Still more than they are here in new york city. I am struggling with a lot of facts in that story. Tha that looks very familiar. In new york they tell you it has character and really high ceilings, so it has that. Melissa i cannot even make that up. It is layers. Levels. Melissa on that note, thanks to both of you. Are you working on her oscar predictions for next year . I will wait and see what is nominated first. Why did he have to touch it at all . Melissa that is all the money we have for you, we will see you back here tomorrow. Gerri tonight on the willis report. Congress and the president detached from reality. Why arent they tackling the real issues like record high gas prices. Also, president s radical new plan for schools. You have to look at the research very closely to know what works in prek. Education and what doesnt work. Gerri one of the countries leading educators is here tonight. A routine checkup causing startling the numbers on the cost of health care. The willis report is on the case. All that and more coming up, but first talk about misplaced priorities. The president obama and congress continue their schoolyard antics, namecalling and count the way decisionmaking for regular americans are feeling squeezed. Rising food prices are hard to miss at the grocery stores. Consumer budgets are stressed to the limit. If you are on fixed income, there isnt a lot of room for tbones when the prices rocketing. Gas prices up almost 0. 50 in the last month alone. The average for unleaded gas isnt the highest we have seen but it is the highest we have seen since late february. The government does not count it in the Consumer Price index. They say prices of gas are too volatile to put into that index, but isnt that the point to measure price changes at every level . The ris right is coming at a bad time because after the first year, every working american got a tax hike in the form of a payroll tax. According to the wall street journal, that hike took a total of 110 billion out of consumer hands. And investors are feeling the heat from political paralysis in washington and around the world. The dow down 200 points today, the biggest drop since november. Watch out, 401 k . Americans adjusting the spending and expectations and all we hear out of washington is how nobody wants to compromise on the silly deadline. For more on this, senior Political Columnist for the washington examiner. And peter murray seat economist. You said Something Interesting in your notes for the show, consumers are on crisis overload. Absolutely. How many times in the next three years will we hea be here aboute process of doom saying the world will come to an end if this budget line isnt met, yet we have had so many times before. The politicians arent focusing on those nattering these people could have gotten to the point that dont care what goes on here. Gerri i think consumers, voters, everybody out there is so tired about hearing about sequester, they cannot even get a lunch date to get together, they cannot agree on anything. Is there any insight into all of the namecalling and nastiness . I for one dont find the namecalling and nastiness so much. Gerri you are out of step with the rest of the country, we want to see some action. This is partly problematic. What kind of action do you want on gasoline prices . Gerri i want to see a budget introduced into Congress Every year on time. Gerripeter, go ahead. I can cut imports in half, slice the price off of a gallon of gasoline. That is good policy in the longterm, but in the short term it wont. Whatever Congress Says there is a problem, we will rush in and act, Government Intervention in the economy makes things worse. Gerri they dont rush for anything, they dont do anything, they only jawboning at the end of the day. Youre starting to sound like nancy pelosi. They rushed into war, into the financial crisis, into all sorts of things. It creates more problems. Gerri i want to give peter some push back now. The profits of doom where your buddies. They call the recessions around here, National Association of business economists say the economy will go nowhere this year, probably 2 growth at best, and as they usually do they predict most of that growth will come in the second half. What do you say . Is that really going to happen . Is washington standing in the way of this . We just increased the payroll tax by 110 billion. Increased tax on the wealthy by another 50 billion. That will slice about two Percentage Points off of gdp with a multiplier effect. The president ran for office in 2008 talk about doing something about domestic energy. The only thing he has done is given us transfer from nowhere to no place. If we started two years ago even drilling for more oil we would have more today and probably gasoline would be a lot cheaper. I will praise the president right now, which i rarely do. He has gotten out of the way of fracking. It is the best thing that happened to our country in years, president obama talked about environmentalism but he is smart enough to know he has two let the market work its way in fracking. What about the gulf of mexico . In the atlantic. Gerri before we get too far off the beaten path, i want to bring you back to ask you about this because what would washington debate and getting nowhere on should we have 85 billion worth of cuts in federal Government Spending and apparently it is not even 85 billion at this point. We are already halfway through the year. Iis that going to stop the economy . The president says the time to go to hell in a handbasket. If the economy goes to hell in a handbasket is because it is already baked in the cake by virtue of large tax increases and other policies slow growth as early as the Fourth Quarter of last year. It is not enough to make that kind of difference, but he is saying its way to blame the republicans for the recession that may already be underway. Gerri will not cut the economy . What will that do to the rest of the country . There will be a lot of businesses that will suffer, that have been dependent on Government Spending. Gerri my heart goes out. The