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Rick's List
President Obama Holds Town Hall in Wisconsin
Aired June 30, 2010 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Listen, folks the president of the United States is talking in Racine, Wisconsin. And you know what's interesting about this? He's hitting Republicans as hard as we have heard him in a long time.
Let me read to you real quick -- I'll tell you what. Let's -- let's go ahead and listen in on what the president has to say. Let's take it.
Hit it, Rog.
(JOINED IN PROGRESS)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: ... work that really should be civilian work, helping to build schools, helping to build bridges, helping to set up rule of law and courts, helping agricultural specialists to help people learn how to irrigate their fields, so that they can grow more food.
And the problem is, is that we don't have a civilian effort that has always matched up to the military effort. So, the military goes in there. They clear out everything. They're making everything secure. And now the question is, all right, can we get the civilians to come in to work with the local governments to improve the situation?
And a lot of times, that civilian side of it has been under- resourced. So, what I'm trying to say is, don't put all the burden on the military. Make sure that we have got a civilian expeditionary force that, when we go out into some village somewhere, and the military makes it secure, let's have that agricultural specialist right there.
Let's have that person who knows how to train a police force right there. Let's have all those personnel, and let's make sure that we are giving them the support that they need in order for us to be successful on our mission.
And that means that, by the way, the State Department, our diplomatic arms, we have got to give them more support. A lot of times, we really support our military. But I will be honest with you. When you go up to Congress and you start talking to them about the budget for training our diplomats and training our development specialists and all that, then people want to cut their budget because they think, well, that's just foreign aid. That's not -- you know, we don't want to spend our money on that. But the problem is, is that, well, if you shortchange that, you may end up having to send our troops in to a very dangerous situation because a country's collapsed, we didn't do the good diplomatic work, and it's too late, and now the only solution is a military solution that might cost us five times as much.
So, we have just got to be smart about using all the elements of American power, not just one element of American power. All right?
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: OK. Right there in the green -- right there in the green blouse.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Excuse me. Excuse me.
First of all, thank you very much for all that you do.
OBAMA: Thank you.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would like to continue on the subject of the military just a little bit.
Would you consider improving the quality of life of our military men and women in a couple of areas? One would be more counseling, more available, eliminating that stigma, that terrible stigma that's there?
OBAMA: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the other one would be, if they are actively in a war zone, and they are deployed back to the United States, could we be sure that they have time to reground themselves before they are sent back into a similar situation again?
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: Absolutely.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: Well, you have just identified two things that we're working on as we speak that are really critical.
The first is making sure that counseling support for our troops is there in theater, as well as when they get back home. And there has been in the past this sort of stigma around mental health issues. But you know what? If you send somebody into a war zone, that's going to be a shock on the system.
They may engage in enormous heroism, enormous courage. You know, our troops do just spectacular things. But it's going to have an impact. And when they have been on two tours or three tours or four tours, sometimes, that impact adds up.
And, in the past, things like post-traumatic stress disorder weren't really talked about. Now we're starting to talk about it. And we have actually -- I was mentioning what we're doing for veterans, as well as active-duty. This whole issue of post-traumatic -- post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, we are really emphasizing this.
And up and down the chain of command, we're saying people should not be embarrassed about seeking out counseling in these situations. So, that's point number one.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: The second point -- the second point you're making is, there needs to be that rest in between deployments. And that's part of the reason why we actually increased the number of Marines. The Army and Marines have really borne the biggest burden in terms of these very quick and rapid and stressful deployments.
And what we have been saying is, let's start getting back to a point where there is ample time between deployments, and we are actually -- for the Marines, I think we're just about there. For the Army, I think we have got another year before we get it to where we want to be, although we have spaced it out a lot more than it was, for example, two years or three years ago.
But you're right. People need to be able to decompress in ways that they have not always had a chance to do. So, thank you very much for your question.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: All right, let me make sure the folks up here are getting -- I will call on that gentleman way up there, way -- yes, you, right. That guy.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks for coming to see us.
OBAMA: You bet.
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I would recommend the O&H Kringle and the Johnsonville brats.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My question is, if you could remind us why the stimulus spending was a good idea and how we should judge its effectiveness at this point in time.
OBAMA: I think it's a great question.
Here's what happened. As I said, when I came in, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month and the economy was contracting at about 6 percent, which is just a huge contraction. And that was happening at every level. That was happening in terms of individual consumers, because either they were losing their jobs or they were worried about maybe losing a job.
