Sunday Sound: Heard on 'This Week'

June, 3, 2012— -- Sunday Sound: Heard on This Week

Below are some of the notable comments made Sunday on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." The Powerhouse Roundtable included Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter and Romney campaign senior advisor Eric Fehrnstrom, ABC News' George Will, Democratic strategist and ABC News contributor Donna Brazile, and Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

Stephanie Cutter

1) CUTTER: I think the president said it best on Friday that, you know, we are still in a recovery period. Over the past 27 months, we have created 4.3 million private-sector jobs. The issue is that we're not adding jobs fast enough. If you looked at the report on Friday, the areas where we are doing well are areas that we've been able to affect policy. Manufacturing jobs continue to rise. And that's precisely because the president stepped in and did what nobody else was willing to do to save the auto industry. And that has had a great impact on manufacturing jobs up and down the supply chain. Now, that report also showed areas that are still hurting, particularly teachers and construction workers. And that just shows the wisdom of the president's policies, because we have two very -- two policies sitting on the desk of Congress right now that they could act on to put teachers back to work and put construction workers back to work rebuilding our roads, bridges and highways.

2) CUTTER: On the president working with Republicans, it's been clear since day one that the president was willing to reach out to Republicans, work with them on critical pieces of legislation to get our economy moving. Time and time again, they've rebuffed him. Now, whether you're talking about the secret meeting that they had on the day of the president's inaugural to figure out how they were going to defeat him or Mitch McConnell saying that his number-one goal to make the president a one-term president or bringing the economy to the brink of disaster last summer and resulting in a reduction in the nation's credit rating because Speaker Boehner couldn't get his Republicans together to do - ensure that everybody paid their fair share and ensured this economy could keep moving.

3) CUTTER: The economy is the number-one issue. Women want to see two candidates compete on their visions for the economy, which is what I was getting at before, whether you want to build an economy from the middle out or the top down.

4) Cutter on Romney's Budget Blueprint

CUTTER: The governor has not put out any details on how he is going to achieve that. The details that he has put out, a $5 trillion tax cut for millionaires and billionaires that he's not just telling us how he's going to pay for it, so he's either blowing up the deficit or he's raising taxes on the middle class…… he's going to deregulate Wall Street, which we know how that turns out. We're going to go back to risky financial deals that crashed our economy. And on China, you know, we've been hearing this blustering on China for quite a while now. What exactly is the governor going to do?

5) Confirming Obama's Stance on Syria

CUTTER: Well, we're doing everything possible to isolate that regime, whether it's leading the world to expel Syrian diplomats from our allied countries, you know, tough sanctions on Syria, everything we can to isolate and move the U.N. towards taking action. And, you know, the president is committing to toppling the regime in Syria, but we have to do it in a responsible way that protects our own interests.

Eric Fehrnstrom

6) FEHRNSTROM: Well, I agree with Stephanie, first, that this president is not adding jobs fast enough. And I think for anybody who is urgently waiting for improvement in the economy, last week was not a good week. And it's not just the devastatingly weak jobs report we got on Friday. It was also the revision in GDP downward for the first quarter. It's a drop in consumer confidence. It was an increase in unemployment claims. And it's not that we don't think that this president is trying. I think he is. It's just that his policies are not working.

7) FEHRNSTROM: .. We gave the keys to the largest economy in the world to a person who did not have any prior executive leadership experiences. Governor Romney has led in the private sector. He organized and ran the Winter Olympic Games in 2002. He's run a state successfully. I think that's a big difference between these two...

8) FEHRNSTROM: What we -- what we -- what we really have here is a deficit in leadership. And this president came into office without any prior experience running anything. He never even ran a corner store. And I think it shows in the way that he's handling the economy.

The Roundtable

Weighing in on the Status of the Economy

9) KRUGMAN: The economy is weak. It's not terrible, but it's weak. The bitter irony here has to be for Obama, certainly for people like me, is that if the Republican answer is "let's slash spending, let's have low taxes," that's actually the policy we've been following. It's amazing, actually - especially if you look at the last couple of years.

10) KRUGMAN: Can I say, the Ryan plan - and I guess this is what counts as a personal attack - but it isn't. It's not an attack on the person; it's an attack on the plan. The plan's a fraud. The plan is a big bunch of tax cuts, some specified spending cuts, basically for poor people, and then a huge magic asterisk which is supposed to turn into a deficit reduction plan, but, in fact, if you look what's actually in it, it's a deficit-increasing plan. And so to say that -- just tell the truth that there is really no plan there, neither from Ryan, nor from Governor Romney, is just the truth. That's not - if that's - if that's being harsh and partisan, gosh, then I guess the truth is anti-bipartisanship

11) WILL: With his predictions about what his stimulus would accomplish, what his green jobs programs would accomplish, the president gave a lot of hostages to fortune, and fortune has shot the hostages.

How the Contraception Debate Influences This Election

12) WILL: The question is whether women can get contraception. The question that we've been litigating in public this spring is whether women can get someone else to pay for their contraception no one is talking about blocking access to contraception. You said people are worried about whether the government will intrude in their private lives. No, they're worried about whether the government will intrude into the life of churches, such as the Catholic Church. So these issues tend to explode and damage almost everyone, which is why at the end of the day we're all going to swerve back to the question of who's going to put us to work.

13) WILL: When did -- since when did Planned Parenthood become a synonym for American women?BRAZILE: Because Planned Parenthood proves a broad range of reproductive health services for women, life-saving medicine, mammograms. This is about, of course, testing for diabetes and so many other important programs. That's why the attacks on Planned Parenthood has alarmed so many women in this country.

Edward's "Road to Redemption" after the Trial

14) BRAZILE: Well, if he's listening to God, I hope it humbles him and that he spends as much time as possible being a good dad to all of his kids and a good man. John Edwards was caught up in a series of lies, lies that he could never unravel and lies that perhaps destroyed his family, but clearly destroyed his public reputation. I don't know if there's a road to redemption. I hope so, because I believe in redemption. But I think for now, John Edwards would be wise just to mellow, chill, and just be with his family.

George Will Slams Bloomberg's Planned Soda Ban

15) WILL: Let me read you what Michael Bloomberg said, because in one sentence, he's got the essence of contemporary liberalism, that is something preposterous and something sinister. Listen to this. We're not taking away anyone's right to do things. Could have fooled me. We're simply forcing you to understand. Now, that's modern liberalism, the delight in bossing people around, the kind of irritable gesture that'll have no public...