successful record job creation, low unemployment, big infrastructure plans passed by congress. why are you running to replace him in the white house now? you call him tremendously successful. this is not about him personally. you say it s tremendously successful. if you were among the 20% of americans who are doing pretty well in this economy, that makes sense. to the 80% of americans who represent a vast sea of economic despair outside of that island. you still have 64% of all americans who are living paycheck to paycheck. we still have 18 million americans who can t even fulfill the prescriptions that they have gotten. that would be settled if we had universal health care. we have not lifted minimum wage. they hid behind the skirts of the parliamentarian on that. we have a third of americas workforce living a less than $15 an hour and unable to afford a place to live.
you have 12 million children who are hungry. under this administration and that congress, they had passed the child credit tax which have the child poverty. they did not make it permanent. this inside the belt commentary about how everything is so great is not a visceral experience of the majority of americans. i hear you and i m sure millions of lot of people watching this hear you as well. my question is, how are you going to achieve that as president of the united states? folks in that building, especially now with the republican congress, they don t want to do any of the stuff. first of all, the republicans would never hide behind a skirt of the parliamentarian. the president is not even mentioning universal health care. the president, one of the things that has nothing to do with congress specifically that the president could do much more about has to do with climate change. the president has given more
several conservative justices questioned biden s authority to wipe out 400 billion dollars in student loan debt without the authorization of congress. the administration hit back. they argue that 2003 heroes act explicitly gives the secretary of education the authority to wave or modify student loan debt during national emergencies by covid. and decision is expected by the end of june. joining me now is nbc senior legal correspondent laura jarrett. thank you so much for having, jonathan. i appreciate it. i m glad you re here. do you think that the biden administration made the case that the president has the legal authority to forgive student debt? the justice department made a pretty compelling argument as you laid out. it goes back to a federal law which was passed just after 9/11. it gives the secretary of education the power to make changes to the federal
the administration putting the climate agenda ahead of the interests of the american people. your reaction? i think that the successes of the biden administration and the 117th congress really speak for themselves. we were able to put through a piece of legislation called the inflation reduction act, which i would argue is probably not appropriately named, although it does reduce inflation, but it does have a significant component of it, more than 50% of it that addresses energy security and energy independence and it is an all of the above kind of strategy. so i do think that biden, president biden has made it clear that he s pursuing an all of the above strategy as am i in my district, as you imagine, pennsylvania is a deeply complicated state with relationship to energy. we need to make sure we re moving as aggressively and rapidly as we can toward energy independence and renewable energies at the same time.
ways that we can move forward. and at a minimum, to ask the members of congress themselves to not participate is something that we re working on, too. griff: and when you say you re working on it, do you predict, are you aware of any sort of fast moving legislation? i mean, i think, when i look at the federal ban across government devices, like your congressional iphone cannot have it on there, so if it s a big enough threat it can t be on government phones, why not on every phone? i think that s a reasonable question. i know that there is a new committee that has just been stood up on china and its relationship with the united states and it s possible that that committee would address that issue. i do think that when congress has the will, we have the ability to move quickly and with authority on legislation and so this is going to be one of those things where hopefully both the house and the senate decide collectively and the president moves forward on that as well. if that s, in f