borrowing and borrowing and putting america in more and more peril. >> what does your vote mean for the american middle class? let's talk about it. mark is a democratic strategist of the public relations firm, and christopher is the senior associate dean of georgetown university school of continuing studies, and a conservative commentator. republicans want to act more like the american families. republicans say, well, yeah, that sounds reasonable. but living within our means demands huge spending cuts, and that will directly affect the middle class. are they walking the tight rope here, and what's it going to mean for how our families live? >> well, as you can see, washington has had a great deal of trouble balancing its budget and getting back to the balanced budget that we had when i worked with president clinton. and i think this is very crucial to the middle class outlook. they want the government to spend somewhat less. but they want to make sure that when it comes to making those cuts, that those cuts are made according to their values. so that means if medicare and social security are cut first,

attack by the obama administration, does work for real people, middle class people, because let me tell you the people working at sports authority and staples, david, those are middle class americanssing those jobs to put food on the table and a roof over their heads and send a kid to college. >> did he say they are middle class americans when it comes to the economy? chris christie, top surrogate for mitt romney passing off jobs as staples and sports authority as middle class jobs. folks, we need to talk about this. these are hard working americans, but if this is your only income, let's face it, it's barely a living wage. many people who work at either of these stores are hourly employees. check out workers, folks who stock shelves, warehouse workers, making $8, $9, $10 an hour, less than $20,000 a year. a good chunk of the jobs are part-time with limited benefits, if benefits at all. this is i guess you could say the republican view of the middle class. these are people living paycheck-to-paycheck, working a couple jobs to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head. they are one sick kid or broken down car away from a real financial problem. forget about saving for c

. >> his advisers call this a make or break moment for the american middle class. and they hope to focus the national conversation on inequality. >> in america where everyone gots a fair shot. everyone does their fair share and everyone plays by the same set of rules. >> we saw what happened when we saw an economy built on bad debt and financial instruments. that didn't work. it caused a crash and we are still recovering from it. >> but republicans hope to make the upcoming election a referendum on the president. under a sign that said obama isn't working, gop presidential candidate, mitt romney, blamed the president for the country's economic struggle. >> and what's critical is that we make today barack obama's last state of the union address. no more from barack obama. >> look for the president to outline new plans to revive housing, to boost american manufacturing and help educate workers for the 21st century. but the speech is already getting bad reviews from republican congressional leaders. >> it sounds to me like the same old policies will be seen. more spend

the american middle classes have been hurting, but the question is where and if that pain is going to stop. in dayton, ohio, times have rarely been tougher. four years ago the local economy fell off a cliff. it is reckoned an extra 20,000 families have been slighted by unemployment. the davis family watch their young does shoot hoops. the davises have had their troubles. they all worked in the motor industry, but gm's and dayton plant was not saved by the bailout. they have little more than on jobs since and fear that is how it is going to stay. >> there is a big disparity, because manufacturing jobs are not there anymore. the good-paying jobs i have enjoyed, my kids are never going to see in this country again. >> you really feel it is not going to come back and, if i do not believe it will. >> they built a dream home. last week they put a lot on the market. good >> it seems we keep dodging bullets, and it has been a lot of prayer. >> this is the one thing we did not want to sacrifice. >> sacrifice has always been a part of those stories americans like to tell about themselves. the p

the american lifestyle sustainable? what could be done to make people feel more secure? >> well, the american middle class, maria, has been declining in terms of its effluence for a long time, since the 1980s. the wages for the middle class has been on a downward trend, and it's only now that they're beginning to sense, yes, we see that in terms of wall street, p -- wall street protests and the like. the fact is that capital has benefited labor in the past 20 years, benefited with lower interest rates, benefited to buying investments at cheap interest rates, and to the extent we have imbalances now between corporate profits relative to record levels of gdp and labor and wages which are declining percentages, then i think we'll have significant problems in the future. these imbalances take a long time to correct, and it will be dependent to a considerable extent in the elections of 2012 and beyond, but we really have a labor versus capital situation which is only now becoming recognized by the american public. >> both of you please stay with us. we'll take a short break on the "wall street journal re

