Next, a discussion on the Obama Administrations economic policies and their effect on certain sectors of the u. S. Economy. From this mornings washington journal, this is an hour and a half. One of our guests. Also joined by heidi, an economist at the Economic Policy institute, or epi, and joining us from George Mason University where she is a Senior Research fellow. Wanted to get your perspective on the economic president obama at a florida port vowed to speed shipping and transit projects, talking how the thinks he can boost the economy. What is the state of the economy now . How would you judge the economy to date . I think its too weak. Weve been out of the recession for four years. I think the best way to describe it is the labor market is stuck in the mud. The Unemployment Rate, which is a share of the population that is employed, has been almost flat, and very low. As unemployment has gone down, thats a because a lot of people have given up and Economic Growth is not as strong as it should be to fix all these longterm Unemployed People back to work. So its really disconcerting. What is your take on the health of the economy . I completely agree. What we saw you look over the last six years, during the great recession, our labor market fell of cliff, and since that time, since the recovery began, we have basically just been bumping along at the bottom of that hole. We havent really started climbing out of it. And the Unemployment Rate itself actually has improved. Right now the Unemployment Rate is 7. 6 . That sounds like a big improvement from the peak of 10 in the fall of 2009 but the thing is that most of that improvement was due to people either dropping out of or never entering the laborers to because of weak Job Opportunities. So when you look at broader measures of Job Opportunities, you see they just really havent improved much since the recovery began. Theyre not deteriorating north getting worse, but were just not getting out of the hole very fast. Talking about in the economic record of the Obama Administration. If you would like to join the conversation, democrats, 2025853880. Republicans, 2025853881. And independent callers, 225853882. Heidi, point to items and things done to impact the economy . Either good or bad. Its a good question. The thing i think is useful is to think about whether something was the right thing to do, was to diagnosis what is wrong with the economy, and when you look at the data, when you look at what is going on in the economy, the thing that is the problem is a lack of demand. Businesses we all know that businesses are sitting on a lot of cash right now. I dont think theyre greedy business people, not wanting to hire. Theyre actually Smart Business people who will hire when they see the demand for their goods and services pick up in a way they can hire people. Theyre not hiring because they dont have demand for their stuff. At the degree where they need to put that back online, get more people on the floor. So thats the problem, a lack of demand. So what we need to do in our economy to boost the recovery to dig us out of the hole, is to boost demand. So a Monetary Policy is the fed reducing Interest Rates to stimulate demand. That creates that been defanged because the interest raise are around zero. The other tool is fiscal policy. That stimulus. So Congress Actually did that. It was a great job in early 2009, the problem is it was too small, it got spent out too soon, it was around 800 billion package, never enough going up against the bursting of the 7 trillion housing bubble. It made a big difference, but never enough to really get us into a robust recovery. What has been done by the administration and has or hasnt worked . I have slightly different understanding of what is going on. I do think that, yes, firms are sitting on a lot of cash and consumers are being very tim met, timid, and its not surprising considering the immense amount of wealth destroyed during the recession. But i see a lot of the community, a lot of the unwillingness to act right now more as fear, and uncertainty, and a lot of it comes from a lot of Government Intervention which people dont know what is going to happen to them. I think theres a clear understanding that we have a big problem with debt and deficit, even though it has slightly improved. But people understand that it probably means a lot of higher tasks taxes in the future. A lot of big rules have been passed. Many of them have not been written yet, and people wonder what it means, so they dont know how its going to affect their businesses. So theres just a lot of uncertainty in the economy, a lot triggered by the Government Intervention. All done for Good Intentions for the most part. As for what we need to do, i actually think heidi says what the government can do, and Monetary Policy and fiscal policy. Youre right about Monetary Policy, even though i guess theres some debate about the fact the fed could actually do better and more in targeting gdp. But fiscal policy is also made very weak in its ability to do anything. Its been tried, and its been tried the Obama Administration has made a lot of promises about what they can bring and didnt deliver on these promises, and more importantly, even though believe in the ability of fiscal policy to boost the economy, one of the things is that its only effective in the short run, and we have been doing there is for five years. When is this over . I think policies, what you need to do is actually try to give the free market chance, try to streamline regulations so people can start hiring and people can start relaxing about the economy. Get more from the panelists. Lets