Relief for millions of people who are working really hard to find a job. It has two real economic benefits. One is you cannot get Unemployment Insurance unless youre looking for a job. Looking for a job means you are in the labor force. In the labor force means youre keeping the people connected so when the economy continues to recover, they will get the jobs. In addition, the purchasing power of the Unemployment Insurance benefits, they have all said this would add to growth and create jobs. What happens at the house fails to act on the senate bill . I do not want to speculate. Two weeks ago most people would tell you this would not pass the senate. Now it looks set to pass the senate with a real bipartisan vote. I do not want the thing we should be doing next as the house. The number of longterm unemployed is actually coming down. Do you think it would be a good sign . Have you looked at the numbers . Is it because of people losing their benefits in december . I have been looking at those numbers. I have not seen it there. We have generally seemed pretty small moves in the household survey. I think what that tells you is that there is bigger forces going on in the economy. We are creating about 200,000 jobs a month. We have heard a lot about the minimum wage. Last year the president proposed raising the minimum wage to nine dollars or 9. 50. Democrats are hung up on the 10. 10 level. Could the white house envision a compromise . Republicann get some support. It is clear harry reid is Going Forward with 10. 10. That is the number you see states like connecticut passed, that you see some employers to organize their efforts around. That is our focus. Minimum wage has been such a heavy focus. Why isnt this something he pushed in the first term when he had the majority that could have passed it . The minimum wage was raised in phases over 2008, 2009, 2010. I may be off by a year. It was going up. We were very focused on turning the economy around. The economy was hemorrhaging jobs in the beginning of 2009 and getting that recovery back on track. Now the recovery is proceeding well. We are not all the way there. Were getting closer. His focus has been even more on wages and income. He talked about minimum wage. He pushed the issue forward last year and he has intensified it this year. It is an effort to persuade congress, state, localities, employers and the countrys largest employer is doing that with the contractors. Even in those years when it was going up, the Median Income was going down. Did that need to be going up faster . Does that tell us anything about the minimum wage hike to effects incomes . It is a promise that if you work hard or fulltime you should not have to raise your children in poverty. 28 Million People is a large, meaningful chunk of the labor force. Those are the people that would directly get a wage. It is not all you need in an Economic Strategy for higher wages and higher incomes. The middleclass families will have a spouse that works parttime at the minimum wage. This would give him or her a raise. We need to be doing more to raise middle earners. That is everything from short run policies to create jobs to tighten up labor market to longer run policies to improve education and productivity growth. You guys sprinted to the finish line on the Affordable Care act implementation. There is still a lot of work left to be done. We heard from robert gibbs saying he thinks the employer mandate may never be implemented. It has been delayed twice already. It is causing a lot of the uncertainty as businesses try to figure how it will work. What can you tell us about the employer mandate and whether it will be postponed again . The characterization you gave is wrong. The mandate for employers was delayed in the first year. In the second year, it is being phased in. All employers with fewer than 50 employees are exempted. For next year, were taking that exception up to 100 employees. We are phasing it in. This is common when youre bringing a new program into place. It is consistent with what you see on the individual side. The vast majority of employers offer coverage. If you get rid of the employer responsibility entirely, you are going to increase the deficit, reduce the number of people covered and that is not the way we think we should be dealing with the Affordable Care act. This past week the president admitted the Affordable Care act it does need improvement. He said he is willing to work with democrats and republicans. Can you envision the political environment would be any different in 2015 that would create that bipartisan effort to fix or change or amended the Affordable Care act . I am certainly not going to forecast what congress looks like in 2015 and what it means. It was not a new admission. He has basically, since i make signing it into law, consistently said if you can find a way that brings cost down more, improves coverage more, that improves the budget impact of it, that he would work with you. You look at Something Like romneycare, there were a lot of improvement after it passed. We have been implementing it in a flexible, sensible, sound way. We will continue to do that. If congress has any ideas, we are happy to work with them. Why has it been such a difficult sell to work with republicans from day one . You are talking about a party that has voted over 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care act. That is not a dialogue that we can have. If you get beyond repeal and start to accept that the basic principles of the Affordable Care act builds on ideas from the heritage foundation, aei, from romneycare, that sets an individual responsibility. A lot of these are conservative ideas. Just like conservatives who originally came up with this idea decades ago, they are working. Once you admit they are working, you can get to the next age of saying can we tweak them to make them work even better . What is your best estimation about how the law is affect and for good, bad, or otherwise the labor market . The Congressional Budget Office said that right now, and they define that as roughly 20142016, the main effect it would have is to lower the Unemployment Rate. That is because the Affordable Care act is putting more money in familys pockets. Each can take some of the money you have saved on Health Insurance and spend it on other things. It helps the economy. Over the medium and long run, the most important question for the economy is what does this do to the growth of health cost . I think it is contributing to the slowdown down. It helps wages and jobs. We have seen a slowdown in health employment. Do you worry about that in terms of overall job creation . My focus is on overall job creation in the economy. You have seen the overall job creation rate pick up some what in the last 12 months as opposed to the 12 months before that. It is consistent with a rate that brings the Unemployment Rate down. When you look at health care, our main goals are what you can do to improve the