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Jobless Claims Vote Hits Snag in Senate; Schools, Courts Closed after Chemical Spill; Swearing Toddler's Mom Defends Herself

Aired January 10, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Senate negotiations over long-term jobless benefits have hit a snag -- surprise, surprise. Democrats need at least five Republicans to cross party lines and support their plan. But majority leader Harry Reid's decision to block any changes to the revamp bill is angering some of the GOP -- all of this while we learned that 347,000 Americans stopped looking for work altogether last year.

Our chief congressional correspondent, Dana Bash, live in Washington with more for you. Good morning, Dana.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

Well, there was a brief moment of hope, really on both sides of the aisle yesterday that there was a bipartisan deal that could have gotten through the Senate to extend those long-term unemployment benefits through November along with paying for it, which is what Republicans want.

But then it really devolved quickly into some pretty acrimonious discussion on the senate floor -- a lot of bad blood over -- in part what you just talked about -- Carol. The fact that a lot of Republicans -- these six Republicans who helped Democrats at least start the debate on this issue felt shut out of the process.

I ran into several of them in the hallway, Dan Coats of Indiana, Susan Collins of Maine saying, what do you think about this deal? They said, "We don't know anything about it." They were not happy about the fact that Harry Reid the Senate majority leader, just dealt with one Republican, his counterpart from Nevada, Dean Heller, and nobody else.

And it wasn't so much about the process. It was also about the substance. Because many of them felt that what they were discussing really wasn't going to fly with them for various reasons.

I just got an e-mail from an aide to one of those six Republicans saying, "Any update?" The response was, "Still a mess." But they are all hoping that they can use the weekend to try to calm things down and work on some kind of package that would extend those long-term emergency unemployment benefits, which is what most Democrats want to do and even some Republicans. But also, help find a way somewhere in the budget to pay for it. Depending on how long they extend it for, it could be up to maybe $18 billion that they are going to have to find in the budget.

COSTELLO: OK.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: I want to show you one quick important statistic, Carol up on the screen if we have it. 37.7 percent -- this is the number, the percentage of people who are the long-term unemployed. This is part of the new unemployment report that we got this morning -- 37.7 percent. That is a very telling number. That's a pretty big number that the people were talking about here who need and want these long- term unemployment benefits.

COSTELLO: I was just going to say that. The long-term unemployed sit around and wait for Congress to come to some conclusion. You can't help but wonder about the people that came out that said that more than half of our lawmakers are millionaires. Maybe they just don't get pain.

BASH: It is such a good point. I mean that study that we saw this week is pretty stunning; that, as you said, more than half of people who serve in Congress are millionaires. However, I think that just knowing the breakdown of who those people are, it seems to be a lot more about their political philosophy than what they have in the bank account.

Just for example, you certainly have a lot of rich Republicans but you have some rich Democrats do. Nancy Pelosi has a lot of money. Dianne Feinstein of California has a lot of money and they favor extending these long-term unemployment benefits. So I think it's again -- more about political philosophy than the millions that they have to spend.

COSTELLO: Dana bash, thanks so much.

So the long-term unemployed sit and wait without benefits waiting for lawmakers to get their act together. Not helping, the jobs report because as we said it came out today only 74,000 jobs added to the economy. Unemployment rate heads down to 6.7 percent but that's because more than 300,000 people have stopped looking for work. Still that likely won't help people.

Actually -- let's bring in our guest right now. His name is Jason Furman. He's the chairman of the President's council of economic advisers. Thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.

JASON FURMAN, CHAIRMAN, PRESIDENT OBAMA'S COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS: Thanks for having me.

COSTELLO: Let's talk about that statistic that Dana Bash just showed us; that 37.7 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for 27 plus weeks. That's just awful. And I am sure that people are sitting out there in the audience shaking their heads and they are not surprised and they are wondering why no one is doing anything about it.

FURMAN: Yes. There is no question that the biggest short-term economic challenge we face in our country is the long-term unemployed. And we are making progress. That long-term unemployment rate is coming down but it's still higher than any point it was ever recorded prior to the Great Recession.

COSTELLO: But it's terrible.

