Talking Stimulus with the GOP; It's All About Jobs
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: And hello again, everyone. I'm Tony Harris in the CNN NEWSROOM. And here are the headlines from CNN for this Tuesday, the 27th day of January, 2009. The Democratic president surrounded by Republican lawmakers. A lunchtime summit on Capitol Hill to wrangle votes for the Obama stimulus package. Anatomy of a meltdown. The view of one bank collapse from the very people who oversaw it. Having trouble following the economic crisis? We will explain it with a ski trip to Switzerland. No kidding. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. Trying a little presidential persuasion. Minutes from now, President Obama sits down with Republican lawmakers hoping to sell them on his $825 billion stimulus plan. He meets with House Republican leaders at 12:15 Eastern. Next hour, Senate GOP leaders. And at 3:45 Eastern, a briefing by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Let's get a preview of the president's talk with reluctant Republicans. White House Correspondent Suzanne Malveaux joining us. And on Capitol Hill, Congressional Correspondent Brianna Keilar. Suzanne, let's start with you. What is the president hoping to accomplish on the Hill today?</s>SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Tony, what he's trying to do is make sure that he's got some sort of bipartisan support here. Obviously, he has a lot of support from the Democrats, but it's not going to be good enough, at least not for the president. He wants to set a tone here to convince the American people that this was the right thing to do. And what he feels is, if he just gets Democratic support, that that is not going to do it. So what you're seeing is the president is going to be on the Hill, he'll be leaving here momentarily. He's not taking his treasury secretary, Tony, but he's taking, rather, his transportation secretary. That's Ray LaHood. The reason why is because he's one of two Republicans who's a part of the administration. He's a veteran of the Hill, he's a good friend of Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. So, obviously he's going to try to gently persuade, perhaps twist a little arms of fellow Republicans, to say, hey, look, ,this is a good idea, it's a good plan, that at least moderate Republicans should sign on to this. There's a lot of opposition, as you know, Tony. The other thing that President Obama is doing that's very significant here is that he's using his own political capital. He is personally engaged, personally involved in this process in shaping the legislation. We have learned that he's picked up the phone and he's called federal Democrats about a controversial contraceptive family planning provision, asked to take it out in the tune of $200 million. And we believe that Democrats are going to do that to offer some sort of nugget for the Republicans -- Tony.</s>HARRIS: All right. Our White House Correspondent Suzanne Malveaux. Suzanne, thank you. Let's get to Capitol Hill now and our Brianna Keilar. And Brianna, what are Republicans hoping to hear from the president? And what issues are they having the most trouble with?</s>BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the big issue for them is they feel that there's not enough tax cuts. They don't like the kind of tax cuts, they think there's too much spending, they don't like the kind of spending in this bill. But what's interesting, Tony, and we've just learned, ,is that despite the fact that President Obama is coming here to the Hill to talk, maybe to exercise his political capital to try to convince these Republicans, we learned that in a meeting this morning, a standard meeting that Republicans have, the top two Republicans in the House, John Boehner and Eric Cantor, told Republicans to vote against this economic stimulus plan when it goes to the House floor tomorrow. So as you can see, even though there is this meeting coming -- and you can see now, actually, some Republicans, some House Republicans coming in to this meeting -- obviously they are hanging their chances of any sort of changes that they want, not in this vote tomorrow, but in changes that might come through the Senate, changes that might come when the Senate and the House in the end has to kind of pow wow and decide overall what the final bill is that they're going to vote on. But at this moment, as we are awaiting President Obama, I can tell you a little bit about what we're expecting from this meeting.</s>HARRIS: Great.</s>KEILAR: According to Republican Mike Pence, there's going to be -- as they expect, President Obama will make some remarks, and then it's going to be a bit of a Q&A; session, an open mike, if you will, where members of the House Republican Conference are going to get to ask questions. They're expected to be candid and direct. And Tony, it is going to be interesting just how many questions they get in. There are, of course, 178 Republicans in the House. This is a big pow wow.</s>HARRIS: Yes. OK. On Capitol Hill, Brianna Keilar for us. Thank you, Brianna. Too worried to spend. Consumer confidence hit a new low this month. The index dropped to 37.7 in January. That's according to figures out today from The Conference Board, a business research group. That represents an all-time low going back to 1967, when the index began. Consumers worried about their jobs, incomes and dwindling retirement accounts. A day after the economy lost some 71,000 jobs, let's add one more company to the list. Corning, the glassmaker, announced today it will slash 3,500 jobs. It blames falling demand for LCD televisions and commuter monitors. Let's talk to our chief business correspondent, Ali Velshi. We don't get enough time anymore with Ali.</s>ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's good to see you, my friend.</s>HARRIS: Yes, it's good to see you. Ali, the president wants to create or save three million to four million jobs. How and where? Walk us through this.</s>VELSHI: Well, you know, we talk about the economy. A year ago, Tony, you and I were talking about the housing crisis and energy prices being the biggest deal.</s>HARRIS: Yes.</s>VELSHI: Six months ago, the stock market was a worry. Now it is all about jobs. He's got to create or save -- now, that's their language, create or save, because we're losing so many jobs, that we're not thinking about building three million or four million jobs on top of these. We're talking about maybe stemming the losses.</s>HARRIS: Yes.</s>VELSHI: This stimulus bill -- and Brianna was just talking about the struggle that it may have. But so much of it is about creating jobs. The idea that the government can spend money in certain ways so as to create jobs. Some of it is direct spending. Let me show you how it breaks down in the stimulus bill.</s>HARRIS: Right.