President Obama Slams GOP Critics Over Stimulus; Jobs Report Numbers Expected to be Dismal; Michael Phelps Suspended and Loses Kellogg's Sponsorship
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Coming up on top of the hour now, a look at the top stories this morning. The Senate ending debate last night -- late last night without a vote or compromise on the stimulus bill. As the president slammed his GOP critics, he gave some harsh warnings about what would happen if this bill is not passed. The side of the president that has not been seen since the campaign trail. He told his GOP critics, it's time for new strategies.</s>CHETRY: As the president slammed his GOP critics, he gave some harsh warnings about what would happen if this bill is not passed. It's a side of the president that has not been seen since the campaign trail. He told his GOP critics it's time for new strategies.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But what I have also said is don't come to the table with the same old tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis.</s>CHETRY: And for the first time in more than half a century, Toyota forecasting a loss for the fiscal year. The world's number one carmaker says profits will drop by $5 billion. In just the third quarter alone, Toyota's earnings fell 28 percent from last year. This is just a day after the company temporarily stopped production because of decreased demand worldwide. And Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recovering in a New York hospital after she had surgery for pancreatic cancer. This was discovered by doctors last month during a routine screening. It's Ginsburg second battle with cancer. She was treated back in 1999 for colon cancer. Ginsburg is 75 years old and the only female on the high court.</s>CHETRY: Breaking news this morning, the economy expected to hit another new low this morning. The government's key employment report is out. It's coming out in just about 90 minutes, and it could send the unemployment rate to a 7.5 percent, to a rate of 7.5 percent. That would be a 16-year high. Last night on "LARRY KING LIVE," money expert Suze Orman put our current situation in depressing terms, saying that it's starting to look like an old newsreel out there.</s>SUZE ORMAN, FINANCIAL EXPERT: There are some people, they can't find a job. They're trying to do anything and everything in their power to get by. They've lost their home. They've lost their car. They don't have any money in retirement. They don't have a penny and what are they doing? They're doing food stamps. They're in bread lines. Go by the bread lines, Larry. Look at the people that are standing in soup lines, so to speak, bread lines, where they just want food. They're white collar workers in some of those lines. It's absolutely to them like a depression.</s>CHETRY: Well, we bring in now Christine Romans as well as Ali Velshi. Both of them are weighing in this morning on this unfortunate news that we're getting once again for January.</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Suze Orman, it's interesting, she points that out. I keep saying that we went from flat screens to food lines in just a year and that's exactly what happened. The unemployment situation has really turned quickly. The last few months have been really bad. Three or four months in a row, 400 plus job loss. We're going to see maybe 550,000 jobs lost in the month of January. Even as Ali knows, it's very, very rare to see numbers like that. That's a whole lot of jobs and one really troubling thing about the labor market right now is that you're not seeing hiring elsewhere.</s>ROBERTS: Yes.</s>ROMANS: It's scattered places, the government and in health care, engineering, you're seeing some hiring, but for the most part, you're not seeing hiring someplace else, and that's really got people concerned. That's why we have so many people continuing to get jobless claims because they can't get jobs someplace else.</s>ROBERTS: So I guess the big question that everybody has, Ali, and Nouriel Roubini, the noted economist for the Stern --</s>ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: The Doom label (ph).</s>ROBERTS: Dr. Doom.</s>ROMANS: Yes. And he said right.</s>ROBERTS: He talks about a very deep U-shaped depression.</s>VELSHI: Right.</s>ROBERTS: It's just how wide is that "U" at the bottom going to be.</s>VELSHI: Right. Right. If the "U" is a couple of months that we hit the bottom and then we start moving up, the other side of a recession is actually the good side. When it's starting to go up, jobs start getting created hopefully. The issue here as Christine says we're losing more than 500,000 jobs a month for the last few months. Every month a number of people retire and a number of new people come into the workforce and to keep up with that, many economists say you need to create between 100 and 150,000 jobs a year -- we've lost --</s>ROMANS: A month.</s>VELSHI: A month. I'm sorry, a month. We went through 2008 losing 2.6 million jobs. Now take a look at this map. The whole country is being affected. There are some parts of the country, those green states, that's where the unemployment rate is a few points lower than the national average, but even the lowest unemployment rates in the country have moved from the twos into the threes. There's not a lot of job change in a lot of those states from the Canadian border down to Oklahoma and Texas. Oklahoma and Texas have a different benefit. They've got energy production. Texas, in particular, is a growing economy but around the coast and the southeast, very, very serious problems with respect to jobs. It's all across the country. Every state has lost jobs.</s>CHETRY: So, what is the answer as we continue to debate the stimulus in the Senate?</s>ROMANS: Well, this is almost like a punctuation mark for the president and anybody who's trying to push the stimulus because this is telling us exactly what he's been saying for some weeks now, which is at this point a really tough situation. He says, the president says that we could see double-digit unemployment if we don't do what they would like us to do. We know that in the stimulus there are provisions for $25 more for your unemployment check to expand your unemployment benefits. We know that there's provisions to subsidize your COBRA. You know, a lot of people are going to be out of work. This is something that will affect on awful lot of people.