and that is what all the gop scandal mongering is about. the president is saving lives and jobs. republicans are just trying to save their political lives. joaning me now are governor ed rendell and susan milligan. thank you both for come on the show tonight. governor rendell, don t americans really care more about having a job and health care than phony scandals? absolutely. i think people are sick and tired of congress looking and investigating all these trumped up scandal whence they haven t done anything. the interesting part about the statistics you just gave is in the last 12 months, we created 2.4 billion private sector jobs and even public sector jobs are starting to grow back a little. but think what we would have done if the president had passed the president s jobs bill in august 201 1. just on infrastructure alone, we would have added a million jobs to that 2.4 million.
the lowest percentage of uninsured americans in history. i mean, this is sensational progress. and i m going to make a prediction. for those people who run and susan said they re trying to nationalize it and they are, because the president may be unpopular. but if you run against the affordable care act, if you re scott walker in wisconsin, you re going to have to explain to 300, 400,000 wisconsinites why they don t have health care because you didn t take the medicaid expansion. and that s going to happen everywhere. everywhere. and they re going to have to explain why they turned their back on giving health care to people. and the only reason they did it is because in ten years it will cost the states money. they re going to pay the price in november. that s my prediction. let me put something else on the table. susan, the city look at this, as a whole, state and local jobs have barely recovered from the recession.
so they ve been obstructionists. the job growth has been incredible despite the fact that they haven t given the president what we need as a country to create more jobs. that s very important. they ve been able to create these jobs against obstructi obstructionism, against a steep hill to climb unnecessarily, by the way, that has been put by the gop. and susan, when you look at the facts, let s compare obama to bush presidencies when it comes to private sector jobs. president obama has created 5.9 million jobs so far. president bush lost 646,000. i mean, we can have different opinions. but those are the facts. yes. and, you know, there seems to be a sort of pavlovian response on the republicans on the hill where, for example, if the unemployment rate goes down they ll say that s just because people have become discouraged aechb they aren t looking for
questions about his 2009 disappearance. whether bergdahl was, quote, a deserter who simply slipped away for a short adventure and was then captured is one of the many mysteries the military is investigating. bre we don t have the details yet. but many republicans have now stopped even pretending they care about the facts. senator john mccain is a leading critic of the release. he said the administration s briefing this week failed to sway him. i learned nothing in this briefing nor did i expect to learn anything in the briefing. i can t comment on what went on there except that i didn t learn anything i didn t already know. he learned nothing from the briefing? maybe that s because he didn t listen to it. quote, senator john mccain stayed long enough to ask one question but left after shouting over an unsatisfactory answer. what a surprise he didn t learn anything. he was too busy shouting. and there s senator saxby chambli chambliss, racing out of the briefing before it
but on the question you asked, rev, there s no question about that. look at two other southern states where the governors, both democrats, governor bebee in arkansas and governor bashir in kentucky, where they took the medicaid expansion and set up their own exchanges. they are popular. they are both 20 points up in positive versus negative as opposed to governor jindal being 14 points down. so i think the republicans are in deep trouble. in kentucky in kentucky, think about kentucky. for 113,000 people signed up by the aca, of which 75% were previously uninsured and more than 50% were under 35. the law has worked beautifully in kentucky. mitch mcconnell is calling for its repeal. he s in trouble. you know, susan, check out these numbers, and this is what the governor s referring to. check out these numbers from the new york times. most voters approve of arkansas