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Week In The News: Obama On Jobs, The GOP Debate, Economic Fears

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The President steps to the plate on jobs. GOP contenders debate. Texas on fire. And a big anniversary. Our week in the news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

Republican presidential candidates Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney listens during a Republican presidential candidate debate at the Reagan Library Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011, in Simi Valley, Calif. (AP)
Republican presidential candidates Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney listens during a Republican presidential candidate debate at the Reagan Library Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011, in Simi Valley, Calif. (AP)

Pass it now, said the President last night.  Pass this jobs bill.  And half the Congress stood up and cheered.  Where Republicans come down remains to be seen.

The economy’s terrible.  It needs something.  But the tone this week at the big GOP debate in California was anything but Obama-friendly.  Ponzi scheme, monstrous lie, said Rick Perry on Social Security.  And it was fierce from there.

Texas burns this week.  Flooding on the Susquehanna.  And the nation faces a big, big anniversary of 9.11, with terror threats.

This hour On Point:  our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.
-Tom Ashbrook
 

Guests


Jon Meacham, executive editor and executive vice president at Random House and  former editor of Newsweek. A Pulitzer-prize-winning author, his books include American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, and American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. He's also a contributing editor at the PBS program “Need to Know.”
Zanny Minton Beddoes, economics editor at The Economist.

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst.

From Tom's Reading List

The New York Times If history is a guide, the odds that the American economy is falling into a double-dip recession have risen sharply in recent weeks and may even have reached 50 percent. Economies have a strong self-reinforcing nature. When people are optimistic, they spend, which begets hiring and then more spending. When people are anxious, they pull back, which leads to a cycle of hiring freezes and further anxiety that often lasts for months.

CBS News On Wednesday, CBS News learned that the president's jobs and growth package now could top $400 billion. That's a big number, and CBS News correspondent Norah O'Donnell reports that the size of this plan has grown over recent days. Advisors claim this plan will have bipartisan appeal and will be paid for with additional deficit reduction. President Obama's plan will combine new tax cuts and spending measures.

Reuters Some 1,386 homes have been destroyed in a monstrous fire burning for the past five days southeast of Austin, Texas, that has been only 30 percent contained, county officials said on Thursday. The devastating new number — nearly triple what officials had said earlier in the week and more than any blaze in Texas history-- is the county's "best estimate" of the 35,000-acre fire that's been ripping through this rural, historic community since Sunday, said Bastrop County Emergency Coordinator Mike Fisher.

This program aired on September 9, 2011.

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