spain, italy, portugal, ireland could all be next needing emergency shelter and support n an economic storm, what that means is more bailouts and cut backs with europe means spending less money. that mean's the world factory floor, asia, has fewer things to manufacture. china, an economy second in size only to that of the united states or of europe has slowed. india slowed, too. that means more than two billion people in the fastest growing nations in the world are buying less. this is one big storm. what is america doing about this storm? well, we've got umbrellas. what we need are hurricane shelters. you can't go out and build an economic hurricane shelter yourself. that is something you need help with. government help. congress, for instance, could help stave off the effects of the storm. but they won't because that would mean being honest with you about things that are getting potentially worse and not better. and that kind of talk doesn't win elections. so congress sticks to what it does best these days, partisan bickering and blame. and then there is an entirely different storm brewing in washington. not the election. it's the so-called fiscal cliff. the series of tax increases and spending cuts that are set to kick in on january 1st. now the conventional wisdom is congress will get to it after the election. by then we could be in a recession. your presidential candidates tell you they can solve -- really they can't. it doesn't much matter who you vote for for president. the president gets altogether too much blame and credit for what goes on in the economy. you can cast a ballot for somebody this fall who can control the weather closer to your home. your member of congress. congress writes and if you believe in miracles, passes the types of laws that can fight off the coming storm. no matter what president obama or mitt romney say, they can only do so much to make you spend money and help create jobs. but congress can and should ultimately the best thing can you do is cast an informed ballot this fall for your senator, for your representative, for state and city officials and not one based on whether you're a democrat or republican but one motivated by politicians who can put politics or at least partisanship aside to deal with this coming storm. we're covering this storm like no other network can by bringing together the best in the business. christine romans, anchor of "your bottom line" says we'll fall off a cliff if congress doesn't act. candy contrrawly is anchor of "t the state of the union." mark preston covered congress for six years. don't hold your breath for anything to happen any time soon. will cane is a cnn contributor and conservative. the best thing congress can do is maintain the status quo. and harvard economist ken rogoff is the leading authority on financial crisis. he says now is the time to act. candy, anchor of "state of the union," you follow this more closely than anyone else. you have been candidates since i had hair. within all this nonsense of serious policy debate these days, is there a single word from either presidential candidate that if a viewer who is concerned about this economy should take seriously? >> listen, i think you can take the gist of what they say seriously. we know that in general mitt romney is for not raising revenues and is for cutting spending. but that's he favors more toward the don't raise taxes cut more spending. we know that president obama thinks, yes, some taxes should be cut, should be raised. so you get sort of the generalities of it. let me tell you a couple things about the specifics. and the first is that remember in 2008 when it was candidate obama, he fought very hard against the idea of an individual mandate for health care insurance. so it depends so much on who he has to deal with by the time a president gets to office. the more specific they get, i think people stand back and go yeah, you have to deal with congress. >> that's a good place to bring mark in. mark, you heard me say congress, along with possibly the federal reserve, holds the keys here. and it would be great if they all got together and said we're not waiting for the election. we're not waiting to see which way the political winds blow. we've got a job to do. it's going to take all the time we need until the end of december to get it done. and you say that i'm smoking something. >> you are smoking something. you're probably living in california where it's legal to do that. but the bottom line this is not going to happen in my lifetime or your lifetime. less than five months before a november election and we're talking about fixing the economy where republicans will tell you is that democrats and president obama have feel over the past couple years to come to them and tried to cut deals. so what is the urgency five months before the election? what they'll also say is they can hold this off right now. mitt romney can become president if republicans can maintain control of the house. then they can have a better unified effort to try to do things the way that they think they should be done. democrats, saying the same thing on the other side. >> all right. candy, let's talk about this. it does appear there may somebody solutions to be worked out by a congress. but congress is busy blaming the other side. they are all saying that president obama has not done as good a job as he can to either get deals by putting viable deals on the table or being a consensus builder. does this now become an important part of the campaign? not what your economic policies are but whether you can get anything done in washington if you don't control congress? >> when you look at who's going to decide this election as they do every election and that is swing voters, those who can vote -- can go either way, they have a tendency to go against one another and cross lines. what does that group most want? they actually want a president who is willing to deal with the other side. so i think it's