advisor to president clinton thanks for joining us. that's "viewpoint" for tonight. stay tuned to enter "the war room" with jennifer granholm coming up next. >> jennifer: i'm jennifer granholm. tonight in "the war room," mitt's secrets lies, gaffes, they're reaching biblical proportions. >> and i looked and behold a pale horse hell follows with him. >> jennifer: oh, stop it. i thought rafalca's olympic performance was lovely and i'm sure mitt was beaming from lapel to lapel. but alas, it is not all gumdrops and lollipops in the land of romney. mitt's off message twitting for going on a month now. it was him or his campaign? maybe he just needs to take a cue from the dancer in the family and shake things up a little bit.

♪ >> jennifer: have you seen the movie "the candidate" with robert redford? if you haven't, you should. it gives a humorous but eerily realistic glimpse inside a political campaign. but not just any political campaign. on the surface, robert redder if's character the perfect candidate. he's easy on the eyes and get this, he's the son of a former governor. sound familiar? but mckay is a broken candidate. he is a product of privilege who maybe has no business being in politics. >> i wonder if anybody understood what i was trying to do. >> don't worry son. it won't make any difference. >> increasingly in this country

candidates are merging the two selling themselves like an under arm deodoranten are commercials long enough to pound in some mindless slogan that cheapens candidate and voter alike. those early hard statements of his are turning into mush. >> jennifer: i don't know. remind you of anyone? candidate romney is also kind of broken. the evidence is everywhere! remember last week when mitt romney blamed the palestinian's culture for their poor economy. today, the author that romney cited when he was making that claim, jared diamond, he wrote that what mitt romney claimed is so different from what my book actually says that i have to doubt whether mr. romney read it. of course, that was just one of the many missteps romney made on his overseas trip but the campaign and its allies refuse to acknowledge his gaffes and they're instead resorting to the oldest trick in the book, blame the media but even rich lowry

the editor of the staunchly conservative national review, even he wrote the press doesn't need any excuse to be either superficial or unfriendly to romney. now, you would think after so many mistakes, romney would be taking a break from the trail and regrouping with his advisers. nope. he's actually campaigning in the crucial swing state of colorado where he made today yet another flip-flop. just days after he vowed to end the federal wind energy production tax credit. that supports the wind industry, he changed his tune. well, sort of. >> romney: we're going to continue to see wind and solar as important parts of our growth of our energy resources. >> jennifer: maybe instead it was just kind of pandering lip service in a state with about 5,000 citizens with wind industry jobs. mitt, what is going on with your

campaign? so for insight on what it is like to be in a republican war room we go to rick tyler in washington. rick was newt gingrich's campaign spokesman. he is president of rode strategies. welcome back inside "the war room." >> governor, how are you? glad to be here. >> jennifer: i'm glad that you're here, too. considering all of the mistakes and the flip-flops and the gaffes over the past couple of weeks, couple of months, years i'm wondering is this a case of the candidate being broken or the campaign being broken? >> well, as you know, i made a -- a lot of time during the early -- last winter talking about romney's gaffes. but i think in this case, we may be -- the gaffes are different in that they're not gaffes in so much as you take the foreign trip. i read jared diamond's book guns germs and steel. i can certainly understand

romney's claim that there are cultural differences that determine a -- remember, the united states is -- it is 3% of the world's people. it creates 1/3 of the world's wealth. it is not dna. people come from all over the world to do that. forgive me but america is a culture which you ascend to. we're not a multicultural nation but people come here from first generations year after year and just run rings around some of the natives if you will. and that's -- >> jennifer: rick, that book what the author was saying is that he wasn't attributing the differences between israelis and palestinians to culture but rather to the geography that there wasn't as much oil. it was landlocked, the palestinian land. so he was refuting directly what mitt romney had claimed. >> i would look at it more -- less of jared diamond's

analysis. it was an excellent book by the way. any landlocked land can become a prosperous place. the only difference between prosperity and poverty is not the land in which you are upon, take north and south korea very similar. same dna same people yet one is abject poverty and one is a very prosperous nation. why? because of political leadership is the only difference and the leadership make the difference between the rich and poor. you can see that on the side of the border and as you go into detroit. >> jennifer: i understand that. he used the word culture which is a dog whistle to many people. the real question i was asking you is do you think -- even if you don't think that was a gaffe, you acknowledge of course that he made a lot of gaffes or flip-flops, do you think that that's a result of a broken campaign or a broken candidate? >> well, i think it is the way in which you handle the gaffes. certainly romney started off the trip wrong by saying london was