(CROSSTALK)

FURMAN: And that's exactly why the President is fighting so hard to extend those unemployment insurance benefits.

COSTELLO: I understand why he wants to extend unemployment benefits. But at some point, you got to stop providing that. And it is not creating jobs.

FURMAN: I actually disagree with you. I think the purchasing power that those families get actually does help the economy. We estimate 240,000 jobs are created by those unemployment insurance benefits. The Congressional Budget Office, which is nonpartisan, has a similar estimate.

But you are absolutely right that we do need to do a whole bunch of things to create jobs, whether it is investments in our infrastructure, immigration reform, business tax reform. There is a whole jobs agenda. We need to keep creating jobs for people.

But until there are as many jobs as we need we also are going to need to extend those unemployment insurance benefits.

COSTELLO: OK. You just mentioned three things that we know won't go anywhere any time soon. Nobody is even talking about it much.

FURMAN: You know Carol, I just -- the President is out there doing everything he can to push those forward. Let's take investments in America's infrastructure, in our roads and bridges. The program that does that expires at the end of September.

That is a bipartisan program. It has had strong support from Democrats and Republicans in the past. I certainly hope that both sides would use the next eight months to -- eight, nine months to come together on an agreement to invest more in our roads and bridges and put people back to work.

COSTELLO: But here's the thing. You use the word "hope" but it is up to the President of the United States to inspire confidence in our economy and that will get people out there spending more money but that's not happening. What is the president not doing? Because a lot of people -- only 24 percent of people feel the economy is getting any better.

FURMAN: You know -- the president is out there. In his last press conference before he left on break, he went and talked about how we were ending the year in a stronger place than we began it. You see that in a range of statistics, whether it is the GDP statistics, the manufacturing number, consumer confidence which is recovering from where it was in October. So you do have an economy that is healing. You do have an economy that is continuing to strengthen.

COSTELLO: Why don't more people feel that?

(CROSSTALK)

FURMAN: The president is being -- well, the president is being optimistic but at 6.7 percent, the unemployment rate is still well above where it should be. It is particularly above where it should be for the long-term unemployed. So you know, we have made progress but we have a lot more work to do. It sounds trite but that doesn't make it any less true.

COSTELLO: Well, the other reason people are feeling bad about the economy is because they are not making much money. Wages for the middle class have stagnated for the past 30 (ph) or four (ph) years. And they are not going to go up now. Should we just get used to this?

FURMAN: Absolutely not. We need to be doing everything we can to turn around. You just said wages -- one thing we could do to turn around the numbers on wages is to raise the minimum wage. That actually hasn't gone up in inflation-adjusted terms in 64 years. 64 years, the minimum wage hasn't been increased to adjust for inflation. We need to raise the minimum wage.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: But isn't the other -- isn't the other part of that is employers have to pay workers more? And haven't those employers discovered thanks to the 2008 recession, that employees will do more work for less? And the companies are still going to make oodles of money. What can the administration do to fix that? Because that's what's going on right now -- the companies are making money. They are just not hiring anybody.

FURMAN: Right. There's a whole lot of things going on -- And look there is some good news in terms of the wage front which is what an economist would tell you is the first thing you are going to see as an economy recovers is that you will create jobs. And then as the labor market gets tighter, that will start to show up in the form of more pressure for wages and more of those benefits translating back.

In the last year, wages have increased by nine-tenths of a percent above and beyond what inflation has been. So we have actually -- after a couple of years where wages fell in real terms. Wages have turned a corner and started to rise.

But there is a lot more that needs to rise to make up for several decades of an economy that's been stacked against middle class families.

COSTELLO: Jason Furman thanks so much for being with me this morning. I appreciate it.

FURMAN: Thanks for having me. COSTELLO: I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: There is a major environmental emergency in West Virginia this morning. Nearly 200,000 people across nine counties are affected. They're trying to find clean water after a leak at a chemical storage facility into the Elk River. Now the governor has warned people not to drink or use tap water in any form. The Health Department says ingesting the chemical could lead to difficulty breathing, severe vomiting or even sores on your skin.