an important issue. i still think that the economy and how it's framed is the main theme of this election and will remain so. but certainly your ability to compromise with the other side was a big reason that a lot of people like the hope and change message of president obama. he, like president bush before him, promised to change the culture of washington. we're all going to get along. we're going to get something done. it didn't happen. but swing voters like that message. >> mark, let me ask you this. i would really like to on that big wall of mine show -- blame everybody. i'd like to put 535 members of congress and the senate up there and say those of who you wait for the election to try to solve this problem are all on this wall. i will take off those faces and those names of who have said i will not wait. we'll compromise now. we'll hammer out a budget deal. we'll hammer out a debt ceiling deal. we'll hammer out the bush tax cuts. we'll hammer out entitlements now. would i have anyone to populate my wall with if i only chose those who are prepared to compromise? >> there will only be a few left. what you would find is you would find centrist republicans and centrist democrats in the middle who by and large are elected every two years or every six years based on the fact that they represent a state that is more accepting of centrist views if you're a conservative democrat or a liberal republican, those are the folks would are really caught in the compromise at this point. again, it is the base politics driving all this, ali. our liberal democrats, conservative republicans who want their members, their congressmen and senators to really dig in and to hold back and not cut the deals. as much as we're talking about how about the crisis is now, let's talk the day after the election. we have sequestration and all the expiring tax cuts coming to a head. we always talk about how dysfunctional washington is. wait until after the election. you're going to see dysfunctional. >> ray of sunshine, candy? >> i want to say the fault lies maybe not in congress but in ourselves. more and more what we have seen is, you know, the census comes along every ten years. depending on whether your state legislature is republican or democrat, there are different ways to do this, they're redrawing the lines. what happens, the lines get redder if it's a republican congress that you have in your state. and they get bluer if they're democrats. so we're self-segregating. you're elected by a very democratic district or by a very republican district. we had all the wave elections. the centrists are all but gone. and what is your impetus to say to the folks that elected you, yeah, i know you elected me because i'm a democrat. but i'm going to cross this line. >> you have -- >> that's a fault here. >> absolutely right. mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most responsible for this economic turmoil after all? it is probably all of us. candy and mark, stay where you are. if your lekted officia lected o until after the election to deal with that fiscal cliff, is that dangerous, irresponsible and coward sfli christine romans agrees with me. but will cane doesn't and we'll hear why. the world's leading commercial expert will join us. 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[ baby crying ] ♪ what started as a whisper ♪ every day, millions of people choose to do the right thing. ♪ slowly turned to a scream ♪ there's an insurance company that does that, too. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? ♪ amen, omen the fiscal cliff is the storm within the storm that i'm telling you about. if law makers in washington can't get it together by january 1st, we'll dive right back in a recession according to the congressional budget office. what is this fiscal cliff anyway? christine romans has been looking into it and breaking it down for us. >> it's bad. i'll see your storm and raise you a cliff. there are two big forces at play, massive tax hikes, massive spending cuts. the bush tax credits, alternative tax fix expires. if nothing changes, your taxes go up. at the same time, medicare doctor pay goes down. at the same time, federal spending is going to be slashed. if current law stays in place, trillion dollars is cut over the next nine years. half in defense and half from nondefense spending. the bipartisan policy center says that those cuts mean a loss of about one million jobs over two years. a million jobs over two years. not just government jobs but job in the private sector as well. many from contractors working with the government. it will almost certainly cause a recession. the cbo says congress drives up off that fiscal cliff, gdp will shrink at 1.3%. we're 1.9% the first quarter. the economy is growing now. they're talking about early next year seeing the economy shrink again. this is important. it's very rare for the cbo, uncharacteristic for them to say something like this. that chairman ben bernanke who tries hard to stay out of politics has been warning congress about trouble ahead in the economy if congress doesn't act as well. what makes it so scary is this is all happening in an election year. no one expects congress to deal with the big issues until after november 6th. we're also approaching the debt ceiling again. we can hit it as early as december. just another thing to add to congress' to do list. all the while, ali, the bond market, interest rates are super low here. sort of giving cover to the urgency of all this as well. >> absolutely right. still cheap for the u.s. to continue borrowing money. thank you. ken rogov, you know, ten years ago people would say what you are panicking about? elections in november. this happens by december 31st, they'll get it together. we watched the last couple years and we came to that debt ceiling, we don't get budgets done in this country. the basic thing that a government has to do is get the budget together. and they don't do that. so there's