not ready for the olympics. but other than that, the fact that he went to the u.k. which remember barack obama sent back winston churchill's bust to the u.k. and he went to poland, the most successful eastern bloc country and he supported, went to israel and said so much as the israelis have a right to defend themselves preemptively from a nuclear capable iran. those three things and look, "the new york times" editorial board isn't going to agree with that. "the washington post" did not but to a lot of us who are conservatives, we found those to be positive visits. even if he didn't say anything. >> jennifer: you don't think he made a lot of mistakes during this past trip overseas or that there's not a lot of flip-flops but during the primaries, did you warn about the perils of nominating mitt romney. i'm wondering was that warning because you thought he would make mistakes or he was an imperfect candidate himself? >> i think mitt romney is an imperfect candidate and i think he does have many issues.

he governed in massachusetts. he shouldn't be taking advice from the catholic cardinals in massachusetts if he's talking for the catholic vote to -- but he was wrong in the abortion issue. he was wrong on many tax issues. and so you know, now he says he's different and he passed romney care in massachusetts against obama care. take him at his word. but look, he won. he is our candidate. i think that our base is actually motivated more by getting rid of barack obama. i think that's inherently a flawed strategy. i think it pays off. but to be for a candidate and mitt romney has so far not excited the base that is ready to go. ready to -- you know, go in november. yesterday, i think it was very instructive and should be instructed to the administration, the chick-fil-a thing was really a big problem for the obama administration because all of those people -- none of those people are going to show up for barack obama.

those people show up to vote in november, i think the administration's got a big problem. >> jennifer: i don't know if all of the people who show up to chick-fil-a voted for mitt rom inny and that was it. there wasn't that many people. what does it say to you though that there have been -- you know, you come out with a pew poll today that shows him significantly down. repeatedly now in swing states we're seeing romney having trouble. what does it say to you inside of a war room, there have been no high profile firings from the campaign. >> well, look, some of the polling i've seen is just -- has just been -- in particular, the "wall street journal," nbc poll which was nonsensical. and the oversampling of democrats, i know why they do this. they oversample the democrats because they want it to be a horse race. they want something to report on. i've heard and seen internal polls that aren't nearly as close and so i think it is closer than i want it to be. i'm always amazed that mitt romney considering the deficit

the broken promise on the spending, the broken promises on unemployment that mitt romney isn't ahead by double digit digits. that's what concerns me. >> jennifer: that's the question right. that is the question is in a challenging economy a candidate should be able to take greater advantage and he has not been able to do that. some people say that he's just been -- he, mitt romney, has been lousy with the media and the campaign now says that they're going to give the press more access to mitt romney. i'm wondering, in your opinion will that hurt or help? >> it depends on how i handles it. romney was well-known in the primary that he would win a state and then go out the next morning and make a seriously dumb statement which the campaign would have to backtrack all day long. but look, i think the way -- to handle the media. i think the fehrnstrom thing harry reid was a complete overreaction. look, harry reid is going to say what harry reid says. dismiss it.

we don't have to get crazy about it and give it more legs. >> jennifer: we actually have a sound byte from -- that sound bite you're referring to for our viewers to take a listen to what eric fehrnstrom said about harry reid. >> harry reid's charges are baseless and they're untrue. and i would ask him one simple question, have you no sense of decency, sir? is there nothing that you won't do to base yourself and the office you hold in the name of dirty politics? >> jennifer: now, you are unique in saying that you think eric fehrnstrom's reaction is an overreaction. that's unique. >> it sounds like thou protests too much. harry reid said a lot of dumb things. this is another dumb thing harry reid said. >> jennifer: we can agree or disagree about that. >> we can certainly. our side listens to harry reid. we think it is insequential and

nonsensical. his campaign treats it that way i don't think it would have gotten the reaction it did. you're playing it now because fehrnstrom overreacted to it. >> jennifer: i agree with you on that. i agree with you on that. i appreciate you coming inside "the war room" again. that's former newt gingrich spokesman rick tyler and coming up, here's something to think about. your next door neighbor could be a tea party member and you wouldn'tino it. -- and you wouldn't even know it. don't mind that man flopping around like a fish out of water. it is mitt romney trying to settle on an energy policy. how do we turn the phrases young and carefree into an actual saying instead of a punch line. you're in "the war room." it is owner on current tv. we'll be right back. >>tax cuts don't create jobs. the golden years as the conservatives call them, we had

the highest tax rates, and the highest amount of growth, and the highest amount of jobs. those are facts. >>"if you ever raise taxes on the rich, you're going to destroy our economy." not true!