Schools and courts are shut down this morning as officials work to figure out just how much of the water supply has been affected. And just moments ago, officials updated us on the progress of the investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a tank farm. It was a release of material from a tank farm. We know it casually as a foaming agent. You have to ask the equipment or the chemical manufacturer of that, the detailed particulars of the information. But we've looked at it and it doesn't have what we would consider a high lethality. We were notified of an event from the DEP just before noon yesterday. The event, we believe, had started before that time but we were not aware.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. The chemical he is talking about is a form of methanol. It's used to clean coal and as I said it seeped into the Elk River and then made its way to the water treatment facility.

Joining me now to talk more about this is Cabell County administrator, Chris Tatum. Good morning Mr. Tatum.

CHRIS TATUM, CABELL COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR: Good morning Carol. How are you?

COSTELLO: I'm much better than you, I know that. How is your community affected?

TATUM: Well, it is a little crazy right now as you can imagine but our county here in Cabell County is one of the smaller places affected by what is going on. We have about 10,000 or 12,000 that are affected by this. We have mobilized water. We have drinking water going to our outlying agencies, volunteer fire departments and we are setting up water stations across that end of the county to make sure that our citizens are taken care of.

COSTELLO: Because Am I right about this? You not only cannot drink the water but you can't bathe in the water or use the water to wash your clothes either?

TATUS: Yes, they -- it is a strict "do not use" situation. And they have advised us and advised our systems not to use the water in any form or fashion. So we have been passing that along and keeping our citizens informed as we can. We have emergency services, sheriff's department and 911 operations all fully staffed and ready to take calls and answer questions and get people to the right places so that they can get water in the instance that they do need it.

Again, we are in a smaller area that is not as affected as some of the larger counties but we have mobilized supplies to get things to people that need them.

COSTELLO: And I know that some people are asking neighbors whose water is safe which is probably pretty far away from where you to fill bottles with water and bring them into communities affected.

TATUM: Correct. You know there is a large community effort to do that. A lot of our local grocery stores and outlets are chain stores were without water last night. And because we are in such close proximity in a way that the water supply runs, people on one end of the county are able to help out the other end of the county.

So we have asked for that neighborly assistance. If you can do that and then, of course, we're a tight knit community anyway so we have all kinds of people out trying to make sure that people get what they need and get it where they can.

COSTELLO: Well, we wish you lots of luck. Chris Tatum -- thank you so much for being with me.

TATUM: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: You're welcome.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The mother of the two-year-old seen swearing and making obscene gestures in a viral video is now speaking out. And she says she is a good mother. Her son and three other kids were put in child protective custody after this video went viral.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You a ho, (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You a ho, bitch.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's up then? I need some (EXPLETIVE DELETED). I'm throwing a fit right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Authorities say the child is in protective custody because the toddler's relatives allowed known gang members into the home. The child's mother is just 16 years old. She doesn't live with her son. A 19-year-old woman was actually caring for him at the time. But the 16-year-old mom says she was in another room when this took place. Someone else shot the video. We are concealing the mom's identity because of her age.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They weren't worried about the video, because he had a clean diaper, the house is clean. Like they said, kids cuss. Every kid does it. He is a smart little boy. All the cussing he did, he doesn't do that. If somebody does cuss, I saw him do that. My son doesn't cuss like that.

Everybody thinks I'm a bad mother. I'm not. I am a good mother to my son. I teach him a lot. He is very smart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Now, remember, the video of the toddler swearing was posted online by an Omaha police union to highlight what they call the "thug cycle". Several groups objected to the union posting the video claiming it needlessly antagonizes minority communities. And the ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the police for excessive force.

With me to talk about this is CNN political commentator Marc Lamont Hill and Kelly Wallace, CNN digital correspondent and editor-at-large of CNN Digital. Welcome to both of you.

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Thanks for having me.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: Thanks for having us.

COSTELLO: All right. Kelly, I'll start with you. You are a mom.

WALLACE: Yes.

COSTELLO: Do all kids swear? I mean this might have been a one-time thing and there was just these three idiots in there getting that kid to say bad words so that they could laugh at the kid. And he had no idea what he was saying.

WALLACE: You know -- and you know, we are going to talk about what I think the inappropriateness really of the police officer's union posting this in the first place.