quality of care, to lower the cost of care, to give patients a better outcome. That is the goal of health policy. Stepping back a little bit, the stock market is at a record high. We are also near a record high of people on food stamps, 50 Million People. We have this new book about whether the stock market is rigged. Are we in an economy now where there is just winners and losers . It seems if youre in the market you can make a lot of money but there is a lot of people getting left behind. What can the white house do about that . You raise a really important issue. It is an issue that goes down several decades. It is an increase in inequality. Part of that is labor income. Part of it is that a larger share of our National Income going to owners of capital. Part of it is the more capital you have, often the higher returns you can get. I think all of that presents a challenge to us. There is a range of things you can do about it. You can try to make labor income more equal. You can try to improve the share of income going to labor with things like a higher growth rates. When it comes to capital income, one of the things the president is doing is a starter savings account. They are able to make them extremely low fee, bringing new people into savings. This will help people accumulate wealth and do it in a way without paying large fees. There have been a number of reports saying it is declining precipitously. Is there a fundamental flaw in the Economy Today that is creating this shrinking middle class . I think there is a fundamental challenge in the economy for several decades now. We have made some progress. We have seen real wages for Something Like the median worker rising over the last year or two. As the Unemployment Rate continues to come down, i would be hopeful that we would see more of that. It has not been anywhere close to enough to make up for all of the lost ground in the previous decade. I think slowing the growth rate of health costs will help the middle class and middle class income. I think strengthening the overall economy will. I think education will. Theres no question that the president when out in december and called this issue the defining challenge of our time. He did that for good reason. Back to the shortrun policy. A lot of liberal economists say the policies are deficit spending. Would we have that are Labor Market Outcomes right now if we were running higher deficits . It is the time path that really matters here. The president is proposing a Growth Opportunity and security initiative. That would spend an extra 86 billion next year and invested in areas like infrastructure, education and in our national security. It would also be paid for over a tenyear year time frame. It is winwin in terms if you get extra support for the economy upfront. You get additional deficit reduction over the medium and long run. It is that type of orientation for fiscal policy that we need. To be clear, you think something in the order of a 50 billion short run deficit would be good for the economy . Im giving you one example. We would like to extend Unemployment Insurance. We would like a fouryear, 300 billion dollar plan. I think all of the types of measures are good for the economy. Cutting the deficit over the medium and long run is good for the economy. I think you see a real contrast it with the budget that the house is advancing. It would actually cut growth in the next couple of years. It would incur brandnew cost over the medium and long run. One of the challenges has been how do you get 20th century workers ready for a 21stcentury economy. There has been this big focus on job creation. The president called on Vice President biden to look at all the programs and figure out a way to remake the way they work federally. Can you give us an update on how we can get this going . He has had dozens of things and discussions with business leaders, labor leaders, experts and others. The we have a lot of programs in the government right now. They do a lot of good. They need to be oriented toward where the jobs are, preparing people for the jobs. He is moving forward to do exactly that. This is the quantitative easing. Is it being done so from your perspective at the right place . Any concerns moving ahead . One of the strengths of American Economic policy is that officials in the white house and the executive branch more broadly do not introduce this by commenting on monetary policy. As important as it is, youll have to find another guest to discuss it with, unfortunately. Im going to ask about an administrative decision. In the first term, this administration went ahead with a bailout for automakers including general motors. Knowing what we know now about the recall problems at gm, was it still a good decision or is this a company the market should have let fail . The overwhelming motivation of what the president did is what needed to be done for our economy and jobs. Nothing since then has changed the number of jobs that were saved, saving the American Auto industry. It is not just the company. It is not just the two automakers that were involved. It was the hundred of suppliers. It is the dealers. It is the entire network and ecosystem of the economy supported by all of that. Did you have any going of the inkling of the recall problems that could be facing gm when you made these decisions . A lot of these issues were being dealt with by independent regulatory authorities. The Keystone Pipeline is one of the Economic Issues that a lot of republicans support it. It is the kind of things that seems like they could get a lot of momentum. I know this is in the state departments hands. Can you give us an update on where this is as far as the white house involvement . You are right. It is in the state departments hands. The president has spoken publicly to the fact that he expects the criteria they will be using is whether it is significantly increases Carbon Emissions to build the pipeline. I think there is a reason why the president said that criteria out. Keystone just is not a Major Economic issue. There is a miniscule number of permanent Jobs Associated with the Keystone Pipeline. It is entirely appropriate that the president is focused on the criteria that he is. To go back now to the longterm, we are talking about the longterm unemployed. And the progress we have seen. Do you think that all of those 3 million longterm unemployed workers will eventually find jobs or is there some class of workers who will be left in the lurch permanently by this Great Recession . That is one of the most important economic questions we face. Right now, two facts are clear. The longterm Unemployment Rate is significantly elevated. I think it is our largest economic problem. It is more than twice the rate it was historically. The second is the longterm Unemployment Rate has been coming steadily down. It is a major challenge. It is one that we have made a lot of progress on. To thesident had ceos white house. They figured out how they could