They had seen their home values plummet, et cetera. So, everybody pulled back on spending, all right? People say, you know what, I better cut out the -- the dinner out, or maybe I'm not going to -- I'm going to cancel my gym membership. Or everybody was doing some belt-tightening either because they had seen their 401(k) drop or they had lost their job or some reason. All right?
Businesses, then they're starting to say, you know what? I'm losing consumers -- customers, because the gym membership just got canceled, so suddenly I have seen a 5 percent drop in the number of customers I have.
Or, if you make widgets, suddenly, you're supplying an auto company, and the auto company says, you know what? People aren't buying new cars right now. So, that demand was going down. All this meant that the state and the local governments, suddenly, their revenues are dropping, because most of their revenues are based on things like sales taxes or property taxes that were all going down.
So, what you have is, suddenly, what's called a negative cycle, where everybody's worried about the recession, so they pull back, which means that businesses pull back, which means they lay off people, which makes them more worried, and they pull back. And, pretty soon, you have got a vicious cycle, where the economy just keeps on shrinking and shrinking, with no end in sight.
So, the job of the Recovery Act was to essentially step in and say, you know what? This is an emergency, so we're going to plug that hole in demand in the economy temporarily, so that everybody kind of settles down.
So, we sent about $250 billion, about one-third of that Recovery Act, was in the form of tax cuts to all of you. You may not have noticed it, because it just went into your weekly paycheck. But everybody here -- I won't say everybody, because, if you are really rich, you might not have gotten one.
(LAUGHTER)
OBAMA: But 95 percent of workers -- 95 percent of workers got a tax cut last year.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: So, what that meant was -- what that meant was, even though you had seen your 401(k) go down, or maybe you were a small business owner and you were tightening your belt, you had a little bit of extra money to cushion the blow. And that meant you were spending those dollars and circulating those into the economy. All right? So, that was about a third of it. About a third of it was help to states and local governments, so that they could plug their budget holes.
So, for example, Jim Doyle here, I think, will testify, had we not provided this federal aid, the states would have had to cut much more severely police officers, teachers, firefighters, and so forth.
Now, not only is that bad in terms of people then not getting services and being less safe or kids not having larger class sizes or all those things, but obviously when those people lose their jobs, they can't spend money buying a new car or buying clothes or buying the computer for their kids.
So, it was -- it put the states and local governments in a better position to kind of sustain themselves. And then the last third of it was infrastructure and long-term investments. So, for example, we have got more road projects going on here in Wisconsin and around the country than at any time since...
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: Road projects, sewer projects, a whole bunch of deferred stuff that needed to be done. But we also looked to the future, and we said, let's invest in clean energy. Let's invest in research and development. Let's invest in broadband lines to link rural communities with -- who don't have broadband lines, so they can be part of the global economy.
All those infrastructure investments and R&D investments not only put people back to work short-term to help plug that hole that had been created, but it also lays the foundation for long-term economic growth, so that, here in Wisconsin, there may be some roads that not only were repaired, but also were suddenly linked up to create a new industrial park that would facilitate long-term economic development beyond this immediate crisis.
So, those were the things that we did through the Recovery Act. Now, every economist who's looked at it has said that the recovery did its job. It put a brake on the collapse of the economy. We avoided a Great Depression. We are now growing again.
The problem is, number one, it's hard to argue sometimes, things would have been a lot worse, right? So, people kind of say, yes, but unemployment is still at 9.6. Yes, but it's not 12 or 13 or 15. People say, well, the stock market didn't fully recover. Yes, but it's recovered more than people expected last year.
So, part of the challenge in delivering this message about all that the Recovery Act accomplished is that things are still tough. They just aren't as bad as they could have been. They could have been a catastrophe. In that sense, it worked.
Now, the other reason that it has been -- it has generated some controversy is, for example, I just pointed out the fact that 95 percent of you got a tax cut, and most of you didn't know it. Most of you didn't know it.
Now, the reason you didn't know it was because it turns out that economists will tell you, if you get -- if you give that tax break to people each time they get a paycheck, as opposed to in one lump sum, then they're more likely to spend it, and that is a better way to stimulate the economy.
It wasn't a good way to advertise the tax cut. So, if I had been just thinking politics, I would have sent you one big check with my picture on it and said, here's your tax cut.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: In terms of infrastructure, it turns out the way we structured this, because we knew this was such a bad recession, that 2010 would still be pretty bad, even though it was better than 2009, we structured it so that not all the money was spent in 2009. Some of it was spent this year.