you recently wrote that as the american middle class is thinned out, the idea of america as a land of now, what happened to the concept that i think is so important here, this concept of social mobility or socioeconomic mobility, the idea which you could not do in 1 a.d. or 1600 or 1700 a.d. the idea that you can be born in one socioeconomic place in life and die in another one. do we still have that in america? >> not nearly enough. what many studies show is thwe measure it by intergenerational mobility. can sons do better than their fathers and can daughters do better than their mothers. that's been in decline in the united states for the last 20 or so years, and there are other nations in europe, in northern europe in particular, that have surpassed us that also have greater equality of resources and wealth. so i think the chain is broken down here. the ladder has a couple of rungs missing. i think there's a whole strat um of jobs, jobs in manufacturing in particular, which have disappeared. actually that's one reason why presidential candidates of both parties, not just barack oba

teddy roosevelt and his square deal, the president frames this as a make or break moment for the american middle class. >> building an economy that works for everyone. not just a wealthy few. >> he is likely to outline new plans for housing, for manufacturing, and for educating american workers. >> what the president's belief is, we should have a country that invests in manufacturing, that invests in new energy. that invests in preparing our work force and has american values that are about fairness and equity. >> but a congress with dismally low approval ratings, a congress ha has been torn by partisan fights with the president. republicans are offering bitter reviews. >> it sounds like the same old policies will be seen. more spending, higher taxes, more regulation. the same policies that haven't helped our economy. if that's what the president is going to talk about, i think it's pathetic. >> republicans complain the goal is not to conquer the nation's problems, but to conquer the gop. >> we don't have to take my word for the facts. >> the decreasing nastiness in the republican primaries and

a person who has the concern of being a job creator, the concern of being compassionate for the american middleu guys were not lazy useless beg garrs, you were doing work, yet it doesn't matter? >> no, we reached out to him. some of the workers actually tracked him down when he was running for senate in somes mis. he talked to them, said he would look into it and get back to them. he never did. >> some of the workers that were laid off or fired tracked down mitt willard -- i'm sorry, willard mitt romney when he was running for the senate and actually talked to him about this? >> yes, he met with six of them in massachusetts, and we thought he's going to get involved, but nothing happened. >> and this is the man that says, as i've just shown in several clips, he created 100,000 jobs, and tens of thousands of jobs. rein, let me ask you quickly. when you see him campaigning saying that, how do you feel? >> oh, i think -- to me it's simple. it's profits before people. i don't think he's in touch with the reality of what it means to be on a shop floor, he's never been a manager on a shop floor. he's

the richest of americans. and worth very little to middle class americans. >> within a few weeks after the legislation was passed, we all get a letter that says congress and the president have given you this tax cut. and that's pretty much it for the middle class. but for higher income groups, the further forward you go in time, the bigger and bigger the benefits get. so it was really designed to front-load the relatively modest benefits for the middle class and to back-load the benefits for the wealthy. >> so why? why do the winners get policies that make their winnings even larger? you know, this is not a trivial change. if you say from the mid-'90s to 2007, those top 400 taxpayers, they've seen their tax rates decline so much that it's worth about $46 million for every one -- >> for every -- >> -- of one of those 400 taxpayers so it's -- the numbers are staggering. when you start to look within the top 1%, and look at what government has done to help those people out through taxes, through changes in the market, financial deregulation and the like, and through protecting them from the efforts to try to push b

the downward mobility, the growing çinequalities, basically destroying the american dream, destroying the hope of the american middleo better than they are doing, and for those in poverty to be able to enter the middle class. and we have seen now with long-term unemployment, with millions of foreclosures, with staggering student loan debt, these are some of the symptoms of that downward mobility that we're seeing right now with 100 million people right now being worse off than their parents were at the similar age. >> people think a lot about what you were describing as the problem. unemployment is the problem. poverty is the problem. lack of social mobility is the problem. but she just talked about it as symptoms. what are they symptoms of? >> i was just listening to her and thinking of the story where the doctor calls the patient and says i have bad news for you. then i have worse news for you. the bad news is you only have 24 hours to live. the guy says bad news is 24 hours to live? what could be worse. he says i've been trying to call you since yesterday. here we have a diagnosis. it is of a broken system. the p

