frankly, he needed a little bit of work and i can tell you, just from watching this very well received. it s interesting, too, sort of gave a stump speech and hit president obama very hard and then the interesting part, i think, was last night and, again, this morning. it was john mccain who went before the audience and sort of went after rick santorum, who s basically the chief competition for romney at this stage and mccain, last night, as well as today, talked about earmarking, which is a process that santorum was very much involved in when he was in the united states senate and let s just listen to what mccain said about that last night. one of the reasons why we have mortgaged our children and our grandchildren s future is because the pork barrel, earmark corruption in washington. believe me, earmark spending is the gateway to corruption. and that was practiced when republicans were in the
for the first time in a very long time, kyra. we have six months in a row of jobs created. boom, boom, boom, more than 100,000 jobs created. that hasn t happened since 2006. think about that, since 2006 that we have been able to put together 6 1/2 months. that was also better than anybody expected. i want to really give you some perspective here because, kyra, as you know, this is a political story, as well. on the campaign trail you hear how this is the obama economy or how president obama is responsible for your job being lost. this is that incredible recession and financial crisis. financial crisis first and then the recession. this was, this was horrible for the american worker and the american economy. and then it was very careful start i mean, these gains here you had to have census and hiring and stimulus to get anything going and we had all these concerns about a double dip recession and now at the end of last year, you re starting to see slow and steady improvement
congressional republican through and through. governor perry aims to really completely overhaul washington, d.c., go into that 20% flat tax, eliminating corporate tax loophole, permanently banning earmarks and trying to get congress to be part-time. we feel like if we cut their pay, send them home to live under the laws they pass, a lot less mischief can be going on in washington, d.c. shannon: joe, i want to give you a chance to respond to a claim from the perry campaign that newt gingrich was basically the grand daddy or the big daddy of earmarks back years ago. well, if you look at the actual total amount of spending on earmarks, it only went up very little under newt. the real explosion in earmark spending came after he left congress. but we re happy to talk about the budget because it was balanced. he is really the only person in this race that actually balance add federal budget before. he did so during a very, very intense fight with the
he s saying that. he also was on the deficit panel so he knows what he s talking about, all the ones that proposed the important cuts, not just discretionary spending which are some of the billions you re talking about but doing the hard work of the entitlement program. right. it s so easy to talk about the programs when it s a little bit of earmark spending that doesn t amount to a whole lot. when you talk about addressing the problems of medicare, medicaid, social security and defense, when you get those, that s when the real cuts need to come. they have to come from both sides. one will use it as a hammer against the other in a couple of years in the election if it gets to that. coming up straight ahead, talk of death panels has all of america talking so democrats killed the proposal but now the white house is sneaking it back in. you have to hear what is about to happen to you. then the profanity patrol is hitting the streets. police writing tickets for swearing in public.
two years we ve had in generations. that doesn t mean that our business is finished. that s not the only political milestone from last year. we re back this morning about doug schoen and nice to have you back. the health care bill, that seemed to be one of the biggest of the year. i was surprised though, it wasn t at the top of your list. senator, what was at the top of your list for biggest political moment of 2010? well, i actually had a quiet moment and that is december 16th, the evenings at thursday night, harry reid polls, 1.7 trillion dollar omnibus spending bill. why is that pontiac? because it had over 6,000 ear marks and every 8,000 in earmark spending and john mccain calls it a seminal moment and will play out in march when they have to deal with the budget and the world has changed. the change in november.