that is the biggest jump in nearly 40 years. prices were up just 5/10 of a percent from november to december, which is a slower pace we had seen previously. but here's the thing, when you go to buy groceries or get gas, you don't need the government to tell you that prices are way up, much more than they were last year. meat's up 15%. the price of eggs up 11%, milk 4%, and the cost of housing 5%, and look at this one. the cost of gas is up 50% in the past year. that is one people love talking about. as i said, when the prices are up while they're up, they didn't go up quite as fast as they did the month before, which could mean we're headed in the right direction. so let's dig deeper into that and bring in co-anchor of cnbc's squawk box and founder of "new york times" deal book andrew ross sorkin. andrew, people are going to freak out over this 7% number, but should they? because we have a really strong economy. >> look, we have a really strong economy, but the truth is -- i would never encourage anybody to freak out. i think this is challenging. i think it's troubling. i think anybody who's gone to the pump, who's gone to the supermarket, who's tried to buy a car in particular, whether used or new, knows that there is a problem, and clearly we have seen wage inflation, which you would think is a good thing, but not really relative to what's actually happening, which is the costs have gone up completely outpaced that. we have an issue here. it probably is going to get worse before it gets better, and so much of this remains a supply issue, not just, you know, chip shortages and all of those conversations we've been having, but actually a people shortage. we talked a lot about the great resignation. that is an issue that is creating a lot of these inflationary forces on costs. >> and that's what i don't understand, jason. prices are up on almost everything, and at the same time you've got millions of people saying take this job and shove it. i don't need the stability of a regular paycheck. i'm going to do something else or i think i can find other work that pays more. how do you square two? >> i don't think anyone fully knows the answer to that. >> that's why i'm asking. >> people who want jobs have jobs. the issue is there's still lots of people who don't want jobs. the labor force participation rate hasn't come close to recovering. i think some of that continues to be the fallout of covid, the way it's affected people psychologically and the like, nervousness about getting back in jobs. some of it is people got some extra cash last year, and so they don't need to be in quite as big a rush. i expect that to solve itself over the next few months, but i don't think anyone fully understands what's going on, so it's hard to be confident about when and whether those people will be coming back. >> andrew, i said a moment ago the economy is growing, unemployment is low, but when you have to pay more for meat or milk or gas and you drive by that gas station all day every day, that is especially what fires people up. they hate paying more. they hate not being able to get the stuff they want when they want it. is the psychologically of inflation going to overshadow everything else? >> there is this great disconnect because people say they feel better about their own wages in so many ways and where things are, and then they say the economy is terrible because they're going past the gas station or they're trying to buy a car or trying to buy a refrigerator and the price is much higher than they thought it was going to be. i think it's going to take -- and jason, i think was speaking to this, i don't think we're really going to know where things are headed truly for another, say, three to six months. i think all of those people that have effectively taken themselves out of the labor -- the labor market are going to either have to come back into the labor market, i think there's real questions about are some of those people trying to be self-employed. the good news would be if those are lower waged workers who are now trying to go out on their own. will they be able to do that. how many of those people are depending on the stock market to effectively pay for themselves. how much of that was stimulus checks and other things that have led them out of that market. i think all of this is going to become clearer. now, i wish i could look into a crystal ball and tell you what's actually going to happen. i do think it will become clear in the next three to six months. >> let's talk about the fed. they went from talking about interest rate hikes in the summer to three or four over the next year: are rate hikes going to be the magic bullet, and if they were, why didn't we start months ago? >> you know, rate hikes are definitely the right thing to be doing right now. you don't even need to look at inflation, just the unemployment rate at 3.9% says we don't need ultra, ultra emergency footing on the part of the federal reserve. the economy is getting back closer to normal. they should be. i think there are a couple months behind the curve. i hope their rate cycle this year is enough. if inflation is more persistent than they expect it to be, and there's a lot of good listens to -- reasons to think it might be, they may need to do more. i think it's fine for them to start out in march, see a couple more months of data. they may need to do more than they're expecting, but they're starting in the