we need to provide the kind of middle class jobs paying good wages and having good benefits that the american middle class needs to grow, not shrink. he also focused on obviously the successes we've had over the last four years. we are, in fact, better off than we were in january of 2009 today by the difference in a million jobs, lost 786,000 jobs in january. picked up 200,000 jobs this last month. that's a million shift. that's positive direction. but his point was, there is much yet to be done. not only in terms of growing jobs, making it in america, but also in getting our deficit down. those are the two major challenges. >> those are the highlights. that's some of the highlights. >> yeah. >> and i'll stop you there because i don't want to go through the entire speech. >> i hear ya. >> but, of course, the gop argument, sir, as you well know, is that here's what's also happened since president obama has taken office. 1.9 million fewer jobs. gas prices are close to have doubled at a record 46 million people are on food stamps. this is what the gop will be arguing as all of this moves toward

that you know good jobs good wages pensions unions things that actually helped america and the american middle class get strong that those were expenses that had to be cut that those were burdens on competitiveness we were just led to accept driven to except really because. we tried to enact laws to to change that they were struck down we were turned into another marketplace in the world rather than something unique the where we could have build in a merican middle class and in fact even worse i think countries like europe are actually doing better at protecting their middle class than we are sure now because of this clearly and and the this concept of corporations as persons and and speech or money as being something other than property as being speech. how do we. you know you call for an amendment to the supreme court or to the constitution to to basically say ok the supreme court doesn't you know they can they can no longer make these lewis powell like rulings because we're going to amend the constitution how do we get to their. well we get there like americans have always gotten there so t

. >> we have got to rebuild the american middle class and that's manufacturing. my legislation, he talked about it. using our tax money to buy american made equipment. >> g era mindi added that congress has to do its part and not wait for the inauguration still a year away. >>> americans had a chance to weigh in. they did it with the rebuttal plus the tea party. ken wayne has the one issue democrats and republicans may end up in agreement. >> reporter: there is one area where the gop agrees with the democratic president, taxes. >> reporter: the president called for the rich to pay the same rate as other americans. up to now many republicans have called that idea class warfare or the politics of envy. tonight in their official response, republicans said the idea has merit. >> the better course is to stop sending the wealthy benefits they do not need and start providing them so many tax preferences that distort our economy and do little or nothing to foster growth. >> reporter: we sat tonight with the chairman of california's republican party. tom devil carl wasn't

. >> we have got to rebuild the american middle class and that's manufacturing. my legislation, he talked about it. using our tax money to buy american made equipment. >> g era mindi added that congress has to do its part and not wait for the inauguration still a year away. >>> americans had a chance to weigh in. they did it with the rebuttal plus the tea party. ken wayne has the one issue democrats and republicans may end up in agreement. >> reporter: there is one area where the gop agrees with the democratic president, taxes. >> reporter: the president called for the rich to pay the same rate as other americans. up to now many republicans have called that idea class warfare or the politics of envy. tonight in their official response, republicans said the idea has merit. >> the better course is to stop sending the wealthy benefits they do not need and start providing them so many tax preferences that distort our economy and do little or nothing to foster growth. >> reporter: we sat tonight with the chairman of california's republican party. tom devil carl wasn't

i'll let him give the details but strengthening the american middle class, health care is part of that> one of cleef concerns that's been expressed, is that tonight's speech won't be so much as a state of the union as much as it will be a campaign kickoff. the president tomorrow, three days, five day, all of them battleground states. what do you make of that? >> reporter: this is the president's vision of how to move this country forward in a durable way to help all americans. it's his policies that he think will best move the country forward. >> nancy-ann, thank you so much. appreciate your time. >> thank you. >>> republican presidential candidate mitt romney released criticism against president obama in what he called a state of the union prebuttal. he said the time in office can be summed up as debt, decline and disappointment. >> tonight we'll get treated to more divisive rhetoric. it's shameful for a president o use the state of the union to divide our nation and someone ought to tell him in order to put the economy back to work, everyone needs to be working. >> joining me now to