So, a lot of the road projects you're now seeing are part of the Recovery Act we passed last year, but last year everybody was looking around, saying, how come we haven't created more jobs yet? But we structured it because we knew that we didn't want it all to be front- loaded, and not have anything and have it run out too quick.
Now, here's the last -- last -- last point I want to make, last point I want to make. Having said all that, I'm still not satisfied with where we're at. We're growing at about 2.5 percent, 3 percent growth. We need to be growing at 4 percent or 5 percent.
So, we -- there are still more things we can do. I mentioned a couple of them. We should -- we should pass a bill that helps small businesses get more loans. If we can help the big banks, then we should certainly be able to help small business lending.
And a lot of small businesses are still having trouble getting credit. We have done some work on that, but we can do more. I think that we could spur more economic development. Here's one idea, just an example, something that we have been promoting, but hasn't passed through Congress yet.
Everybody would benefit from more energy efficiency in their home. The problem -- and everybody knows that. The truth is, I was back home in Chicago the other day. It's nice when you're in your own house. And, I mean, the White House is nice, don't get me wrong.
(LAUGHTER)
OBAMA: But you're just like kind of tooling around your own place and seeing how the garden is doing and looking in the basement and seeing what kind of stuff needs to get done.
But everybody -- every homeowner here, if you haven't already done it, you could probably retrofit your home and save 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent on your electricity and your heating bills.
But the problem is, a lot of people don't have cash right now to make the investments. So, what we have said is, why don't we give everybody a tax credit to retrofit their homes? That will help Home Depots and Lowe's, where you're buying the insulation or the new windows. That will help a lot of these small construction companies that have been out of work. They were doing remodeling on homes, and now that business isn't there. Give them a little bit of business.
All that would help stimulate the economy. You could, with a relatively small investment, help put people back to work, and, by the way, we could save on our energy bills and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we're sending into the atmosphere.
And, so, it's a win-win-win situation. But the -- we haven't been able to get particularly my Republican friends on the other side of the aisle to move on this. So, I'm going to make a -- I know this is a long answer, but it was a -- a long answer, but it was an important question.
I see you, Reggie (ph).
Reggie is saying, I'm going to have to go soon.
But let me make one last point, and that is about the spending issue. People, I think, have a very real and legitimate concern that, after having spent $700 billion on the Recovery Act, after having intervened with the autos and had to deal with the banks, even though, by the way, the banks will have paid back all this money, and the auto companies are now up and running, GM and Chrysler -- and if we hadn't intervened, they would have collapsed and all those folks would have lost their jobs.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: But the fact is, is that everybody looks at this and they start saying, you know what, that looks like just a lot of money going out there. The debt is getting bigger. The deficit is getting bigger. How do we get government spending under control?
And that's a legitimate question. And whether you're a Democrat, an independent or a Republican, all of us should be worried about the fact that we have been running the credit card on -- in the name of future generations. And somebody's going to have to pay that back.
And, by the way, when we borrow all that money, we have to pay interest on that to other countries and other investors. So, we have got to get our debt and our deficits under control.
Here's the thing. The steps we took, the emergency steps that we took added, let's say, $1 trillion to our debt. That's with a T. That's serious money. But our structural deficit -- and what that means is the amount of money that we're paying out vs. the amount of money we're taking in -- the gap between what we're spending and how much money we have has been out of whack for years now. That's why I inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. Our big problem is not the emergency steps we took last year. Our big problem is the fact that, when you add in what's happening with Medicare, what's happening with Social Security, the population is aging, when you add all those things in, if we don't change how we do business medium- and long-term, then that's going to be our big problem.
So, we have got a tough job, but I think it's a job that we can accomplish. And that is, we stimulated the economy. We got it moving again. It's growing again. We now have to, in a gradual way, reduce spending, particularly on those big-ticket items, but do so in a way that doesn't hurt people.
And that is a challenge. That's why I have set up a fiscal commission to take a look and figure out, how are we going to reorder our priorities, so that we're spending the same -- we're not spending anymore than we're taking in, but we're doing it in a way that doesn't hurt the economy and doesn't hurt ordinary people?
And that's going to be our project for the next couple of years. All right? But everybody's going to have to be patient, because we're not going to be able to change that overnight.
All right, I'm going to take -- thank you for the question, though. That was very helpful.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: All right, I guess it's a lady's turn.
(LAUGHTER)
OBAMA: OK. I'm going to call on that young lady right there in the white T-shirt, right, right there.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One man cannot create this country again the way it needs to be built. So, we as a nation need to work together.
