good evening, everyone. i m erin burnett. outfront tonight is the economy, stupid. in a surprise news conference today the president blamed congress for keeping americans out of work. they left most of the jobs plan just sitting there, and in light of the head winds that we re facing right now, i urged them to reconsider because there are steps to take right now to put more people back to work. the president is angry that congress has not passed his jobs bill, which sat on the shelf since last fall. part of it did pass. the payroll tax cut extension and long-term unemployment insurance, but the president wants to pass the rest immediately and the price tag is $297 billion. his bill summary, which we obtained from the white house, says that money will go to things like preventing teacher layoffs, modernizing schools, building science labs for a total of $297 billion. does spending more at up? we did the math on how much money taxpayers have spent on stimulus since it beg
words and message discipline and go by what resonates with voters. but gretchen, it s not going to get him elected these gimmicks that he s doing. you have the buffet rule and the payroll tax cut extension. these aren t real things to get the economy going and i will point out, though, when they ve tried to get into the details, they always lose. for example, they said if we pass this stimulus, unemployment won t go above 8%. very specific. well, that wasn t true. so they do not want to get into specifics because they assume, too, that we re dumb enough to believe what they re pushing. juan, are we dumb enough? is that why they don t get into the details? i just disagree with the premise, gretchen. i think andrea is right, politicians love buzz words and slogans but in this case, there s lots of meat on the bone because it s very clear that they ve laid out that the buffet rule, you know, 30% tax on millionaires so they would not be paying a lower tax cut on investment income and p
will stimulate the economy further. we spoke with a u.s. representative here in pennsylvania and says it s a plan that is being considered by the ways and means committee staff and research team to try to craft the language so they can put this in bill form. then they will try to get this introduced as a piece of legislation. we need to try to get it moving through the legislative process by getting the support and attention of the committee chairman where the bill will be, as well as leadership in the house and senate and hopefully get it moving through the process as soon as possible. reporter: now if any of this sounds familiar there is a test plan similar to ep stein s going on right now with the payroll tax cut extension which passed in february. that is only a test program that affects ten states, where ten states can participate. gene s plan will be national if it s passed, and you know he s very hopeful and many people getting a good buzz on this and saying it could really
heat from conservatives claiming the white house said the president had not previously killed the keystone pipeline. we will play you what happened then and what happened today when he acknowledged the president did make phone calls. president did not turn down the keystone pipeline, the fact the process. ended the way it did with the permit request, that is the sonsibility of the republicans who insisted on laying politics with the payroll tax cut extension. the president believes that it is wrong to play politics with pipeline projects whose route is not proposed and the company involved affirmed this week they have not identified a route for the possible pipeline. so it cannot possibly be reviewed adequately because it does not exist. reporter: the white house defense is that republicans blew
keystone project. congressman, jay carney, a white house president secretary this week said the fact is the republicans essentially forced the administration to deny the permit process because they insisted on a timeframe within which it was impossible to appropriately approve the pipeline and then says this is all the republicans fault and says the process ended the way it did, it is wholly the responsibility of republicans who insisted on playing politics with the payroll tax cut extension at the end of the year. does that make sense to you? it doesn t. the fact of the matter is the keystone pipeline project started the approval process in september of 2008 when a previous administration was in the white house. then, they have had three years to evaluate this. my golly, the documents were piled head high in the committee hearing that we had