right place. >> we don't need per ma central bank support, we've just gotten used to it and we like it that way. thank you so much. we're going to leave it there. later in the hour i will be speaking to white house economic council chair digging into all of this even deeper. we have to turn to this story, the u.s. surpassing more than 62 million covid cases seasons the pandemic began with covid hospitalizations in the united states doubling in more than a dozen states in the last two weeks. i want you to look at this screen, the dark orange states on this map show where hospitalizations have surged the most. there's some encouraging news, a new study from california shows the omicron variant causes fewer hospitalizations and much shorter stays. just this morning the biden administration announcing several new actions to increase the number of covid tests available to schools by 10 million per month. joining us now to discuss, morgan chesky in dallas, and dr. vin gupta, global health policy expert. dr. gupta, hospitalizations are doubling in more than a dozen states, but this california study shows that omicron causes fewer hospitalizations, shorter stays, and when you look at those states, what do they show you? high concentrations of unvaccinated people. >> good morning, stephanie. you know, i do think we should take this into context. we're expecting that daily deaths are going to increase and peak around january 23rd and then precipitous decline. by end of february, less than 500 daily deaths. i do think it's going to be still a combination of omicron and the delta variant causing 10,000 weekly american deaths well into the end of january at least, and it's important to note here that if you're vaccinated, yes, i think omicron is not going to be that big of a deal. if you're unvaccinated there's still going to be a lot of virus that can accumulate in your lungs, in your nose, and that is a problem here. the messaging here still needs to be that omicron and delta, that covid-19 is still a threat to you and your livelihood if you're unvaccinated, and that's what we're going to see in the data. >> the messaging and misinformation continues to be disturbing. i want to get your reaction to senator rand paul who is a doctor, his continued attacks on dr. anthony fauci. watch this. >> a planner who believes he is the science leads to an arrogance that justifies in his mind using government resources to smear and to destroy the reputations of other scientists. >> in usual fashion, senator, you are distorting everything about me. so go to rand paul website, and you see fire dr. fauci with a little box that says contribute here. you can do $5, $10, $20, $100, so you are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain. >> it's hard to even watch that, when you think about anthony fauci has devoted his life's work to medicine and science working for the government. he could have left the government and worked for private industry and made 10, 20 times, but instead he has stayed in that seat, gotten abused like this. help us understand these kind of distortions that are coming from the government. i mean, examples right there, that led to death threats against fauci. an arrest that took place last month of a guy with an ar-15 rifle on his way to d.c. who police said was driving with a hit list. can you just give us a sense as a medical professional someone who has devoted his life's worth to helping and saving people, what do you make of this? >> it's a pattern of disturbing behavior by senator rand paul who is also an m.d., to your point, stephanie. and i think for all your viewers out there, something that gets lost is that without dr. anthony fauci, who had the foresight to investigation in the research to help catalyze the research on the mrna vaccines. we would not currently have vaccines. i'm sitting five feet away from a set of patients here in an icu in seattle that are suffering many unvaccinated from covid-19 on ventilators. we would have having much worse situation, over 1.5 million more americans would have died without his foresight here. so the fact that that is not even a point of discussion with dr. paul and dr. fauci is unfortunate. rand paul is giving voice and oxygen to scientists -- or to data that has been debunked such as ivermectin. he seems like he wants to giver oxygen to this faux science for reasons i do not know. there is not clear evidence these alternative therapies worked. right now there is no clinical data to suggest it's safe and effective in patients and human beings. that's why we're not doing it. dr. fauci is the reason why we are where we are in terms of light at the end of the tunnel, and we need to give him credit. >> i don't even understand how it remains so hyperpoliticized. it was operation warp speed. it was during the trump administration that the vaccine was developed and trump himself got the vaccine, got the booster and has continued to say it has saved tens of millions of lives, so i don't even get the political argument. morgan, take us to texas. you've got small businesses there, again, fighting to stay afloat amid omicron. what are they telling you? >> reporter: yeah, stephanie, it is a fight to stay open, and it's a fight to find staff that can work inside some of these smaller venues. we're in dallas's deep alum neighborhood, a hot spot for nightclubs, bars, restaurants, et cetera. some of the smaller ones have had to