listen to president obama yesterday in jacksonville, giving his own reflection on where we were five years ago and where we are now. The good news is that after nearly five years since the financial crisis happened, thanks to the hard work and resilience of the American People, america has fought back. So together we saved an auto industry, and i was told that the other places where were sending out more american cars than ever before all around the world. [applause] we took on a broken healthcare system. We invested in new American Technology to reverse our addiction to foreign oil. We doubled our production of clean energy. Put in place tough new rules on the big banks and Credit Card Companies and mortgage insurers so make sheer sure we didnt have the same financial shenanigans that we did before. Changed the tax code a that was skewed in favor of the wealthy and make sure it does more for working and middle Class Companies and locked in tax cuts for 98 of americans and then we asked folks at the top to pay a little bit more. So you add all this up, and over the last 40 months, our businesses have created 7. 2 million new jobs. [applause] and this year were off to our strongest private sector job growth since 1999. Strongest job growth in over a decade. We just heard from the president and also heard from our other panelists, one perspective on what the government could do now. What is your response . Is employment being held back because of Business Concern over regulations or uncertainty over what policies are going to be put in place . We have way to test that. If that were true, and if businesses had demand for their goods and services but didnt want to hire because of uncertainty about future policy, they would be ramping up the hours of the workers they have. They would be increasing the hours of the workes on staff. They dont want to here more people but but can increase hou. But we havent seen that. The helping of the average work week is no higher than before the recession. So very difficult to find the evidence that businesses are holing back because of uncertainty or regulation. It really comes down to they just dont have demand for their stuff, that means theyre going to need to hire more people. So thats where the issue is. Thats where we should be focusing our energy. Lets hear from our callers. Nate, kansas city, missouri, democrat. Caller how you doing . Im tired of hearing about president obama. Because really what has gone on that i see and i do a lot of studying is that basically taking away government jobs and even a lot of factory worker jobs and privatizing so much government jobs. Just like the florida. Florida, come august 1st, all the medical people for the prisons are going to be laid off. They can go put application in for the private contractors but they cant guarantee them a job and if they do get a jobbing, they get lower pay and they get also no pension. But the whole idea of what dish challenge cspan, you need to do a segment on forget about the president. What a lot of the republicans not just republican but mostly republican governors, what theyre dag right now is rung under the radar as far as crag so much of the government out, and what this so how do what that does, that makes a lot of people thats working today, wont be working tomorrow therapy. Privatizing most of the prinze now, and a lot prisons now and theyre using the inmates to run the prison because they dont want to pay the personnel to run the prisons properly. So what is happening is were being undermined. This talk about the president is nothing compared to what the republican governors are doing. And basically privatizing good jobs people had for years thanks for your input. You talked about government jobs. Heres some numbers from the Treasury Department. From the bureau of Economic Analysis and bureau of anker statistics looking at where growth i happening. The private sector is leading growth and young see there, private, nonfarm business, and then government, right here, federal, state, and local. What do you see when you look at where development is happening . So, the private sector is always the true engine of growth, sustainable growth, and sustainable jobs. But i think that is a very important question and that is a point thats the underemployment of the people who are employed. And thats another problem we have with the labor force right now. That guess to another sign that the Unemployment Rate doesnt capture everything that it should capture. So, for instance, while we have people who are working now, a lot of them are working in parttime jobs. More than before. And so a lot of people actually should be working fulltime, arent, and that is a product of some regulation and in particular, the healthcare. When you call businesses theyll say tha in order to get around that law, whether they think the law is good or bad, instead of hiring fulltime people, the only hire parttime people, which then compounds the problem of underemployment, even for people who are in a job, and thats a real problem. Heidi . Theres a couple of things id like to responsible to nate brought up a great point about the loss of Public Sector jurors. We have last nearly threequarters of a million of Public Sector jobs and its a huge drag of the recovery, and when you lose a Public Sector job, there are biggs ripples big ripples into the private sector forks every Public Sector job lost, the affect on the private sector, theres a loss of one private sector job, or a private sector job that was not gained. So its a huge drag on the recovery and its a drag that wasnt weighen weighing on earlier recovers. So