OBAMA: Right.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What are we doing as a nation to bring jobs back into this country that have left so that we, the people, can give you the resources that you need to do the job you need to do?
OBAMA: Well, it's a great question.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: Well, this actually connects to the previous question, because I was talking about what we were doing for the emergency and what we were doing for the local economy.
But, obviously, now we live in a global economy. So, we have got to compete with other countries like we have never had to compete before. It used to be that, because you didn't have an Internet, and you didn't have jet planes, and you -- you know, if somebody made something in China, they couldn't get it here fast enough to sell it, or it was too expensive to ship.
And so basically we had a protected market, and we -- you know, whatever was made here, we could sell here. Now it's a global market. Some of that we can't stop. That's just technology. The world has shrunk. We have got to be more competitive.
And what that means is, our workers have to be better-trained than we have ever been, which means we have got to make sure our education system is the best in the world and that our kids are going to get secondary school and community college and university educations.
So, back to that gentleman's question up there, people may not have known, but this Recovery Act was also the biggest investment that we have ever made in education in our history. We -- we -- at the federal level.
We helped universities and community colleges to create new labs and set up better infrastructure. And, as part of the health care bill -- a lot of people don't know this, that, as part of the health care bill, we also had an education bill in there. It's just the health care bill was getting so much attention, people missed the fact that we changed the rules so that the way previously the student loan program was working, it would go through a bank or a financial institution.
And they took out billions of dollars of profits, even though the loan was guaranteed, so they weren't taking any risk. So, we said, well, if the government is guaranteeing this loan, why are we going through a bank? Let's just give it directly to the student. We will take that money to reduce the cost of the loan.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: So, all those steps are critical to bring jobs back here, because companies will come to where they have got the most highly skilled work force. That's point number one.
Second thing we have got to do is infrastructure, what I just mentioned. If we have got a third-class infrastructure, it's hard for us to have a first-class economy. So, we have got to upgrade our infrastructure.
And I don't just mean the old infrastructure like roads. I mean new infrastructure like broadband and wireless and what are we doing in terms of making our electricity grid reliable and efficient. Those are all investments that we make that help bring more jobs back to places like Racine. That's the second thing.
Third thing we have got to do is, we have got to get control of our health care costs. Part of the reason we did health care reform...
(APPLAUSE) OBAMA: A lot of the reason to do health care reform was because it was the right thing to do. I was tired of hearing stories about parents who were worried about whether they could get health care for their kids, or somebody with a preexisting condition who wasn't able to get insurance because they were discriminated against.
But part of it was, it's a huge burden on businesses. The cost for businesses of health care have been going up and up and up. And what we're doing in health care reform is trying to control the costs of health care, so that we're improving quality, but people are getting a better bang for their health care dollar. That helps make our businesses more competitive.
And then we have got to put more money into...
SANCHEZ: I just want to get in here for a moment for a couple of reasons, first of all, because we are going to have to get a break in at some point. Second of all, you may have missed what, I guess, in sports you would call the money moment here.
The president of the United States just hammered away at two Republicans. One of them is Barton, Congressman Barton of Texas, for his famous line about apologizing to BP or apologizing to BP for what the president had asked BP to do.
Well, we had heard all the president's assistants talk about this. But, just a little while ago, we heard the president address Barton himself.
And then there's also a part here -- and you missed this, because it was before we joined you -- where the president hammers John Boehner.
Well, Jessica Yellin has just reached out to me. She just sent me an e-mail saying, Rick, you have got to check this out. John Boehner is now hammering the president for what the president said about him. This is interesting.
We're going to get a break in. When we come back, I want you to listen to the president hammering away at Barton, then hammering away at Boehner. And then Jessica is going to fill you in on Boehner hammering away at the president.
Obviously, we're following the Kagan hearings and the very latest on Hurricane Alex. It's about to hit not really the United States, but it's going to have an effect on parts of Texas, and, yes, it's having an effect on the oil in the Gulf as well. All of this is going on at the same time. And we're literally going to be splitting the screen and taking you back and forth and letting you hear for yourself as much of the Kagan thing as possible, because you told me yesterday in no uncertain terms you wanted to see it for yourself. Well, you will.
This is RICK'S LIST, your national conversation. And I'm going to be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SANCHEZ: As remarkable as it is to watch something as important as the president of the United States deliver his message and really take on his opposition in maybe ways that we haven't seen before, I have been fascinated.
And call me what a wonk. Call what me you want, but I have been fascinated by Elena Kagan's hearing. I have been a reporter for 30 years, and I just heard something, for example, I had never heard before.
