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welcome to "your $$$$$." i'm ali velshi. >> and i'm christine romans. the u.s. economy grew at 5.9% in the last three months of 2009. another sign that the worst of the recession may be over. but in the new normal that is our economy, nothing is ever as it seems. consumer confidence tumbled, nearly 1 out of every 4 mortgages is under water. that means you owe more than the home is actually worth and the banks are still in big trouble. the number of troubled banks on the rise. one area where a comeback seems to be in full effect, wall street. bonuses up 17% in 2009. it may be a recovery, ali, but as you can see, it's a very fragile one at best. >> that's right, christine. that brings us to the heart of the matter, which still remains jobs. obviously, if we had better employment positions, people would feel better about the economy. take a look at this map. it provides a shocking visual of how unemployment has spread like a virus throughout the country. this was provided to us by la to toya, she put this together as a graduate student. as the map gets darker, that means unemployment is worse than it was the previous month. you've seen this develop over the last couple of years. unemployment in those particular darkened areas at 10% or higher. >> that's the political reality that's facing so many in washington and so many of us at home, trying to make sense of the statistical recovery, as larry summers, one of the presidents of money man put it, but the human recession we're still going through. david gergen is a political analyst. april ryan is the white house correspondent with the american urban radio network. and douglas hoelts ache sn president of dhe consulting and a former economic adviser to john mccain. doug, when you look at a map like that and see that stain of unemployment spreading across the country, it means that economists, politicians, and main street are all very, very nervous about the condition of america, doesn't it? >> yes. and they should be. this recession is so severe, precisely because that map is dark everywhere. in a lot of recessions, there are states that escape the brunt or even grow completely. that's not the case in this recession. there's pain everywhere in the u.s. >> let's take a quick look at this unemployment bill that was passed by the senate. david gergen, they passed a $15 billion plan. the jobs part of it is it's going to give a tax break to companies that hire people who have been unplemployed for a while. they're actually going to not have them pay the social security portion. it's a small amount, about $3,500 in the first year for businesses. there are other things in that bill as well. it doesn't include the jobless benefits extension. david gurden, this has to be reconciled with a house bill that is much bigger. i don't even know how that process is going to end up, but is this right direction for the government in terms of creating jobs? >> i think it is. and the good news is that the senate bill got 70 votes. it got a number of republicans to come over, scott brown being the first one out of the gate to come support it. so it was bipartisan in nature. the bad news is that it is so small. the senate was contemplating a much bigger bill. the house passed a bill of $174 billion. the administration asked for $150 billion and they came up with 15. "the new york times" has editorialized that that's pathetic, they called it puny. and it really will not create many more jobs. i think the real question now, ali -- i think this will be passed by the house, by the way, they've got some irons to wrinkle out. but the question is, where do we go from here? the country clearly does not want another stimulus bill. what they want is something much more targeted. and the issue becomes and doug and other economists can respond to this, but are there pieces you can carve out, such as infrastructure, that would make sense to continue and make sure you don't get into a lot of the pork that we saw in the stimulus. and that's going to be the hard question. i think it is -- there's no question that the senate will act, the house will act on extending the unemployment benefits. there's no question they'll act on extending cobra, which is important for people's insurance purposes, but i think the hard question is, where do day go from here after this $15 billion start, which is a tiny start. >> right, april, he calls it a tiny start and many of the economists we've talked to says it will have modest job growth at best. that's why a lot of the economists say, it may not create that many jobs. is the stimulus bill is the targeted stimulus from here on out, is it the right plan? >> from what i'm hearing, the way you make a dent is not this bill. the people i've talked to, including members of the house, democrats particularly, they don't like it. they say one way to make a dent is to extend unemployment. to take that money, you know, extra, beyond the 13 weeks, to take that money and push it into the economy so people will spend and you can see a little bit from that. but also that you're hearing that this doesn't have enough dealing with jobs. and i think what's happening is we've seen the problem with the stimulus package, as we talked about a moment ago, the fact that the stimulus package has problems. the stimulus package, you have not seen all of the moneys go to the shovel-ready projects as of yet. they're trying to learn the lessons from the past of the stimulus package, but they're also having some problems with this, because they're not focusing more so on job creation. so the dent is, from what we're hearing, put more jobs in there, more shovel-ready projects and also extend unemployment. >> doug, is this the right thing to do? are targeted stimulus plans just taking little pieces of the jobs, safety net situation, and addressing that, is that the right way to handle this? and the government can't really create jobs unless they're government jobs. they can create the atmosphere under which private industry can create jobs. is this really going to help small businesses doing some hiring? >> well, i think you said it exactly right. in the end, the government doesn't create jobs. it can speed the recovery of the private sector jobs and even there, its tools are limited. so one of the things that i think makes sense is to extend unemployment benefits, those automatic stabilizers, the things that put more money out when things are bad, but get smaller automatically when the economy recovers, those are a good idea. i had some hope for the jobs tax idea here, because, first of