competitiveness. apple in the last few days -- >> washington journal airs live every morning at 7:00 eastern on c-span. now interviews and political news live on c-span radio's washington today. going to be dealt with. but the senate was the last bastion of resistance that heterosexual to be overcome and what mansfield did with hubert humphrey and everett dirksen and the other senators they won an overwhelming victory for what was probably the most important piece of legislation ever enjaktd, the civiling rights of '64. >> shapiro discusses his book with bernie sanders of vermont this friday at 7:00 p.m. eastern on "after words" here on c-span radio. ♪ this is an economic relief package. because the president's policies have not only failed, they've actually made the economy worse. we were doing policies like

those that we've passed and sent over to the senate be no need for this type of economic relief package. >> i'm just glad for the american people that the drum beat that president obama created across the country, remember public sentiment is everything and the public overwhelmingly supported a payroll tax cut for 160 million americans. the republic overwhelmingly supported that we have unemployment compensation. >> the democratic leader in the house of representatives, congresswoman nancy pelosi and the speaker of the house john boehner in agreement on a payroll tax deal that will be signed into law before the end of this week. welcome to hour one of washington today. i'm steve scully. thanks for joining us. nancy pelosi talking about the president who by the way is in california today, a series of fundraisers four in fact scheduled to raise $8 million for his re-election effort.

one political note a debate scheduled to take place on march 1st before super tuesday has been cancelled. mitt romney and ron paul telling the georgian republican party they will not participate and so because of that plans for that have been scrubbed. meanwhile other news on this thursday. the nigerian man who tried to blow up an international flight near detroit on be. of al qaeda has been sentenced to life in prison without parole. he pled guilty in october at a sentencing hearing today the 25-year-old saying that the bomb in his underwear was a blessed we fond avenge poorly treated muslims worldwide. meanwhile the letter of hezbollah is denying the iranian backed group had anything to do with this week's attack on an israeli diplomat in india as well as a botched plot in thailand or attempted bombing in the soviet republic of georgia. leader suggesting the attacks were too st. paul to be the work of hezbollah. israel has accused iran of being behind the plot.

and in politics mitt romney campaigning today in michigan, receiving the endorsement of the governor and also rick santorum campaigning, the michigan primary is less than two weeks way. coming on the same day arizona will hold a primary. let's begin with our lead story which is this agreement as the hill newspaper reports congressional negotiators signing off on a sweeping package to extend the payroll tax cut along with emergency unemployment benefits and the medicare reimbursement rate. it potentially paves the way for both chambers to consider the measure tomorrow. members of the conference committee tasked with dealing with issues cast the agreement as a bipartisan achievement in a congress that has been known for gridlock. so let's show you how the story played out beginning with this statement from democratic senator chuck schumer of new york. >> we all know how the senate works. and i want goes without saying that this deal will not pass unless leader mcconnell gives it his blessing. even if he won't vote for it himself he needs to allow enough

of his members to support it so it can pass. but a strange dynamic is going on here. you have a situation where for once house republicans are negotiating a responsible package and standing by it. the senate republican leadership is linking arms with the far right. it's usually speaker boehner who gets dragged along by the tea party but this time it looks like it may be the senate republican leadership. i don't get how one senate republican conferree would sign a deal, negotiated by their own party and endorsed by speaker boehner. everyone remembers how senator mcconnell negotiate ad bipartisan deal two months ago only to be abandoned by speaker boehner who said he never signed off on it. just like no one believed it in december when the speaker said he never signed off on leader mcconnell's deal, no one

believes the senate republicans now when they say dave camp and the speakers struck this deal without their input. by the way, at a press conference today speaker boehner said that senator mcconnell had been consulted. so there appears to be strange divisions emerging between the house and senate republicans these days. earlier this week there was a story in the capitol hill newspaper with the headline, "mcconnell staying at arm's length from boehner." just today there was a story about how the senate republicans are angry at their house counterparts for hurting their chances of gaining control of the senate. well, this agreement that helps middle class families, senior citizens, and those who have been looking for work is too important to be jeopardized by political rivalries between republicans in the house and republicans in the senate.