I want you to listen to this, OK? See what you think. This is Senator Arlen Specter, and here he's calling out John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States of America suggesting Roberts wasn't truthful at his own confirmation, and further suggesting that while something ought to be done about this.
Watch this for yourself. I want to talk about it with Jeff Toobin and Donna Brazile on the other side. Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ARLEN SPECTER, (D) PENNSYLVANIA: What if anything can be done about nominees who drastically abandon positions taken at the confirmation hearings? I would like to put into the record the questioning that I made of Chief Justice Roberts, which took 28 of my 30 minutes and his concurrent opinion on Citizens United, which is an apologia, a really repudiation of everything he testified to, diametrically opposed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: If you don't remember Citizens United, we remember it. Citizens United is the case where this new Supreme Court essentially decided that businesses, corporations have a right to give as much money and campaign contributions as they want to politicians as they see fit. A very controversial decision. It had to do with the first amendment. There's arguments over stare decisis here.
Toobin is joining us as well as Brazile. We're on a last-name basis here.
(LAUGHTER)
I thought it was jaw-dropping times to hear Arlen Specter come out and say essentially that John Roberts had lied to him the last time he was before him and that he had done whatever the hell he wanted to do after that.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I was struck by it, too. But Arlen Specter, we've had a little fun with him over the course of these hearings. But no one on that committee knows more about constitutional law. Yes, he's grumpy, but he knows what he's talking about.
And what he's referring to specifically is that in his testimony for his nomination to be chief justice, he said I believe in precedent, I believe in settled precedent and I don't want to change a lot of law.
What he said in his concurring opinion in Citizens United is here is a list of reasons why the precedents that we thought supported campaign finance regulation no longer apply, and that's why these precedents should be overruled.
Basically he testified as a moderate and is governing -- is a chief justice as activist conservative. And he's asking Elena Kagan, what can we do about that? And the answer pretty clearly is nothing.
SANCHEZ: It's one of those moments when it's not so much about the answer but more so about the question. And some would argue, Donna Brazile, that what Roberts' court did was literally change something like 100 years of precedent, that this is a decision that had been made. They came in and said, no, we're going to change it.
And I think what Jeff was getting to there -- and I'm going to throw this back at you because this goes back to the whole who's really the activist, the Republicans or the conservatives or the Democrats on the court -- the Democrats would say, well, here you have a court that's acting in an activist way, working against stare decisis.
DONNA BRAZILE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Some other Democrats will argue this court is really siding with big corporations over ordinary people and that this court has clearly come out more in favor of big business than ordinary people.
But also I think that Senator Specter was getting very frustrated with Elena Kagan in not being more forthcoming in her own beliefs and whether she would try to take to court on a number of issues.
SANCHEZ: Let me ask you about that. You've followed this game for a long time, as much as anybody. I want your opinion on this. Here's a guy -- am I correct, he used to be the chairman of this committee, did he not?
BRAZILE: Yes.
TOOBIN: He was the chairman for both Bush nominees, Roberts and Alito.
He is actually -- we should, again, pay tribute to Arlen Specter who is leaving the Senate. He lost the Democratic primary earlier this year. He has participated in 14 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, which is a pretty remarkable thing when you consider there are only nine justices.
SANCHEZ: That's the point that I'm getting at, though, Donna. Here's a guy who's been in charge that many times, has been on this committee as a Republican, and suddenly he's a little bit on the outside and he's trying to assert himself. I'm getting that sense that's very much a possibility. Am I wrong? BRAZILE: I've always enjoyed his line of questioning because he tries to get really at some of the issues that many of us care about. And I particularly like the way he tried today to get her to be a little bit more forthcoming. He did get a little testy, but I think the two of them did come to some agreement on cameras in the court. And that was a more delightful exchange.
TOOBIN: And he's also been consistent that nominees should answer questions. And he realizes the only leverage that the Senate has is to say, unless you answer these questions, we're not going to vote for you. That's our only leverage. We can't ask nicely. We can't ask meanly. All that matters is whether we withhold our vote or not.
And he seems to be the only member of that committee who is at least considering withholding his vote based on not answering questions.
SANCHEZ: It was an interesting exchange and it's funny how I was about to give up on it and thought the whole thing was getting boring. Just as he's getting ready to conclude, he comes out with that and I go, what did he just say?
And I'm glad we had a chance to share it with folks, because it's a strong opinion that's been shared. In fact, you could argue, Jeff, could you not, that it's almost been thematic throughout these hearings, more so than I expected to hear, accusation that this particular court has been more of an activist court than what the other side professes.
