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 has slowed, too. that means more than 2 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. but you can't go out and build an economic hurricane shelter yourself. that's 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's an entirely different storm brewing in washington. not the election, it's the so-called fiscal cliff. series of tax increases and spending cuts that are set to kick in on january 1st. now the conventional wisdom is that congress will get to it -- after the election. by then we could be in a recession. your presidential candidates tell you they can solve it but really they can't. from my perspective, it doesn't much matter who you vote for for president. the president gets all together too much blame and too much credit for what goes on in the economy. here's what will matter. you can cast a ballot for somebody this fall who can control the weather closer to your home. your member of congress. because 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 you can do is cast an informed ballot this fall for your senator, for your representative, for state and for city officials. and not one based on whether you're a democrat or a republican but one motivated by politicians who can put politics or at least partisanship aside to deal with this coming storm. we're covering the storm like no other network can by bringing together the best in the business. christine romans, anchor of "your bottom line" says we will fall off a fiscal cliff if congress doesn't act. candy crowley is cnn's chief political correspondent and anchor of "state of the union." i'm going to ask her point-blank if there's a word from either candidate she takes seriously about the economy. mark preston is cnn's political director. he spent six years covering congress. he says don't hold your breath for something to happen any time soon. will cain is a cnn contributor and a conservative. he says the best thing congress can do is maintain the status quo. and harvard economist ken rogoff is one of canada's lead iing analysts. candy, you follow this more closely than anyone else. you have been with candidates for as long as -- i think i still had hair when you started following candidates around on campaign. now amidst all this partisan nonsense that passes for serious economic policy debate these days, is there a single word from either presidential candidate that 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, that that's -- that 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. but let me tell you a couple things about the specifics. the first is that, remember in 2008 when it was candidate obama, he fought very hard against the idea of an individual mandate for a health care insurance. so it depends so much on who he has to deal with by the time a president gets to office, so the more specific they get, people stand back and sort of go, yeah, but you got 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 and it is 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, ali, and you're probably living in california where it is legal to do that but the bottom line is this is not going to happen in my lifetime or your lifetime. we're less than five months now before a november election and we're talking about fixing commit. what republicans will tell you is that democrats and president obama have failed over the past couple of years to come to them and try to cut deals. so what is the urgency five months before the election? what they'll also say is the bottom line is that 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 are saying the same thing on the other side, ali. >> candy, let's talk about this. it does appear that there may be some solutions to be worked out by a congress, but congress is busy blaming the other side and they are all saying that president obama has not done as good a job as he can to put 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 tend to have a tendency to go to one party or another but have crossed lines. when you look at that group, what do they most want? they actually want a president who is willing to deal with the other side. so i think it is 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 liked the hope and change message of president obama because 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 -- but it didn't happen. but swing voters like that message. >> mark, i would really like to on that big wall of mine blame everybody. i'd like to put 535 members of congress and the senate up there and say, those of you who wait for the election to try and solve this problem are all on this wall and i will take off those faces and those names who have said i will not wait, we will compromise now, we will hammer out a budget deal, we will hammer out a debt ceiling deal, we will hammer out the bush tax cuts, we will hammer out entitlements now. would i have anyone to populate my wall withfy only chose those who were prepared to compromise? >> there would only be a few left. really what you'd normally find if you were to do that, you'd find centrist republicans and centrist democrats in the middle who, by and large, are elected every two years or every six years based upon the fact that they represent a state that is more accepting of centrist views. if you are a conservative democrat, if you are a liberal republican, those are the folks who are really talking compromise at this point. but again, it is the base politics that's driving all of this, ali. it is our liberal democrats, it is conservative republicans who want their members, their congressmen and senators to really dig in and hold back and to not cut these deals. inasmuch as we're talking about how bad the crisis is right now, let's talk the day after the election when we have sequestration and all these expiring tax cuts all coming to a head. we always talk about how dysfunctional washington is. wait until after the leak and you're going to see dysfunction. >> that's a ray of sunshine, candy? >> the fault, dear ali, maybe lies not in congress but in ourselves. more and more what we have seen is -- the census comes along every ten years and depending on whether your state legislature is republican or democrat -- there's different ways to do this -- they redraw those lines. what happens? the lines get redder, if it's a republican congress that you have in your state, and they get bluer if it's a democrat. so we are sort of self-segregating. so what happens. you are elected by a very democratic district or you are elected by a very republican district. we've had all these wave elections. the centrists are all but gone. what is your impetus to say to the folks that elected you, yeah, i know you elected me because i'm democrat like you but i'm going to cross this line. so we may have some 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 elected officials do wait until after the election to deal with that possible fiscal cliff like mark says they might, well, that's dangerous, it's irresponsible and it is cowardly. i know christine romans agrees with me but conservative will cain doesn't. we will hear why. no one's more qualified to weigh in on this issue than harvard's ken rogoff. the world's leading expert on financial crises. we'll be right back. 