temporarily close. they thought they made it out of the woods when the vaccine came out. then came the delta variant, and now you have omicron. so much more highly transmissible, and they're watching it impact their work force in realtime. hear what one bar owner told me in an interview. >> i would say it's a week by week basis, but maybe honestly a day-by-day basis on, we're going to have to restaff and performers and deejays and the like, just don't know until we open those doors what we're going to have. >> reporter: and on top of the omicron variant continuing to spread, at last check 11,500 hospitalizations in texas, there is another problem that only complicates this, stef, and that's the fact that a lot of these workers think they may have been exposed. they go to get tested and they're waiting for in some cases hours upon hours in these testing sites to finally get the test, but then on top of that, they're not getting the results for days. and so they're kind of put in this limbo that they don't want to expose anyone else to it. they're left on their hands hoping for an answer. >> speaking of businesses, dr. gupta, we're seeing more fortune 500 ceos speaking out in favor of vaccine mandates despite anything going on in the supreme court. united airlines mandated vaccines for early on. 3,000 have tested positive, not one single vaccinated employee has been hospitalized. jamie dimon of jpmorgan is now saying employees cannot come to the office unless you're vaccinated, and if you're working from home, you're not getting paid. >> real world evidence is pretty clear now that vaccine mandates work. that when individuals are faced with the prospect of losing their job, they get vaccinated. attrition is low, and i understand in a tight labor market when you're worried about employees and losing staff to maybe a competitor, this becomes the question, how do you retain talent, though it's now been very clear across multiple examples that's not happening. attrition is low. people get vaccinated. >> get vaccinated. get to keep your job, get to stay out of the hospital. seems like a winning combo. dr. vin gupta, morgan chesky, thank you both so much. coming up, we got a lot to get to today. president biden narrows in on voting rights, but does he have a plan? can he? he's not the one who makes laws. and after more than 250 audits, people are questioning the 2020 results in michigan. so how can the state convince voters that the elections are free and fair? we'll ask michigan secretary of state jocelyn benson next. we'll ask michigan secretary of we'll ask michigan secretary of state jocelyn benson next. it's non habit forming and powered by the makers of nyquil. new zzzquil ultra. when you really really need to sleep. ♪ limu emu and doug.♪ and it's easy to customize your insurance at libertymutual.com so you only pay for what you need. isn't that right limu? limu? limu? sorry, one sec. doug blows several different whistles. doug blows several different whistles. 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president biden doesn't have the power to make or pass laws. right? he can make an argument. he can use political capital, twist some arms, use his bully pulpit. he's doing that, so where do we go from here? >> you're right, steph. the president doesn't have a vote in any of this. his power here is in persuasion, and so far as you note, he has not managed to persuade any key democrats to change their minds in terms of getting rid of the filibuster. the white house says the president's going to be out there. he's going to continue to talk about this, use the bully pulpit as you noticed, and have conversations with senators. he said yesterday he had been having private conversations with them over the past couple of months. the white house says that's going to continue. but look, it's just not clear where it goes from here. he doesn't have the votes. the white house knows he doesn't have the votes. i think the question going forward is the president said he would get rid of the filibuster under pressure from supporters. leaning into this now, is his decision to make this big reversal on his position on the filibuster enough for those supporters to be satisfied with that he's getting in the fight if this indeed fails as it looks like it will. or does the president wind up paying a political price among those supporters who say he should have done this a lot sooner. that's really tbd, and that's kind of what's hanging over this. it's not necessarily whether it's going to pass or not, because that's not likely to happen. it's what the president gets out of this at the end from supporters who wanted him to do this for some time. >> but it wasn't like if he did this sooner manchin and cinema were going to get on board. they've been very public about not wanting to change the rules to pass this thing. why, eugene does majority leader schumer say let's take this thing to a vote. we know what they're going to do. >> yeah, exactly, and it's a little odd to have a majority leader put his senators in this position to take a tough vote that he kind of already knows what the answer is on that. and that's another issue that people have is trying to figure out, okay, so biden can't have a plan because he is not in the senate, the plan is the persuasion at this point, and what he can do, but then you have chuck schumer, that's where people are like, well, how -- what is your plan