TOOBIN: "Activism" is one of these great phrase that's very much in the eye of the beholder. Liberals are activist when they strike down laws banning abortions. Conservatives are activists when they restrict corporations either in commercials or in the environment.
Activism doesn't tell you anything. You have to know what kind of activism because it both exists, liberal and conservative.
SANCHEZ: Jeff, you're going to stick around because we're going to go back to the proceedings, the hearings. I understand they're in break right now. They're going to be coming back. Donna, you've got to go. But I want to thank you because I always appreciate when you stick around and do "RICK'S LIST."
BRAZILE: Thank you, sir.
SANCHEZ: By the way, Jessica Yellin is going to be in place in just a moment. And I promised you that I would bring you the comments by the president.
Once again, for those of you just now joining us, let me catch you up on this. The president -- here's the president's speech that was sent to us. The president hammers away at John Boehner. You'll be surprised what he says about what Boehner says.
Then he hammers away at Congressman Barton for what he said -- for his apology to BP.
Now, Jessica shoots me this e-mail just a little while ago saying, hey, Rick, check this out. John Boehner is now answering the president in no uncertain terms. So we've got this back and forth going on. Jessica's going to take us through it.
First we have to pay some bills. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SANCHEZ: OK, let's bring Jessica Yellin into this because we probably should do this together. We've got two sound bites, as we say in television. The first one is the president talking about Congressman Barton.
This is interesting because, as far as I can tell, I know everybody in the White House commented on Barton and -- both Republicans and Democrats commented on Barton, but this is the first time I've heard the president sound so forceful in his criticism of Congressman Barton when he stood before Hayward and apologized for the president charging him $20 billion or whatever it was. Let's listen to that first.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: The top Republican on the energy committee apologized to BP. Did y'all read about that? He apologized to BP that we had made them set up this fund, called it "a tragedy" that we had made them pay for the destruction that they caused.
Now, I've got to say -- they pulled it back after -- he meant it, but then they kind of walked it back.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: Actually he called it a shakedown. That's the Barton part. Now I'm going to bring in Jessica and she's going to set up what the president says about John Boehner and then she's going to tell you what John Boehner says about the president. It's your show, Jessica.
(LAUGHTER)
JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Uh-oh, Rick. So this is a bit of a back and forth between the top Republican in the house and the president over this Wall Street reform package that's about to pass. John Boehner essentially said that the Democrats' plan is attacking an ant with a hammer -- I can't remember the exact phrasing. And then the president hit back today with this -- hit it. Does that work?
SANCHEZ: That's good.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: The leader of the Republicans in the House said that financial reform was like -- I'm quoting here -- using a nuclear weapon to argument an ant. That's what he said. He compared the financial crisis to an ant.
This is the same financial crisis that led to the loss of nearly eight million jobs, same crisis that cost people their homes, their life savings. He can't be that out of touch with the struggles of American families.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: Wow. And he's not talking about any Republican here. He's talking about the minority leader, John Boehner. Those are pretty strong words. But it didn't end there, did it, Jessica?
YELLIN: No, it didn't. So John Boehner's office -- John Boehner himself has released a statement hitting back. He even released it before the president went live and said that because he knew it was coming.
He said, "The president should be focused" -- this is John Boehner -- "on solving the problems of the American people instead of focusing on my choice of metaphors." Again, John Boehner saying this. He says that "attacking Republicans is a lot easier than explaining why there's still high unemployment after the stimulus package has been in effect."
And then he went on to attack the president and the Democrats' Wall Street reform package saying "I wasn't minimizing the crisis America faced. I was pointing out that Washington Democrats have produced a bill," and he goes on to describe a litany of things he thinks are wrong with it, that essentially it will kill more jobs and make the situation worse.
He says the American people want leadership from the White House, not partisanship. What we're getting from both sides, clearly partisanship.
SANCHEZ: Truth be told, the closer we get to the midterms, the more the rhetoric will heat up. The more we will likely see president Obama hammer away at people like John Boehner, not only for that, but for example what he said a couple of days ago about increasing the age for Social Security, et cetera, et cetera. Will we not?
YELLIN: Oh, definitely, and not only just the rhetoric across the board, but on this particular theme.
So what we're seeing is that the White House moving into a message strategy where they're trying to position the argument in the following way, that Democrats stand for the regular folk, the little people, and the Republicans stand for corporate interests.