all, it was bipartisan in its origin. senator hatch and senator schumer. i thought that was a good step for washington. number two, it targeted the problem. the problem is the labor market. the payroll tax is the biggest tax most americans pay. unfortunately, it's not very big. and it will have only modest effects. but i think if you paired something like this, maybe in a more aggressive form, with the plan to get rid of the deficits in the years to come, the markets would responsible favorably to that. what's been missing in all of this has been an exit strategy where the private sector can say, you know, i can see the way out for the government. they'll withdraw their efforts. there'll be room for me to grow. >> stay with us. douglas holtz-eakin, don't go anywhere. all the big wigs gathered for the president's health care summit, but with all that power in one room, did anything actually get done? ♪ [ female announcer ] most people make resolutions... based on what they see on the outside. ♪ this year, focus on what's inside... and let cheerios help tackle your cholesterol. now you could win a free box to get started. 23 years. 21 years. i do really love what i do. ♪ i have clients down the block. across the street. in the same zip code. basically next door. i see the rewards every day of the people that i help. she said, i couldn't have done this without you. -i'm craig. -i'm mark. my name is kari. and i'm an ameriprise financial advisor. [ male announcer ] meet us at ameriprise.com. president obama this week calling a bipartisan summit on health care to break through the gridlock. >> part of the goal here, i think, is to figure out what are the areas that we do agree on, war the areas where we don't agree, and at the end of that process, then make an honest assessment as to whether we can bridge these differences. >> but after a full day of serious and televised discussion, did democrats and republicans find any common ground or was it all political theater, ali? >> all right. well, let's take that to our panel. april ryan, doug holtz-eakin and david gergen. i want to start with you, doug, having watched every last detail and fact checked it, the bottom line, i don't that we're any closer to an agreement on any particular aspect of health care than we were before this summit. what did we get out of the summit and what did you take from it? >> i don't think we got any real progress towards a bipartisan bill out of the u.s. congress. we did get some good political theater. we actually got a pretty serious discussion of the issues involved in health care reform. but, unfortunately, the meeting was a year to late. this is a meeting that had to happen last year, before the legislation was set in stone, at a time when you could actually engage republicans and get them on board by having democrats accept some of their ideas. i saw republicans and the president engaged, but i didn't see republicans and democrats on the hill, their counterparts, engaged. i don't see much future there. >> april, you were there covering this for the whole day. and i want you to listen to what senator lamar alexander said and tell me if you think this is the right approach. >> we've god to do something. and that's about -- that's where we are. but we think to do that, we have to start by taking the current bill and putting it on the shelf and starting from a clean sheet of paper. >> a do-over. we've been looking at this for months. the white house would like to get moving on something new and soon. he's calling for a complete do-over. >> the president and democrats are saying no do-over, it's not going to that, because if you do it over, they're not going to get anywhere. they're as close as they've ever come before, even with all of this ranging. and going back to the earlier question, the congressman james clyburn says, the house minority whip says, yes, there is theater in this, and they included many republicans to include cantor and mr. lamar alexander, saying what they're doing is nothing but theater. but both sides do contend that, look, we have to do something. and the cost of this is so exorbitant, $1 trillion, but look at the cost, $1 trillion for this versus the fact that you have other insurance companies all across the country talking about possibilities of raising rates. you have anthem in california talking about raising rates by 39% and over states are talking about doing it, other insurance companies in other states. so $1 trillion versus the cost of going up. right now insurance in this country, 17% of the economy, 2 to 3 times of that of inflation. 1 in every 6 american dollars for inflation. and imagine if they don't do anything and all these other insurance companies around the country raise rates, what's going to happen then? >> david, let me ask you about that. you were watching it along with me yesterday, all of the detail. i thought there was something fascinating about the fact that all of these different constituent people were having a conversation with the president. i did enjoy it. but in reality, with this idea of a blank slate, starting again came up a few times. is that practical, given that what we kept hearing from republicans and democrats is that they're not even close on many parts of health care reform. >> i thought it was the best conversation the country has had about health care since this whole debate started. i agree that had we heard it a year earlier, it would have been much more productive. what it did reveal is that everybody in that room thinks that the status quo is intolerable, that we have to do something. the disagreement is over whether this big omnibus bill is the right answer or not or whether it's going to make things worse. and that's a sharp disagreement. what clearly we're now not going to get a bipartisan deal. they are too far apart, democrats don't want sto start over, republicans don't want to sign on to this bill. so bipartisan agreement is now off the table after this meeting. where we're going is, the question becomes, can and should the democrats pass this omnibus bill through this so-called reconciliation process. and they're going to be thrashing around on that over the next four or five weeks. i think that we will now see a lot of dialogue and debate and as i say, thrashing, for a while here and we're not going to know whether the democrats are going to pass this bill or whether they'll attempt to go to plan "b "b," the so-called skinny bill. i think there are a lot of questions that need to be resolved. what's striking about this, of course, in his state of the union address, the president said jobs, jobs, jobs, that