Jobs Lost on President Obama's Watch
BLITZER: To our viewers, you're in THE SITUATION ROOM. Happening now, Iraqis are set for Sunday's national elections, but worried because early voting is marred again by violence. You'll see Iraq's special weapons trying to rev up some combat responsibilities on election -- to deal with election day violence. And I'll talk with the son of the Iraqi president. And officials say he was nicely dressed in a suit, calmly approached the busiest entrance of the Pentagon and then started shooting. But why? There are revealing -- even bizarre details surrounding this deadly incident. I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM. On another Friday when many jobless Americans will do without paychecks, President Obama is trying to put the best spin possible on new unemployment numbers. Here's what he said while visiting a small business in Virginia.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This morning, we learned that in February, our economy lost an additional 36,000 jobs. Now, this is actually better than expected, considering the severe storms all along the East Coast are estimated to have had a depressing effect on the numbers. And it shows that the measures that we're taking to turn our economy around are having some impact. But even though it's better than expected, it's more than we should tolerate.</s>BLITZER: And joining us now, the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney. He's the author of a brand new book entitled "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness." Governor, thanks very much for coming in.</s>MITT ROMNEY (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thanks, Wolf. It's good to be back.</s>BLITZER: I want to get to this book in a moment. But look at these numbers. Turn around a -- a second over there. Look at these jobless numbers. In December of 2008, January 2009, the last two months of the Bush administration, 673,000 Americans lost their jobs in December; 779,000 lost their jobs in January. Now we've just received the February 2010 jobless numbers -- 36,000 Americans lost their jobs last month. How much credit does the Obama administration deserve for this turnaround?</s>ROMNEY: Very little, if any.</s>BLITZER: Why?</s>ROMNEY: Well, the -- every recession is followed by a recovery. And, unfortunately, the president's stimulus bill didn't do what it was designed to do. It did not...</s>BLITZER: But look at those -- look at those numbers.</s>ROMNEY: Well, every recession comes to an end. At some point, the job losses stop and we start rebuilding. And that will happen here, whether or not the president takes effective action. What he should have done would be to create incentives to actually do what he said he was doing. He said if you passed his $787 billion bill that we'd hold unemployment at 8 percent and that if we didn't pass it, it would go to 10 percent. Well, it went to 10. So millions of additional people lost their jobs.</s>BLITZER: But now it's stabilized.</s>ROMNEY: Well, when -- when you reach the bottom, when you can't cut any more construction jobs, then, yes, it stabilizes and it will come back. And the -- there will be a recovery. And, of course, President Obama will say, look, there's a recovery. I don't recall any recession after which there was not a recovery. And I'm happy that this one will see a recovery. We will see that. But unfortunately, we will have been saddled with $787 billion of debt, largely to the Chinese, which was not as effectively spent as it could have been, nor has it pulled us out of the recession as quickly as it could have, allowing a lot of people not to suffer the differ -- difficulty of unemployment.</s>BLITZER: But you remember at the end of the Bush administration, in the last few months, there was fears of another Great Depression.</s>ROMNEY: Yes. Yes.</s>BLITZER: They were looking over the cliff at the abyss of that. Now, the situation has improved.</s>ROMNEY: There's no question but that the action that was taken at the very end of the Bush administration, which was the TARP plan to keep the financial system from completely imploding and a cascade of -- of bank failures going across the entire nation, that that was the right action to be taken. I'm -- I'm glad that that was taken. But there's no...</s>BLITZER: A lot of your fellow conservatives...</s>ROMNEY: -- there's no...</s>BLITZER: -- hated that.</s>ROMNEY: They're -- they're -- that's true. It -- it happens, however, to have been essential to keep a cascade of failures from basically causing our entire financial system to collapse. And -- and that was stabilized. The -- ultimately, the economy reached bottom. Many more people became unemployed than needed to become unemployed. If the president's bill had actually worked, we wouldn't have had as much pain. But now we're coming out of it. I think you'll see a recovery. I hope it comes quickly, but I think. You're going to see it come out more slowly than it could have had this bill been properly structured.</s>BLITZER: Let me read from the book, "No Apology": "His effort," referring to the president's, "his effort to expand the size, reach and role of government is without precedent in our history. His plans would leave us with a crushing deficit and debt far beyond anything we have ever experienced." Now, as you know, when President Bush took office back in 2001, the national debt was around $5 trillion or so. When he left office, it more than doubled, to more than $10 trillion. That's a pretty sad state, as well, right?