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septic disasters are disgusting and costly, but avoidable. the rid-x septic subscriber program helps prevent backups by sending you monthly doses right to your door so you will never forget to maintain your system. sign up at rid-x.com. >> jennifer: when tea party darling ted cruz beats mainstream republican david dewhurst in texas' senate republican primary earlier this week, it really did come as something of a surprise. dewhurst had more money, more endorsements more name recognition but cruz's victory may be less of an outlier than perhaps a harbinger of things to come. in several states, tea party senate candidates are on the rise. way up in wisconsin cruz's victory brought a fund-raising boom for tea party senate

candidate mark neumann. his campaign said they saw a spike in donations following cruz's victory and promptly put out a statement calling wisconsin the next tea party battle and neumann is a conservative's choice. in missouri, the leading republican senate candidate is tea partier john brunner and he is something. here's what's really scary. he hasn't clinched the republican nomination. he's leading incumbent blue dog democrat claire mccaskill. this comes after indiana tea party candidate richard mourdock bumped off dig lugar in the indiana republican primary in may. are we going to see a tea party insurgency in the senate the same way we saw it in the house in 2010 and what does that mean for the president's second term agenda if he does manage to win re-election which we think he will. so here to answer that and talk about the senate and the presidential races are larry

director of the university of virginia center for politics joining us from charlottesville virginia. thanks again for joining us inside "the war room," larry. >> thank you governor. >> jennifer: you bet. so do you think the senate could actually shift this time and become either red or more deeply red? >> well, look, it is a close battle for the senate. no one with any sense is going to predict it in early august. you have so many close races. there are six seven really close races and a couple of others that could easily become close. so i'm not ready to say that. let's say the republicans win the senate with you know, 51 to 49 or 52 to 48, what is that caucus going to look like? you're going to have ten solid tea party members. i'm counting mourdock who will probably win in indiana.

cruz ted cruz is guaranteed to win in texas. unless you're about wisconsin. let's wait on that. you know tommy thompson, former governor of wisconsin. >> jennifer: i do. >> if there were a one-on-one race in that republican primary in wisconsin i think thompson would lose but he's lucky in that he has two conservative challengers, mark neumann but also a businessman eric huvde. you look around the country, i think it will be about ten tea party members. that mines that -- that means that if mitch mcconnell is the majority leader, 20% of his caucus will be tea party. now that's not a majority. they can't run the republican caucus but it certainly is a large enough group so that he's going to have to deal with them. >> jennifer: it is similar to what john boehner was facing not enough perhaps to move him out of position but certainly there could be a challenger like there was with eric kantor

facing john boehner and that challenger might be someone like maybe rand paul maybe? >> yeah, i don't see him being a serious challenger. kind of odd isn't it, the two senators from kentucky would be contending to be majority leader. i think mcconnell would win fairly easily because as you know, it is a secret ballot. that is going to be mcconnell's savior if it comes down to mcconnell versus rand paul. >> jennifer: if it works like it does in the house the tea party is going to wag the dog if, in fact, they get the majority. if they get the majority from a presidential level if you had a majority republicans in the house and the senate that, means that the president's favorite four letter word is going to be veto. >> absolutely. the veto power it is possible that obama will exide the record -- exceed the record that was registered by another democrat more than a century

ago. grover cleveland who is the all-time veto champ because he had a republican congress. of course, he was a conservative democrat and believed in -- he tended to veto measures from a more progressive republican congress that wanted to do things. but nonetheless yeah, you'll have barack obama being the grover cleveland of our age. vetoing dozens and maybe hundreds of bills. >> jennifer: i just hope that's not where we end up. let's just get specific though. you have looked at missouri and indiana. in fact, you were making some predictions about moving them further in the red column on the presidential side. obviously two states where we're seeing the tea party insurgency in senate races. do you think that the tea party will play a role in the presidential race? is that one of the reasons why you moved them further into the red column? >> yes. that's one reason. you know, governor, look around

the country with the exception of wisconsin and as i said, i'm not really ready to call that primary. i think it may be more complicated than we think. but when you look to places where the tea party has done very well this year and the republican primaries places like indiana places like texas maybe missouri, they're already red states. that's the key to the tea party success generally. they are winning in low turnout republican primaries. they're able to motivate their followers. they will turn out in large numbers, overwhelm the rank and file moderate conservative to conservative republicans get the nominee and then they simply win in november because it is a deeply red state. that red state in this age of polarization is going to elect any republican. that's their secret.