</s>VELSHI: Construction jobs on the top left, 678,000 of them. That would be the infrastructure building. Manufacturing jobs, 408,000. Tony, manufacturing is where we've lost most of the jobs every month for the last several years. Retail, 604,000. How do you create retail jobs? You create demand. You get that consumer confidence up. You get people spending. Education and health, 240,000 jobs. It doesn't seem that much, but that's because that's one of the only areas that's actually been growing -- two of the only areas that have been growing for months. Tourism, 499,000 jobs. That's sort of similar to retail.</s>HARRIS: Yes.</s>VELSHI: You get people spending because they feel good. Right now people are canceling those holidays even though airfares are low, gas prices are low. They're not spending money because they're worried about losing their jobs. And then government, 244,000. Again, government jobs have been there and have been created over the last little while. But that's how they say the stimulus bill will actually work to create directly and indirectly three million to four million jobs. And that is the centerpiece of this whole operation, because without jobs, how do you get out of a recession? Without demand, how do you get yourself out of this?</s>HARRIS: All right. Let's blast through a couple points here, because, again, I need to drill down on some of these issues with you.</s>VELSHI: Sure.</s>HARRIS: It's a question that I get a lot, Ali. And I don't have an answer for it, but I did promise folks that I would ask you. Are employers cutting too deeply? Are they using the difficult environment as an excuse to actually, well, gut the employment pool, to cut jobs?</s>VELSHI: Well again, there's no science to it; right? It's an emotional thing.</s>HARRIS: Yes.</s>VELSHI: If the employers think things are going to be bad, they combine that with the fact that things have been bad, and they say, I don't want to get stuck with too many people. I think in some cases, companies, typically public companies, get a boost in their stock price when they lay people off because the market thinks that's good. In this particular instance, that's not happening anyway. So you're not getting any particular benefit...</s>HARRIS: Yes.</s>VELSHI: ... for laying off more people than you need. And really, it's just deepening the situation. So I would love it if companies that weren't actually in dire straits, who are just going to make a little less profit, maybe didn't lay off as many people. But unfortunately, there is no science to it. It is all about confidence.</s>HARRIS: OK. And here's another one. I keep hearing that job cuts are a lagging indicator.</s>VELSHI: Yes, that's right.</s>HARRIS: Is that true? And if that's true, could we actually be into a recovery -- optimist hat on -- while still receiving negative job reports?</s>VELSHI: Well, that's a good question. You know, the stock market is a very clear leading indicator. You invest in a stock because you think you're betting on what the earnings of that stock will be in the future. So that's absolutely leading. Typically, job losses are lagging, but in this instance there are many people -- I think January has seen so many job losses because these are employers who are trying to get these people off their books, like you just described, getting ahead of this situation. So I think with jobs, it's hard to tell anymore accurately whether it's a lagging indicator or a leading indicating. Lagging means we've seen business bad, we've seen our profits shrink, so we're going to lay people off. There may be some companies in January who are laying people off because of anticipation of what they see later in the year. So good question.</s>HARRIS: Yes.</s>VELSHI: I don't know whether we can adequately call unemployment a lagging or a leading indicator at this point.</s>HARRIS: Boy, always good to talk to you. Thanks, Ali. Thanks for your time.</s>VELSHI: My pleasure.</s>HARRIS: OK. Reluctant Republicans say the stimulus bill has too much spending, too few tax cuts. They also question whether it will actually revive the economy and create jobs. Last hour I talked with two GOP representatives opposed to the bill in its current form.</s>REP. ZACH WAMP (R), TENNESSEE: We're going to vote no, but they've now got the votes to do basically whatever they want to, and so they're going to slam-dunk this, and we're going to go much further in debt. Republicans blew it on spending, but now Democrats are like -- they're on steroids with spending. And the debt and deficit is a huge long-term problem that's going to make the recession longer. We're going to vote no.</s>REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R), TENNESSEE: The best economic stimulus there is, is a job. And this bill is short on the stimulus that is needed to create that. You know, Tony, when you break out -- according to the CBO, when you break out this bill, you only have $93 billion that would be spent in '09. Now, stimulus money is to be spent immediately, and what you have is $825 billion of programmatic money, only $93 billion of which would even be slated to be spent this year, and another $225 billion in 2010.</s>HARRIS: Boy, OK. First day on the job, and the brand-new treasury secretary is already overhauling the $700 billion federal bailout. Timothy Geithner's plan would protect you, the taxpayer. For starters, it keeps lobbyists away from the people who are doling out bailout money. It requires regular reports to Congress showing that the bailout money was handed out using objective standards. And the plan would track banks' lending practices that would make sure they're using taxpayer money for consumer borrowing. The bailout, the handouts and the stimulus packages -- CNN's Lou Dobbs pulls them apart line by line to separate the pork from what might really fix the economy. Don't miss Lou's "Line Item Veto," a special segment starting tonight on "LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" at 7:00 Eastern. It is really, to turn to weather now, getting messy out there. Look at this. A potent winter storm is icing roads and power lines from Texas all the way to Kentucky today. We're going to bring Chad Myers in, in just a second. Most areas will see quarter of an inch of ice, but some isolated spots will get well over an inch. Schools are closed, and already tens of thousands of homes and businesses are without power. It is exactly what Chad warned us might happen. That number will grow as the storm slides toward the Northeast today.</s>HARRIS: How about this? An earthquake rattles Alaska. The second in just a few days, really. And this one hitting smack-dab in the center of the Aleutian Island chain. It measured 5.6 in magnitude, slightly less than the one over the weekend. No damage reported. President Obama reaches out to the Arab world with his first sit-down interview. What's been the reaction in that part of the world? And as you know, the president, we believe, is on his way to Capitol Hill right now to meet with House and Senate Republicans. We will keep an eye on this story throughout the hour for you in the CNN NEWSROOM.