of our unfavorable trade balance is skaued by u.s. multinational corporations. they should be paying for this. the importers they re bringing this suv in, taking jobs away from u.s. companies. he make as very interesting point. he s right in saying largely neither this administration nor the prior administration has fundamentally taken on manufacturing as an issue. this isn t about the recession. manufacturing has been in decline for more than ten years. here s something interesting he said. we should have a border tax. the reason we have dutieses on thi things is to protect what is made in america. the reason we lower those duties is because we want to be able to sell to other markets. so it s a bit of a quick fix that doesn t necessarily solve the problem to say we should have a border tax. i don t know what he means because some things you pi a duty on and some thing you don t already. so i m not sure i understand that whole thing. but we need to sell things to it other countries
watch it live here. and you can ask ali anytime monday through friday 1:00 to 3:00 eastern time right here at cnn. 55 days until the midterm elections. the cnn election express on the road. listening to your concerns, whether congress is listening or not. today s stop cuffing ton, kentucky. it t.j. holmes has been talk with people there about whether washington is helping, hurting or ignoring, right? right, and i was just listening to your conversation there with my dear friend, ali velshi, and he and i have been going back and forth about it this very top i go. we re talking the health care bill, stimulus plan. big stuff for anybody to get their head around. but here on the ground where we ve been this week, it s just a matter of how things feel to them. they re not trying to present down numbers, statistics or read
he is talking about a christian center, a jewish center, a space for islamic prayer, a swimming pool. the plans eem to be all over the map and then there was a promise to tell us about the financing at some later time. is this just a project that s kind of moving along in pieces, there s no real definite plan right now? reporter: no. there is a definite plan. there is it a focused blueprint. they have architectural drawing that are already in place. there s a big debate as to whether they were going to be able to tear down the existing structure and they did get approval to do so. it s going to be about 12 to 13 stories and it is going to be all encompassing. you are going to have a community center, an art space, a basketball court, swimming pool, very much like the ymca, the ymha, those kinds of things. you are also going to have prayer space. you noted something interesting. initially when i asked the developer, why not make this sort of an interfaith prayer
and this was a very unique for me because i met this beautiful older couple in their 70s and they worked their whole lives and in the pack is an any military twice and with a small pension, he built this home and for his family and grandchildren and it was very modest to begin with. but he had something. and now they re both dealing with a lot of sickness and as we see in the tape, the woman is so embarrassed with her situation. and the man spoke of the fact that he never felt in his lfr time he s ever going to be able to recuperate what he s lost, that he would never ever have again nice things, that he would never have a nice bed, a nice house, and they ve lived in this place since 1972. and raised their children and hair grandchildren there are. and in a moment in a few hours, it was completely gone. you can impact your world
she was kind of saying that in jes, but a lot people do feel that way. we got new unemployment numbers at 9.9% here in kentucky, above the national average, but this is the first time they ve been below 10% in over a year. almost a year and a half. first time they ve been under 10%, so that s something, but a lot of people are leaving the workforce. we debate this washington and there are a lot of smart folks working on big complex problem, but for the folks here in cuffing ton, columbus or pittsburgh, the places we ve been this week, it s as simple as this, i feel like things aren t right. i see less money in my account at the end of the month, and it is that simple for they will. so they wonder what s going on and who is going to help out and that s what they re looking to washington for right now. and those are the people who are really living this economy. they re not government workers or now getting paid more than the private sector. they don t have a lot of job security. so th