</s>ROMNEY: Oh, I agree. There -- there's no question, in my view, that the -- but that the spending that's gone on over the last couple of decades in Washington has made it very difficult for America to see a bright and prosperous future. And, of course, what President Obama has done has taken the deficits that President Bush put in place and doubled up on them again -- now multi-trillion dollar deficits projected out through the next 10 years...</s>BLITZER: Because he inherited a trillion dollar a year...</s>ROMNEY: Well...</s>BLITZER: -- annual budget deficit.</s>ROMNEY: Well, he's -- he's so anxious to talk about what he inherited. But the -- the truth is that at some point as president, you do have to take responsibility for your own budget and your own budget gaps. And he has added to those and is projecting multi- trillion dollar deficits in the future. Frankly, we could spend a lot of time pointing fingers at who's to blame, but in my view, Washington is to blame. You...</s>BLITZER: Well, you're ready to blame both the Bush administration and the Obama administration.</s>ROMNEY: I'm willing to blame anyone in Washington who's consistently spending more money than they we take in and without recognizing that we've got to stop that. I'm not talking about the annual deficits, the inability to deal with our entitlement liability, which is, what, 60, $70 trillion of unfunded liability.</s>BLITZER: They'll come up with recommendations at the end of the year.</s>ROMNEY: Exactly. And President Bush of course actually put something on the table. He put a plan out there for social security. Like it or not, he took action to try and make social security sustainable. I was disappointed that the president hasn't had a plan despite being in office for a year.</s>BLITZER: Do you like that plan that Bush had of privatizing social security?</s>ROMNEY: There's parts of it I liked. I liked the idea of people being able to direct some portion of their retirement savings to accounts that will have a higher return than social security, but I wouldn't replace our social security system with private accounts only. I lay out in my book a way I think to bring sustainability to social security which I like better.</s>BLITZER: And in the book you have a whole list of recommendations at the end of the book on things you would do. Let's talk about health care because the president and a lot of Democrats say what they want to do nationally is what you did in Massachusetts when you were governor, get a lot more people insured. Are they right?</s>ROMNEY: Well, it's a great idea to get more people insured, but the right place to get people insured is at the state level. We've shown in Massachusetts you can deal with this on a state basis. You know your own population, you know the number of uninsured that exist in your state and you can fashion an insurance plan that meets the needs of those citizens. That's why I proposed letting each state craft their own program, receiving federal support that cares for the poor as in the past.</s>BLITZER: Is it working in Massachusetts right now?</s>ROMNEY: You know, we've gotten or citizens insured. About 98 percent of our people are insured and it's generally popular in the state. Docs sure like it, because they're not having to turn people away for lack of coverage, but there are some problems with the plan, and if I was there, I probably would be making adjustments to it.</s>BLITZER: If you were elected president, would you have tried to get a lot more people insured nationally?</s>ROMNEY: Not with a federal plan, not with a one size fits all federal plan and certainly not like the president's plan, which raises taxes. We didn't do that. That's the wrong way to go, and cutting Medicare by $500 billion, having the seniors pay for the plan? That doesn't make sense, either. I would have done was to say we're going to give you the money we sent you last year to help you care for your poor state by state, and you craft plans that you think will be effective in getting more people insured.</s>BLITZER: Is he going to get it passed?</s>ROMNEY: You know, he can jam through whatever he'd like. He has the votes he needs to try to do something, but the American people have told him in every way possible, no, we do not want it. If he jams it through, I think the country will not be better off for it, and I think the Democratic Party will suffer.</s>BLITZER: It's possible that Americans will like it, the fact that insurance companies won't be able to remove them or cut their benefits or they won't have to worry about preexisting conditions. It's possible that he gets it passed that over the next several months between now and November let's say folks will start saying, you know what? That's pretty good.</s>ROMNEY: I don't think that's likely to happen. I think you're going to find that people are appalled at the rising health care costs because of the new taxes he puts on companies that make health equipment and so forth. I think you'll find that the people of America are not enamored with what he puts through and that's why I think it's more likely that in 2010 and then again in 2012 you'll see a reversal of fortune on the part of the Democrats as Americans say we want a different course. I think you'll see this plan either stopped or repealed or gutted.</s>BLITZER: All right. That was part one of the interview with Mitt Romney. Later we'll have part 2, and I asked Mitt Romney if he believes that Sarah Palin is qualified to be president of the United States. His answer might surprise you. Part 2 of the interview later in THE SITUATION ROOM. The dangers of driving in heavy fog hit home in Wisconsin in a very big way. Wait until you hear what a man in Georgia dug up in his backyard. When I tell you it's explosive, I mean it.