and right now the plan that he has has been outlined and, that where -- that is where they're at. i will say, though, the anger from voting rights a advocates at president biden and chuck schumer, it's not going anywhere. because if there's no actual resolution to this, then they don't care. they also are upset because it's taken so long. the president had a speech last summer about voting rights, and then he kind of went straight to being full-fledged and focused on this. the president is going to continue having speeches, is going to continue pressing senators that's going to actually work this time, they're not holding their breath. they know the realities of this year. the fact that bbb has still not been done and the white house wants that taken care of. you have manchin and sinema, but you also have mark kelly who told my colleagues that he's not sure what he's going to do when it comes to the filibuster. the president is nowhere near the 50 votes he would need to change this. and that's why that frustration is not going anywhere. it puts the president and chuck schumer in an almost impossible position. >> is kill the filibuster turning into the new defund the police, where the meaning behind it isn't to wipe out either one but to make improvements and reform they both need, but the meaning people don't know it's just the messaging, and the messaging isn't correct. >> right. and i think that is the question, particularly if you're looking at arizona here where joe biden won by just 11,000 votes in the 2020 election, and mark kelly is up for re-election this very year. when you look out here to west virginia, this is joe manchin territory, donald trump won it by 39 percentage points, and frankly, a great number of people view joe manchin, kyrsten sinema as the stopgaps to democrats passing their major legtsive priorities. there are the structural issues here, the rules, right? but if you also look at the political conversation that we are talking about where you're talking about defunding the police. what does that mean or killing the filibuster hear, you know, joe manchin won in 2018 by just three percentage points in west virginia. just in the last hour i talk to two gentleman who voted for trump, who intend to vote for joe manchin if he upholds the filibuster. i was talking with a democrat a few minutes ago who said essentially joe manchin is throwing away democrats' opportunity to pass major voting reformts here with the one chance they've got. she said to help west virginia move forward. i think that is where you're having these conversations on the ground. it's very similar to louisiana in 2014 when mary landrieu was running for re-election. she pushed forward the keystone pipeline. ultimately, she wasn't reelected but then you go to heidi heitkamp before her 2018 re-election there in deep red north dakota, she voted against brett kavanaugh, ultimately she was voted out by north dakota vote. i think that is the very conversation here in the deep red states about what ultimately does joe manchin, whether he votes to upend the filibuster or not, regardless of what legislative priority for. >> vaughn hillyard, eugene daniels, carol lee, thank you all for your tame this morning. i want to remind our viewers what is in these bills. that's what matters. the freedom to vote act would expand voter registration and election day access, provide universal mail-in voting, make election day a national holiday and ban partisan redistricting. the john lewis voting rights act would reinstall federal oversight in cities and states with histories of voter discrimination. amazing all those who call themselves patriots, why wouldn't they want to make election day a national holiday. as lawmakers are battling it over, it is important not to overlook what is going on at a state level. a lot. we are checking in on the state of election security and inviting all 50 secretaries of state to come right here, put their money where their mouth is to tell us what they are doing tooverturn the election results in 2020. secretary benson thanks for coming this morning. yo wrote an op-ed saying the 2020 election was the most secure and accessible in your state's history, why? >> number one, first, thanks for having me and focusing on this really critical issue right now, but number one is because more people voted than ever before. we had the highest turnover we've ever had. more michigan citizens on both sides of the aisle participated and took advantage of their opportunities, their options to vote whether it was by mail or absentee or in person. and secondly, we no security breaches. our elections were secure. every valid vote was counted. it was counted efficiently, more efficiently than it had been in the past, and then third, our results withstood not just over 250 official audits at the state and local level, all of which affirmed the accuracy of those results, we also withstood an extraordinary amount of scrutiny, dozens of lawsuits trying to upend, and yet our results held. our democracy prevailed ask our voters will and voices were ultimately heard. it was a success on all fronts and it's particularly really frustrating to me that we're spending so much time instead of trying to replicate that success, really defend against attacks that are trying to and aimed at preventing our ability to replicate that success in the future. >> you had lawsuits. you had audits and some really