Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

President to Present His Budget; Americans Accused of Child Trafficking in Haiti; Mortgage Morality: Homeowners Walking Away from Mortgages; Memo to the President; New Sleep and Fertility Studies Discussed; NASA's Constellation Program Wasting Stimulus Money?; Toyota's Big P.R. Drive; Indirect Jobs "A Real Question" When It Comes to Missouri Bridge

Aired February 01, 2010 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: And we are going to stay on top of that story for you. Meantime, though, CNN NEWSROOM continues right now with T.J. Holmes, who is in for Ali Velshi.

Hey, there, T.J.

T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Didn't we announce not long ago that Ali was getting this show?

NGUYEN: Right.

HOLMES: How is he taking time off already?

NGUYEN: And now we're -- you're doing it.

HOLMES: Hope you're having a good vacation already there, Ali.

Our good friend Ali's off today. He deserves the time off.

I'm T.J. Holmes. We're going to be taking you through all the important topics today; going to be breaking them down in a major way. Also, we want you to participate as always. You can send those tweets to AliVelshi. Also, send them: @TJHolmesCNN. So please, chime in.

We've got an interesting couple of hours. Going to be seeing the president with a YouTube town hall, I guess you could call it. Some people have been sending in questions via YouTube. He's going to be answering those today.

But something else from the president today: his budget. A huge budget: $3.8 trillion in spending that the president is now sending to Congress and leading them read over it. Take a look at this today.

These things were being delivered. This is a pretty big budget, some reading to do from the members of Congress, also, you know, mainly their staffers are going to be reading this stuff. But $3.8 trillion. We're going to be poring over that.

And to help us with that, our Candy Crowley, who's our senior political correspondent, she also has a new title that we're going to be getting into in a little bit. A new title that's going to have us -- have her joining me on the weekends in a way, if you will. But we'll get into that in just a second.

But Candy, before we start talking about this budget, I want to take a listen what we heard the president say about his budget just a little bit ago. Then we're going to ask you about it and see if any of it sounds familiar. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The fact is, ten years ago, we had a budget surplus of more than $200 billion, with projected surpluses stretching out toward the horizon. Yet, over the course of the past ten years, the previous administration and previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program, passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and funded two wars without paying for any of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Like I said, Candy, does any of that sound familiar? He's -- he's sticking with this theme in a lot of ways. Why would he still be going, I guess, back to that familiar line?

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Certainly, when it comes to the deficit, the president obviously still feels defensive about it, because we hear all the time when he talks about the deficit, "Well, I inherited most of this deficit." And yes indeed, he did have to spend money and up the deficit, because he did the huge stimulus package.

But what are we finding? That over the course of the year that stimulus package has become pretty unpopular with the American people. I think the last I saw it was like 75 percent thought it really favored the banks rather than people on Main Street. And we are seeing very high levels of concern among Americans about the level of red ink that there is now in Washington.

So the president is walking a couple of lines here. First, he does say, "Listen, I didn't start this here." And that "I inherited a bad economy" and from a bad economy, you have to spend money.

But the other thing is he still has a very high jobless rate at this point, which is not sustainable for those who don't have the jobs. It's not sustainable as a policy out of Washington. It's certainly not sustainable politically in this midterm election year.

So what the president has to do is address the need to create jobs, which costs money, and the need to lower the deficit, which is just the opposite. So he's looking in there for a way to assure the American people that he is all over the economy, that he does have a way to help stimulate jobs and that he's watching that bottom line. And that's a very tricky thing to do, and it helps to say, "Let's all recall how this started."

HOLMES: And Candy, remind people here, as well. We always talk about -- we've been talking about it, and we'll be talking about it all week: the president sending his budget. But in reality these are his suggestions in a lot of ways. A lot of this stuff is still really not even up to him.

CROWLEY: It's a blueprint. It goes to, I can't tell you, how many committees up on Capitol Hill, because the budget gets divvied up between the various departments and the programs. And certainly, it is up to Capitol Hill. That's what makes it so difficult. If the president could write a budget and get it, well, then it would be on him. But the fact of the matter is, in large part budgets become political documents at this stage.

And what do we learn of the president? We learned that his priorities remain energy policy, because there is more money for certain energy projects. Education, because there is more money for the Education Department and various programs. At the same time, he is doing -- establishing some program cuts that he would like to have.

Having said that, some of the programs that he's suggesting be cut was suggested last year, and Congress just went on and did its own thing, and they still exist.

So it is always a battle. First of all, in the large view. It's a political battle, Republicans tend to be -- although as the president points out, they're the ones that spent all the money over the last eight years -- but this group of Republicans is now talking about fiscal responsibility. And they are attacking the president's budget as spending too much and not paying enough attention to the deficit. But the president wants to put more money into jobs creation and more money into energy and more money into education.

So you are seeing political battle lines being drawn in the big picture, and you will see the tiny battles begin about specific programs, because for every program there is in the government, there's somebody up on Capitol Hill who supports it. So it's always sort of a smack-down when it comes to the specifics of the budget.

