defense committee and foreign relations committee ought to know what the plans are, make sure that sacrifice was not for naught there s a big problem with fraud in the money that we ve sent over there and how it s worked. we don t have an inspector general over there, we haven t for months and we know at least 10 billion has been defrauded of american money by afghani contractors and others. which we ought to be on top of. and there s no execute to not have somebody looking at that all the time. jon: obviously we re going to be going to the polls come november to vote on the presidential race, as well as senators and congressmen and so forth, but afghanistan, it appears, is not going to be one of the big issues when voters issues. when voters were asked recently in a reuters poll what s the most important issue to you, jobs and the economy come in at 53 percent, health care is at 14 percent, and down near the bottom of the list is foreign policy, at 3 percent that s a big focus of yo
they ll be here to break it down later in the program. a new and diz million monthly jobs report to tell you about how now, raising concerns about the health of the economy. today, a closely watched payroll company adp showed private sector employers added only 119,000 jobs in april. that s far fewer than expected. my next guest says the adp numbers give a much more accurate reading of the jobs situation out there than the labor department s monthly figures. let s ask him about it, it s steve moore, senior economics writer for the wall street journal . so what does this tell us that maybe we don t already know? hi harris. that number by the adp, suggesting 110, 115,000 new jobs, that s not going to cut it harris. we need about 150, to 175,000 jobs a month, just to keep pace with the increase in population and new people entering the work force, the people graduateing from college, immigrants who come into the country. so that number is very subpar, and one of the problems i have
book jobs and the con pe jobs and the economy. you day the debt bomb is a bigger threat than al-qaeda. it s not just ming z saying that. forer joint chiefs of staff said it s not al-qaeda. no country can defend itself if it s broke. that s the point he was making. and how do we fund this debt. you know, the interesting thing to me that the political dynamic that nobody is working on the biggest problem facing our country today because it s an election year and nobody has been working on it for two years because they don t want to address the hard issues and the point i make in the book, this is going to get much more difficult and much more painful if we continue to delay, because then somebody else is going to be telling us what to do rather than us. jon: the most predictable crisis that s right and the lack of inaction, i make the case in the book, is because of careerism, the next election is the most important thing to people, including the
we need in this economy, so it s been a what i describe it as, harris, as a jobs recession. we re technically out of the official recession, but we re not out of the jobs recession, when you ve got 38 straight months of more than 8 percent unemployment. harkat-ul-jihad-al-islami harris: i m thinking one more thing, it pays people to stay home and lets the economy reset without millions of people already in it. i want to move forward to one thing that could be coming and that s a huge number of foreclosures. that makes it so much more difficult for people to find jobs. as you know, construction jobs are a big part of the economy. we ve had almost no net new housing built in this country in the last three years. as we ve seen, if you look at the unemployment numbers e. offer the last six months to a year, we re not seeing virtually any comeback in the construction industry. but that s actually, harris, the one area i m somewhat hopeful on. i do think this is the one optimistic note
harris: want to bring up to speed right now on news just coming into our newsroom. it is new video of a mom in new jersey who just pleaded not guilty to child endangerment. she allegedly took her 5-year-old daughter to a tanning salon which is against the law in the state. in new jersey you must be 14 years or older to use tanning beds. it has been a big controversy in the state and this is brand new video coming in. we will follow the case and bring up to speed what happens next. jon? jon: and brand new stories ahead next hour. a live look at the dow after some disappointing numbers this morning on jobs. the dow down about 42 points right now. we ll go behind the numbers to get the real unemployment picture in this country. another explosive day at the john edwards trial with another former aide, a guy edwards reportedly fired after a shouting match over allegation of his affair. that guy is expected on the stand today. we ll go in depth. brand new developments in the hazing death o