</s>ROBERTS: But here's the big debate, tax cuts versus spending...</s>VELSHI: Yes.</s>ROBERTS: ... short term spending versus long-term spending. You're the guru, you wrote the book. Tax cuts, which is best?</s>VELSHI: I like tax cuts. They're a neat idea but in this recession it's so serious and because we don't know how it ends, what happens is individuals and companies who get money may not spend. If the traditional ideas that you get a tax cut the money you save, you spend, you create demand and you create jobs.</s>ROMANS: Right.</s>VELSHI: Right now, people might be too scared to spend.</s>ROBERTS: Yes. People are afraid to spend.</s>VELSHI: And so are companies.</s>ROMANS: And some of them should be, quite frankly. I mean, we had negative savings for so long, people have to build up the cushion again before they can feel confident and the economy doesn't turn around until confidence returns.</s>ROBERTS: An hour and a half now from that big number, we'll be watching before you all morning here. It's the number one story right now on CNN.com, though, this one. The alleged bong hit seen around the world getting lots of hits online. Gold medalist Michael Phelps has now been slapped with a suspension and he's losing a big endorsement. Our Jason Carroll is following the story for us this morning.</s>JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, a lot of interest in this one, John. Phelps is learning a valuable lesson on what happens when a sports hero does not live up to that image. The gold medal winner was dropped by Kellogg's, one of his sponsors, and he's been temporarily suspended from swimming. Phelps has yet to publicly respond to the suspension or the lost sponsorship. For the first time, he did speak out on camera yesterday, talking to a local TV station from his hometown in Baltimore.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Michael Phelps, what were you thinking?</s>MICHAEL PHELPS, OLYMPIC CHAMPION: Obviously not much. And, you know, like I said, a bad judgment and, you know, I can learn from it and try to make my life better than it has been in at best (ph). Like I said, I made mistakes and, you know, I have to live with every mistake that I've learned. I think it's hard to really, you know, to be ready for any of this. You know, to understand anything that's going to happen, I think, it's impossible for anybody to really know the definite answer. But you know, I've actually, I've been able to talk to a lot of people and you know, a lot of people that have been in my shoes in other sports and I've been able to get their perspective and just talk to them a little bit. And I think that's been helpful over the last few days.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Has this made you rethink Rome this summer and maybe London in 2012?</s>PHELPS: You know, like I said, swimming makes me happy. It's been a part of my life for so many years now, and, you know, I just feel it's good to be -- it's good to get back in the water. I'm not going to make any decisions yet, but you know, we'll see what happens. I'm going to do everything I can, you know, in the pool and I'm already back in the water training. Still deciding on a lot of things, but I'm happy to be back in the water, and that's a place where I feel at home and feel comfortable.</s>CARROLL: And John, as you know, this all started over the weekend, when that infamous photo surfaced. It shows Phelps appears to be smoking a bong. USA Swimming has now suspended Phelps from competition for three months and cut his financial support. In a statement they said, "This is not a situation where any anti-doping rule was violated, but we decided to send a strong message to Michael because he disappointed so many people, particularly the hundreds of thousands of USA Swimming member kids who look up to him as a role model and a hero." Kellogg's also very disappointed about this, saying it will not renew its sponsorship deal with Phelps. A spokeswoman saying his behavior was not consistent with the image of the cereal giant. Phelps' three-month suspension would expire in time for him to participate in the next big competition, the world championships in Rome, that's in July. But as you heard there in the interview, not sure if he's going to participate -- John.</s>ROBERTS: I mean, this wasn't about a performance-enhancing issue at all, because obviously marijuana is not a performance enhancer, that was proven back in the 1998 Nagano Olympics when Ross Rebagliati, the snowboarder from Canada, was stripped of his gold medal then it was given back. But it's all about this idea of ethics and morals and, you know, what's right and what's wrong in terms of --</s>CARROLL: It really is and it's also about that image that he puts out there. If you're going to put yourself out there with the image, you know, on a cereal box or whatever the case may be that you're this upstanding, good guy and then you do something that flies in the face of that image, you got to pay the price.</s>CHETRY: Yes. It's also interesting, you don't realize how much the kids look up to him. There's a little 9-year-old in my neighborhood and he said, "I'm going to go to the pool, you know, this winter, the indoor pool, because I want to be like Michael Phelps." He didn't know at the time that this happened.</s>ROBERTS: You know, let's hope (ph) he says, "I want to be like Michael Phelps and before I go to the pool I'm going to blow his</s>CHETRY: Yes, exactly.</s>ROBERTS: You don't want that.</s>CHETRY: No, not that. Well, thanks, Jason. And we're following breaking news this morning as well. President Obama taking on GOP senators over his stimulus bill. The president pulling no punches. We're going to have more on what he said, coming up. Also, a locker room atmosphere at the White House? One of President Bush's former top hands says that President Obama's casual dress code is disrespectful. Why he's weighing in on that right now at ten minutes after the hour.