they figured that out. >> jennifer: it is pretty ingenious and what i have been struck by in doing a little bit of research on what compromises the bulk of tea parties we learn tea partiers are actually on average better educated than the average american, at least from a study done in 2010 and 2011. the majority hold college degrees, they earn more, most are above $50,000 a year. do you think that ultimately they will get enthusiastically behind mitt romney who is -- whose tax policies benefit the wealthy or do you think that he's too much of an establishment candidate for them to be super enthusiastic about? >> they're never going to be enthusiastic about mitt romney, sorry. i just don't buy that. they will vote for him and they're working for the republican ticket because they're supporting their senate candidate or their house candidate or their candidate for

governor and romney benefits almost by accident. mainly they're anti-obama. they're not really proromney but the effect may be about the same. but there is a distinction there that could make a difference if romney became president. i don't know that they wouldn't break with him fairly quickly if he didn't go along with their platform. many of the people in the tea party that i've talked to, governor they are solely focused virtually on the debt and on fiscal policy and that is what is motivating them more than anything else. you know, they may not see the big picture on the debt which involves a lot more than simply cutting spending if you're really going to deal with the debt as the commission showed but nonetheless, that's what they're focused on. they can sense and they do sense whether somebody is serious about it or not.

i think they're less convinced that mitt romney is totally serious about it. >> jennifer: well, it is going to be interesting, i just want to dial back for 30 seconds on "new york times" pollster nate silver today gave president obama his largest chance of winning so far. 70%. he's pretty numbers driven. do you agree with that and what does romney's path to victory look like now in the face of that kind of number? >> well, you know, governor, next week on this day i'm turning 60 and nate is about half my age and he's twice as certain about things as i am. you tend -- when you're younger you tend to be much more certain about everything. i'm very uncertain about most things and certainly the field i know best which is politics, all i know is it is early august and you and i both know from -- you're much younger of course but we've been around for awhile and we've seen the tides change pretty dramatically from early

august to november. so you know, i've read nate's stuff. i love nate's stuff. it is interesting. he's got -- >> jennifer: but you're not as confident. >> what's that? >> jennifer: you're not as confident as he is. i was saying you're not as confident. >> i'm definitely not where he is but you know, he could be right. >> jennifer: he could be. larry, thank you so much for joining us as ever inside "the war room." that's larry sab toe from the university of virginia. which republican presidential candidate is telling his financial backers he's selling out to members of his own party? here's a hint. he's married to ann romney. that and much more after the break. guys that always make you laugh. charges come down on

rupert murdoch's phone-hacking scan l.

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>> the wind energy production tax credit is a major priority of mine even with its long-standing bipartisan support. the credit was left on the cutting floor for no apparent reason. >> jennifer: that was iowa republican senator chuck grassley today, a little ticked off at the senate finance committee was considering extending tax credits for business but not the credit for the wind energy business. in iowa, that's important which brings me to my point. i just so detest mitt romney's deception. senator grassley, there is a reason for what happened. your candidate, mitt romney has once again sold his opinion to the highest bidder and this time, it is the oil industry. romney decided that wind energy and the 75,000 american jobs that go with it are expendable. and announced this week he's against that very tax credit, the tax credit getting wind energy off the ground. by the way romney is also

getting really lousy political advice. he's alienating four big wind energy states which, by the way are also key swing states, iowa, senator grassley, pennsylvania, ohio colorado where he was today and today when he was there, he gave lip service to energy independents and he uttered the word -- uttered the word renewables. big deal! it is absolute bunk. his policy eliminating the tax incentive for wind would also eliminate renewable energy jobs. he wants to drill baby, drill right into the koch brothers' wallets but he deceptively hid this fact from the colorado crowd that he is going to kill their wind industry. colorado's home to 5,000 wind energy jobs. major turbine manufacturer ves tass has invested over a billion dollars in colorado. and now they're threatening to

