it is september 14th. this is your a.m. wake-up call. i m carol costello joining you live this morning from new york. thanks for waking up with us. nearly one in six americans are now living in poverty. that s according to a new report from the census bureau. it s a gut check on where we stand in the wake of the recession. here are the raw numbers from the government. 46.2 million lived in poverty in 2010. that s over 15% of the population, the highest level since 1993. for a family of four, the poverty line is just over $22,000 a year. some advocates for the poor say that bar is way too low, but the conservative heritage foundation is pushing back again. if you qualify as being in poverty today, then you re really in deep poverty because that number is so low. that s based on an outdated formula from the 60s. i think that these numbers are designed to exaggerate the extent of poverty in the united states in order to build a larger welfare state, and it does make it mo
call. i m carol costello. thank you for waking up with us. rick perry was the prime target along with seven other presidential candidates on stage, trading barbs about everything from the economy to vaccinations to immigration. social security set the tone right off the bat. you ll hear from all eight contenders talking about your money, your job, your retirement. but let s talk about the two candidates sitting at the top of the polls. rick perry and mitt romney. listen. this is a broken system. it has been called a ponzi scheme by many people long before me, but no one s had the courage to stand up and say here is how we re going to reform it. the term ponzi scheme i think is over the top, unnecessary, and frightful to many people. i m not particularly worried about about governor perry and governor romney frightening the people when president obama scares them every day. social security is broke, we spent all the money, and it s on its last legs unless we do some
malone s is the country s only village post office. the postal service says they expect to save about $42,000 a year here and may turn as many as 3,700 existing locations into village post offices. but with a looming debt of $9 billion, saving the u.s. mail service is going to take more than a village post office. patrick oppman, cnn, malone, washington. the news continues now with randi kaye. this is the bill, says president obama. the question now is whether the american jobs act will ever be turned into law and how fast. as you may have seen live right here on cnn, president today showed off the job creating blueprint he plans to send to congress just hours from now. it is $447 billion worth of tax breaks and new federal spending which the white house says will be more than offset elsewhere in the budget. it would deepen and extent the existing payroll tax cut for employees and employers, it would pump $60 billion into infrastructure projects and $25 billion into schoo
and the lead economic adviser. and then mark sandy to tell us whether a deal with save the u.s. credit rating, and finally presidential politics. candy crowley in iowa with candidate, tim pawlenty. you can be both strong and pleasant and nice. those are not contradictory things. i am gloria borger in for candy crowley, and this is st e state of the union. mitch mcconnell yesterday demanded that president obama get personally involved in the debt talks and he soon got his wish, and now there are reports this morning a plan is near. mitch mcconnell, thank you for being with us. let me get to it. can you announce this morning that a plan has been reached and there s a deal? we are very close. we had a good day yesterday, both the president and vice president called me and the president talked to the speaker as well, and they understand with a republican majority in the house and a republican in the senate, and we made progress in that direction since april when the admin
now, we are standing by to here about two hikers held in iran. and then you will hear from the men who sin tau grated the marines. hello, i am t. j. holmes, and thank you for spending part of your sunday with us. this is what we re keeping an eye on today in the debt debate. 1:00 eastern time, that is when a vote is scheduled in the senate on majority leader harry reid s plan. that was the vote that was supposed to take place overnight but it was delayed late into the evening. listen to the senate majority leader. i have spoken to the white house quite a few times this evening and asked me to give everybody as much time as possible to see if a deal can be reached. the only way that can be done is with the president of the united states. and we re going to continue to work on that, and get this problem solved and let everybody in the country know we will not default for the first time in history, and that s how i am going to spend that time until we get that out come.