really, i mean, ben bernanke is worried that congress may not get their act together. are you worried or do you think they'll work it out? >> i think they'll work it out but i don't know what they're going to work out. it's hard to imagine that they're going to deal with this before election. there are just so many reasons for partisanship. but they have such different visions. we've been paralyzed for years now. we haven't undertaken fundamental reform. we've been using band aids and tape to sort of keep the economy moving along. and this is a time, a crisis is a time you're supposed to take advantage to do things we couldn't do. and we're still sitting here. i that i is really the biggest issue in america today. >> you mentioned last week you thought if the storm is coming, the federal reserve can play a big role. they did a little bit this week. we'll be expecting them to do that. they have more than they can do. but there is also a role for congress. when i said that congress can help build those hurricane shelters, i'm saying they can fix a bunch of things. you think that simpson bowls, another term that ow viewers heard, but this gets swept under the table, you think that is something they can fix. >> they can fix the tax system and keep rates low. but make it fair, get rid of a lot of the tax deductions. some of the people you are seeing deductions you like. on the other hand, they can keep rates low. this idea we can't raise anyone's taxes, that's nuts. that's not so simple. fairness is an issue. if you can keep the rates low so people want to work hard and produce stuff, that's what makes america strong. >> okay. we're going to come back to this conversation in a second. i want to bring will back into the conversation. will cane, you say we're headed for a recession if year headed for recession and the best congress can do is maintain the status quo. >> i have been saying maintain the status quo. towards the end of the year, we're looking at a fiscal cliff. what we do is exacerbate a downward trend in our economy. we must do something. status quo, no bueno, you must do something. however, you must look at this. our economy is it already shaky. it is uncertain. there are storm clouds hanging over. ken talked about this. europe, asia, our current debt situation in the united states. these are all pushing down on the united states economy. so what can we do about that? besides dealing with the fiscal cliff, what can we do about this? we have two theories. my theory is this. i'm going to give you 17th century religious flol if i here, ali. >> that's right. >> the show is called your money, right? >> what he said is in a debate between whether or not god exists and atheism only an irrational man would choose atheism. there is no upside. there is no win if you're right about atheism. you may as well vote for mitt romney. here's why. if you believe austerity is the way to economic growth, cutting taxes, cutting government spending, well, you got to vote for mitt romney, right? that's what he says he'll do. but if you believe stimulus is the way, government spending the way to economic growth, well, you have to vote for mitt romney as well. why? because president obama says he believes in stimulus, he can't deliver. he had three years and not able to put together another fiscal stimulus package. while mitt romney says he believes in austerity, i think there is a chance he doesn't. i think there's a chance he has no interest in short term government spending cuts and you may as well take that probability chance. you may as well find out. mitt romney, he may believe in stimulus. he could get that through congress. he could call it infrastructure investment, combine it with tax cuts and maybe actually get into congress. president obama is simply a bad bet no matter what you believe. that's what i think. >> wow. you see ken what i got for goating him and misrepresenting him for the first half hour of the show. >> where am i wrong? >> well, i think when he said at the top about, you know, there are a lot of issues having to do with what congress is going to do is a big question here. and the president is a leader. but they can't do anything without congress. we have a very divided congress. the center is disappearing, by the way. and so it's been very hard to get compromise done. i must say with these storms coming in and you look at history of financial crisis, when you really dig yourself a deep hole is when you get hit with a problem and you're paralyzed. you can't react quickly. and there's a danger we're moving in that direction with the very fractured government that we have. i'm not sure i come to your equation on not trying to be partisan here. it's a great graph. >> i think whether or not congress needs to act, your point is exactly right. romney is the only one that can actually force action. >> all right. 17th century theology to 21st century economics. we got you covered here on "your money." i'm going to bring christine romans back. i hope christine has something to top that. we're going to continue to talk about how you can make a difference to protect your the storm that's headed your way. sc. the top academic performers surprised some people. so did the country that came in 17th place. let's raise the bar and elevate our academic standards. let's do what's best for our students-by investing in our teachers. let's solve this. we're back with will cane and christine romans and ken rogoff. i want to give you pakt of what -- a picture of what is going on. the thing that you feel the most, the thing that makes you feel better or worse is jobs lost or created. take a look at the last year. let's take a look at this first of all. this is a poll. it points out something you all know. the economy is the most important issue to 52% of those polled. right after that is deficit and health care. they have to do with the economy, right? deep pockets, health care is not your problem. we know can you g