Stay updated with breaking news from Go get jobs. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
leak at a u.s. government lab. is an agency that s supposed to protect us from disease putting people at risk? we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. all eyes on the u.s. supreme court this coming week as the justices are expected to hand out a ruling that will impact every american and shape the future of the country. the long-awaited decision on president obama s health care reform law. and coming just months before the election, the stakes, politically speaking, could not be higher. cnn s kate balduan is joining us now. she s got a little preview of what we could expect. set the scene for us, kate. hey, there, wolf. well, it is the biggest secret in washington and really only the justices and their law clerks know how this drama will end. but one thing is certain. we will know in a matter of days if the affordable care act stays or goes. an unprecedented decision affecting, as ....
We talk about income inequality, talk about income disparity. and yet we have reports that luxury goods are, you know, at peak levels. the wall street journal says sales of luxury cars are going strong. saks fifth avenue had sales up in november. meanwhile, at target, walmart and toys r us, the layaway programs have expanded. you have, effectively, two americans here in terms of economic health. i think that there s a real disconnect between those in leadership and congress, who are, you know, talking about payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance, and those who are actually dealing with this stuff, and whose heads are barely being kept above water because of these subsidies, because of these tax credits. my concern here, though, is that in the genius of the founders, the idea was to link the outcomes for ordinary people to the outcomes for elected leaders. and when you have a political system that can disfranchise the poorest americans through these new voter i.d. laws, throu ....
you re staying at home and watching a television you have no right to even own. that has been very powerfully, politically. but that s because that group was very easily marginalized and very easily seen as the other. if the unemployed, and particularly the chronically unemployed, can be labeled in that same way. if they can be thought of as the kind of black folks or city folks that we don t have to think of as us. then, yes, i think that strategy works. but if it s everybody. if we are the unemployed, if we are the 99% if we are the 11%, as it were. exactly. to that very good point, my hunch that americans know unemployed people, know people who haven t been able to get a job for a year. so the idea that oh, it s this other lazy person off there is not politically salable an idea as it might have been in the past. and with orrin hatch, really, you use christmas week to say, oh, those people are lazy. get to work, mr. hatch, who ....
Tax cut debate is the extension of unemployment benefits. and it s something that makes republicans very uncomfortable. and in the house bill, the republicans had tried to trim back the number of weeks you could be on unemployment insurance. i wonder to what degree you guys think that that kind of messaging, that kind of talk, and i would dare say insensitivity towards the job market and then the unemployed, ends up hurting republicans in the long run for 2012? i think it depends in part on what happens to this category called the tunemployed in our collective imaginations. if you look at the discourse around the unemployed and the discourse around a lot of the occupy movements, much of it sounds in the last 20 years the way both the left and the right have talked about the african-american community. the truth is, 10% unemployment has been standard in black communities and urban communities for decades. this idea of get up off the couch, go get jobs, even if those jobs don t exist ....