tom perez is my second favorite department of justice official. we are very honored today that tom perez has come from washington, dc, to give welcoming remarks here at this summit. tom perez is the assistant attorney general of the civil rights division in washington, dc, he was nominated for that position by president obama and sworn in in october of 2009 and we are all the lucky -- we are all very lucky that that happened in october of 2009. tom has spent his entire career in public service and on protecting the civil rights of our most vulnerable people. tom actually joined the civil rights division as a young lawyer and while he was there he prosecuted some of the most significant cases in the country. lawyers in the civil rights division get fanned out to places in the country to handle cases in mississippi and alabama and california and all over and tom was one of those people. he was sent to texas to handle a very significant hate crime case when he was a young lawyer that involved a gang of white supremacists that went on a killing spree

tom perez, assistant secretary for civil rights, ruslyn lee. she was also nominated by president obama to serve in her role as assistant secretary of education for civil rights and she was confirmed by the senate in may of 2009. as assistant secretary, ruslyn is assistant secretary arnie's duncan's primary advisor. before she joined the department of education she was vice president of the education trust in washington, dc and was the founding executive of education trust west in oakland. in these positions she advocated for public school students in california, focusing on achievement and opportunity gaps, improving can urriculum and instructional quality and ensuring quality education for everybody. she served as an advisor on education issues on a number of private ipbs institutions, she is a teacher, a lawyer, and a very influential voice on all policy matters. she was also passionate about ending this issue of bullying and bringing everyone together to stop this disturbing trend so please welcome assistant secretary for civil rights, rusly

eric holder, susan rice, van jones, sonja sotomayor and tom perez, it sounds -- something about eachto give me a picture in my head. what am i thinking, e.j.? >> i can't possibly read your mind, karen. i mean, you have to tell us. but i think, look. i don't want to charge racism here. you need proof for that. s if true that eric holder is the first african-american attorney general. it is not surprising that people ask that question. but the fact is i think his highest crime in their eyes is that he doesn't agree with them. in particular, which is not a crime. which is not against the law. >> right. >> as last i checked. thank goodness. and i think one of the things they really do hold against him, it's striking on that list of congressman to impeach him, there are a bunch of names, republicans of texas. >> yep. >> eric holder has been very clear that he is going to enforce the voting rights act even though the supreme court knocked down part of it. and he's trying to use other parts of the voting rights act to knock down some of these voter suppression laws that have been passed in

this same thing again happened with hagel, tom perez. he eventually got confirmed over at labor.ally, you know, folks will get -- will get a good hearing and an up or down vote on the senate floor. >> josh, isn't it utterly reasonable that an individual like senator lindsey graham should use his power to block the functioning of government in order to protect himself from challenges? >> you know, i think -- >> is that really what we've come to? >> well, i think what it is is that all of these things have existed in the past to a degree. but what you have seen over the last 15, maybe 20 years, and increasingly over the last six or seven years is all of the norms that keep things in check. yes, you can block nominees. but you use it for something very specific, usually. and then you work out a deal. the idea that to -- the idea that someone would do what graham is doing now, the idea that you would shut down the whole government over obama care -- >> over a law that has passed and been affirmed by the supreme court. >> right. these are -- again, a lot of it has to do with none of t

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let's go to the white house and labor secretary tom perez. >> pleasure to be with you today. >> you'ver. this has got to be the strongest report yet. does it suggest the weakness on the unemployment side will be transitory and the private side is perhaps stronger than we previously thought? >> i have two or three takeaways from this report. number one, the economy continues to be resilient, notwithstanding the self-inflicted wounds from congress, 209,000 private sector jobs, on top of september, on top 238,000 in august, so four consecutive months of private sector job growth. the second takeaway was the shutdown undeniably had a negative impact on the economy. there were more people temporarily unemployed last month than in any month as soon as they've been collecting the survey data in 1967. we saw first hand, we saw it throughout this country and throughout this city that the shutdown had a negative impact. and then, thirdly, we need to pivot. we need to take our foot off the brake and put it on the accelerator. that is why the president is in new orleans talking at the port about i

tom, we had labor secretary thomas perez in the last hour speaking to us live and he saw the number asificant when it came to sort of baseline job creation. he wants to see better labor participation because we haven't seen numbers so low since the late '60s. i need your opinion on this what did you think of today's number and what does it portend for the economy. >> i think this number is no different than the series of employment reports we were receiving up to the september focm -- fomc meeting. that is to say this data is not different than what we've seen last everal months. think about these numbers for a second. last months you had 150,000 jobs. last month prior to that, 207,000 jobs. a the month prior to that, we are over 212,000 jobs, the numbers are not very different. this was a better than feared report. so i think you're getting a little more euphoria associated with it, but generally speaking this number remains very consistent with a 2% growth backdrop. that has been our call pretty much throughout the course of this recovery. liz: job creation numbers look good. we do n