HOLMES: And you kind of hit on this. This becomes such an inside-the-beltway fight in a whole lot of ways, and certainly, it reaches out to communities around the country. But where is the stomach for the American people for stuff like this?

You know, this is another huge, complicated beast of a bill that needs to be gone through. I mean, people have already gone through a stimulus bill. We're talking about another jobs bill. Now we go with another, this huge bill, as well. So I guess, what part of this do Americans need to be paying attention to? And where is it going to be a problem for the president in trying to sell this particular bill?

CROWLEY: The budget is mind-boggling. Just trying to wrap your mind around a $1.6 trillion deficit. I mean, what is that even?

And so, you can look at it, you know, again as a whole, because there are differences among Americans and between the parties about how much money should be spent on what projects. And that's what this is. This is about how much money are we going to give the student loan program? If you've got a child who is ready to go to college, you should know that the president wants to have more Pell grants. That is, money given to students who do not have the means to get to college otherwise.

There is more money for primary and secondary education.

There are other Americans who say, "This deficit is going to cost my children in the long run and, as hard as this may be, we're going to have to not be the one who provides everything for everybody."

So, there are -- when it gets down to it and when these various committees start talking, you will begin to see some of the battles taking place.

What does the president have to watch for? He has to watch that he does remind people that he is keeping an eye on the bottom line, since there is increasing concern about this, but yet that he understands, at the very time that people need the most help from their government, hard economic times, he's also talking about cutting programs.

So he has to say, "These are programs that are duplicative." Or "these are programs that can be -- that are a waste or that haven't worked or no longer needed." But it's funny how the smallest item in the budget can become a very big deal when it gets down to putting the numbers by the program.

HOLMES: This thing is massive. All right. Candy, let me...

CROWLEY: It's crazy.

HOLMES: Please let me welcome you to the weekend shift. Our Candy Crowley, our senior political correspondent, but also the new anchor of "STATE OF THE UNION"; going to be taking over for a spot that John king held for some time. We always talk to him live on our show on Sunday morning. So we expect to see you there, as well. But I can't tell you how excited we certainly are to see you in that spot. It is just a perfect spot for you. So well deserved.

CROWLEY: Thank you so much. I'm -- I'm very excited, and I will be talking to you this Sunday. I mean, why not just plunge in and go with it?

HOLMES: Let's do that. Candy, thank you so, so much. We'll be talking to you soon.

CROWLEY: OK. Thank you, T.J.

HOLMES: We're going to turn here in a moment to a story out of Haiti. Have you heard, ten Americans under arrest in Haiti on child trafficking charges. The girl you're seeing in this picture, some are saying she's a victim. Some are saying she's the victim of just a misunderstanding. We are breaking down this story for you. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: Well, a lot of people have been focused on trying to help Haiti, including a lot of Americans, especially a lot of Americans who are trying to help the children of Haiti who have been affected by this earthquake.

Well, ten Americans, American Baptists, who were trying to help, they say, now accused of child trafficking. You may have heard this story over the weekend.

There were trying to drive a bus that was full of about 33 children, trying to drive them across the border from Haiti into the Dominican Republic. The Haitian government now calling this kidnapping.

Lawyers for the group say they're being treated poorly, as well. They're being held right now, but lawyers for those Americans say they're being treated poorly. One of them even is in the hospital. That person is a diabetic.

We're also hearing reports now that, because of the broken judicial system there in Haiti because of the quake, of course, there's talk of possibly moving the Americans back to the U.S. to be tried on these child trafficking charges.

Our Karl Penhaul picks up the latest for us on this story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They say they're answering Jesus' call. Now these American Baptists stand accused of trafficking 33 Haitian babies and children.

The Americans deny the charges and say they believed the kids were orphaned or abandoned, but some were not orphans at all and were crying to go home to their parents.

Haitian authorities and aid workers say Haitian police allowed the Americans out of their jail cells to talk to CNN. They described a poorly-planned mission to bus kids out of Haiti to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic, but they denied wrongdoing.

LAURA SILSBY, NEW LIFE CHILDREN'S REFUGE: We believe that we've been charged very falsely with trafficking, which of course, that is the furthest possible extreme, because I mean, our whole -- our hearts here, we literally all gave up, you know, everything we had to, I mean, income and use of our own funds to come here to help these children and by no means are any part of that horrendous practice.

CARLA THOMPSON, NEW LIFE CHILDREN'S REFUGE: God is the one who called us to come here. And we just -- we just really believe that this was his purpose.

PENHAUL: Haitian police arrested the ten Americans from Idaho, Kansas, and Texas Friday as they tried to cross the border from Haiti into the Dominican Republic. Team leader Silsby admitted the children have no documents, no passports, nor official permission to leave.

SILSBY: They really didn't have any paperwork. And my -- this is again probably a misunderstanding on my part, but that -- I did not understand that that would need -- that would really need to be required.

PENHAUL: The children, between 2 months and 12 years old, have been temporarily housed here at SOS Children's Village, run by an Austrian charity in Port-au-Prince. Spokesmen George Willeit said initial investigations show at least ten of the youngsters had at least one surviving parent. He's now responsible for trying to reunite the families.