So Joe Barton defending BP plays into that. When Rand Paul, the Kentucky tea party winner in the Senate race defended BP, also played into that. And now John Boehner's comments play into it because the president can argue he's minimizing the financial crisis so many people suffered through as if it were nothing more than the problem of an ant's stature.
SANCHEZ: Jessica Yellin -- by the way, you could fill in for me anytime. You did very well when you tossed to that sound bite very thanks very much.
(LAUGHTER)
YELLIN: I prefer being on with you.
SANCHEZ: Thanks, Jessica.
By the way, here is more news coming your way. I've just been told that we've got a piece of sound that we're going to turn around. There's been a lot made of justice Thurgood Marshall throughout these Kagan hearings. And now we understand that it came back up in the conversation just a little while ago with John Cornyn of Texas while he was asking questions of Kagan.
I'm looking at part of the transcript here. I'm going to save it. Hopefully we can get to this as well as what's going on in the Gulf when we come back. So much going on. We're taking it one segment at a time, folks. This is your national conversation, this is your list. This is "RICK'S LIST." I'm Rick Sanchez. He's Chad Myers. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SANCHEZ: Things are going right on schedule for us today. Welcome back. The president's finished his remarks in Racine, Wisconsin. We brought you most of that and brought you the highlights as well. The Kagan hearing is in recess. If and when that starts up, we're going to take you back there and let you see it for yourself.
But in the meantime, one of the biggest stories going on today has to do with the Gulf of Mexico. And these are really two stories happening at once. The Gulf situation is still there, it's still a mess, still a disaster. There are still a lot of questions about how that got so screwed up. We'll get to that in a minute.
The most pressing information is the fact there's a hurricane not far away from those waters and it's about to bear down on parts of northern Mexico/southern Texas. Here's Chad Myers to take you through what, where, when and what the effects will be.
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Jimmy Buffett tried to do a concert in Gulfport for benefits of the people, got canceled because of the weather.
(LAUGHTER)
SANCHEZ: Really?
MYERS: The winds are out of the south. The wind is now blowing this oil right onshore from west of Florida and Pensacola through Mississippi and Louisiana. But the storm, hundreds of miles away. That's the odd part about all this.
SANCHEZ: It's like the storm itself is not the story so much because it's not hitting a populated area. It's the effect of it.
MYERS: Right. This is going to hit from -- here's Brownsville. This is the Rio Grande river right there, the Rio Grande. This is going to move onshore. It's going to affect Monterrey, Mexico. These areas, not really populated.
But the effect is all the way over to Florida. It's raining through Tampa, all the way through regional southwest airport. Raining in New Orleans, big-time waves there. We're going to talk to Randi Kaye next hour. She's stuck in New Orleans. She was supposed to be out here doing stories along the water. Water's too rough.
We can't get the boats out to skim anymore. What's a boom that's one foot high going to do with a six-foot wave? No way to boom it. The water goes right over the top of it.
Then the waves and winds come onshore here. We'll do a couple more things here. I'll push you ahead and zoom into a couple spots. This eye of this thing is going to be onshore very quickly. This will be onshore.
I have to believe, Rick, that we're going to see this thing come through here, right here, 63 miles away. That's how far that is away right now. I think that at least, I would say in the next four hours, that eye will be coming onshore right here south of Brownsville into mainland Mexico right there.
The red box, tornado watch box which means some of these storms are spinning. No kidding. The whole storm is spinning. Some that are spinning could make small tornadoes. Not Texas sized tornadoes. Certainly water spout sized tornadoes.
When that happens this will go off -- you'll see a couple purple spots. Corpus Christi to your west, a couple purple boxes. Those are tornado warnings, also Brownsville.
SANCHEZ: I have a question. I'm going to interrupt. I know you hate when I do this.
MYERS: You know what? If I hated when you interrupt that means I would hate it every day.
(LAUGHTER)
SANCHEZ: I would have thought this hurricane would have blown through Mexico already. What's taking it so long? Is it slowed down? If so, what's the effect and meaning of that?
MYERS: As it has slowed down overnight but it was always supposed to come onshore about midnight tonight. I think it has actually sped up. I think it will be 8:00, 9:00 central time and this thing will be onshore. But the problem is it's onshore and dying, fine. OK, it's 85 miles per hour now. I just saw a wind gust of 106.
So 85 miles per hour, here it's 45, here it's 25. The waves are still being made. These waves are still going to be here for days.
SANCHEZ: The longer it sits in that water the more waves it makes.
MYERS: Exactly. And the wind is always going to be in this direction.
SANCHEZ: Yes.
