the house majority, of course, was democratic and now the republicans have the majority in the house and they have more seats in the senate as well but not the majority. they ll be so mingled up, it s going to be hard to tell who s got more. when it comes to approval ratings not much of a difference. this surprises me. surprised me the approval rating isn t further down than this. it s rebounded recently. it s up around 50% then and now it s around 47%. some polls have them over 50. let s talk about the unemployment rate in this country. one year ago, it stood at 9.7%. now it s at 9.4%. however, that does not factor in underemployment which in this country is close to 20%. of course, what s on the forefront of many people s minds, the debt. and the debt ceiling they may be voting on in a couple of months. the national debt only $12.3 trillion and now, i say tongue in cheek, only $14 trillion and growing exponentially every day.
in a matter of speaking. it depends on your perspective, i guess. bill your perspective is now the newfound minority party. i want to show you a number that i think a lot of people are in tune with now more so than ever, okay? in 2010, u.s. government spending grew by $4.3 billion a day. our debt rose from $12.3 trillion about a year ago to $13.9 trillion today. now, is that acceptable? well, that s absolutely why we re going to measure the republicans proposals by the following yardstick, whether it creates jobs, whether it reduces the decifit, and whether it enhances the middle class, and right out of the gate, sadly, they re going to pursue fruitlessly the repeal of health care reform, which actually will explode the decifit by $143 billion in the first ten years and a trillion
expensive public policy flop in american history. we didn t create jobs, we lost them and an additional problem, bill, is there were all of these other priorities and it s not just the attention was diverted away from job creation, bill, it is a lot of those things that the president was focusing on, to take one example, the cap-and-trade bill or the tax increases, those were things that were going to make it harder for businesses to create jobs and i think, the administration was working at cross-purposes. bill: the current federal debt by the way is $13.9 trillion. the debt ceiling at $14.3 trillion. i think we ll hit that ceiling in two months, right? first part of march. yes, sometime in spring, yes. bill: the federal debt grew nearly $4.3 billion, per day, last year. in 2010, from $12.3 trillion to the end of the year, as i said, 13.9. 4.3 billion dollars a day. now, we had this gentleman on from pennsylvania two hours ago,
economic committee hearing, that is not too crowded at the moment. it s kicking off on the hill. we ll show you that inside the hearing room throughout the day so you can reach any conclusions. martha: then there is this for you, house representatives approving an increase in the u.s. debt limit. this is like raising the absolute ceiling on your credit card, okay, of the whole country, and it s now a whopping 14.29, that is the absolute last dollar you re allowed to spend as the u.s. government, 14.29. take a look at this this, is the national debt clock, it s run by a privately owned site, the numbers, you can t see them because they re pretty scary. there we go, $12.3 trillion is where the debt stands now. that doesn t leave us a whole lot of room, up to 14.29. i bet we can get there quickly. per person, you owe $40,076. bill: you want it to
all right. let s go to d.c. brianna keilar is there as the house votes to raise the nation s debt ceiling. look at these numbers. brianna, walk us through. that s just an incredible number besides you. how much does that even add up to? this is the national debt, ali. and you can see all of the zeros, right? about $12.3 trillion, and this number is quickly closing in on what s called the debt ceiling. it s essentially, you know that s the credit limit. it is on the limit on our credit card, right. so what they are voting to do, what the house is voting to do, to increase it by $1.9 trillion, to this number, the debt ceiling, so the u.s. government can borrow more. it would go to about $14.29 trillion, and this is expected to happen on party line vote,