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Ed Schultz spoke to journalist David Cay Johnston this Friday about what America needs to do to keep adding more jobs to our economy, the importance of continuing the extended unemployment benefits, and the Republicans' refusal to help the problem by passing President Obama's jobs bill.

As Johnston noted, Republicans love to complain about "uncertainty" creating problems with the economy, but par for the course, they're generally the ones causing it.

SCHULTZ: We told you at the top of the show, Republicans are dragging their feet to get a tax cut deal with the American people. Those Republican delays are putting our economic recovery, I think, in some serious neighborhood, dangerous, very dangerous.

But the good news is though, the latest employment numbers came out this morning. The economy added 146,000 jobs in the month of November. The unemployment rate hit a four-year low. It inched down to 7.7 percent.

Here's the bad news. America lost another 7000 manufacturing jobs last month. Overall the job numbers are better than analysts predicted, but republicans refuse to compromise on policies which will bring back even more jobs next year. They are risking our nation's economic recovery. Here's how Speaker John Boehner's explanation today.

BOEHNER: The risk the President wants us to take, increasing tax rates, will hit the many small businesses that produce 60 to 70 percent of the the new jobs in our country. That's the whole issue here.

SCHULTZ: Once again, it's all theory from Boehner. No guarantee on that. But Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi says the problem goes beyond the fiscal cliff debate.

PELOSI: Our economy is moving forward, but it could be growing at a faster rate if the Republican leadership had taken up and passed some of President Obama’s job initiatives including the American Jobs Act and had passed the middle income tax cut.

SCHULTZ: So, let's cut to the chase. One of those Congressional members is lying. Either the Republicans are right on cutting taxes on small businesses will add jobs or the President's stimulus policies are fueling the economic recovery in this country.

Joining me tonight to sort out the facts, David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of "The Fine Print." Let's start with the job growth. Unemployment hit rock bottom near the beginning of the -- under the Bush administration. You can see this right here. This is of course the changing of the color here when President Obama took over in January of '09. Who is responsible for this turn around?

JOHNSTON: Oh, absolutely the President and it would be a better turn around if the Republicans had allowed a bigger stimulus. We would have many, many more jobs if we had had a bigger stimulus.

SCHULTZ: You would make the case we didn't spend enough on the economy?

JOHNSTON: Not only did we not spend enough, but we wasted 40 percent of it on tax cuts for small business, which is inherently savings and not stimulus. It was a real policy mistake.

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Politics is making for some strange bedfellows these days. Keith Olbermann talked to Sen. Bernie Sanders about whether he and Senator Jim DeMint might filibuster the deal made by the White House and Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts.

Sanders, DeMint pledge to filibuster Obama-GOP tax cut deal:

The US Senate's most liberal and most conservative member have both come out strongly against the bipartisan compromise on tax cuts between President Barack Obama and Republicans.

Self-avowed democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Tuesday evening promised he will "do whatever it takes" to prevent passage of the measure, objecting to its temporary two-year extension of tax cuts for the highest income earners, a centerpiece of the Republican agenda.

A fierce opponent of the high-end tax breaks, Sanders appeared on television Tuesday blasting the deal as a "moral outrage." He depicted it a Republican ploy to hold the middle class "hostage" to the demands of millionaires and billionaires.

Sanders' office confirmed to Raw Story that he will filibuster the measure, becoming the first senator to announce such an intention, and will court others to do the same.

Also on Tuesday, after Obama's prime time pitch depicting the bill as a necessary compromise to move forward, arch-conservative Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said he'll also filibuster to the bill, but for different reasons than Sanders. Read on...

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Keith's Special Comment Tuesday was in response to President Obama's deal with Republicans for more tax cuts for the rich, followed by his press conference, where he attacked his base for not being appreciative enough of what he's accomplished.

I'll add some transcript later if they post it. All I can say is I don't think Keith will be getting any invitations to the White House any time soon after this one.

UPDATE: Here's the transcript:

Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the tax compromise.

To paraphrase Churchill, again, let me begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing: "that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road. We should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of American politics and policy have been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being, been pronounced against this Administration: 'thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting'."

In exchange for selling out a principal campaign pledge, and the people to whom and for whom it was made. In exchange for betraying the truth that the idle and corporate rich of this country have gotten unprecedented and wholly indefensible tax cuts for a decade. In exchange for giving the idle and corporate rich of this country two more years in which to accumulate still more, and more vast piles of personal wealth with which they can buy and sell everybody else.

In exchange for extending what he spent the weeks before the mid-terms calling "tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires" to people who have proven, without a scintilla of doubt, without even a fig leaf of phony effort to make it look like they would do otherwise, that they will keep the money for themselves.

In exchange for injecting new vigor into the infantile, moronic, disproved-for-a-decade three-card monte game of an economic theory purveyed by these treacherous and ultimately traitorous Republicans, that tax cuts for the rich will somehow lead to job creation even though if that had ever been true in the slightest the economy would not be where it is today.

In exchange for giving tax cuts for the rich which the nation cannot afford, and extending their vintage through the next election and thus promising at best a reenactment of this whole sorry, amoral, degrading spectacle in the winter of 2012 and at worst a rubber-stamp from a wholly Republican House and Senate and even White House.

In exchange for this searing and transcendent capitulation, the President got just thirteen months of extended benefits for those unemployed less than 100 weeks. And he got nothing absolutely nothing for those unemployed for longer — the 99ers.

