion of continued stimulus. the dow right now up by 42 at 15,918. the dow, the s&p poised for six weeks of gains after today's closing. back after this. but there are a lot of people that do ride the bus. and now that the buses are running on natural gas, they don't throw out as much pollution into the air. so i feel good. i feel like i'm doing my part to help out the environment. why would i take one pepcid® when i could take tums® throughout the day when my heartburn comes back? 'cause you only have to take one... [ male announcer ] don't be like the burns. just one pepcid® complete works fast and lasts. hands for holding. feet, kicking. better things than the joint pain and swelling of moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. if you're trying to manage your ra, now may be the tim

joining me now are angela rye and maria teresa kumar. thank you both for being here. there's no question there are problems with the health care law. and the president's working on that. but how can they point fingers when they have no plan of their own, maria? >> well, it's not only they don't have any al anyives. they're also basically not reading their own playbook. they say they need to expand the republican party. how are they going about that? they promised they were going to reach out to latinos, reach out to gays, and reach out to women and in the last 30 days they said no to immigration, no to equal protection under the law in the workplace and reintroduced a 20-week abortion ban. i think not only is the party disarrayed they just realized they're completely disconnected with the american people. not only do they not have any alternatives they want to be a setting party. >> angela, rush limbaugh, the real leader of the republican party, outlined a gop strategy on health care. listen to this. >> the republicans need to be pushing for total repeal, and they sho

joining me now are maria teresa kumar and jared bernstein. thanks for coming on the show. >> thank you. >> jared, how can republicans justify hurting the economy while also hurting americans who need the help the most? >> well, it's a great question. and i think that the justification tends to be if we take away food stamps, s.n.a.p., or any other benefit that's helping people get by in this tough economy, unemployment insurance is another area they've been going after. we're going to somehow give these people the incentive they lack to get out there and work harder. and it's incredibly ironic when you consider that the economy while clearly recovering, clearly getting better is still quite tough from the perspective of folks saying the bottom half of the income scale. what we've seen time and time and what we've seen when the market is tight, if there are good jobs available to people, they will go into the job market and they will get them. don't tell me somebody is kicking back not trying to work so they can stay on these programs. it just

joining us now is maria teresa kumar who is president of voter latino.snbc contributor jimmy williams, and dana milbank, who is a political columne esist fo "the washington post." dana, you have to help me. i don't understand the right wing reaction to this election. they're attacking chris christie who won his election but the cuch who lost is now being elevated into a martyr for what? his crusade against the affo affordable care act? >> well, they want to figure out a way to steal defeat from the jaws of victory. >> exactly. >> look, i think there is an element within the party, the republican party, the tea party, that would rather have some sort of a heroic defeat, a heroic failure, than an actual victory. there's a path to salvation staring them in the face and that's chris christie, by far and away the candidate most likely to have a victory in 2016. and he's the last guy they want to see get through a republican primary. so i think this is -- it's sort of the purity test gone mad here and the idea is we'd rather go down in flames and be pure about