reporter: now march 5th there will be a benefit concert here in south florida where they hope to raise money so that ramel can begin the rebuilding process of his school. you know, kyra, he says that as soon as he s able, he plans to go back to haiti and start that rebuilding process. kyra. no doubt. we ve got another followup and that will hopefully be the concert where ramel and stevie play together. it caught my attention at the end of the piece he said, you know, anything is possible. that s exactly what stevie wonder s mom told him when he was a little boy, you know, when he was dealing with being blind and he loved music and she told him that his entire life until the day she passed away. so these two are definitely connected in body, mind and spirit, aren t they? reporter: they are kindred spirit, there s no question
year they believe that 1.5 to 2 million jobs have been saved or created. this administration keeps using this phrase time and time again that the economy was brought back from the brink of another great depression. so they really believe that this money has been put to good use. and in the second phase, if you will, you ll see an increase of money going towards some of the infrastructure projects, health care, technology, things like that where this administration believes additional jobs will be created. then tomorrow, part two, president going to release a plan for dealing with the federal deficit. reporter: that s right. that s this fiscal commission the president has talked about the difficulty of getting bipartisan support for anything looking forward in terms of bringing down the federal deficit. and so this fiscal commission will be co-chaired by allen simpson, the former republican senator and erskine bowles. they ll study the problem over the next several months, then comi
gives confidence to entrepreneurs that maybe they don t have to cut back right now. maybe they can hold steady in their plans and in their dreams. that s exactly what we ve been able to do with the recovery act. and i just want to point this out, there has never been a program of this scale moved at this speed, that has been enacted as effectively and as transparently as the recovery act. i m grateful that congress agreed to my request that the bill include no earmarks, that all projects receive funding based solely on their merits. and despite that, i was still concerned, joe and i were just talking in the back, when this thing passed, we said $787 billion somewhere, there s going to be some story of some money that ended up being misspent. $787 billion spent out over 18
months. that s a lot. that s a lot of money. and it is a testimony to vice president biden and his team that, as joe puts it, the dog so far at least hasn t barked. this team has done an outstanding job overseeing the recovery act. it doesn t mean that everything s been perfect. but when you think about the scope, the magnitude of this thing, this program has run cleanly, smoothly, transparently. we brought in one of the toughest inspector generals in washington, as well as professionals from private industry to help run the implementation. and every american can see how and where this money has been spent just by going on www.recovery.gov. now, just to review, one-third of the money in this bill, one-third, was made up of tax cuts. i talked about this at the state
let s bring in jim doyle, he joins us live from madison this morning. governor, why don t we start by talking about the politics. because despite everything that the president said and economists believe this is still a very, very difficult political point to sell. how come? well, because the republicans have just decided they re going to say no to everything. we have a very good example in wisconsin. we ve received $825 million for high-speed rail to connect chicago to milwaukee, milwaukee to madison and ultimately over to the twin cities. republicans in wisconsin would reject that money and have it go to texas or some other state. so they re taking this we re going to say no to everything, sort of a nonsensical position. and that s made it difficult for the president to work through it. but his statement was exactly correct. in wisconsin, we have not laid off teachers. we have not laid off policemen