GEORGE WILLEIT, SOS CHILDREN'S VILLAGE: Some of them for sure are not orphans because immediately as she arrived here, an older girl -- she might be 9 years old -- was crying loud, "I'm not an orphan. I do have my parents. Please call my parents."

PENHAUL: We met 10-year-old Benatine Poulime. She'd been on the Baptist bus and was clearly frightened. She gave us the phone number of her mum, Adrianne (ph) Poulime. In a brief conversation, the woman said she'd agreed to hand over her only daughter to the Americans and said she believed her child would be schooled and be well cared for.

Her mother gave permission to interview little Benatine (ph). In her quiet voice, she told how she was loaded onto a bus just yards from her home with only the clothes she stood up in. She did not want to go.

"I said I wanted to get out of the bus, but they told me I had to stay. I was crying. I said I wanted to go to my mum," she says.

Back to jail and Baptist team leader Laura Silsby.

(on camera) At least ten of the children have either a mother or a father. And they have the phone numbers of their mothers and fathers.

SILSBY: OK. I can tell you our heart and our intent was to help only those children that needed us most, that -- that they had lost either both mother and father or had lost, you know, one of their parents. The other parent had abandoned them.

PENHAUL (voice-over): Silsby told me her Baptist group first met a Haitian pastor by chance as they arrived in the country last week, and he helped them gather the children.

SILSBY: We felt like it was a very God appointed meeting.

PENHAUL: Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive banned fast- track adoptions just after the earthquake and put a stop on Haitian kids leaving without official paperwork. The move was an effort to stop the risk of kids being sold for adoption or sold into child abuse rings. Bellerive said he believed the Americans had committed a crime and is vowing to fully investigate. JEAN-MAX BELLERIVE, HAITIAN PRIME MINISTER: For what I know till now, this is a kidnapping case. If there -- we had some related parents involved in that operation, the children certainly were not fully willing to go, because in some case, we -- for what I heard that, they were asking for their parents. They wanted to return to their parents. So in any case, really just or not, it's not acceptable.

PENHAUL: But the prime minister conceded Haiti's justice system is not fully functioning after the quake. He suggested the ten Americans could be extradited to the United States to face trial.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Now, the American group is in Haiti as part of a mission sponsored by two Idaho churches. Both churches belong to the Southern Baptist Convention, but a spokesman for the convention's outreach body says the churches were acting independently in organizing the mission there in Haiti.

The reporter on that story, Karl Penhaul, who's been in Haiti for us doing some work, doing some remarkable work, joins us now on the phone. He's been following this story for us very closely for us.

Karl, I guess, just give us the update on -- on the Americans. Are they still being held in jail? Are they going to be in front of a judge anytime soon?

PENHAUL (via phone): They are still in jail, and we do understand that, in the course of the day, they were due to appear before a judge. We still don't know whether that is going ahead.

But there is another amazing twist to this story, T.J. I'm now in a farming village called Callabrat (ph), and that's in the mountains near the capital. And this is the village where 21 of those 33 Haitian children came from. And -- and we'd met the parents of many of those children, because the citizens here say that almost all those 21 children have either a parent or a direct relative such as a brother or a sister.

But what the relatives say is that they allowed the Americans to take their children. They say that they gave the Americans their children because the Americans told that they were going to take their children to the Dominican Republic and school them, put them through school, give them a good home, care for them in an orphanage that would even have a swimming pool.

And so the citizens here cannot believe now that the Haitian authorities have stopped that bus and are accusing both the American Baptists of kidnapping but also accusing the Haitian parents here of giving away their children. They say it's a very confusing situation, but what all the parents that we have talked to today insist is that they gave their children away.

But as the prime minister, the Haitian prime minister says, it could quite well be that the parents decided to give the children away, but the children were not in agreement.

Now, I was talking to one father just a few moments ago. He gave his 4-year-old daughter and his 5-year-old daughter to the Americans, hoping that they would be taken to a better life. But when they took them on the bus, he packed absolutely nothing for them. He didn't even pack the favorite stuffed toy of his youngest daughter. I saw it lying on the floor of his shack, which was partially damaged by the quake.

I said, "What's this stuffed toy doing? Who's was this?"

He said, "That was of my 4-year-old daughter's Saria." He said, "But I didn't take it for her. I didn't pack it for her." He said, "Because the Americans said my children would have new stuffed toys. They would have many more toys where they were going and that they would be well cared for," T.J.

HOLMES: All right. Karl Penhaul with another twist to this remarkable story so far. I know you're up there. We're going to see reporting from you, I'm sure, very soon about the parents of these particular children.

Karl, thank you so much. Hope to check in with you again.

So again, Karl's reporting there is that, in fact, these Americans are now charged with child trafficking. He has now checked in with the parents of many of those children, at least 21 of the 33. A village there where he's checked in. And the parents say they did, in fact, give their children up to these Americans in hopes of having a better life for those children.

We will continue to follow that story. Karl is on top of it. Any more news breaks out, we'll certainly bring it in to you.