broader economy that isnt spending cuts, this is a reduction in spending increases. There will be some Ripple Effect but in the long run it will be good. Gerri that was a really good debate. Thank you for your time, great points, both of you. Thank you. Gerri when it comes to the sequester fight for the white house and congress both are going over all the wrong things . I will share the results at the end of tonights show. Also in washington, we could have a new treasury secretary as early as wednesday. The Senate Finance committee will vote tomorrow on a nomination and will decide whether he will pass despite raising questions about his role during the financial crisis and the bonus he got while he was there. The senate could vote on wednesday and watched the willis report tomorrow when im joined by the senator Chuck Grassley from iowa. Tomorrow liz claman will sit down with the acting treasury secretary. Dont miss that. Lots more to come including in a new report on Rising Health care costs in one of the top educators in the country with middle income students are better situation than lower income. Stick around. announcer at scottrade, our clients trade and invest exactly how they want. With scottrades online banking, i get one view of my bank and brokerage accounts with one login. To easily move my money when i need to. Plus, when i call my local scottrade office, i can talk to someone who knows how i trade. Because i dont trade like everim with scottrade. Me. announcer scottrade. Awarded fivestars from smartmoney magazine. train horn vo wherever our trains go, the economy comes to life. Norfolk southern. One line, infinite possibilities. [ male announcer ] it was designed to escape the ordinary. It feels like it can escape gravity. The 2013 cclass coupe. Starting at 37,800. Gerri president obamas push s drawn mixed reaction over how much it will cost and effectiveness. Earlier i spoke with founder of students first author of a new book radical fighting to push the students first. Why do we need another prek. Program . Well, look, you opportunity to ensure more children in particular low income and minority children are in school earlier could be a very positive thing, but as with anything it really depends on the accountability that is attached. If we have children at a younger age enrolled in classrooms with highly effective teachers, think it can make absolutely a huge difference in terms of the School Readiness by the time they get into kindergarten. If they are in classrooms were essentially babysitting is going on, we will not see the return on investment we need. Gerri that is why the studies are sort of on how effective the publicly financed prek. Programs are because a lot of them show the effectiveness doesnt continue very far at all interested in career. That has a lot to do with the effectiveness of the Program Overall and specifically the teachers in the classroom. When i was in d. C. , we extended the prek options dramatically and we found there was a wide variety between the quality of education kids are getting in those programs, some of them are excellent. Very high benchmarks for what kids were to do and to show that they had grown academically by the end of the year. And other programs who didnt have that level of return. Gerri before you start a brandnew spanking program that will be from sea to shining sea, all states, wouldnt you first reconsider the effectiveness of existing programs that are already out in schools all over the country . I think what would have to be done if you would have to look at the research very clearly to know what works in prek education and what doesnt work and you have to set very clear standards about what kinds of programs would need to be setup iset upin order to access the fl funding and also ensure that the program did not meet the standards that our taxpayer dollars were not going to fund those things. Gerri itll be interesting to see the idea gets anywhere. I want to ask about your book because you have a really interesting conclusion. The kids most at risk in our system may not be low income students but in fact middle clasmiddleclass students, why d that be . A lot of what we see is people assuming the problem in Public Education that we have is just about the minority kids in the inner cities and that actually isnt true at all. If you look at the top u. S. Kids based on income and compare them to the top kids in other countries across the globe, you will see our kids actually ranked 23rd, which is the same rating as the low income kids do. Gerri that is unbelievable, michelle. That is a real newsflash for parents all over the country, what do we do about it . We have to make sure their are highly effective teachers in every classroom, parents have options for sending their kids to a highquality School Program and the last thing tied to what we were talking about, making sure we have effective use of taxpayer dollars. A lot of middle and upper middle income households in this country, their kids are going to school everyday, they think theyre getting a good education but they actually dont know what kind of return on investment taxpayers are getting. Gerri answer tha answered thatn could be very difficult. I wanted the degree to which so many teachers are unionized is one of those things drain money out of the system that could be better deployed. I think has less to do with the fact teachers are unionized or not unionized that we have these problems. Was the issue is as we have lost our policies in place in unionized and nonunionized state to be sure the best interest of the adults is what comes first and foremost rather than what is in the best interest of the books do not kids. Gerri fascinating stuff. Hope you come back soon, thank you so much. Thank you. Gerri still to come, one of the most prominent women in business thinking of stepping down to break the Glass Ceiling and Health Care Costs out of control and obama could do something to fix the real problems. I will break it all down coming up. We know a place where tossing and turning have given way to sleeping. Where sleepless