tacks on anyone for as long as you live. now is not the time to carve out an exception and raise middle class taxes which is why you should pass this bill right away. this larger notion that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government and refund everybody s money and let everyone write their own rules and tell everyone they are on their own, it s not who we are. it s not the story of america. yes, we are individuals. yes, we are strong and self-reliant. and it has been the drive and initiative of our workers and entrepreneurs made this economy the engine and the envy of the world. but there is always been another threat running throughout our history. a belief that we are all connected. and that there are some things we can only do together as a nation. taking aim there at what may be the less politically sus sustainable positions of the republican party s activist base characterizing the only thing we
to go through the standard approval process for a federal transportation project. specifically that s too long. in what the president was talking about tonight, let me get one specific other things he talked about. he talked about infrastructure investment to modernize 35,000 public schools. 35,000 public schools across the country doing that sort of investment. i realize your area of the area in which people come on bended knee to you for permission to do things is transportation specifically, but do you foresee something like that investing and upgrade in america s public schools spending $30 billion on investing in america s public schools and their buildings? could that be something that republicans could get behind? well, again, i don t know the specifics. i deal in transportation, not school construction. but if we can speed up the process and, again, i think the president made a commitment to pay for these projects as we go.
half percent. it actually shrunk by 3.7%. ugh. turns out it wasn t 3.8%, actually, it was 8.9%! that is not a typo. that s how fast the economy was shrinking. republicans look at this chain of events and say, see? well, the stimulus didn t work. everybody else looks a at these numbers and say the stimulus did something but given what we now know what we were up against, it s clear it was not enough. it s clear we actually did need that second round of stimulus the president was sort of pushing for in december of 2009 but not that hard. what we are seeing in the economy is the effect of not getting further stimulus. not only given that the economy has proven to be resiliently bad but way worse than we thought it was when we initially designed the things we were going to do to try to fix it. the hope it is not too late but time is up and we got to do something now. the people of this country
tonight and my particular area which is which is transportation, but and i have to say i would take exception with the one major specific proposal and that was for a national infrastructure bank which is a proposal by a massachusetts and texas senator, bipartisan, but i think it s wrong based. why do you oppose an infrastructure bank? the idea i think behind that at least politically was it would harness both private and public investment in a way that could sort of allow market forces to play role in where things got built rather than allowing it to be decided by who is the most powerful congressman with the best connections. well, what you described, rachel, about, you know, harnessing private sector investment and participation and getting projects moving people working is right. but the problem i have is creating one more washington based program where you have to come on bended knees to
obamacare. last weekend, there was a dissent over the travel ban. now the putin comments. bring out a new crop of republicans. although the republicans control the house and senate, they control the senate by a thin margin. 52 votes. they need a united front and the president s actions in the past weeks have made the republican party more divided. i take it, shannon, if they continue down this road, the chances for dealing with substantive issues like obamacare and massive tax plan they want to enact, all of those things will besi side tracked b things that don t matter. on the hill right now, it is moving to gridlock. the battle over the cabinet secretaries. democrats are boycotting them. they cannot get unity on that. until they get the nominees through, they will not deal with health reform or tax reform.