But no, you know, kids do what we do -- right. They role model us. So if you are swearing and cursing and you're encouraging the child to do that and laughing about it, of course, the child is going to think that's OK.

But this happens in lots of cultures -- Carol. I was on the subway not too long ago and a grandmother and a mother were sitting there with maybe a six-year-old. And they were talking to this guy. The guy is cursing and talking about all his sexual exploits and the grandmother and the mother are cracking up. All I could think of is, what message is that six or seven-year-old girl getting? Not a good one.

COSTELLO: Was it a good call to remove the child from the home for this incident?

LAMONT HILL: In my estimation, it was. I mean I think we all agree that this was a bad circumstance. But the child wasn't removed because of the video. I think we would have to see more than just that video. No laws were broken in that video even though we all find it deplorable.

The child was removed because of all the other things going on. There was a lot of gang activity. People had direct access to the child. There were way too many people under age living in the house. There were a multitude of factors that led to the child being removed. And it sounds like that was for the best.

But I think there's a difference between saying this individual kid was in a bad circumstance and saying that what the police union did was appropriate because it simply was not. They exploited the child. They put his face out there. What they did was bad and it also sends a message to the broader community about who and what young black boys can be, even before they enter first grade.

In this case, there is enough blame to go around for everybody.

COSTELLO: Are you saying that they wouldn't have posted a white child?

LAMONT HILL: I am saying they didn't post a white child. In a town where there is a four percent population of African-American people, it seems a bit stunning that the only example of thuggery that they could find is that of the black child. I can't get into their heads and say whether they would or would not do this with a while child.

What I did find odd thought was that they said the cycle of thuggery. If they are saying that this baby is part of the cycle of thuggery, they are saying that this three-year-old is going to be a thug. That is very dangerous.

And in a world where people fail to see the humanity of young black bodies, ala Trayvon Martin, it worries me that if the police department sees him as a thug in a diaper, just like those terrible people on the video did, then it worries me for his future in the world. Not because of the people in the video but because of the police as well.

COSTELLO: Well Kelly, I would think that the officers would say, "We are just trying to help this kid. We want to save him from a possible life of crime. Because he is -- he has all these bad people around him and we want to remove him from the home. We want to show people what's going on."

WALLACE: Right, but you know, the way to help the child is to contact Child Protective Services --

LAMONT HILL: Right.

WALLACE: And have them look at the environment the child is in, not to post the video on the union's Facebook page. And I think, if my understanding is correct, the child's identity -- you know, the face was not obscured when that video went up so that the child, in essence, can be viewed as a poster child for the thug culture.

Carol -- the larger issue here is we have issues about teen parenting. We don't want kids raising kids. We just don't want that. What can we do to stop that? We want to educate people that everything they do can impact their children. There are issues with poverty, issues of different cultures. There is so much here in the soup but I just don't think that what the union did in this incident was really the right way to go to help this child.

COSTELLO: Kelly Wallace, Mark Lamont Hill, thanks for the interesting conversation this morning. I appreciate it.

LAMONT HILL: Pleasure.

COSTELLO: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Checking our top stories at 55 minutes past.

In San Diego, an hour-long, high-speed chase, ended in a flurry of gunfire. The driver was injured, you know, after the police shot at this car, you would expect that, right. The driver has not been identified, his condition is not known. Official's say the suspect's vehicle matched the description of a car involved in a shooting earlier this week. The chase started when the car ran a stop sign and refused to pull over.

A police chase in Oregon takes a surprising turn when the suspect hops out of the car and jumps over a bridge. Cops say they tried to pull Rebecca Humphries (ph) over for a minor traffic violation but after she sped off, they realized the car was stolen. Rescue crews were able to get Humphries out of the water alive. She suffered only minor injuries.

A Chicago couple is definitely making their mark this winter. Tara Catogge and Ian Comes discovered their upstairs sink wasn't working and feared a pipe had burst. After taking the pipe apart, they found a wedding ring. They decided to polish the ring up and find out who it belonged to. Well, it actually belonged to the previous homeowners. And Tara and Ian tracked them down in Colorado. Needless to say, the couple was elated when they got the news.

Thank you so much for joining me today. "LEGAL VIEW" with Ashleigh Banfield coming your way, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)