nights yield to restful sleep. And lunesta® eszopiclone can help you get there. Like it has for so many people before. When taking lunesta, dont drive or operate machinery until you feel fully awake. Walking, eating, dving, or engaging in other activities while asleep, without remembering it the next day, have been reported. Lunesta should not be taken together with alcohol. Abnormal behaviors may include aggressiveness, agitation, hallucinations, or confusion. In depressed patients, worsening of depression, including risk of suicide, may occur. Alcohol may increase these risks. Allergic reactions such as tongue or throat swelling occur rarely and may be fatal. Side effects may include unpleasant taste, headache, dizziness, and morning drowsiness. Ask your doctor if lunesta is right for you. Then find out how to get lunesta for as low as fifteen dollars at lunesta. Com. Theres a land of restful sleep. We can help you go there on the wings of lunesta. Gerri we spend twice as much on our failed Health Care System than most nations but doesnt need to be this way. We look at the outofcontrol costs. Gerri imagine this, you are 64 years old and have severe chest pain. Mike just called an ambulance. Taken for miles emergency room at stanford hospital, which is officially a nonprofit organizatioinstitution. She was told she didnt have a heart attack, just indigestion. The bad news is she was charged 21,000 for the false alarm. Hundred 95 for the ambulance ride, 3000 for the doctors and 17,000 for the hospital. One of the many antidotes on the rats nest. We spend twice as much, we spend twice as much as most nations, 20 of gdp on health care. The story appears this week in time magazine. We spend more on health car heae than the next 10 countries combined. More than those combined. U. S. Health care spending will probably total 3 trillion this year alone. We think we spent a lot of money cleaning up new york, new jersey, connecticut after Hurricane Sandy . We spent that much last week on health care. Why are costs so outofcontrol . The system is run by the sellers of the services, not the consumer. 85 people in an emergency room for the same treatment and youll likely get five totally different bills depending on their insurance coverage. The medical establishment is becoming very wealthy under this system. Ceos of nonprofit hospitals are pulling down sixfigure salaries and the government predicts the 20 fastest occupations are in health care. Outspending aerospace and oil and gas sectors. The health care complex has replaced the militaryindustrial complex as a business with the most political muscle. Consumers of health care actually able to shop around for service, maybe they can make a difference. That rarely happens. When you are on a ride on a gurney you dont ask for a price estimate, but maybe we should. Prescription drug prices 50 higher than other countries. Some market discipline has to be introduced into the system. Currently medicare doesnt even negotiate prices on drugs. Two drugs have the same effect, one is five times the price, shouldnt the government choose the cheaper one . I understand, but why can a medicare patient get a free ride or nearly free ride for catastrophic care when those of us without any insurance are unpayable. Why is cancer and my nose treatment event for anybody but a medicare enrollee . Obama k. Did nothing to solve these problems because it focuses on who pays for care rather than how in the heck can we stop the increase in health care prices. That is a problem that needs solving. We will have much more on the Health Care Cost crisis when we are joined. Coming up, in a new warning for business travelers. A big night for Jennifer Lawrence at the moment. But a chivalrous moment by hugh jackman that caught my eye. Next. From our fox business studios in new york, here again is gerri willis. Gerri all too often people take a fall on their way up the ladder in life and last nights oscars was no exception. Jennifer lawrence in her win was briefly upstaged by her tumble up the stairs to receive her award for best actress. Youre looking at it there. Did you see the gentleman hugh jackman jump up and try to help her . The actress couldnt have played it off any better. Listen to this. You guys are just standing up because you feel bad i felt, it is embarrassing. Gerri bringing in an allstar panel to break down the womens headlines. Thank you all, i will start with you. I thought this was so interesting because i thought, and shes only 23 years old, she handled this with such poise. Is it because she is young and doesnt know what it could mean, or is she just that smart . She is lighthearted, you saw them on the red carpet last night having a lot of fun, she is living in the moment and if there is anyone who is going to have every girls Worst Nightmare happen, falling when youre going up a set of stairs, it is her. She played it off well and looks so great at the same time. Gerri julia, i thought this was interesting because this really showed the character of the man in the front row. If you jumped up, what a chivalrous kind of action. What did you make of that . Absolutely. Last night proved no matter what people think are contrary to popular belief, feminism isnt having that much of an impact in hollywood based on last nights actions of hugh jackman, god bless them. Chivalry is not dead, it will not be dead. If a man fell down right in front of me, god bless him, i would reach out and help him. The matter what, chivalry will not be dead no matter what feminists want to believe or what they wish for. Gerri is this about feminism, or what is this about . This is common courtesy. If somebody trips, it is kind to help them. Gerri it means they were in a moment, thinking about what was going on and willing to extend it. It was very sweet. Gerri and i had to show it today. I wanted to talk about cheryl sandberg. The possibility she will start a whole new life helping women get into the workforce. What do you make of this, is this a surprise . It is not a surprise, she has written this book poised to be an international bestseller. On t