Now, for every orphan leaving the chaos of Haiti, thousands upon thousands still left behind. So how do we help the children of Haiti? We search for answers on "AC 360," a special series, "Children of Haiti." That's tonight, 10 p.m. Eastern.

Well, are you one of those underwater homeowners? Probably so. A lot of people are. Paying more on your mortgage than the house is worth. We've got a solution. Some say just walk away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: Well, they have the money but some just don't want to shell it out. Some homeowners voluntarily walking away from their homes and not paying their mortgages anymore. Why? Because they're so deeply underwater that the payments pretty much seem pointless. Is this irresponsible or is this a smart business move, actually?

Joining me now to talk about this, Luigi Zingales from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, also Brent White from the University of Arizona Law School.

And Brent, you got a lot of people talking when you wrote a paper essentially laying out the arguments for and against doing this. So I want to say, it's one thing when someone gets in financial trouble because of the downturn in the economy and can't make their payments. That's one thing.

But you kind of set up a scenario in which, you know, some people it just makes better business sense. Yes, you can make your payment, but in the long run, you've lost so much that you're better off just walking away and foreclosing on the home.

Now, explain briefly why you think and why you laid out that that is a good option.

BRENT WHITE, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA LAW SCHOOL: Well, you know, I don't advise people to take any particular course of action, but I do note that businesses do this all the time. Just last week, I believe, Tishman Speyer walked away from Stuyvesant Town, because it no longer made financial sense for them to continuing paying on their mortgage. They have $33 billion in assets, but they decided they didn't want to use those assets to pay on Stuyvesant Town.

Morgan Stanley recently walked away from five properties in San Francisco, because they thought it was no longer economically wise, despite record profits this year.

So the point is that businesses make these decisions all the time. And what I address in my paper is why is it that, when individuals make the same types of decisions, they're called deadbeats or scumbags, and businesses are said to have made a good business decision when they walk away?

HOLMES: Now, Luigi, is that a fair comparison, even, comparing an individual homeowner to business practice, essentially?

LUIGI ZINGALES, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO'S BOOTH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS: I think it's a fair comparison if the contracts are similar. And here we make a huge distinction between what is called a non-recourse mortgage and what is called a recourse mortgage.

A no-recourse mortgage is a mortgage in which the borrower either pledges only the assets as a collateral and not as future income. And that's exactly what businesses do. And that's the way -- why walking away is part of the contract.

In a recourse mortgage, which in most states in the United States the mortgages are recourse, you don't only pledge the assets. You pledge also your future income. So you have an implicit promise to pay, not just with the value of the asset, but also with your future income. And if you violate that promise, you are violating a promise.

HOLMES: So Brent, on that point there, and you brought into your paper, you talked about a moral argument that so many people do not walk away from mortgages even though it might make good business sense because they feel morally obligated in some way. But shouldn't that come into play? Shouldn't we always want to keep that moral compass, if you will, and not walk away from something you promised to do?

WHITE: Well, the misunderstand is the contract is a...

ZINGALES: I think that...

HOLMES: Go ahead, Brent, yes. Go ahead, Brent. Go ahead.

WHITE: A contract is a legal document, and it lays out certain rights and obligations and options. And as Dr. Zingales points out, in a non-recourse state, the contract contains an option to default. And you, in fact, pay more for that option to the tune of about $800 more for each $100,000 you borrow in closing costs.

In other words, there is an option to default. You pay for that option to default. And there's no -- nothing more immoral about exercising that option than collecting on an insurance policy. You paid for the option, so you have a right to exercise it.

HOLMES: All right. Let me -- Zingales, I want to bring you back here. But let's break this down the simplest way for Americans out there who are in a regular mortgage, who are not paying more for, like you just said, Brent, that other option of defaulting but most people in their homes, you're underneath. You owe more on it than it's actually worth.

Some people, and Brent, you set up in your paper, walk away because it could make more sense to you financially in the long run. You're not going to break even, so walk away.

Professor Zingales, did you see any options to where that makes sense to do, where you would recommend that people do that? If you can make the payment, make the payment?

ZINGALES: Oh, again, if you are -- if you have a no-recourse mortgage, I think that what he's saying is absolutely correct. If you are severely underwater it makes financial sense to do it, and I don't see any moral issue why you should not do it. So you should do it.

But I have to remind that the vast majority of the states are recourse mortgages, and even in states where there are no-recourse like California, the only mortgage that is no recourse is the first mortgage. So if you refinance your house, you have a recourse mortgage. So in that case, the lender can come after your other assets, can come after your future labor income, and they will.

HOLMES: And Mr. White, I know you don't recommend -- again, you're not a financial adviser in that respect. But you wrote a paper that laid out an argument. And it's easy, when you read through, that you came to some conclusions here that you have a line that says homeowners should be walking away in droves, but they are not.

You said this paper explored the financial logic of walking away from an underwater mortgage and suggests that many more homeowners should be strategically defaulting.

What do you think would happen if a lot of people read that? I know you're not advising, but still, the paper lays out a good argument for it. What would happen to us if our neighbors, everyone who was underwater in their mortgage started walking away? Wouldn't that have a huge negative impact on already a hurting housing market?