>> that was earlier today. as you heard, the new york senator saying that speaker boehner announcing an agreement that was worked out over the last four or five days. now speaker boehner 78 days ago said that lawmakers could take it to the bank the fact that the payroll tax extension would be paid for. that resolve of course fizzled yesterday when he agreed to support a deal that would add about $100 billion to the budget deficit, in the time between those statements speaker boehner and republicans faced attacks from the president as well as congressional democrats about the impasse over extending the tax break that does benefit 160 million americans. house republicans were blamed back in december for almost allowing the tax cuts to lapse after rejecting a deal that was brokered by their senate counterparts. this is likely to come to the floor tomorrow. as we heard from the president and democrats they want to make sure they can take to it the bank the fact that this agreement will hold. we're hearing from some who say

they will not support the agreement including a democrat from west virginia saying he opposes the plan and from senator, congressman james lancasterford a republican from oklahoma says he'll oppose the plan. the congressional leadership, democrats and republicans moving ahead with this payroll tax extension that will continue through the end of this year. here's speaker of the house john boehner this morning at his thursday news conference. >> last fall i said that the only reason we're even talking about a payroll tax break or an extension of unemployment benefits is because the president's economic policies had failed. i still believe that to be the case today. the agreement that's been reached to staff a tax hike on middle class americans is a fair agreement and one that i support. i'm going to thank chairman camp and all of our conferrees for all the work and effort they've been put into this bill. but let's be honest. this is an economic relief

package. not a bill that's going to grow the economy and create jobs. tomorrow is the third anniversary of the president's stimulus bill. and yet another reminder that we need to change course and focus on pro growth economic policies and the types of bills that for months republicans have been passing over to the united states senate. in december the white house famously said that extending the payroll tax cut was the last must do item on the president's agenda. according to the white house when he signs this bill he's finished. if you haven't noticed the president checked out last labor day. and has been unengaged in leading our country ever since. it's been a one nonstop campaign trip after another. so he can campaign all he wants but the republicans are going to stay focused on jobs and the

types of pro growth policies that will help small businesses grow and put americans back to work. listen, you all know we passed nearly 30 jobs bills, all passed with bipartisan support. sitting in the united states senate awaiting action. if we really want to get our economy going again and put americans back to work and have no need for an economic relief package, the president ought to be pushing the democrats in the senate to move these bills. because many of them will pass with bipartisan support in the united states senate as well. listen, we've made it clear that we want network with the president on jobs. to help move our country forward. and unfortunately the white house has made clear that the president is finished with governing for the balance of his term. so we're not putting policies that not only help the economy but they've made it worse. unemployment is above 8% for three straight years.

gas prices have more than doubled since the president took office. the national debt now tops $15.3 trillion. but where is his vision for,000 repair all of this? he could have outlined it in his budget submission this week. yet the president did nothing more than just kick the can down the road once again. >> the comments of the speaker of the house john boehner at his thursday morning news conference and joining us live on capitol hill with some perspective on all of this is meredith shiner. she's following the story for roll call. we've been through this before a compromise reached by congressional republicans and yet some of the rank-and-file saying we're not going support this. will this payroll extension package pass tomorrow the >> we've been here before multiple times. it's a good question. you have to ask it in two fold. you asked about conservative republicans in the house but i think one of the more interesting questions is also about democrats in which democrats will support this

bill. i think there were documents that were being circulated by the house ways and mean committee today to republican members basically highlighting all of the republican wins in this bill, whether it was cuts to the president's health care law, using federal worker pensions to pay for an extension of unemployment benefits and a reduction in the number of weeks of unemployment benefits are available. a lot of republicans are actually pleased and supportive of this bill. what you've seen more publicly at least to date is the traction from democrats, house minority whip steny hoyer said he won't vote for this. you have senators from virginia and maryland particularly where federal workers are obviously highly concentrated. it's been a long day. who are opposing this bill because they don't think it's right to cut federal workers pensions in order to pay for an