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Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders appeared on the Ed Schultz Show and would not rule out a filibuster of the deal just reached between President Obama and Republicans on the extension of the Bush tax cuts. I don't see him necessarily following through on the threat, but he may very well be able to force some more concessions from the Republicans. He manged to get some improvements made to the health care bill by holding out on his support. I imagine we might see a similar scenario take place here.

SCHULTZ: Joining me now is the firebrand Independent, Senator Bernie Sanders. Senator, sketchy details on what they have agreed to. You heard what I said. Is this a deal with the devil financially? What do you think?

SANDERS: I think it is an absolute disaster and an insult to the vast majority of the American people to be talking about giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country, driving up our deficit, and increasing the growing gap between the very rich and everybody else. Millionaires and billionaires do not need huge tax deductions. That`s the simple truth.

And the fact of the matter is, despite Republican rhetoric, if we`re serious about creating jobs in this country, which should be our main priority, that`s one of the worst ways to do it. Much better to take that money, invest in our roads, bridges, railroad systems, infrastructure. You create jobs doing that.

SCHULTZ: Senator, how do you feel about the unemployed in this country being held hostage in these negotiations? Because that`s exactly what it was. We`ve got to call it for what it is. It was a bargaining chip on the table after Americans have played into unemployment insurance.

SANDERS: Ed, this is the issue -- our Republican friends have got to be held accountable. This issue is the insult, the outrage that they want tax breaks for billionaires, but they can`t in their heart come up with extending unemployment compensation so that millions of families in this country will have a modicum of security. That`s an outrage.

I believe politically we can rally the American people around that cause. We`re right. We`re talking about social justice. They`re talking about more tax breaks for billionaires who don`t need it.

SCHULTZ: This is against the will of the American people. All the polling that`s out there, this is against the majority votes in the House, this is against the majority of votes in the Senate. There were 53 votes on the Senate floor on Saturday.

Is President Obama playing with the future of his presidency, in your opinion?

SANDERS: Not only is this bad public policy, driving up the deficit, increasing the growing gap between the rich and everybody else, I think it is bad politics. It`s bad politics in the sense of who is going to believe the president or anybody who votes for this in the future when you campaign for years against Bush`s economic policy and then you say, oh, by the way, that`s what I`m voting for? I`m voting for tax breaks for the rich.

And, by the way, if it turns out in this deal to be two years, you can bet that that`s just the beginning. It will be extended beyond that.

So I think for a Democratic president, Democratic House, Democratic Senate to be following the Bush economic philosophy of tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires is absolutely wrong public policy, absolutely wrong politically. And I have got to tell you, I will do whatever I can to see that 60 votes are not acquired to pass this piece of legislation.

SCHULTZ: Will you filibuster this?

SANDERS: I will do whatever I can on this. This is a very, very bad agreement.

SCHULTZ: So the two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts, the 13 months of unemployment, that`s the reported meat of the deal. You`re telling us tonight that you will do everything you can to stop this deal?

SANDERS: I will.

SCHULTZ: And this, of course, would push it into the next session of the Congress and we would go back to the old right. That`s what you would take right now, Senator?

SANDERS: I believe, Ed, that we have the vast majority of the American people on our side. I think we`ve got to hold tough on this, hold firm on this, and not concede to Republicans, who, as you indicated, have absolutely no inclination for compromise. They want it all for their rich friends.

SCHULTZ: Senator, good to have you with us tonight. Thanks for speaking up.

SANDERS: Thank you.

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The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore thinks that all of those unemployed people out there right now just need to get off of their lazy asses and go find a job despite the fact that, as the other panelists pointed out, there just aren't jobs out there to be found. And in the next breath he was defending extending the Bush tax cuts, claiming that it's going to hurt the "job creators" if those taxes go up.

I guess it was too much to ask of the other panels to have Stephen Moore why unemployment is so high right now and why the economy tanked under George Bush if those tax cuts created jobs. Every time one of these Republicans goes on the air repeating this nonsense, someone needs to be holding up Steve Benen's monthly jobs report chart so the public can see clearly what those Bush tax cuts did to create jobs.

And for more charts and a reminder about what happens to the economy when Democrats are in charge, here's our own Jon Perr's post from back in July -- GOP Leaders Remind Voters the Economy Does Better Under Democrats.

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Rachel Maddow responds to Tom Caller for this (warning, link goes to Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller) Coburn: Our goal is to be less emotional than Rachel Maddow:

Coburn used the example of an MSNBC anchor to make his point: “Look at Rachel Maddow. She comes at me on the basis of emotion. She demonizes me. I don’t want conservatives to win on the basis of emotion. If we lower ourselves to the level they operate on, we hurt ourselves and our arguments.”

As Rachel noted Coburn threatened to block all spending bills in the Senate that aren't paid for:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on Tuesday vowed to block all future spending bills in the Senate that aren’t fully “paid for” with cuts to other spending programs.

Coburn and other Republicans are already blocking a $9 billion bill to extend jobless benefits for 30 days that isn’t offset with other spending cuts. That impasse halted benefits to 200,000 unemployed people this week. Read on..

She went on to list all of the things that Sen. Coburn has had no problem allowing to pass through the Senate without being paid for such as the Bush tax cuts, more wars, the bank bailouts and he also voted against pay-go. Rachel also pointed to his on-going problems in the corruption scandal of John Ensign and the questions now being asked about his rent at the C-Street house.

Rachel Maddow thankfully has done some of the best reporting out there on Tom Coburn and his fellow C-Street members. His response was to call her an overly emotional woman. Nice. About what I'd expect from someone who has no problem using womens' uteruses for political gain.

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March 01, 2010 C-SPAN