everybody else has to do a whole lot more. we ve got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the poor. we ve got to scale back on the investments that have always helped our economy grow. we ve got to settle for second rate roads and bridges and airports. and schools that are crumble. that s unacceptable to me. that s unacceptable to the american people. and it will not happen on my watch. i will not support i will not support any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary americans. and i will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on medicare, but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share.
we did not expect it to come back hurdling towards us. a satellite coming back into earth, and nobody seems to know where it will land, and we re told not to panic. so back to you. thank you, alex. as we kick off the week, you need to know no matter how many times politicians say it, government is not like a household and should not tighten its belt. so the analogy is pure bunk and you need to know it s an inseedious obstacle to the scale of action we need to remedy the jobs deficit. there s a growing consensus we need larger deficits if we want to bring it down. and troy davis is to be executed. nine of the officers have
almost 32 million kids eat lunch at school each day. it s a captive audience. what are we feeding them and who should pay for healthier option snz. first, the middle classes is falling behind. income for the average american family has fallen now for the past three years and is at 1996 levels now. bankruptcy filings by those holding a college degree are up 20% in the past five years. college graduates, the fastest growing group of feeling filing for bankruptcy. and one in six americans lives in poverty. rick newman is from u.s. news & world report. rick, i want to talk about how we can fix this problem. what does it mean for our economy if the middle class is falling behind? can we have a meaningful recovery without having a recovery for the middle class? it s obviously bad news. incomes have been falling, real incomes after inflation, for the last are ten years. that was going on before the recession and the recession intensified that. and this is a national problem. i
almost all of it in fact which means we are beneath the do no harm scenario if they have their way which means we do harm, and not just to the jobless or the economy, but to the deficit, too. in fact, you heard that sentiment come up this morning at the first meeting of the deficit-focused super committee. take a listen. the national debt is 14$14.7 trillion and also a jobs deficit, and we cannot fix our budget without fixing jobs and we can t fix jobs without fixing the budget. and let s be very clear here. obama s leverage right now is not tonight s speech, and it is not a speech at all, and the speeches don t work that way in american politics and a talisman s drama does not work in the real world, but he does have leverage through the super committee and obama could say he will veto any recommendations that the super committee offers on jobs and if he does that, then congress would have a choice to make and would they
underlying economic weakness, of course, both here and particularly in the banks of europe where there s worries about contagion to larger countries. we saw a new poll today showing almost half of americans think the worst is yet to come for this economy. how much is consumer confidence or the lack of it fueling this cycle? it s definitely part of the problem, but it itself is, of course, a function of what matters most to consumers or basically people which is their jobs, their incomes, their paychecks, their living standards. what really doesn t matter a lot to people is a debt ceiling debate. in fact, the budget deficit is a far second or third or fourth to people s major concerns versus the jobs deficit, so as long as washington was kind of in this in this dysfunctional self-inflicted wound mode for a couple of months, that hurt consumer confidence because policy-makers weren t working on jobs. that s what matters most to people right now. jared, is there anything to