plus the u.s. and russia debating a prisoner swap. antony blinken speaking with sergey lavrov. and a breakthrough on capitol hill. chuck shchumer and joe manchin striking a deal after a year of negotiations. there s a lot in this bill, including tax changes. we begin with major developments on the u.s. economy. the gross domestic product fell 0.9%, following a 1.6% drop in the first part of this your, blamed in part on the omicron surge, all of this adding to fears the u.s. could be in a recession. joining me to talk about all this, white house national economic director brian dees. good morning. thanks for taking the time this morning. happy to be here. two consecutive quarters of negative growth. every period since 1948 of two straight negative quarters of gdp has coincided with a recession. in every prior recession in the united states, we have lost jobs. and over the course of the year we have gained 2.7 million jobs. the unemployment rate is 3.6%. there s only be
plus the u.s. and russia debating a prisoner swap. antony blinken speaking with sergey lavrov. and a breakthrough on capitol hill. chuck shchumer and joe manchin striking a deal after a year of negotiations. there s a lot in this bill, including tax changes. we begin with major developments on the u.s. economy. the gross domestic product fell 0.9%, following a 1.6% drop in the first part of this your, blamed in part on the omicron surge, all of this adding to fears the u.s. could be in a recession. joining me to talk about all this, white house national economic director brian dees. good morning. thanks for taking the time this
understandably wary. a little bit of wear ing thin o the democrat ic democratic. which is why they don t want to give republican negotiators all too long. people in the group not just republican negotiators in the group but democrats as well are saying publicly and telling chuck shchumer and others, look we are very close. we are almost there. this is going to be a major accomplishment for this de democratic congress and president joe biden. at the same time, though, certainly a lost impatience bubbling up with this $3.5 trillion package led by bernie sanders and will encompass all the party s priorities, expanded medicare coverage, dental and vision coverage. we re talking about potentially immigration. there are so many things in this. also we have such a short amount of time. chuck schumer wants to get not
it s interesting. this week will be about the house and about speaker pelosi and about her leadership of the house democrats. but chuck schumer, there hasn t been a lot of legislating in the last year or so. chuck shchumer will get a spotlight here, too, to see how he manages it, both the politics and the math. when you do look at the numbers, you see this movement from independents. it s not from people who supported the president, right, it s from people who didn t support the president but wasn t quite sure about impeachment. republicans need to conduct a trial in such a way that it seems fair, and the people in the purple states can vote to remove the president, can vote to keep the president in office without invoking the teek.
those children, those dreamers that supposedly we care so deeply about. democrats saying it s not a serious offer. you are claiming it is. the white house is actually considering a plan that would give the 700,000 dreamers a pathway to getting green cards. could you support that? i am open to having that conversation and supporting that type of solution here. look what you are hearing, brianna. you are hearing movement from the white house and i do not hear any sincere movement from nancy pelosi and the house of representatives. it s time for chuck shchumer an mitch mcconnell and send it to the house and let s vote on it and let s put our cards where our mouths are. truly the movement that we ve seen from the white house has been the president was okay with funding bills that then passed the senate and them he changed his mind. there has been movement, but it s been all over the map. well, there s movement now. as you saw the president address the nation, brianna, in a way