dangerous behavior by officials. documents obtained by "politico" show that 16 high ranking republicans in the state party signed papers attempting to certify the election for trump despite biden winning. how does that even happen and what is being done to prevent something like that from happening again? >> exactly. that is a reflection of exactly how far people were willing to go then to block the will of the people from coming to fruition. and what's happening since and what's been happening since is that my office and local election officials all across the state are more determined now to plan for that to happen, to assume that could happen again and be prepared for it by educating voters and preparing local election officials to protect those results. unfortunately what's also happening in michigan is a lot of those local officials who certified our results have been replaced by folks who don't believe in democracy. so the efforts to undo democracy are intensifying in our state. >> hold on a second, they have been repaced by people who don't believe in democracy. if the people who don't believe in democracy were in those seats ten months ago, would we have scene the state of michigan be certified for donald trump, which would have been an outright law? >> i and our attorney general would have continued to fight in the courts to make sure that didn't happen, but the fight would have been more intense and taken longer to certify those results, which would have done two things. one, potentially pushed us past the safe harbor date which enables the legislature to potentially get involved and congress to potentially reconsider accepting our electoral college votes but also creates this air of illegitimacy and confusion around our election results none of which is valid or based on evidence, but is certainly the goal of democracy deniers who are trying to damage voters' confidence about our elections and our democracy. >> 250 audits took place and still there are people pushing the big lie. we need more than education. we need legal protections. secretary, thank you for joining us this morning. i appreciate it. coming up, the january 6th committee issues new subpoenas zeroing in on one of don jr.'s long-time advisers. so could the former president's son be next. we'll talk to a member of the committee, republican congressman adam kinzinger next. congressman adam kinzinger next. fries or salad? 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(vo) this year, t-mobile for business is here to help you hit the ground running. when you switch to t-mobile and bring your own device, we'll pay off your phone up to $800. you can keep your phone. keep your number. and get your employees connected on the largest and fastest 5g network. plus, we give you $200 in facebook ads on us! so you can reach more customers, create more opportunities, and make this the best year for your business yet. visit your local t-mobile store today. the january 6th probe is showing no signs of slowing, and this morning election fraud lies are not going away. in fact, former president trump just cut an interview short with npr when he was pressed on those very lies. it comes after the house committee took a big step to debunk a bogus conspiracy theory that the fbi was behind it. the justice department to -- the committee issued subpoenas for these three guys saying they want to know if they spoke to speakers and organizers at the pro-trump rally before the riot. let's bring in republican congressman adam kinzinger from the state of illinois and a member of the house january 6th committee. thank you for being here. based on those three subpoenas, those are don jr.'s boys. does that mean the next people you're going to be looking to subpoena are don jr. and kim guilfoyle? >> well, obviously i don't want to reveal the next steps. it flexes every day in terms of if we learn new information, where does our focus go, how do we build that case? but i mean certainly i think there's no doubt looking at the role that kimberly guilfoyle played, that don jr. played, it would be obvious we would need some information from them or people that would know things about what they were doing. we all saw the selfie video of them dancing and laughing after the president's speech. we just -- all we want is answers. it's not like, you know, there's anything nefarious here besides let's find out what the truth is, and we will. i'm convinced that the january 6th committee will get the truth. now, the question is will people want to accept the truth or conspiracy, and that's a whole other issue. >> but that is the issue because you're not going to get any answers unless these people face consequences. just having to testify, it's just a show, and they don't care. >> well, i mean, look, as far as any consequences, that really is up to doj. we can bring people in to testify and produce evidence and information and refer that to the doj. i certainly think we intend to do that. what is the rock that led up to january 6th, and what's been happening since. show that to the american people. even if the whatever, 30% or whatever the number is of people that think january 6th was legit, their kids won't, and what's important is that they get the right answer. they get the right narrative to all of this. and we'll do everything we can to get there. it will be up to the doj on what they want to prosecute or what they don't. >> most people