I strongly disagree with your decision to cover this story by asking a Republican representative's reactions without equal time given to an elected Democrat's responses, or a White House representative. In this way you have given the final word to a Republican without any recourse to the elected opposition. It is exactly this type of coverage that weights public opinion away from any sort of bipartisan approach to government. The news should not take part in making the story by weighted commentary, unless it is presented as out of story commentary -- such as Shields and Brooks. Otherwise the News Hour is no better than Fox News.

when Kwame Holman in his report Friday said "10 percent of Americans" are looking for a job, he misstated the facts. Even allowing for the discouraged workers' raising the rate to 17 percent, as economists would say, that's 10 or 17 percent of the work force, not all Americans. The work force is variously estimated at between 130,000 and 135,000, so even 17 percent would be much less than 10 percent of all Americans. /carlw/

Shame on Mark Shields for voicing a Republican half-truth about the deficit: :The (US) “deficit is bigger than the national budgets" of most countries. Of course it is. So is our GPD. The half-truth -- which is of course just a clever way to lie -- distorts two nearly universally accepted truths. 1) The national debt (deficit is just the annual contribution to the debt) is always analyzed in comparison with that nation's GDP and is called the debt ratio. The US debt ratio is not out of line with our Western European counterparts or in comparison with the EU or with many other countries. 2) Mainstream, reputable economists believe that it is the appropriate role of government to deficit spend during economic bust cycles. This is in fact what all major ecomnomies did in 2009. I believe, and I image the world believes, that this deficit spending was the right thing to do to ease the suffering caused by the recession. To talk about the deficit or the national debt as an absolute rather than a comparative number is to tell a half-truth. To declare that deficit spending is inappropriate and not describe when it is appropriate is a half-truth. Half-truths are lies. I expected better from Mark Shields than to repeat these lies.