extension of european employment insurance which as recently as two years ago did not have to be offset. so the simple question or answer to your question now that i've meandered. i think it will pass. many republicans will vote in favor for it. senate democrats had a press conference to pressure senate republicans to get on board to make sure there's enough votes because they acknowledge they will lose senator warner who has come out of this bill. they are calculating a number of others might fall off before the final votes are held but i think that everyone wants to wrap up work and get on planes and go home for president's day recess and you'll probably see that happen. >> let me tread you this news reasons from senator mansion's office. he says quote for the life of me i cannot imagine why our elected leaders from both sides of the aisle are continuing to play political football with our spending, our debt and our children's future. i did come here to put the next

generation into more debt, i came here to get them out it. i mean that seems to be the sentiment. this is a democrat from west virginia, conservative democrat, former governor. he's in his own tough re-election battle in the past and yet he along with senator warner as you just indicated saying they are not going to go along with this. >> there's an intent -- there's a tension within the democratic party. today they had a caucus lunch, first time the full democratic caucus was going to be able to vet their frustration about this deal to leaders who had shaped it. and you had the senators from maryland, including carter who is a conferree stay tuned and give an impassioned speech what they believe is a systemic and sustained policy against federal workers and then you had other senators who stood up and said yes obviously we don't want to affect middle class americans or federal workers but we are continuing to add to our debt and build on our deficits and

this affects our children and our grandchildren and in that exact moment when you had these two groups of democrats who are frustrated over this deal for two very separate reasons, it reveals the conversation that we've been having on capitol hill all year. whether or not, you know, stimulative policies that the president has put forward or some democrats and house democrats have advocate even if they add to the deficit will in the long term reduce the deficit. and whether or not there needs to be more spending cuts. and this is the debate that we've seen since the shutdown last april. we saw it again in august. it's something you'll continue to see to the election because republicans and democrats alike are trying to paint a picture of what the government should do and should be and so you're seeing that now on a small scale on this deal that many people thought would go through no matter what. but you'll see it on a larger scale as we continue to go

through 2012. >> when speaker boehner took over and the republicans one of their pledges was the three day trouble allow the public to look at legislation before members of congress voted on that. this agreement was worked out today, at last count i figured tomorrow is just one day not three days if my math is correct so what happened to that rule? >> counting is so hard for lawmakers. here's the thing. there had been a deadline of midnight yesterday because if they had technically got it in on wednesday they could have counted wednesday as a day, thursday and voted on friday. there's a lot of conversation that people just want to go home and they will waive the rule because the great thing about house rules is that there's a lot of them but they can be waived by the rules committee. you'll see that happen because everybody want goss home. it's the great open secret about capitol hill is that when the recess come senators, congressman like to talk to their constituents particularly in an election year. they don't want that get cut

into because of a rule easily waived. >> what's in this compromise. what does it mean to those people out of work, for doctors and for the 160 million americans who pay social security taxes? >> there are three main pieces to this bill. the payroll tax cut extension which was the number one priority of the white house since last august when they unrolled their jobs bill. that piece was basically the most supportive piece of all and it went through because house republicans said earlier this week and late last week that they would consider moving forward with that provision without offsetting it. that was one of the biggest complications to finding a deal in december was that they had to find $160 billion for the whole package, house republicans took 100 billion off the table. that's one piece. so people who get their paychecks will not see more money taken away from those paychecks because this tax cut

won't lapse. second part is unemployment benefits. there have been changes, there have been reductions in the number of weeks of eligibility. basically with federal jobless benefits, the eligibility that states have is based on their unemployment rate at the time and also over the course of the past three years. and there's something called extended benefits which had been passed to give an extra 20 weeks of coverage. those extended benefits are going to expire over the next few months so that's 20 weeks that people won't see. so where the top number used to be 99, you'll see that number for the most or the hardest hit states in terms of employment you'll see that number drop from 99 to 73. and it's a difference in at least 20 weeks at most brackets. the last part is doctor's payments. many years ago when they were trying to balance the budget, they had something called the doc fix. they took away payments in the