when they hear they could get subpoenaed, that's really scary, yet jim jordan and scott perry say they're not going to cooperate with your committee. if you were to subpoena them, then what? what would be the actual course of action because they don't seem scared. >> yeah, i mean, that's information i don't fully know. there's uniqueness when members of congress are subpoenaed by a congressional committee. i haven't seen it before in my career. i think if you're a member of congress and have information, first off, you should be in front of us voluntarily. this is the people's house. this is the people's inquiry, if you don't do that, if we have to subpoena you, we'll do that. ultimately the interesting thing with people like jim jordan is the house has ways to compel testimony or to be able to punish in a way that we can't with anybody else. you know, obviously we can refer somebody to doj for contempt when it comes to somebody like a member of congress. there's things on committee. there's obviously various i guess perks, that can be used. i'm not saying we're going to use that. i'm saying those are quills we can use if we need to. >> can i ask what this is like for you. you're a republican. you're a member of congress. i'm guessing jim jordan not long ago, i don't know if he was your friend, but he was certainly your colleague. what is it like for you to be a republican member of congress right now? who do you eat lunch with? >> it's disappointing. i think what's the most disappointing for me is i thought there were people that had red lines that, you know, truth to some level actually mattered. when i see somebody, you know, refusing to cooperate in front of the committee. it's like what are you trying to hide. when i see members of congress, when i see ted cruz, you know, pushing this idea of the ray epps conspiracy, which by the way has been a conspiracy almost taken as gospel for about two or three months that somehow ray epps was an fbi agent and somehow everybody is so dumb which even if he was an fbi agent, which he wasn't, that that one fbi agent incited everybody to do something like tear up the capitol. what do you think of your own base and voters if you think they're that gullible. what happens is the reaction is always some circular argument to come back and point out something different. people will accept whatever reality feels good to them. all i can do is tell truth. ultimately, these people pushing these lies and conspiracies, j.d. vance this morning is pushing this ray epps idea. they will pay for that someday. they will pay for that because the truth always prevails. >> i know you want to hear from former vice president mike pence. have you reached out to him personally? you and liz cheney have the best chance to make that happen. >> i haven't. i can't speak for liz, i have no requested if she has or hasn't. for me i'm always careful. i want to go through the committee process on this. i think it's important that it maintains that way. i would love to see the vice president obviously testify even if it's just written answers to questions. i recognize he played an important role that day. regardless of your feelings of the vice president, he certainly could have made this situation way worse. he can come in and actually adjudicate his role in history very well. we'll get the information i need. i'm very confident of that. >> republican senator mike rounds, i know you've been thinking about it, talking about it this week, he told the truth. he said that the 2020 election was fair and that president biden won. he told a fact. yet trump attacked him and attacked him. watch this. >> i think as republicans we owe it to tell the truth, and i think integrity matters. and so, in my opinion, if we want to keep the confidence of our supporters and our voters, then we have to be honest with them. >> congressman, you and senator rounds are part of only a handful of republicans welcome -- willing to tell the truth. trump is still pushing the big lie. you see more and more republicans either pushing it or staying silent about it. how frustrating is this to you to realize there is no place for the truth in the gop anymore? >> it's frustrating. it's angering. you know, senator round said the right thing, and i get it. i mean, all you have to do is look at twitter and see people, oh, nobody should be praised for doing the basic minimum, the right thing. i typically agree with that, but in this current environment what senator rounds was actually, unfortunately brave, and he should be commended for that. that can be something that can spread. but yeah, i mean, that's the moment we're in. people -- every, you know, member of congress and senator, i think if you put them on that cia juice, right? like the truth serum. they're going to tell you they know joe biden won, but they're scared to death. they're scared of thinker own voters to tell them the truth. what kind of leadership is that? what kind of leadership is that? that's not leadership at all. that's fear. that's the spirit of fear permeating your soul. that is not leading. >> yes, we saw ted cruz tell the truth about january 6th and then get spanked by tucker carlson, and he crawled back. and lastly, i just want to ask you then, is there a place for you in the gop right now? >> you know, do i feel like it, not really. i mean, i'm going to maintain my republican identity. i'm a republican. i've been one since