WHITE: Well, to clarify, what I said is that if people made purely rational financial calculations, they would be walking away in groves. I don't say they should be. I say, if they were rational actors, this is what Americans would do.

As to the concern about whether or not -- you know, what happens if people walk away, it's a lot to ask your neighbor to stay in their underwater home and not save for retirement and not have money to send their child to college, paying an underwater mortgage, just because of some effect that they might have on the overall market if they walk away.

This is a real problem. It should be addressed. We can't prop up the market on the backs of individual homeowners, particularly the middle class, for whom a home is the primary investment. So there is a problem.

The concern about what happens to the market if people walk away is a valid one. But this is an issue for the government to address.

And Dr. Zingales, along with Eric Posner (ph), suggests a solution. That is to force lenders to write down mortgage principals. I think this is a sensible solution and something we should look at.

Other things we could do is to work to level the playing field so that homeowners can negotiate with lenders.

But the reality is we have a serious problem with a lot of homeowners underwater. They can't save for the future. They don't spend because they feel poor, and we've got to address this problem one way or the other.

HOLMES: Well, gentlemen, Professor Zingales and Brent White, gentleman I appreciate you being here. This is such a fascinating argument on all sides really. It's an interesting read, "Underwater and Not Walking Away." That paper you wrote, Mr. White.

Thank you both, gentlemen. Everybody agrees people need some help out there. Hopefully they'll get some. Thank you both for being here.

A lot of people are looking to the president for some of that help. Dear Mr. President, we need jobs now. We need them now. We need a lot of them. That's how Christine Romans starts off her "Memo to President Obama."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: All right. There's a stimulus plan out there, as we all know. There's also another jobs bill being talked about. The president's presenting another budget now he's talking about creating jobs in. And all this talk about jobs, but we still seem to be losing jobs in this country. Still at 10 percent unemployment. It's time for a "Memo to the President. What do you have to say to him, Christine? CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: T.J., one of the president's top money men, Larry Summers, says the country is in statistical recovery and a human recession. That's because jobs have not come back yet, and this remains a challenge for the president.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS (voice-over): Mr. President, you've now put jobs front and center.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010.

ROMANS: But can you really create jobs, and how?

OBAMA: Hey, guys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How are you doing sir?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, Mr. President!

OBAMA: How are you?

ROMANS: In December, you visited this career training center in Pennsylvania's Leigh High Valley. At the same center today, former Marine Barry Hessinger is hoping the training will help him find new work after losing his job in carpentry.

BARRY HESSINGER, STUDENT: We were building more houses than we could handle three years ago, and it just -- within a couple months it totally died down.

ROMANS: Barry's job is just one of 7.2 million lost in this recession. That's a lot of people out of work. It could take years to recover from the loss.

Mr. President, where do you begin?

OBAMA: We should start where most new jobs do, in small businesses. We can put Americans to work today building the infrastructure of tomorrow. We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities.

ROMANS: But some critics think those jobs wouldn't come fast enough.

PETER MORICI, ECONOMIST, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: The president is not making sense when he pitches green jobs or sending mothers back to college. Quite simply, that's the economy of the future. In the here and now, we need to bring back a lot of the jobs that were lost during the recession.

ROMANS: When you took office, Mr. President, the economy was losing, on average, close to 700,000 jobs a month. Sure, that's slowed down, but unemployment has jumped to 10 percent and the unemployed are getting frustrated. DIANE SWONK, CHIEF ECONOMIST, MESIROW FINANCIAL: One of the biggest worries we have right now is not only generating enough jobs to lower the unemployment rate, which is going to be difficult, but also reengaging those people who have been already unemployed for more than six months.

ROMANS: Think of it, nearly 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months, and only about 58 percent of the entire adult population is even working right now. That's the lowest level since the early 1980s.

You say help is on the way, Mr. President, but Americans need jobs now.

That's why Barry Hessinger has given up on construction and has gone back to school for physical therapy. He's getting free tuition funded by the stimulus package you signed last year.

HESSINGER: It feels good to finally get into a career where I think I'll be working every day.

ROMANS: Mr. President, you've called on Congress to come together on a jobs bill and you've said you want it on your desk right away. Americans are waiting, and many can't afford to wait much longer.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: Employers are starting to hire temporary workers, often a first step for companies who are just beginning to see the economy get better. But consider this. If the economy creates 200,000 jobs a month consistently, it would take till 2016 to get everyone back to work who lost a job in the recession and to absorb the new workers coming back into the workforce. In December, the economy lost 85,000 jobs. T.J.?

HOLMES: All right.

How are you feeling right now? A little sleepy? Think you need a nap right about now? A lot of people out there assume that we want more sleep as we get older. But it may be those young folk who need to be taking naps.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: We're all told have those sweet dreams. You need eight hours of sleep. Less than that, it might be a nightmare. Eight hours is what we've always been told, right?

Now there's a new study out that suggests it may not exactly be true. It all depends on your age. Our senior molitical -- political, medical...

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Whatever.