lay off most of their 1700 employees in the tax credit is not extended. romney is bucking the wishes of the voters and three out of four republican congressmen from colorado. all of whom want the state to develop wind and solar. but a couple of recent polls found that over 60% of americans, 60% want to extend tax credits for clean energy. want to create clean energy standards, want to spend yes more government money to develop solar and wind power jobs! but not mitt! he wants to give the oil and gas industry $4 billion in tax credits instead. why? maybe because his campaign has taken $9 million from big oil so far. folks, we cannot drill our way to energy independence. we cannot drill our way to lower gas prices. every expert has made that clear. you have to have an array of

energy sources. but mitt romney does not care about the experts. he cares about the donors. the only thing that romney's energy plan would do is send thousands of american jobs overseas and make us more oil dependent. while the oil barons and speculators get rich off of our public land but romney's plan should do is cost him lots of votes in colorado, iowa, ohio and pennsylvania and every state where they've invested in a clean energy future. they've got thousands of jobs at stake in those states and they have a choice to make. you better believe that mitt romney just made that choice a whole lot easier. >>oh really? >>tax cuts don't create jobs. the golden years as the conservatives call them, we had the highest tax rates, and the highest amount of growth, and the highest amount of jobs. those are facts.

>>"if you ever raise taxes on the rich, you're going to destroy our economy." not true!

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>> jennifer: mitt romney is banking that he's the guy to turn the american economy around and obviously a cornerstone of why he thinks he should be president. here's what he said today on his campaign stop in colorado. >> his policies have not worked. they have not got america back to work again. my policies will work and i know that because they've worked in the past. >> jennifer: back when he was governor in 2004, governor romney defended then president bush's handling of the economy in this way. take a listen. >> an effort by one candidate to somehow say this recession and slowdown in jobs was the result of somehow this president magically being elected people in america just dismiss that as being poppycock so the people of america have to ask do you want to stay with the president who is rebuilding the economy, who

is creating jobs or do you want to stop midstream and find someone new? >> jennifer: i agree with governor romney. it is poppycock. let's not change a president midstream! this video actually emerged today from the liberal super pac american bridge 21st century. it is not your average super pac. instead of bombarding the airwaves with ads he's focusing on opposition research just like that video we just saw digging back into the past, trying to honor things that might be interesting to voters and also today, american bridge launched another thing its g.o.p. young duds campaign to hit back against the so-called young gun challengers supported by the national republican congressional committee. hundreds of pages of opposition research on 30 candidates are now posted online. american bridge is trying to help democrats like utah's jim

mathieson, california's jerry mcnortheasternny and massachusetts's john tierney trying to help them keep their seats. the super pac is putting resources into tracking candidates to record as many speeches as possible. today on the campaign trail in hopes of them saying something damaging. so joining us now from washington, d.c. is the subversive rodell mollineau president of the super pac american bridge 21st century. thank you so much for coming inside "the war room." >> thank you for having me. >> jennifer: you bet. so your -- a massive task documenting hypocrisy in politics. it is a huge undertaking. >> there is a lot of it out there. >> jennifer: is romney your easiest target ever? >> he is the gift that keeps on giving. just because of the flip-flops -- you wait two weeks and he's going to have another position on an issue and we're

going to be there to capture it. >> jennifer: two weeks? 20 minutes man! within a day! it is flip-flopping and you know lies, secrets. what research -- i'm interested about the young duds aspect of what you're doing. what research on the young duds surprised you the most? >> well, i start off by saying that they're actually not all that young. an average age of 55. >> jennifer: they're old people obviously. >> some of the things that truly surprise me is you know, you've got a group of candidates that are always crying about government largesse but many of them have taken government handouts farm subsidies stimulus money through their businesses. they talk about fiscal responsibility some of them have tax liens in the hundreds of thousands of dollars because of poor fiscal mismanagement of their budgets.

you've got people who are opposed to social security and medicare. you've got members of the flat earth society. some of them are zeno phobes and it seems that on the house republican side, the more ignorant and the more venomous that you are and the more unwilling you are to work with the other side, the better chance you have of winning your nomination. that's pretty sad when that's what we're seeing every day as we go through the research. >> jennifer: today i was just watching a debate over the farm bill and the most conservative republicans are begging for the subsidies to keep the bee industry alive. i'm just sayin', we asked the national republican congressional committee their response to your young duds campaign and its spokesman told us in a quote here...

