has changed at the federal level at least. joe biden s speech last night, what did you think about it, and do you think it will move the needle? i thought it was excellent, and i thought it was important that he was putting a flag in the ground and saying that, you know, there will be consequences if you don t compromise. for too long it s been all or nothing, and we really need to come together and find common ground on things like red flag laws or background checks, secure storage, mental health support, this is something the vast majority of americans want, and john, to your point, look, i have been doing this work now for a decade, and i have certainly been disappointed many times, more than i can count by the senate, but i want to be clear that if this does fail, and i m hopeful always that it won t, this work will not stop. we will keep fighting. i mean, just in the last days, you know, we have driven over 680,000 messages to the senate. we have dropped off tens of thousands of
this week we learned that the measure of consumer confidence fell for the fourth month in a row to its lowest levels since january. you may disagree with why it s down. but, again, the customer who in this case is the american consumer is always right when it comes to the economy. why? because if americans are worried about the economy, they delay making important purchases and a perceived economic slowdown can easily become a reality. okay. so it s happening. but why? well, probably the biggest reason is this jobs. 20 straight months of job growth. yes. but over the last five months, look at that trend. roughly corresponding to the drop in consumer confidence, hiring in america has slowed. a week from now we ll have the job creation numbers for june to see where this trend is going. but until we have a strong jobs recovery, americans are going to hold back. and that is going to hamper a wider recovery. frankly, there is good and real reason to be nervous. it s that economi
the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. i saw a very upbeat newt gingrich this week. i spent time with him behind the scenes here in washington. before we sat down for our indepth interview. this is a man experienced big highs and big lows in his political career. and he s not ready at least publicly to presume he s got the republican presidential nomination all wrapped up. listen to our conversation here in washington. mr. speaker, thanks very much for joining us. we have new polls and i know you ve seen those numbers and you re doing remarkably well. double digit leads in south carolina, florida, and iowa. you re moving up even in new hampshire. but your critics say you, newt gingrich, are fully capable of imploding if you will, making a mistake, a blunder that can turn things around. are you worried about that? sure. that will be a bad thing to do. i mean is it possible? i guess. on the other hand, i have had a very long career. i have a very pub
war on religion. you re in the situation room. but first, this just coming in right now at this moment, our brand new poll shows newt gingrich leading the pack in three of the first four states to hold republican presidential contests. with less than a month to go before republicans start voting, newt gingrich has double digit leads in iowa, south carolina, and florida. he trails mitt romney in new hampshire but they still have some competition. ron paul essentially tied with romney in iowa and double digit support in new hampshire. let s discuss these numbers. they spell it exactly the same but they pronounce their names differently. he pronounces it incorrectly. we won t discuss the history right now. iowa is coming up january 3. here is what we have in our cnn time magazine poll numbers. gingrich, 33%. romney 20, ron paul 17, perry 9, bachmann 7, santorum 5 and huntsman 1. it s a rather dramatic lead in iowa for newt gingrich. and a rather difficult state to ap
generation of republicans in line. and president obama warns, and i m quoting him now, we are almost out of time, urging all americans to keep the pressure on washington and bring this devastating crisis to an end. i m wolf blitzer, you re in the situation room. you re looking at a live picture right now of the house floor, where just a short time from now, we expect to see that critical vote on the gop debt plan. the vote was supposed to happen yesterday around this time, but was abruptly postponed when the house speaker john boehner failed to get the 216 votes it needs for passage. meanwhile, with only days left to solve this unprecedented crisis, wall street is already reeling. stocks posted their worst weekly performance in more than a year while the dow fell about 97 points today. this on the heels of a dismal new economic report out today, showing the country s economic growth has now slowed to a crawl. let s go straight to our congressional correspondent, kate ba