HOLMES: Molidical? Is that what I said? Our medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, here now, fully rested. All right. What's the deal here? Is that true? We get older, we need more sleep? Don't' we assume that?

COHEN: You assume that. You think Grandma and Grandpa need to take little naps throughout the day. Researchers said, let's put the conventional wisdom to the test.

So, they did this really interesting study. They took people of all ages and said during the day, they said go take a nap. Wouldn't you love that if someone just said to you, go take a nap?

HOLMES: It sounds great.

COHEN: It sounds great, doesn't it? What happened was that the people in their 20s said yes, let's go and fell asleep really quickly. The people - the senior citizens, they took the longest to fall asleep, and people in their 40s were somewhere in the middle. So, in other words, the people in their 20s were so exhausted they dozed off really, really quickly.

HOLMES: Is that exhaustion? Now, is this an obvious answer because they've been out partying the night before?

COHEN: No! Right, you would think it would be. But in fact, the older people were getting less sleep during the night as well. So, it wasn't that the old people were sleeping a lot at night. They were sleeping less during the night and they felt less of a need to sleep during the day. Doctors think as we age, we just don't have that same need for sleep that we did in our 20s.

HOLMES: That's the explanation? So, why are the young people so tired?

COHEN: You know what? Our brains aren't the same as we age. Our brains change. Our hormone levels change. There's something about those two things alone or in combination or in combination with other things that means we need to get less sleep.

HOLMES: That is interesting.

COHEN: Isn't that interesting?

HOLMES: Is there a number, a number of hours? We always hear eight hours. Is that still the standard...

COHEN: There's no good magic number. But if you feel like you are needing less sleep as you get older, you're not crazy. You might be crazy but...

(LAUGHTER)

HOLMES: But no health concerns there. They always tell you you need more sleep to promote better health.

COHEN: If you're feeling good, you might just need less sleep as you get older. HOLMES: All right. Let's turn to another here. Another study, this one a totally different topic here about women's fertility as they age, as well. Now, is this alarming stuff we need to pay attention to?

COHEN: It's not really alarming so much as interesting how doctors managed to quantify something that women and their doctors talk about a lot. We all know that women are less likely to conceive as they age.

So, what they did is they looked at women at birth and how many eggs they had. So, women at birth or females at birth have more than a million eggs. By the time you're 30, you only have about 12 percent of who is it left. And by the time you're 40, you have about 3 percent of those left.

HOLMES: Wow.

COHEN: Yes. And we can also look at it this way. At age 13, you have 180,000 eggs. Not you. A woman.

HOLMES: Egg drop, egg drop.

COHEN: Right, egg drop. (INAUDIBLE) Isn't that clever? And at age 25, have you 65,000 eggs and at age 35, a woman has 16,000 eggs. Now, you might think wow, at age 35, you're really in trouble there. You don't need 16,000 eggs to conceive unless I guess you're going to have 16,000 babies. Just one will do the trick.

But the thing is, as the number of eggs diminishes, the number of good eggs diminish. So, you're going to have a bunch of eggs that really aren't fit to become the babies, so the number of good ones goes down. Women still conceive in late 30s and early 40s. It still happens. It is just more difficult.

And if you want your best bets for conceiving, you ought to have a child at age, like, 15. We don't want to encourage that...

HOLMES: No, I know what you're saying.

COHEN: ... but medically speaking, that is when women are meant to conceive and have children.

HOLMES: Please, don't get confused out there. Not suggesting that at all.

COHEN: Not at all, no.

HOLMES: That's very interesting.

COHEN: But from a scientific standpoint.

HOLMES: The first time they've been able to get the exact number, not exactly, but still to see numbers like that.

COHEN: It's a new sort of mathematical modeling. A new way to kind of pinpoint that number.

HOLMES: All right. Elizabeth Cohen, good information. Thank you so much.

Want to check some of our headlines today.

President Obama submitting nearly a $4 trillion budget to Congress this morning. Two competing goals here. Slowing runaway deficits while at the same time increasing spending in a bid to lift the country out of recession. Among the items, $53 billion in tax cuts, $50 billion in job creating measures, plus the spending freeze on several programs that you heard the president talk in his about State of the Union last week.

One of the nation's major newspapers going on a diet. Thanks to the recession starting with today's edition, "The L.A. Times" shrinking in page width to 11 inches from 12 inches. Now is, they're also laying off 80 press operators for the first time in decades. Today's Times was printed without a stand lone business section.

For those of you out there who love to play the Lottery, your luck may be changing. Dozens of states are now selling both Powerball and Megamillions tickets. Of course, until now you could only buy tickets for one or the other in your state. Officials say the next step could be a national lottery by spring of 2011.

Well, the government should be buying some lottery tickets and maybe that would help us pay down some of our debt. We're going to break down some of those stimulus dollars that the government has been spending. This is not an easy job and a big project here for us at CNN. Our Josh Levs and producers are tackling this right now. They're shooting for the moon or maybe not so much. I'll explain.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FMR. PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Well, we got to the moon. We just might not be going back anytime soon. That was President Kennedy, of course, in 1961 reaching for the stars before Congress, specifically reaching for the moon.

