american jobs act. the president says he will issue a more ambitious deficit reduction plan aweek from monday which will call for reforms to medicare and tax revenue increases. joining me now is the washington post columnist and msnbc contributor ezra klein. thanks for joining me. good evening. did i hear the president say i m going to have the super committee do the pay for side of this bill and then let, you know, the bridges and all of the infrastructure stuff, the teacher stuff, let all of that stuff be done by the other committees of jurisdiction? i think he said he would like them to do it. i don t think he is saying the only ones that can do it. my understanding from them is what they would like to do is show they are serious about getting this paid for. not just by saying it and not just offering up a plan but adding to the super committee s trigger a equivalent equivalent
bus of financial reasons in the state of new jersey. i think the president should fund that fully from federal level and ask for support from chris christie to help him with that. megyn: sound like he will get some cooperation with boehner and cantor in the house, some of the infrastructure stuff sounds okay to us. couple other points but they will not go for 500 billion or $300 billion in stimulus spending i don t think, chris. that is conventional wisdom. more proposals along the same lines. this is about paying off the unions and if it is about jobs, there is an old adage about this, let s give them all spoons instead of shovels. all the big projects. barack obama himself said he found out much too late there are no such thing as shovel-ready jobs. they re reintroducing the shovel-ready jobs because they re so out of ideas they re circling back to old ideas. megyn: one idea they clearly have is grandeur, right? giving the address before a joint session of congress. that has some p
american people want very much cutting across most ideological lines, they want to see common sense things that will increase jobs in america, put people back to work, put investment into our economy, and i don t think it s a stretch, i don t think we need outside aliens to attack us for that to be motivated. i think there s self-motivation here, they just want to see a common sense approach and an approach that s likely to work. i think that you re right that the infrastructure stuff in particular that we heard the president talking about is popular, the polling bears that out. even republicans like to talk about infrastructure in a popular way, but do you think the president and congressional democrats have a plan for turning the popularity of those things into political feasibility? well, the infrastructure bank is a great idea and the president deserves credit and he s funding it at the $30 billion level. that s very important, but that s going to take time to set up, to play o
extremist, circumstantial extremist in order to justify doing something right now to create jobs. do you think that s true? i don t, and the reason i don t, rachel, is i think the american people want very much cutting across most ideological lines, they want to see common sense things that will increase jobs in america, put people back to work, put investment into our economy, and i don t think it s a stretch, i don t think we need outside aliens to attack us for that to be motivated. i think there s self-motivation here, they just want to see a commonsense approach and an approach that s likely to work. i think that you re right that the infrastructure stuff in particular that we heard the president talking about is popular, the polling bears that out. no question. even republicans like to talk about infrastructure in a popular way. but do you think the president and congressional democrats have a plan for turning the popularity of those things into political feasibility? w
economy, and i don t think it s a stretch, i don t think we need outside aliens to attack us for that to be motivated. i think there s self-motivation here, they just want to see a common sense approach and an approach that s likely to work. i think that you re right that the infrastructure stuff in particular that we heard the president talking about is popular, the polling bears that out. even republicans like to talk about infrastructure in a popular way, but do you think the president and congressional democrats have a plan for turning the popularity of those things into political feasibility? well, the infrastructure bank is a great idea and the president deserves credit and he s funding it at the $30 billion level. that s very important, but that s going to take time to set up, to play out. it s important, and, you know, just last monday, building america s future, echoing what you ve been saying for a long time, said we ve got to invest in our infrastructure for the long run