>> jennifer: you accept the challenge? >> uh, no. we're going to continue to do what we're -- to do what we're doing. listen, i'm not sure who the spokesman is. i think some of the republicans will have to hang their head with what some of their house republican candidates say. people like steve king in iowa who compares immigrants to dogs. just some of the things that come out of the mouths of these candidates, some of the blatant hypocrisy, you know, then you have on the other side, some of the candidates who have no real world or policy experience. you know, they want to balance the united states' budget. they can't even balance their own checkbook. so you know, i'll let the nrcc do what they're doing and we'll do what we're doing. >> jennifer: exactly.

hopefully you can say i told you so. well besides opposition research you've got -- following a lot of the candidates to catch their moments on video. i want to share this one that came out today. it shows republican congressman and florida senate candidate connie mack in his district instead of attending a vote. tell us about the program. how many trackers do you have? >> we have about 20 trackers across the country. following senate candidates, house candidates, during the republican presidential primary we had trackers in new hampshire and iowa and south carolina and all of the places that they were going. i think what people believe about trackers is that it is all about the gotcha moment but it is about more than that. it is about finding the inconsistencies and the hypocrisies that kind of come out throughout a campaign. it is about those republican candidates who swing so far to the right in order to appease

their tea party base during the primary and then the day after that primary was over, they tried to forget. it is kind of like what mitt romney's advisor said, the whole etch-a-sketch. we said all of the things. we're going to cut medicare and social security. the day they have to start talking to more independent open-minded voters, they try to change those positions and we think that you know, the american voter has the right to see all of the candidates, not just the part that they want you to see. so we point out the inconsistencies and the flip-flops so that the american people have all of the information they need to make their decisions when they go into the ballot box in november. >> jennifer: it is a service to the american people that you are providing. rodell, thank you so much for joining us inside "the war room" for waging your own battles waging your wars out there on the campaign trail. rodell mollineau president of super pac american bridge 21st century. coming up after the break so you finally got your college

degree? is there time to celebrate or should we be moving straight to the worrying phase? and later one of brett ehrlich's favorite emerges from witness protection. >> newt gingrich is back in the news. hopefully it is only temporary. like food poisoning. don't go away. >> will your next doctor be a robot. gavin newsom probes for answers on "the gavin newsom show." only on current tv.

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jennifer speaks truth to power. >>the bottom line is we need an amendment. >>now it's your turn. connect with "the war room" jennifer granholm. >>it's a call to arms. make your voice heard. >> jerry, we've gotta talk. >> i don't have time right now guys. >> not a good time in you shoot down here all day.

>> jennifer: this recent kfc commercial epitomizes the harsh reality facing many young adults. they're unplom id and -- they're unemployed and living with their parents. 29% of young adults 25 to 34 have moved back home. 29%! have moved back home! the sad truth is this so-called privileged generation actually had the bottom fall out from underneath them. this last month, a report by the national organization young invincibles entitled no end in sight estimated the current state of youth unemployment is the worst that it's been since the great depression. let's break it down. the unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds is 16.5%. more than twice the national average. and even if they do get a job the average wage has fallen 11% for male college graduates and

7.6% for females since 2001. and on top of that, these young adults on average are saddled with $23,000 in student loan debt. i guess reality really does bite but does it have to? joining us from washington, d.c. to discuss the status of youth unemployment and what we can do to fix it is rory o'sullivan, the policy director of young invincibles committed to mobilizing and expanding opportunities for young americans. rory, thank you so much for joining us inside "the war room." >> thanks so much for having me. >> jennifer: you bet. tell us what you are seeing about the youth jobs gap. >> right well we did an analysis and found out that there's 2.7 million jobs missing than there would have been had the economy remained healthy and we never saw the great recession. to give you a sense for the size of that, that's about the same number of people as the size of

chicago. so our generation has been a -- is in a pretty big hole with a long way to climb out. >> jennifer: and does a lot of that -- when you say they're missing the jobs, is it because of the structural changes to the nation's economy? or is it -- meaning that you've seen a lot of jobs move offshore. you've seen technological advances that have eliminated jobs due to productivity or is it just because the recession has caused slower investments slower getting back on track? >> well, unfortunately, both of these things, governor. it turned out that youth jobs were disappearing for almost a decade before the recession began. and that has to do with a lot of those structural changes that you just mentioned. then the recession struck and it really knocked this generation for a loop. so it is a combination of things and that's why we see as you mentioned, the lowest employment rates for 16 to 24-year-olds since we've ever seen since we've been keeping track. >> >> jennifer: before we get to the solutions because i know you've got ideas this

