meeting. loud, lively and threat breaking on america live right now. we are awaiting details on the resignation on one of the most powerful and controversial union leaders in the united states. he is andy stern. we are told he will address reports that he is stepping down. the news sending shock waves throughout organized labor and washington. that s was stern claims he helped president obama get elected and helped democrats pass healthcare reform. stern also a regular at the white house, visiting 36 times last year alone. earlier this year president obama awarded stern with a political appointment, tapping him not a noted budget expert to a commission that will suggest ways to reduce the federal deficit. molly has more. what is the seiu saying about this? reporter: they are not confirming it publicly. the union is going to let andy stern do the talking in a couple days. reporter: there has been speculation about stern s intention to step down at end of his term in 2012
events, undermine the party s message, smear public opinion and disrupt and derail their plans. monica crowley has some thoughts on that, she s a radio talk show host and a fox news contributor. all right, it s called crash the tea party.com, or.org, and our research on this group shows the guy who registered this, ben franklin. he lives in philadelphia. [laughter] cool, ben franklin is behind it as it turns out. this is the left s idea of irony and humor. megyn: he would like to crash the party that s against big government. does that make sense to you? ben franklin one of the founding fathers who envisioned a limited role, so he d be leading the tear party movement. megyn: look at him, poor ben. it s actually, according to our reports, this guy named jason levin. this guy is trying to rally people to do what?
purpose. how will they do that, though? what are they planning on carrying out? it s an interesting situation where we have some folks on the left, notably the jason levin, the fellow behind crash the parties.org, encouraging folks and claiming to have been infiltrating various tea party groups across the country. and promising that they re going to go to tea party rallies with signs that are stupidly written, or that contain racist slogans, those kind of things. neil: but they will write them and put them in to tea partiers hands? no, they ll carry them. neil: carry them themselves? absolutely. they re going to pose as tea party folks in an attempt to discredit tea party folks. neil: all right, those are the signs it s a false flag operation. neil: i ve seen how it works. those are the signs that get the attention and the signs that the media focuses on. unavoidable we ll see all
taxes go up. to a certain degree, you raise the upper rate to 70%. the top to 78? we re at 34. 39.6. i m not convinced they ll go that way. we have unemployment is high but this is pretty sobering news if you put your money in the markets. we re going to get higher taxes, even if they don t raise the upper rate, higher gains taxes. show that again because i want to bring this to your attention. if everyone s rates were raised. that s where you go. but you don t think that s in the immediate cards. maybe not. but take this out because i think congress will be under pressure, more republicans in congress at the end of this year, too, and they may have the house and senate changing the dynamic. you take that out, we ll have higher taxes for healthcare, higher taxes on the state and local levels and not only that, you re going to have rate hikes. think about it right now. interest rates. interest rates. the fed fund rates at essentially zero. banks borrowing f
james rosen has more on that live in washington d.c. hey, james. reporter: yeah. it s no way to balance a checkbook, megyn. this is one of those votes coming up later today that could leave an incumbent exposed to his or her challenger in a midterm election year because each with polls showing americans are very concerned about deficit is spending, no one wants to be seen opposing the helping hand for unemployed people down on their luck. the republican colleagues who have cited deficit concerns in their opposition to h.r. 4851, that s snappily entitled the continuing extension act of 2010. it would extend jobless benefits, some government payments for cobra health insurance and federal flood insurance through the 5th of may. it s estimated because this measure has not yet passed more than 200,000 unemployed people who had already exhausted their state s jobless benefits could not as of april 5th apply for additional benefits. senator jim bunning, the retired cayenne, and t