me to have him here in the white house, but my loss will be the nation's gain. >> joining us now is jonathan alter, a columnist for the bloomberg view, and in washington jared bernstein, a senior fellow at the center on budget and policy priorities. welcome to you both. john, congratulations on a very severe haircut which i must confess i approve of. >> hard to respond to that. >> well, don't. i have been reading a lot about mr. lieu, it seems he's either a socialist liberal according to republicans or a wall street apologist according to progressives. which is he? >> well, obviously he's neither one of them. what he is is a long-time, talented public servant who has been working mostly in government since he started with tip o'neill, actually joe moakley, he knows the federal