But things have changed a lot. Money's a little different. The budget that President Obama submitted to Congress today would end up cutting NASA's constellation program. That program is the one that would set up those missions to return Americans back to the moon.

Now, it doesn't have money in there for the constellation program. The problem here that some are looking at is that that constellation program -- a lot of money has been dumped into it. A lot of other stimulus money. Josh Levs at the Stimulus Desk crunching some of these numbers for us. So, we might not get a bang for the bucks we already put into it.

JOHS LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDET: I'll tell you how this breaks down. It's a heck of a lot of money we're talking about, a quarter billion dollars spent for the constellation program.

I pulled up some video from NASA's Web site that talks a lot about this. You can see kind of what this is and what it's all about. The idea here is to return man to the moon. This was the big plan that NASA had underway to get there.

They've gotten a lot of funding. They had about $557 million in funding from the stimulus and about half of it, so about a quarter billion dollars spent on the constellation program that has now been scrapped under the president's new budget, at least. The proposed budget -- it would be scrapped.

So, one thing we're looking at now, is this a big waste? What we're hearing from NASA is they're saying a lot of the technology that's been built will still be used. It's not just a complete waste. They're also saying it's employed people along the way. Lockheed Martin says they've had between 50 to 100 jobs because of these efforts. Kennedy's Space Center has had another 125 jobs because of these efforts, they're saying.

And in the president's new budget today, I pulled out a quote for you. I want you to see this. We have this on a graphic for you. They're explaining why they made this choice. It says in the president's proposed budget "an independent panel found that Constellation was years behind schedule and would require large budget increases to land even a handful of astronauts back on the moon before 2030."

So, that's where they're standing here. But still in the end there is this big question hangover. If we can go back to the cool video. The big question: how much of it does get wasted? In our story -- you can read about this on CNN.com right now. We have a guy who's the director of globalsecurity.org. He's also a space policy expert. He says a lot of what was created, T.J., will end up on the cutting room floor, basically.

So, the question now is when you talk about a quarter billion dollars in stimulus funding, how much of that ultimately is going to be wasted here?

And while we're taking a look at this, I'm going to take a walk to the big Stimulus Desk screen we can see here. What we're doing here is tracking the dollars of your stimulus funding, and now it's going to jump up a little bit. We were up to 9.7. Now looking at the latest $557 million, we're at $10 billion -- $10.2 billion under review by CNN of that giant stimulus pile. That's the latest example, T.J. As I'm telling you, a lot of questions hanging out there about that funding there.

HOLMES: That gets everybody excited. People argue about the usefulness of NASA sometimes. But still, it inspires people. A lot of people would love to see Americans, a national spirit of sending Americans back to the moon. Just hate to think all that money might have been wasted.

LEVS: Well, I will tell you this. They're also saying in the budget that the president is investing billions of dollars into a new, better, more efficient plan to get men back to the moon. We have yet to see what that plan will be, how it will play out. They're saying, hey, we still want to get people out there, but this wasn't the efficient way to do it. The question for us is of that $250 million, how much of it ends up on the cutting room floor where technology never gets used?

HOLMES: Josh, we appreciate that. We'll check in again with the Stimulus Desk. Thanks so much.

Finally, Toyota putting the pedal to the metal. Is it fast enough? We'll tell you how Toyota plans to address more than 2 million cars that need some emergency service.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM LENTZ, PRES. AND COO, TOYOTA MOTOR SALES U.S.A.: : It's been about ten days from the time we stopped the sale of our product, announced the recall, stopped the sale of our product, and actually did something unprecedented by stopping the manufacturing of our product so that we could ensure that we had a supply of parts, all of resources, moving toward taking care of customers as rapidly as possible.

To us, what's most important now is making sure that customers understand we have the fix and that we're going to take care of their cars as quickly as we can.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: All right. A bit of a P.R. drive for Toyota today, pulling out the big dogs. That was one of them you saw on "AMERICAN MORNING" talking about the fix. They're finally putting out a plan to fix millions of recalled vehicles. The replacement parts for the sticky gas pedals supposedly on the way now.

OK, it can fix the cars, but can it fix Toyota's image, reputation? The entire brand could need a big fix as well.

Poppy Harlow is in New York for us. Poppy, lways good to see you. So, people have always highly regarded Toyotas. The little cars have been on the road for a long time, they're safe, dependable, all that good stuff. The reputation -- how much fixing do they have to do?

HARLOW: A lot. That's the bottom line. They have been in this country 50 years and won the reputation of very high quality, good pricing, but the image is clearly tarnished. I spoke to the man you heard from, Jim Lentz, the president of Toyota USA here today when he was in the NEWSROOM. He said, "Listen, we have a lot of work to do, but this is what we're doing. We are shipping the new parts to the dealers. We're going to work around the clock. We're going to keep dealers open." Some of them 24 hours to fix their cars and here's why.

As you probably know by now, 2.3 million cars were recalled in the U.S. alone. Millions more around the globe because of the problem the gas pedal can stick and cause one of their vehicles to accelerate uncontrollably. This is on a number of models, and the fix involves reinforcing that gas pedal to eliminate what the country calls "excess friction" that causes it to stick.