must now be our focus. and only a few weeks later, here we are back into health care again. and i think the country is sort of scratching its head, what about the jobs? and i think it's really imperative that the congress tonight to work on jobs, even as we have this sort of large-scale debate over health care. >> i don't think a lot of americans think that they're elected officials feel their pain, quite frankly. and you look around that table, and quite a few of those people would to the be able to go out and purchase health insurance on their own. that is the truth. they would be uninsured if they didn't have that nice job that we've put them in. so i think that's why there's some, i don't know, skepticism and cynicism among the american public. >> one person said yesterday they had a replaced hip and something else going on and they said, you know, if they didn't have the insurance they have now they would vice presiden't have. >> april ryan, thanks so much. david gergen, cnn senior political analyst, and doug holtz-eakin will stick around for another round after the break. for a while it looked like housing was on the we bound. more wings ! no way he'll be in first thing tomorrow. only alka-seltzer relieves your upset stomach, heartburn, indigestion and headache... so you're good to go in the morning. you're late. alka-seltzer brings you back. april 30th is the deadline for home buyers to sign their contract if they want up to $8,000 in tax credits. the federal reserve is also planning to stop buying back those mortgage-backed securities next month, which most experts agree, ali, will lead to higher mortgage rates down the road. >> now, help for the housing market, that means might be drying up before this housing recovery is complete. existing home sales were off more than 7% last month while new home sales fell to a record low in january. and a startling one in four mortgages in this country are under water, meaning that those homeowners owe more than the home is actually worth. now, this means that foreclosures will continue to weigh on lenders and borrowers alike. this map shows the hardest-hit areas of the country. nevada now seeing 70% of all mortgaged properties under water. >> that's just unreal, those statistics. the mortgage meltdown started this mess. are we right back where we began? don peebles is with the peebles organization. douglas holtz-eakin remains with us as well. don, a lot of people have saying me the peak of foreclosure activity, the trough of the housing mess was in the fourth quarter of last year and now people are scratching their heads and saying, wait a minute, maybe we haven't seen the worst yet. where do you weigh in on this? >> i think we haven't seen the worse yet. we've almost seen the worse, but what's happening now in states like florida, a judicial foreclosure state, these foreclosures have had to work themselves through the court system. and now they're going to free up, for example, in south florida alone, there are about 50,000 foreclosure cases pending in the courts right now, and as they work their way through the court system, they will then begin to put a new amount of inventory on the marketplace. those are going to be at steep discounts as well and pull them down. i think we're going to see more of that. and that's contributing to this lower volume. and then, also, the inexpensive properties, the quality inexpensive properties have been absorbed. now you're going to also see the impacts of markets like charlotte and other markets where they didn't have as much velocity in the boom and bust time, so now they're getting hit by the economic impact of job loss and sectors in the financial markets being hit by like bank of america and charlotte. and i think you're going to see that pull down price a bit as well and slow things down. and then, of course, there's jobs, jobs, and jobs. >> that's exactly right. doug, let's look at this for a second from the perspective of our viewer who might be a potential buyer or seller of homes. the reality is, we may see what don is saying. we may see further lowering of the median price of a home over the course of the next year, but we are likely to see slightly higher interest rates. if you are a buyer or a seller, how do you read these tea leaves and decide what you're supposed to do over the course of the next year? >> it's pretty hard to. for buyers, they should rends that we're seeing a normalization of policy toward the housing market. the government shouldn't be in the business of bribing people to get new homes and it's getting out. the federal reserve shouldn't be in the business -- >> i'm going to stop for you a second. when you say normalization of policy, you mean, we're going to stop keeping interest rates really, really low. which mean it's going to become more expensive to buy a house. >> absolutely. which means the tax credits go away. if you're on the buyer's side, now it's the time to move. on the selling side, we'll see a downward pressure on prices still. it's tied to the jobs issue in two ways. number one, we're getting increasing evidence that many of the small businesses that aren't hiring at this point aren't hiring because they borrow against the owner's home in order to finance themselves and they can't do it in this environment. the second thing we've learned, the you've got a house that's under water, you can't pick up and go find a new job. and traditionally that mobility, the chance to go to a new place have been part of the recovery. both of those things are being handicapped by the housing market. >> and that mobility thing really bothers me. that's been a defining characteristic of this american economy. people get up and move and try something new. and when they have a good opportunity, they take it. quickly, doug, how do you know if you're that first-time home buyer and you want to sign a deal by april 30th, how do you know that -- for example, in miami, there's a forecast that prices could go down by another 26% by next year. how do you know if you buy today, you're not sitting on something that's worth 26% less. >> don't be in the business of buying a house with a one-year horizon. make sure you're in it for something that's going to last five, ten years. >> don? >> i think, first of all, people should buy homes because they need them. they're a utilitarian purpose, use them for shelter. if you're committed to that location at least a five-year horizon, then you should buy. otherwise, i think you should rent. i do not believe, by the way, that south florida prices or prices in miami will drop close to 30%. i think we may s