teddy roosevelt and his square deal, the president frames this as a make or break moment for the american middle class. >> building an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few. >> he is likely to outline new plans from housing, manufacturing, and educating american workers. >> what the president's belief is, we should have a country that invests in manufacturing. that invests in new energy. that invests in preparing our work force and has american values that are about fairness and equity. >> in congress with low approval ratings, congress that has been torn by partisan fights with the president. republicans are already offering bitter reviews. >> it sounds to me like the same old policies will be seen. more spending, a higher taxes, more regulations. the same policies that haven't helped our economy, they made it worse. if that's what the president is going to talk about tuesday night, i think it's pathetic. >> the goal of this speech is not to conquer the nation's problems, but to conquer the gop. >> we don't have to take my word for the facts. >> increasing nastiness and the

structure of production of this great device, the apple iphone, is one that leaves many in the american middlebehind. we simply don't have the production platform that china has when it comes to putting together that kind of a device and those kind of devices are dominant in our economy right now. we need to think in a more forward-thinking matter about industrial policy that let's america play a significant role in that kind of economic production. >> jared bernstein, brilliant on the numbers and economics. thank you. tune in tomorrow night for the president's state of the union address at 9:00 p.m. eastern here on msnbc. we just learned congresswoman gabrielle giffords yesterday announced her retirement, will be attending the address. certain to be an emotional moment at the capital. we'll be right back. if you're not satisfied with 50% more cash, send it back! i'll be right here, waiting for it. who wouldn't want more cash? [ insects chirping ] i'll take it. i'll make it rain up in here. [ male announcer ] the new capital one cash rewards card. the card for people who want 50% more cash. wh

work and our children may be living worse than we do as infected the broad cross section of the american middle. the president is going to speak to that, i'm sure. he's going to make sure he's going to say, i don't know the words, i haven't seen, it but the import is going to be i, your president, is going to make sure the game is no longer rigged. i'm going to make sure that opportunity is there for you and your children. >> robert reich, you and your children. >> it's always great to see you, sir, thank you. >> thank you, thomas. >>> mitt romney is among the 1%, making $42 million in the past few years, his campaign trying to paint him as a great american success story, but could this hurt him. so i was the guy who was never going to have the heart attack. i thought i was invincible. i'm on an aspirin regimen now because i never want to feel that helplessness again. [ male announcer ] be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. talk to your doctor, and take care of what you have to take care of. spark card from capital one. spark cash gives me the most rewards of any s

it created an escalator to the ms -- middle-class for tens of millions of americans. is breaking down now. , editor ofs bennet "the atlantic." he is the 14 editor of the magazine created back in 1847 to advance the american idea. he was named editor in 2006. prior to that he worked for "the new york times." he was also a white house correspondent. let's hear from the bill, republicans in florida. caller: good morning. and i wanted to talk about industrial towns. i have seen a documentary and the rule ofemp law." it would be great if c-span and your magazine to do a report on it as far as putting american workers back to work, i encouraged the listeners to check into it. ralph nader wrote a piece recently a few months ago about it, and congressman ron paul has legislation out there trying to decriminalized this resources that could be grown in all 50 states and used to be grown in all 50 states. the whole reason why it was criminalize was because it was a threat to the petrochemical industry. any product you can make at a petrochemical you could make out of industrial

that for the bottom two-thirds of americans, the civil rights movement pulled about a third of the african-american community into the middle class, but remember, if you look at the statistics, now that the bottom is falling out on the middle class, it's african-american families that are suffering disproportionately even within the middle class itself. and i think one could argue that for the bottom two-thirds of african-americans in this country, things are worse than they were when king marched in memphis or birmingham or zell -- selma. and so we as white americans have a special responsibility because of the long night of slavery, the destruction of families, the destruction of religion, the destruction of language, the destruction of culture, even their names were taken from them in the same way that germany has a kind of eternal responsibility for what was done to jews during the holocaust. and we have walked out on that responsibility. the best schools in this country should be in the cities like camden. the most intricate systems of familial and especially childhood support and medical care should be in the poorest

the start would you believe of his 30 million jobs tour. dylan, where are you? >>> we are in the middle of a crisis. >> they're just not creating jobs. >> the american middle class decade of the 2000s. >> look at the jobs. okay? we can't afford to joke