MYERS: As the wind blows in this direction all the oil that's out here, uncontained now because they can't burn it off. The second thing is still going on, the cap is still going on, the Q4000. The waves aren't big enough for that. But still a lot of oil is out there from mobile back to the Chandelier Islands and into all of coastal Louisiana in trouble with this oil moving now.
SANCHEZ: We'll be watching. At 4:00, we just got our hands on great video.
MYERS: What's that?
SANCHEZ: We keep talking about what the oil looks like but, what does it look like from the long view? If you were to get into a helicopter and hover over the Gulf of Mexico and look down what would that all look like? We've got some video to show that. I'll bring you into that. We'll do that during the 4:00, probably the next 20 minutes or so hopefully.
MYERS: OK.
SANCHEZ: Cool with that?
MYERS: Absolutely.
SANCHEZ: She is the female James bond. The alleged Russian spy plot that captured the attention of the world, and now there's a femme fatale involved in this. Who is this woman? Well, they say she's a Russian spy. That's what she looks like. Her story is next. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SANCHEZ: An apparently attractive secret agent working against the United States, a Russian, her story, because it turns out, and this is where the story is now catching a lot of national and world attention, it turns out she is one of the 11 alleged secret agents who has been charged in this case.
Let's start this story by introducing our correspondent who has been putting this together for us here. Watch her work. This is Deb Feyerick.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DEBORAHFEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Talking on YouTube, accused spy Anna Chapman says she is inspired by the quantity and quality of people she's met in New York, many of them successful in business.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (via translator): I'm working on a project that will connect two capitals, New York and Moscow, from my point of view the two major cities for me to look for most talented people.
FEYERICK: The striking 28-year-old entrepreneur seen here on her Facebook page appears to have started domdot.ru, a search engine for Russian real estate. But Chapman, says an acquaintance says she is not so much James bond as James bond's girlfriend.
The FBI says she is a highly trained intelligence operative, a spy, the headlines read, sophisticated enough to elude detection until now. An FBI agent says Anna Chapman was inside this coffee shop on her computer when a van known to be driven by a Russian government official passed by.
It's at that point that FBI agents detected a wireless network signal. They say Anna Chapman was passing encrypted data from her computer to a computer inside that vehicle.
Whether real estate was Chapman's real career, another woman in Boston accused of being a spy is also in real estate. On her Web site, Anne Foley is described as a native of Montreal. According to papers, her alibi on a trip to Russia was that she was working as an international business consultant.
Her husband, Donald Howard Heathfield, an international sales consultant for an energy company, is also under arrest. Prosecutors say a birth certificate with his name was found in a safety deposit box, and though it appears genuine, prosecutors say the real Donald Heathfield passed away five years ago.
Of the 11 alleged spies, one worked as a journalist for the New York based Spanish language newspaper "El Diario." Vicky Pelez is accused of traveling to South America where she received $76,000 allegedly for recruiting sources.
On a wiretap, her husband Juan Lazaro, who claimed to be born in Uruguay is heard telling his wife he and his parents moved to Siberia when the war started.
And the reason FBI agents stepped in when they did, according to the Justice Department, one of the suspects was getting ready to leave the United States, and so agents had to arrest everyone allegedly connected to this decade long investigation.
Deborah Feyerick, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SANCHEZ: A couple things to get to first of all. The Dow. We've been following it every day. It was significantly down yesterday. It appears to be down again today. Certainly nothing like what it was yesterday, but down nonetheless. It looks like it's going to close around oh, say somewhere in the low 90s. OK?
We'll continue to follow this for you. If there are any more developments we will bring it to you.
The other big story of course is the Elena Kagan hearings. And there is an interesting development that happened just in the last little bit here. This is about a former Supreme Court justice. This conversation continues to come up, a record of exactly what Thurgood Marshall was. Was he an activist judge?
Now, his name has been brought up by Sessions, Hatch, Coburn. So just a while ago Elena Kagan was taking a question, I believe from John Cornyn, right? I've got so many notes in front of me. Yes. She was taking some questions from Cornyn.
And Cornyn asked her, because this story is suddenly becoming a bit of a thread on the internet, everybody has been talking about what's going on with this discussion about Thurgood Marshall, that he actually brought it up. John Cornyn brings it up and asks Kagan the question. Listen to it and watch the exchange. Let's do this together. Hit it, Roger
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN CORNYN, (R) TEXAS: Did you read any disrespect in any of the comments that any of us have made about justice Marshall or did you understand it to be a criticism or a disagreement with his judicial philosophy.