commit to making more progress. I certainly would not write those people off. I would not give up on them. I believe that we can bring them back to the labor force. It will be a challenge to do so. The comment from the new chair of the Committee Said that the finance committee would agreed to this but it would be the last time, presumably it would be front and center next year and the next congress. From your perspective, what should it include . I think ron wydens comments were good news. If you look at the president s budget, he is proposed to take a limited set of tax extenders that support clean energy and make them permanent and also pay for doing that. That would be one of the things he would do with tax reform. More importantly, we would bring our tax rate down so we were at a competitive level. We would do that while broadening the base and making other Structural Reforms so that we are not adding to the deficit. The other thing i would add is that it is not just Corporate Tax reform. He thinks of it as it is ms. Tax Business Tax Reform for all businesses, small and large. It is a real opportunity to simplify and simplify for Small Businesses while we broaden the base and lower the rate for corporations. Millions of americans are trying to figure out their taxes and filing before the deadline. It is so hard for families to do this when they are juggling other things. Tax sides have admitted the code is a mess. There has been no progress. Max baucus was the new ambassador of china. There seems to be no momentum to get any tax reform done. What kind of assurances can you get to the public that there will be a priority for the white house in the final two years of the obama administration. The president put this issue firmly on the agenda in his state of the union that was in january 2011. He was the first president in decades to call out the problem of the need to lower our Corporate Tax rates so we do not have the highest per tax rate of any country in the world but to also say we could do this by broadening the base without adding anything to the deficit. There has been some forward movement. There is a lot of complexity. We would love to have partners in congress that help continue to push that forward so we can get it done. Could tax reform further reduce the deficit . When it comes to Business Tax Reform, our proposal raises some money when you transition to a new system. We propose to take it in the nations infrastructure. It helps our competitiveness in terms of infrastructure and reforming. When it comes to the individual system, there is a substantial scope for cutting back on some of the tax benefits that the highest income households get. The basic question that most americans keep asking, despite the jobs report which are encouraging and better than the ones we saw earlier in the recovery, more than half the country still thinks were in a recession. What is it about this recovery that so Many Americans do not feel things are Getting Better . The answer is what is it about the Great Recession . It is the worst recession since the great depression. It was not just the amount of jobs we lost, nearly 9 million private sector jobs lost. What made the recession so bad was that it was a systemic financial crisis. It is really hard to get your way out. Of the 12 countries that went through the crises, only two have that covered. The United States and germany. I do not think grading on a curve and saying we are better than a lot of other countries is going to satisfy people. I do not think it should. What will we do is continuing to steadily increase jobs. We have come pretty far. We had our fill. How are we doing 50 years later on the war on poverty . We did a comprehensive report. I would give that to your viewers. The focus of our report is that there has been tremendous success in bringing this down over the first 50 years. It is entirely up to public areas. The place where we have not been as successful is raising wages for families. Part of that is the minimum wage has lost 1 3 of the purchasing power in the last 50 years. That is a big push to raise the minimum wage. Let me conclude on this question based on a recent bio. What is more difficult, juggling numbers are being a semi professional juggler . What is difficult is showing up at your sons birthday party, deciding you will impress the children by juggling flaming torches and not having practice with flaming torches in five the end result was my lawn going up in flames. On that note, we will leave it there. Thank you for being with us. We appreciate you being with us here. First on the jobs numbers. This economy is in a space where the numbers are not good or bad. We are not getting the escape velocity we need. It seems like we are stuck. There is a lot of people that are not looking for jobs. This is not a bad monthly number, but not great. A couple of questions about tax reform. Is there an appetite for this to come up . Is there an appetite for washington to do anything . If so, is tax reform one of those . Tax reform is where everyone is for it in principle but everyone is against it in practice. There are huge groups that lineup. Until you have a plan to actually take on the groups and really push through these broad proposals that everyone talks about, very difficult for me to see how congress and the president will agree on the plan. We had a policy discussion right now. Is this a driving issue for 2014 . On the one hand you have the democrat and kentucky running against mitch mcconnell. She thinks this is a good issue that will get people to the polls. Then you have people like mark pryor and Mary Landrieu who seem a little more hesitant. The democrats are risk and are not sure how to come down. If they go for the 10. 10 level it might alienate businesses and backfire. The single woman is a key part of the electorate for the democrats. The economy is not Getting Better so quick that they can run on that and say happy days are here again. On the other hand, they need an issue, even though they have controlled the white house, where they can say it is not our fault that the bad guys are blocking a good thing from happening that would help you. The minimum wage appears to be the best of those issues that hit both of the spots. It is aspirational and casts the democrats as an underdog. What did you learn today . Jason furman has a lot of numbers but they do not have a path forward. In the first term, they were a lot more aggressive in getting it passed the finish line. I think the white house feels like it they get too involved it will just scare republicans away. Theyre counting on democrats on the hill to get things done. I think they are much less defensive than they used to sound on the Affordable Care act. Theyre talking about bringing down costs and the benefits of the law and engaging that in a way that is not putting them on the defensive of a bad website. He just sounded a lot more confident talking about it than i have heard from white house