generation is not just weeding through a bleak job market. they're also competing with adults. who have years of experience. how are young adults supposed to get an edge when they're competing against people with experience? >> it is pretty tough. and more so than ever before, getting skills and experience is essential to getting a job in this economy. and young people just by their station in life haven't had the kind of time as older americans to build their education and skills. they have a very tough time finding jobs in the economy right now. >> jennifer: what needs to happen? what would you recommend both on the policy side and on the individual side. both sides have to do something right? >> absolutely. on the individual side, young people need to go to school, get skills and get ready for the 21st century economy. the good thing is that eight out of ten young americans when we ask them responded that yes they thought getting skills and education was more important than their parent's generation. we have that part covered.

young people know it is important. on the policy side the most important thing is that the economy gets moving again. the more jobs that are created the more young people are going to get jobs. there are some specific things that we can do to make things faster and get the generation back to work. one is national service. there were over a half million applications for am americorps last year. the 80,000 positions available. if we were to up the number of positions, we could get a lot of young people back to work pretty quickly. the other big thing has to do with skills. right now, we're missing -- excuse me, there are three million jobs open in the economy. which is a curiously high number considering how many people that are looking for work. the general consensus is that this work force today doesn't have quite the skill that they need to compete in the 21st century. and there is actually a lot of innovative programs out there that can train young people in community colleges and apprenticeships for the kind of

in demand jobs we see that the business are creating. if we were to identify those already successful programs, scale them up, we could make a big dent in youth unemployment now and over the long-term. really get our generation moving again as the economy picks up. >> jennifer: let me start by asking you about the americorps idea. obviously it is a great jobs solution but the house republican budget would slash funding for it so you would have less than the 80,000 out of half a million people applied? some large applied. how do we get congress to expand the programs and can you talk about the cost? what would be your ideal number in terms of a per job or the total amount that would need to be invested in order doing address, really make a dent in youth unemployment. >> to cover those half million positions, it would cost about $6 billion. to give you a sense for the size of that, we spend much more than that every month in afghanistan

right now. so definitely it is a do-able number. >> jennifer: so on the training front, wouldn't you have a recommendation as well for the students who are going into college to take a -- a course of study that is relevant to the vacancies available in the economy right now? >> yes. absolutely. and you know we've been around the country we did a bus tour this spring where we hosted 100 roundtables with groups of young people of all walks of life. one of the things we found is they want to know the information. they want to know the jobs that are out there that are available to them. that are growing. we just need to get the information to them. i'm confident that when we do they'll be able to see the opportunities and take advantage of them. >> jennifer: i totally agree. give people the information about what will end up giving them a job at the end. it may not be the liberal arts kind of stuff. not that it is not for sure but i'm saying you better take the kind of study that will lead you to a job. that's rory o'sullivan, policy

director of young invincibles. up next, fighting fire with fire! brett ehrlich takes on the politically ignorant. this is going to be good! we'll be right back. >>oh really? >>tax cuts don't create jobs. the golden years as the conservatives call them, we had the highest tax rates, and the highest amount of growth, and the highest amount of jobs. those are facts. >>"if you ever raise taxes on the rich, you're going to destroy our economy." not true!

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hands. dishes. surfaces. the lysol no-touch kitchen system: the only all-in-one kitchen soap. try it for yourself. lysol. mission for health. right by those who gave their lives to for this country nearly 70 years ago. >> jennifer: when politicians underperform, thank goodness coach brett ehrlich is there to keep them in line. shh, brett's talking now. >> p and sometimes you wish you were the coach of that game so you could take the idiots who were playing bad and tell them you know what? you're done! [ whistle ] when newt gingrich, you're done. don't fight me on this.

did you or did you not say that bill clinton officially nominated president obama at the national convention would "shrink" obama by comparison? you're not the republican nominee. this is none of your business. if clinton could only nominate your head, maybe he would shrink it down to normal size. the romney's dressage horse rafalca, you're done! getting made fun of by me. your motions are flawless and serene. simple yet simultaneously intricate. you are perfection personified. rafalca, i'm done. making fung of you. sorry. mitt romney, you're done traveling. from now on, only take business trips to do things you're good at like raising money -- okay, so saying you're good at. mitt romney, you're done. >> jennifer: thank you brett. and thank you for joining us here in "the war room." big shout out to patricia vickers of michigan