Now, Toyota said to us they will start contacting customers this week, T.J., let them know when they can bring cars in. Obviously no charge here. It should take 30 minutes once you get to the dealer to make the change.

This is all after the problem. A huge, huge blemish on Toyota's reputation. It will take them a while to repair that one. T.J.?

HOLMES: I was going to ask you next, about the long-term implications. At the same time, fortunately, we weren't hearing about accident after accident that were caused by the problems. Also, here we are talking about it a lot over the past week, but the fix is now in. Long-term, will it be that big of a deal for sales in the U.S.?

HARLOW: You ask Toyota, and they're really optimistic saying, sure, we'll lose some customers, but we have strong loyalty.

That's to be seen. What you see now that's so interesting is you see the competitors coming in. This is total U.S. market share of auto sales in 2009. GM is at the top near 20 percent of cars sold in this country. Toyota's right below it with 17 percent. Ford is right under there with 15.5 percent. What you have seen is that these competitors, also Chrysler, have come in and offered big incentives for people to switch from Toyotas to their brands. So, you see what they are trying to do.

As for the financial impact to Toyota, there is no price tag yet, but honestly, T.J., some analysts say it could run into the billions of dollars. Fixing cars is expensive. So, that could be one of the most expensive recalls ever.

A major reason, as you heard Jim Lentz of Toyota say is they stopped production and sales of all the recalled models, including the best selling Camay. That's something to keep an eye on until they get fixed.

Want to show you the stock. The stock has taken a huge hit over the last two weeks, down 14 percent. Looking at the stock trading now, up over 4 percent. So, a little rebound today on that P.R. blitz. We'll keep watching it.

Want to point you to the story on CNNmoney.com in case one of your cars is one of these recalled models. It goes through a list of what to do if your car is one of the recalled models.

HOLMES: Very important information to have there at the end. You can get them fixed. That's a great thing. Poppy Harlow from CNNmoney.com. Thank you very much as always.

Quick break. We are right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: One question on a lot of people's minds, maybe the question for a lot of people -- when are we going to see more jobs? The White House said the stimulus plan funded nearly 600,000 jobs last quarter. The big chunk of the budget President Obama submitted today goes toward job creation, but how many jobs are being created or saved, as we hear? Drew Griffin from our Special Investigations Unit traveled back to the beginning to find out.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS CORRESPONDENT: Show me where we're going now. We're here, right?

(voice-over): It took us hours of driving just to find it.

(on camera): So that way.

(voice-over): Three hours out of St. Louis, 40 miles south of Jefferson City, then another 10 miles on a two-lane rural road. And there it was, and under way. We are in Missouri and this was the first project in the nation to receive stimulus money. Announced the very day President Obama signed the stimulus bill. A project to replace this old, literally crumbling bridge over the Osage River.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the stuff that will come down.

GRIFFIN (on camera): That?

(voice-over): Our visit was in March and there was no doubt the bridge needed to be replaced. It's why Missouri had it on its list for years, just never spent the money because, well, the Osage River Bridge, near the remote and tiny town of Tuscumbia, on this two-lane road, is not exactly high priority. It become a high priority when Missouri found out it could get someone else to pay for it. Minutes after President Obama signed the stimulus bill, Missouri officials ordered the earth movers into action. A project that would create or save the administration said around 30 jobs.

(on camera): According to the administration, that number turned out to be pretty close. About 25 jobs. But were any of those jobs actually created? Or even saved? Construction officials say, in effect, not so much. Most of the workers at the bridge site already had jobs and were just transferred over to do that work. As for jobs saved, a construction manager tells CNN, only a few were saved.

(voice-over): Keeping them honest, we went back last week. Ten months after our first visit to check in. Turns out the claims about so-called indirect jobs are a real question. The head of Missouri's Department of Transportation told us by his calculations, those indirect jobs, he calls them multipliers, were the big thing here and around the region. They added up to 240.

PETE RAHN, DIR., MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION: It ripples out. These people all receive a paycheck. They buy from grocery stores and restaurants and they buy gasoline. And so it ripples throughout the economy.

GRIFFIN: That's not what we found at the very closest restaurant to the Osage River Bridge. Wes Horton runs the Red Oak Inn. He's glad the bridge is being built. He has served a few more meals, but an economy booster? Hardly.

WES HORTON, OWNER, RED OAK INN: Precious little of it rubbed off on us, but no great amount. I mean, you know, any time -- any time you got people around, they always spend just a little bit of money with somebody. And they -- I mean, they sure as hell ain't no land boom or nothing like that.

MICHAEL SYKUTA, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI: Based on what I've seen of estimates of construction projects in similar regions and even Missouri Department of Transportation estimates on projects in the St. Louis area, the multipliers that are -- apply in those settings would generate nowhere near the numbers that they're suggesting for Tuscumbia.

GRIFFIN: There's no question that the bridge over the river needed replacing. As for this project being able to jump-start the local economy with lots of jobs in the region? Well, that appears to be a bridge too far.

Drew Griffin, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)