i was 6, and i'm going to fight for the soul of the party, but yeah, i'm not going to sit here and pretend like that it certainly feels like i'm a member of the republican family. there's a lot of people that are silent that i think agree with me. we just need people to speak out. silence is complicit, and silence will allow the conspiracy to infect this party in a way way worse than we've seen now. >> the fact that you were a republican since you were 6 years old, means there's a lot more i want to discuss with you about your childhood. we just don't have time today. coming up, republican since he was 6. that's insane. when we come back, back to our breaking news. new numbers out this morning show that prices are still rising at the high est level in nearly four years. we'll be talking to the president's top economic adviser, brian deese next. adviser, brian deese next. ♪wouldn't you like to get away? 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capsule pharmacy can hand blodeliverner. your medications - today - for free. go to capsule.com. we handle your insurance. all you have to do is schedule delivery. go to capsule.com to get started in 15 seconds today. oh hey there! i'm just reading wayfair reviews like it's my job. i love seeing people loving their home. my daughter and i never agree on anything. that's not true! but we did agree this rug was perfect. okay. stop being weird. mom and daughter agreeing on something. wayfair works miracles! ooh! check this one out. this chair is so comfortable. it puts both of my babies to sleep. look at you making a space that works perfectly for all of you! i could use a good nap. well, would you look at that? jerry, you gotta see this. seen it. trust me, after 15 walks... gets a little old. i really should be retired by now. wish i'd invested when i had the chance... to the moon! ugh. unbelievable. breaking news, a federal judge will allow a sex abuse lawsuit against britain's prince andrew to move forward after the royal family member tried to get the suit tossed out. let's go right to kelly cobiella in london. what's going on? >> reporter: that's right, stephanie, a federal judge has ruled this lawsuit must now go forward. the lawyers for prince andrew had argued he was covered under a settlement agreement dating back to 2009 between epstein accuser virginia giuffre, that prince andrew couldn't be sued because of that settlement agreement. the judge has said that's not the case. this lawsuit can now move forward. just as a reminder, virginia juf ri alleges she was forced to have sex with prince andrew when she was 17 years old at three different locations. prince andrew has denied all of those allegations, he has consistently denied them and claims he's never met her. this now means that essentially the discovery process can move forward, giuffre's lawyers have asked for a number of documents from prince andrew's team and the question comes in the months moving forward how much of this documentation from the public, as the lawsuit plays out over the next several months. right now, it's scheduled to go to trial in september, but as you and i both now, a lot of things can change between now and then. stephanie? >> no doubt. kelly, thank you. now let's go back to our top story. inflation, increasing at a rate of 7% year over year. the highest jump since the summer of 1982. let's bring in brian deese. he's the director of national economic council and joins us from the white house. brian, i know it's a very busy day. thank you for being here. we have a very strong economy. unemployment is very low. consumer spending is increasing. but inflation is up, prices are up on almost everything, and it's overshadowing a winning economy. how do you manage that? >> well, we start by looking at this month's data, and getting a little bit under the hood. what we saw was the 0.5% increase month over month was actually a deceleration, a welcome deceleration from october and november. and that was driven by a reduction in energy prices, principally gas prices, which is good news, wells a reduction in the rate of increase flood costs, particularly food at the grocery store. so that reflects some progress. at the same time, you're absolutely right. the price increases are too high and they are affecting family's household budgets and their outlook on the economy, which is why we are focused on the things that we can do to sustain that strong growth that you're saying. sustain a strong economy, a sustainable economic recovery, while going at prices. that start with congress confirming -- the senate confirming the president's nominees for the dhar and vice chair of the federal reserve. our work on supply chains and unsticking those bottlenecks is even more important as we manage through the omicron surge. and moving forward on measures like build more housing supply, so we can get ahead of the price increases that were problems before the pandemic and are exacerbated now. but if we make investments now, we can start to make progress on those issues. >> can you explain this one to me? how do we have soaring prices on almost everything. and at the same time, soaring numbers of people quitting saying, take this job and shove it. i don't need to go back to an office. how do you raise the two? >> what that underscores is a labor market where people see more opportunity to move up into better jobs with higher wages. what we see is a record number