Transcript: 'Countdown' (8-12-10)

Olbermann destroy's Gingrich's argument on unemployed insurance being for lazy people:

OLBERMANN: But now, as we mentioned, Republicans have targeted one individual American who`s struggling to make ends meet and held him up as part of the problem. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich writing yesterday, quote, "The extension of unemployment benefits has given people a perverse incentive to stay on unemployment rather than accept a job."

He continued "`The Wall Street Journal` quotes an engineer who admits he turned down more than a dozen offers because the salary would have been less than he made on welfare. This story encapsulates the problem of the long-term unemployed, the depth and length of this recession is at risk of creating a permanent pool of unemployed Americans who get so used to being unproductive that they are willing to accept welfare indefinitely instead of taking a job."

The man who turned down those offers will tell his own side of the story in just a minute and the reasons for turning down a job are not always as simple as Mr. Gingrich is.

"The Journal" interviewed Rick Helliwell about his company`s difficulty finding people, quote, "The jobs require a little more than a high school diploma and fluency in English. They include free accommodation of medical care and starting pay of about $30,000 a year. Mr. Helliwell speculates that Americans might be hesitant to move to Dubai where the jobs are based."

Speculates -- you might add other possible reasons for giving up a job, such as -- saving the country, or because Republicans thought you unfit to work.

This as "The New York Times" reports that yet another Republican politician, South Carolina`s Governor Mark Sanford, has been approved by the Department of Labor to accept stimulus money targeted to expanding that state`s unemployment benefits -- an expansion Governor Sanford once predicted would cause tax increases, but which now appears to have embraced wholeheartedly -- he now appears to have done so -- signing the bill two months ago, expanding those unemployment benefits for his state to the tune of $98 million.

Governor Sanford joining the ranks of other Republican governors who once denounced such stimulus spending before they embraced it, such as Dave Heineman of Nebraska and Georgia`s Sonny Perdue.

But despite the rush of Republicans to embrace the stimulus, most of America seems to have forgotten that it was their party, not President Obama`s, that bailed out Wall Street banks. A new poll finding that more Americans, 47 percent, think President Obama signed the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, into law, only 34 percent know it was actually, shh, President Bush who did it.

And now, as promised, COUNTDOWN exclusive, the man singled out by former Speaker Gingrich, because he in Gingrich`s words, admits he turned down more than a dozen offers because the salary would have been less than he made on welfare, Mike Hatchell joining us from his home in Lumberton, North Carolina, along with his wife, Sara.