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this is big news. you'll hear this term for months to come. it is the storm within the storm that i'm telling you about. if lawmakers in washington can't get it together by january 1st, we'll dive right back in to recession, according to the congressional budget office. what is this fiscal cliff anyway? christine romans has been looking into it and is breaking it down for us. christine. >> it's bad. i'll see your storm and raise you a cliff, ali. two big forces are at play -- massive tack hikes, massive spending cuts. on january 1st the bush tax cuts, alternative minimum tax cuts expire. that means if nothing changes, your taxes will go up. at the same time medicare doctor pay will also go down. federal spending will be cut $1 trillion over the next nine years. half from defense and half from non-defense spending. the bipartisan policy center says that those cuts mean a loss of about 1 million jobs over two years. a million jobs over two years. not just government jobs, ali -- but jobs in the private sector as well. many from contractors working with the government. it will almost certainly cause a recession. the cbo says if congress drives us off that fiscal cliff, gdp will shrink at 1.9%. 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 come out and say something like this. fed 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 these big issues until after november 6th. we're also approaching the debt ceiling again. we could hit it as early as december. just another thing to add to congress's 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. it is still cheap for the u.s. to continue borrowing money. christine, thank you. ken rogoff, even two years ago, people would have said, what are you panicking about? the election is in november. this happens by december 31st, they'll get it. the basic -- the basic thing that a government has to do is get its budget together and they don't do that. so there's really -- ben bernanke's worried that congress may not get their act together. are you waerd or 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. i think that's what scares everybody. it's hard to imagine they're really going to hit a deal before the election. there are just so many reasons for partisanship and sniping at each other. but they have such different investigations. ali, we've been paralyzed for years now. we haven't undertaken fundamental reform. we have 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 take advantage to do things you couldn't do. we're still sitting here. think that's really the biggest issue in america today. >> you mentioned last week if this storm is coming, the federal reserve can play a big role and they did a little bit this week. what we expected them to do. they probably have more that they can do but there is also a role for congress. when i said congress can help build those hurricane shelters, i'm saying they can fix a bunch of thinks. you're saying simpson-bowles just gets swept under the table. you think that's something they could do? >> oh, yeah, they could fix the tax system and try to keep rates low but make it fairer, get rid of a lot of what they call tax expenditures, these tons of deductions. some of the people you're going to see losing deductions you like. but on the other hand, they can keep rates low and, by the way, i think this idea we can't raise anyone's taxes -- that's nuts. i mean it's not so simple. fairness is an issue here. but i think if you can keep the rates low so people want to work hard and they want to produce stuff, that's what makes america strong. >> we're going to come back to this conversation in a second. i want to bring will cain back into the conversation. you say we're headed for a recession if we're headed for a recession and that the best congress can do is maintain the status quo. i don't know if you actually said that -- >> i haven't said that once. >> i've just been making stuff up. >> you said it to goad me. look, christine's 100% right, towards the end of the year we're looking at a fiscal clifr. what we do is exacerbate what's already a downward trend in our economy. we must do something. status quo, no good. you must do something. our economy is already shaking, it is already uncertain. there are already 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. what can we do about that? besides dealing with the fiscal cliff, what can we do about this? i've got two theories. i'm going to give you 17th century religious philosophy here, ali. >> whoa! >> that's right. >> you understand this show is called "your money." >> paregardless of your economi philosophy, you might 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? he says that's what he had's do. but if you believe stimulus is the way, government spending, the way to economic growth, well, you ought to go vote for mitt romney as well. why? because while president obama says he believes in stimulus, he can't deliver it. ali, he's had three years and he's not been able to put together another fiscal stimulus package. while mitt romney says he believes in austerity, i think there's a chance he doesn't. i think there is a chance he has no interest in short-term government spending cuts and you might as well take that probability chance. you might as well find out, mitt romney, he may believe in the stimulus. you know what? he could actually get that through congress. he could call it infrastructure invest. combine it with tax cuts and maybe actually get it through congress. president obama is simply a bad bet no matter what you believe in. that's what i think. >> wow. you see, ken, what i got for goading him and misrepresenting him for the first half-hour of the show. >> where's the hole in my game, ken? where am i wrong? >> well, i mean i think what ali said at -- towards the top about there are a lot of issues having to do with what congress is going do is the big question here. >> right. >> the president is a leader, but they can't do anything without congress. we have a very divided congress. the center's been disappearing, by the way. so it's been very hard to get a compromise done. i must say, with these storms coming in and you look at the history of financial crises, 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. there's a danger. we're moving in that direction with the very fractured government that we have. i'm not sure i quite come to your equation. i'm trying not to be partisan here, will. but it's a great graph. >> i think whether or not congress needs to act, your point of acting is exactly right. i think romney's the only one who can actually force action. from 17th century theology to 21st century economics, we've got you covered here on "your money." i'm going to bring christine romans back. after that demonstr