with had the same Government Spending now that we had in the recovery from the 2001 recession, in other words in the recovery, that george bush was president during, if we had the same level of Government Spending as we had during that recovery we would likely have three million more jobs now though fact the Government Spending was going down, rather than up, is a huge drag on this recovery. So, its a really good point there. The other thing he talk about was contracting out of government services. Theres something the president can do on that. The president , through executive order, could just say that i federal spending right now the president could actually say that people who are employed by federal funds, so contractors who are employing people, subcontracting, they have to pay a living wage. The president through executive action could actually make a lot of highquality jobs. It could have a big impact right now the around two Million People are paid in jobs less than 12 an hour through federal funds, through this kind of crag. So that kind of executive order could have a big impact on job quality in this country. Our guests are heidi, an economist at the Economic Policy inestate, and joined by a Senior Research fellow at the George Mason University. Lets go to whenry. Republican. Caller good morning, cspan. She said the topic had changed. We could talk all day on this one. I dont see any change. The healthcare is turning out to be a major disaster, can which is dragging the economy down. My feelings are im sort of what you call a naturalist, and by the government sticking its nose into everything, trying to be big brother, whatever, theyve managed to what i call natural selection, people make bad mistakes in business, they should lose. If the government feels they should bail them out. And the people in the upper part of it, they win. Everybody else loses. And so that seems to be the trend. And fortunately i work for a company that the management makes good decisions. And we are surviving but were not surviving because we have had big brother looking over our shoulder. Lets get from comment from heidi. Im glad he brought up the health care. What were actually seeing is that so far the evidence suggests its not going to be implemented theres going to be some bumps in the road but that its working pretty well. New york just came out showing that premiums are going to be reduced by about half when the obamacare is implemented. So the signs are that the insurance people people are going to be able to get, the insurance they have to get through the mandate, is actually going to be a reasonable cost. The implementation looks like its going well. Theres been some flexibility in saying, okay, the employer mandate, the idea that theres going to be sanctions against employers, certain set of employers if they dont provide Health Insurance, administration said theres been problems and lets put that off a year. So theyre being flexible when things are looking like there might be bumps in the road. Its not perfect but all signs point to this is actually going to be successfully implemented and is going to provide Health Insurance to millions of families. People who had preexisting conditions who were not able to get Health Insurance they could afford, will now be able to that sort of thing is going to make our country stronger, going to be better for the people of the country, and looks like its working. I find it interesting that you should bring up new york, because it is true that the study came out and showed an improvement because new yorks Healthcare Market was one of the most ridge edof the country, and its improving is good but its unlike i guess in fact all of the signs were getting, california is not going to be such great news, and were getting signs 0 of a lot of the premiums are going to increase by gigantic amounts, and i agree theres always bumps in the road in implementation but these are pretty big bumps. We have pretty big bumps. Lets not forget the act which was supposed to be reducing the cost of the healthcare law had to be repealed because it was unworkable, and now the employer mandates, and its been delayed and a lot of people whoa think it means its going to be permanently delayed because its unworkable, and one of the problems that the healthcare law was making was, first well, some of the problems, we were going to be cover everyone. Not going to be the case. For better or worse because dont think covering everyone is actually the right direction. Certainly poor people need to have access to health care and be able to get Better Health outcomes, but we were told people could teen their insurance and theres a lot of signs this is not going to happen, and as premiums begin to go down for everyone, one of the promises that was made, and it is true that some people, older people and sick people, will see their premium go down. However theres absolutely no doubt that, again, younger and healthier people, again, will have their short stick. Wont see the Social Security and will have to pay for medicare and will see their premium go up significantly. Im not as optimistic as you are. Were looking at the economy and what president obama and his team at the white house have done for the economy over the last five years. The president in florida yesterday, talked about infrastructure. The headline in the New York Times was that he vows to speed shipping and transit projects and you can see hem touring right there in jacksonville, florida. Lets hear what the president said on infrastructure development. Theres a bipartisan bill in the senate to fund critical improvements i