bill: stuart, thank you. a lot to talk about for you at 9:15 on fbn. sure. bill: stuck in the mud. let s get it moving. patti ann: this comes on the heels of a troubling report from the fed. the board lowering its expectation for economic growth and raising its forecast for the unemployment rate. back in april it projected the unemployment rate would be 7.8 and 8% this year. now it is seeing a higher number. eight and 8.2%. bleak numbers for the economy too. back in april it foy cast the economy would grow to just under 3%. it is revising those numbers down to more like 1.9 to 2.4%. bill: on the topic of the economy we have a new poll from the key battleground state of florida. quinnipiac university asking voters regardless how they vote who do you think would do a better job on the economy. 48% chose mitt romney. 44 choose president obama.
for medicaid. and the big question will be severability. this bill did not what is called a severability clause where one part is unconstitutional the rest stands. whether it will stand whether it . bill: if they take out the mandate in simple language how does that affect the rest of the law? it blows up most of the rest of the law. even the administration in its pleadings before the court acknowledged if the individual mandate were struck down most of the law would collapse. this thing doesn t work unless you require everybody to buy health insurance as a condition of being alive at the age of 25. without it even the administration said it would be an unworkable mess. bill: now on immigration, does arizona survive here or not? you know, again, going to be a close call. my suspicion it is going to survive. what is interesting to me, bill is, that remember the arizona law says that local law enforcement can inquire
right why not do it weeks ago, why not do it months ago, why yesterday? i have a theory on this. the president is happy to have a conversation about this rather than about the economy. remember today we have a new jobs number out, 387,000 americans filed first-time claims for unemployment. the president would much rather talk about a fight with the republicans in the house of representatives over something that is sort of hard for people to get attention to and to which the mainstream media has given no attention. over the last year, nbc devoted 10 seconds in their evening broadcast to a, to fast and furious which involves u.s. government giving over 2,000 weapons to mexican drug cartels in order to trace them. those weapons were used in the deaths of innocent mexicans and the death of a u.s. border patrol agent. and nbc has given 10 seconds to it. he would rather have this conversation then a failed economy, anemic recovery. lots of people out of jobs. affordable care act, big defic
said the president knew nothing about fast and furious, he knew nothing about it, he didn t approve it. how can he assert executive privilege over something he knew nothing about? if that i his version of executive privilege is abg receipaccurate we won t be able too get any documents on anything. bill: he wants to resolve this and he says it can be resolved on the proposal offered earlier this week. is that a possibility? bill, you wouldn t think very highly of us if we accepted his extraordinary accommodation or proposal or whatever you ve nice eupl he is going to use today. he proposed to chairman issa, give a verbal briefing, no documents, and you take contempt of congress after the table. it s been a little over a year and a half since i negotiated in criminal cases, that is not a very good negotiation from the state s standpoint.
white house when the president exerted executive privilege yesterday? yeah. you know, i believe, i do believe a president has a right to exercise executive privilege. what i worry about in this instance is the white house has previously said there were no connections between the fast and furious program at the justice department, alcohol, firearms and tobacco and dea, that the white house was not involved at all in it. so, you know, it is one thing to exert executive privilege over the actions of the president and his aides and the white house. it is another thing to exercise executive privilege with regard to a cabinet official, seemingly in a matter according to the president up till now had no connections with, no contact with, no commune kath with the white house. i m a little concerned about it. i think it is overreach. bill: what do you mean concerned about it in what sense? well the president previously said the white house had nothing to