of new hires which reflects a record number of people quigt, but an even higher number of people getting new jobs. and that reflects the fact we're getting wages increase, particularly for the bottom. on friday, we got historic wage increase data, the first in 40 years. i understand that may be less exciting as a headline than the inflation prints. but the fact is that wages are growing for people at the bottom, jobs are plentiful, and people have opportunities in this labor market. that's a positive thing. and what we feed to focus on now is how do we sustain that kind of economic recovery. as the president often talks about, from the bottom up and the middle out. but that's an economic recovery where people have more opportunity in the labor market, while getting some of these supply-related issues under control. >> but then, how do you think about people on the bottom? because you said it. while their wages are going up, it doesn't matter much when the price of everything is going up. so what's the fed going to do? they're going to raise rates. we need to raise rates. but that's good for people like you and me. we're savers, and, great, i would love to see -- to get a little bit more in my savings, but for people who don't have savings, those hire rates hurt them. how do we think about that? >> it's important for the fed to operate within independence. the argument that the president has been laying out is that what we can do is to actually sustain strength and sustainability of this economic recovery. we want more growth and we want to expand the productive capacity of the economy. so if we have a problem with cars, for example, the car prices represented one third of the entire price increase that we saw. and while the typical person only buys a car every five, six, seven years, car prices clearly reflect not enough supply of cars. so there's two ways to deal with that, by which is reduce demand for cars by making people poorer and the other is build more cars. that's an example, but our approach is, how do we expand the productive capacity of this economy? get more growth, more production happening, particularly here in the united states, more goods and services produced. and we do that by things like getting more people into the workforce. you and i have talked at length about why we need quality child care to get more people in the workforce. building out our infrastructure, so we can actually move goods across the country more cheaply so we can actually build more things. i think the core answer is, we need to build the producti capacity of this economy. we need more growth. we need more capacity in this economy. some of that can happen quite immediately, like some of the supply chain bottlenecks. some of that happens over time. but even the things that happen over time are urgent to start right now. we can start on things like child care right now, and they will start to make a difference. >> yeah, but there was $39 billion in the american rescue plan dedicated to child care. where'd that money go? you could have been giving that out for months. we have a child care shortage now. that's a lot of money. >> great question. and one of the things that was important about the american rescue plan is that we built in resources to states, to municipalities, to child care facilities so that even as we have fits and starts with the pandemic, and otherwise, they have the resources. so this month, hundreds and hundreds of child care facilities across the country are getting resources from the american rescue plan that they can invest in covid protocols to stay open, invest in retention to keep people on the job, which we know is critically important, so the child care centers stay open. that helps more people stay and go to work. those resources are being put to work -- >> with all due respect, where? talk to any city, talk to any parent. they're saying they can't find a child care center and the price is off the chart. where is this? >> well, i would be happy to give to you and your viewers the full details on exactly where the child care money is going. it's going out to, again, hundreds of child care facilities across the country. and i think if you look at states and localities and their budget situation, they're actually in a historically strong budget situation because we provided them the resources, and we're not seeing the kind of falloff in employment in state and local first responders, health care providers, education workers that we have in prior recoveries, because of the steps that we took. no doubt, we still have challenges and that's why we need to finish the job with a long-term investments in build back better in child care. but we're in a dramatically better situation than we would have been, having made those investments over the course of 2021. >> no doubt those states have the money. now it's time to get it in the right places. and again, we are in an economic recovery. we've just got to keep on trucking. brian, we are out of time. thank you for joining me this morning. i appreciate it. to you at home, thank you for watching. that wraps up this very busy hour. i'm stephanie ruhle. don't go anywhere. jose diaz-balart picks up coverage on the other side of the break. jose diaz-balart picks up coverage on the other side of coverage on the other side of the break.ster than before. whoa! is that done? 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