president obama and now 15.6 now. and they have gone through a list of these things with the speech, mark, which obviously is what we re going to see i think the first he point out mitt romney has put ideas but no real meat behind some of them. what was interesting yesterday and also today that mitt romney really pivoted away from the economy and was talking more about the spending and the deficit and in a state where he was yesterday in iowa where the unemployment rate is 5.2% t makes sense he is going at the debt and the deficit because that s actually one place where things there hasn t been a whole lot of progress, the deficit is still very, very high where you re hearing democrats counteract and even that a.p. fact check point out a lot of the drivers of the deficit accrued from the bush administration due to the iraq war, the war in afghanistan, the bush tax cuts and things like that, tamron, and so that s the
t there. - one serving of cheese is the size of four dice. one serving of cereal, a baseball. and one serving of fruit, a tennis ball. - you know, both parties agree. our kids can be healthier. the more you know. the national debt is now 15.6 trilli trillion, which is nearly $50,000 for every american. it s an issue that s become a political football. we have a president comfortable with trillion dollar deficits. how can that be? well, a new book looks at how the national debt affects the country. joining me now is simon johnson,
turns out very different groups of people would pay. if you are in the bottom 20% of the income distribution, in obama s plan you pay federal tax rate of 1.8%. under romney s plan, double that, 3.4%. that is the poorest group. in the middle, a lot closer, 15.2% under obama s plan, 15.6% under romney s plan. if you re in the top 1% as both romney and obama are, the difference becomes huge. under obama s plan, 36.3%. under romney s plan, 25.9. to get that out of percents and in dollars, your taxes will be $160,000 lower than under obama. $160,000. tax cuts of that size cost a lot of money. trillions of dollars. romney is promised he won t pay for that by cutting defense. he s promised he won t pay for it by raising taxes elsewhere. and he s promised to balance the
romney s plans. turns out very different groups of people would pay. if you are eye in the bottom 20% of the income distribution, in obama s plan you pay federal tax rate of 1.8%. under romney s plan, double that, 3.4%. that is the poorest group. in the middle, a lot closer, 15.2% under obama s plan, 15.6% under romney s plan. if you re in the top 1% as both romney and obama are, the difference becomes huge. under obama s plan, 36.3%. under romney s plan, 25.9. to get that out of percents and in dollars, your taxes will be $160,000 lower than under obama. $160,000. tax cuts of that size cost a lot of money. trillions of dollars. romney is promised he won t pay for that by cutting defense. he promise the he won t raise taxes elsewhere.
according to the most recent numbers released this year, it hasn t gotten much better. the rate for whites remains at 8.7% while african-americans are at 15.6%. so what can be done to close this gap in the national urban league has come up with a 12-point plan which they say will help put urban back to work. marc morial joins me from washington to discuss this plan. hey it, rand i, how are you. i m fine. i m interested in this plan of yours. why now? why hasn t someone done this before? well, we issued six of the 12 points over a year ago. and added six additional points and we think that there s been some reluctance to have more of what i call a targeted approach to areas of high unemployment. there are 474 counties in the united states where the poverty rate is higher than 20% and has