'This Week' Transcript: Austan Goolsbee

WASHINGTON, June 5, 2011 — -- (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): This week, the recovery hits the brakes. Tough economic news on jobs, on housing, and gridlock in Washington sends jitters through Wall Street.

OBAMA: We still face some tough times. We still face some challenges.

AMANPOUR: Is there any relief in sight? I ask the president's top economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, what to expect.

Republican presidential candidates have their own answers.

ROMNEY: Barack Obama has failed America.

PAWLENTY: President Obama's fluffy rhetoric doesn't fill our gas tanks with gas.

AMANPOUR: In a week filled with political drama, will John Edwards go to jail?

Then, a slaughter in Syria, even children a target. Will the United States call on President Assad to step down?

CLINTON: If he cannot end the violence against his own people, then he needs to get out of the way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Live from the Newseum in Washington, "This Week" with Christiane Amanpour starts right now.

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program. We'll get to the economy in just a moment, but first, some news since your morning papers.

Protesters in Yemen are celebrating today, this after the embattled Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh left for Saudi Arabia to seek medical treatment after being wounded in an attack on his compound on Friday. His regime, now in danger of falling, is a key U.S. ally against Al Qaida, which could take advantage of a leadership vacuum there.

And American and Pakistani officials are increasingly confident that top Al Qaida leader Ilyas Kashmiri was killed in a U.S. drone attack Friday in Pakistan. Pakistani intelligence officials say they provided the key tip-off about his whereabouts. The operation is being seen as a confidence-building measure between the two countries. And we'll have more on the U.S.-Pakistan relations with Diane Sawyer, who's in Afghanistan. We'll have that later in the program.

And this week, just as the race for the Republican nomination shifts into high gear, the economy has dominated the headlines, and it makes for very grim reading. High gas prices, disruptions caused by the earthquake in Japan, and uncertainty about government debt have made the road to recovery a rocky one.

Here's ABC's John Berman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN (voice-over): The American road to recovery, just one month ago speeding along with the strongest private-sector growth in five years, until suddenly...

OBAMA: There are always going to be bumps on the road to recovery.

BERMAN: Bumps on jobs, just 54,000 new jobs added last month, unemployment back up to 9.1 percent; bumps on manufacturing, new factory orders fell to the lowest level in two years; bumps in housing, a double dip in home prices all of the way down to 2002 levels. And if the economy hit a bump, for the White House, something else hit the fan.

PALIN: When you're looking at the extremely high unemployment numbers, still aren't coming down as fast as they should be.

ROMNEY: This is now his economy, and what he has done has failed the American people.

BERMAN: Republican candidate, official and otherwise, smell opportunity.

(on-screen): Why you, why now?

ROMNEY: Well, the president has failed at getting our economy going, and the economy is in my wheelhouse.