what we wanted to address is what has happened to manufacturing in the american economy, which was the great factory of the american middless. we have been talking about collaborating with adam davidson and the folks at "planet money. they are wonderful story tellers. host: tell us about "planned money." guest: it is a national public radio program focused on american business generally and the american economy. they do a great job of finding very tangible, accessible illustrations of often complicated, intricate, economic forces and development adam davidson, who is the founder, had also gotten very interested in trying to get his hands around the question of what happened to american manufacturing. particularly interesting is the interstate 85 corridor, where there has been a renaissance of american manufacturing over the course 20 years. at the same time -- a renaissance of the new form of manufacturing. it is a sign that the traditional form was collapsing, and to be more specific, what i mean it is the textile mills that power the economy, particularly in south carolina, and rely on seemingly limitless jobs for relat

of the main gearly -- gallery at the american history museum, the most visited museum in the world, there is george washington to the left, the american flag to the middlethe kiprusoffy collection to the right. and i just want you to know that because you know, luis was trying to tell you who the kinseys are and you know what? you need to know who's speaking to you so sometimes you sit up a little bit better and you listen, but we are very grounded in what we're doing and we've lived in san francisco back in the 1970's. we ran a million square feet for der -- xerox out of south san francisco. we ran the oakland branch in oakland for three years there where i had 100 black folks working for me in 1977, just so you know. so we got our roots in the right place. we got our hearts in the right place. and it's a joy to be here in san francisco at this beautiful building here in city hall. i want to thank the supervisor cohen and aughtle supervisors, catchose and others that are here. you get a feel ream quickly whether or not a city really gets it if the mayor -- mayor shows up and the supervisors show up you know what i mean? because if they don't show you t

. >> the american middle class got nowhere in the decade of the 2000s. >> look at the jobs. okay? we can't afford to joke around anymore. >> the problem is larger than the proposals. >> that could mean an additional 1.9 million jobs. >> it would create 100,000 new jobs here in the united states. >> it will add 11.5 million new jobs for americans. >> 30 million jobs. that's what we truly need. it's a big number. but america is where big ideas are born. from the inventions of thomas edison to the first airplane flight of the wright brothers to the ottawa assembly line of henry ford america became the industrial giant and into the digital age with the microsofting of bill gates and the apple of his eye steve jobs. >> there it is right there. what's made america the engine that runs the world is innovation. so we begin our 30 million jobs tour from the 21st century's cradle of innovation, silicon valley, and the show for wednesday, january 18th, starts right now. good afternoon to you. welcome to san jose, california. nice to see you. we are on top of the hotel valencia overlooking si

middle class families through the payroll tax cut. doing the things that demonstrate his commitment to the american middle class. >> thank you so much. jay carney, come back again. howard fineman is huffington post editorial director and an msnbc political analyst. i want you to watch something. i thought it was good from newt. there's a little good from everybody. i like this part, besides the brazenness. here's something he said last night. he spoke about how he asks people to be with him and not for him. a big distinction. let's listen. >> i tell audiences, i never ask anyone to be for me. they vote yes and say i sure hope newt does it. i ask people to be with me, because i think this will be a very hard, very difficult journey. >> people listen carefully to what i'm saying. that is politics. you don't tell people i'm going to be your big brother, big sister and look out for you. i'm going to go to washington and look out for you. i need you once i get there. i need you to lobby with me with members of congress. i need you to root for me. be part of me and understand me. participate. >> chris, it's also consistent with what newt g

one, he got up there and said he's ready to fight for the american middle class, the working class.ay say class warfare, but i'm here to fight for the working class, talked about tax fairness, and saying the most wealthy and privileged among us have to pony up and do their fair share, and then he said he was going to fight for financial reform, and made a point of saying that richard core day's appointment was something he was proud of. to me, if you can make a little money and keep a little money, and, you know, we can get some manufacturing jobs going, that's really what we need. >> you were in the chamber, obviously. i was too, i was up in the gallery. there was a lot of good news the president was talking about tonight that got no reaction from republicans. it was economic news, the number of jobs that have been created and saved. and then the automobile industry. i looked over the edge, i was absolutely stunned. i was looking at republicans and they sat there like, well, that's just not really that important. >> he did make a comment some people thought he shouldn't save the am