future because they could count that as sort of their accounting and so every year since congress has pass ad bill to make sure that there are no gaps in payments to medicare doctors and so that too has been passed for the next ten months. >> finally walk us through what will happen tomorrow in both house to and senate. what do you expect? >> i expect the house move first. both chambers say the house will vote on their package first. they will send to it the senate. it will have a lot of republican votes and you'll see split democrats because there are still democrats who are not pleased how this deal broke down. then go the senate and i imagine it will get at least probably around 70 votes and there will be certainly republicans who will have to get behind it because there's going to be some loss in the democratic caucus where people don't agree with the deal for various reasons like we've talked about earlier. >> the president who is returning from his west coast trip he's in los angeles and washington state back at the white house late tomorrow so one

would expect he could sign it into the weekend. >> yeah. he certainly would although probably don't expect a signing ceremony because we don't want to show off that congress got something done when they were asked to. >> meredith shiner of roll call thanks so much for joining us live on capitol hill. >> thanks for having me of. >> let's turn our attention to another issue the solengra loan guarantee. one critic is senator upton. he's been among the toughest critics of the president's plan that provided loan guarantee to the company that's now bankrupt, a company that made solar panels. congressman upton will be our guest on sunday at 10:00 a.m. eastern time. secretary steven chu testified on capitol hill about the energy department budget but getting some tough questions about the solendra program. >> whether it's a republican

administration or a democrat administration there have been a number of embarrassing moments where winners and losers have been selected on the basis of not doing basic research, which i think is a function of government, but in transferring that research to a specific industry, specific company. and it's embarrassing to you, it's embarrassing to the president, it's embarrassing to congress, it's embarrassing in the way in which money is allocated. talk a little bit about how we can avoid -- and the problem is that the political gets involved. and then there are headlines and there's allegations of crony capitalism and favoring one company over another for political reasons, accompanied with well maybe this is the, you know, maybe this is the future

and we ought to invest this money. i know your department has taken some second looks at some of the proposed loan guarantees and one of those is a letter we sent to you and i thank you for doing that second look, that due diligence which resulted in a different decision, saving potentially the taxpayer well over half a billion dollars. so i thank you for that. can you talk a little bit about what i'm suggesting here and that is to things the due diligence needed to take second looks at what programs are currently being evaluated, and secondly the whole concept of, you know, should the government be involved -- i think larry

summers said government takes it. can you address the roll of government being involved in basic research as opposed to selecting specific companies to develop a particular product when we don't run into as i said whether it's republican or democratic administration continue to run into embarrassing situations on the taxpayers' dime? >> well, first senator, let me say i'm very glad to hear you are very supportive of research and development, that is a proper role for the government because in many instances not all the investments in research and development are captured by the company that makes that investment and because of that not only this country but countries all over the world feel that it is a government's responsibility to help with the competitiveness of the businesses in their home countries to continue research and development. as you go more towards

deployment, that becomes increasingly a larger responsibility to really the responsibility of the private-sector to decide what they want to invest in. but having said that, there have been policies in the united states that go back a century or more that do help beginning industries start off. and this has been part of the tradition, if you think about going back again, about 100 years and the beginning of the oil industry in the united states, there were incentives to help early investments in developing this, that are continuing but certainly those incentives were there to spur new technologies. there are incentives, there were incentives in the airplane industry, lots of things in how

to help the semiconductor industry. but in the last analysis i think the most effective programs are ones which can guide and stimulate private investment. you know, senators bingham and murkowski are supportive of a seeded loan program, but in addition to that there are other things that we can do which can actually, again, just help guide those investment choices. mostly what we want to do, in my opinion, what we would like to do is find the investment choices that can really stimulate high technology manufacturing in the united states. there's no reason why we cannot be competitive with any country in the world. germany remains competitive in high technology manufacturing. i believe they have higher labor costs than we do and so -- and

we're at least as innovative and inventive as any country in the world. i would say more so. so -- >> my only response would be i think the market makes a better decision-making process than the government based on, based on the record and it's not the taxpayers' money at stake it's the stock holders' money at stake with the winners and the losers and i just personally think that's the way it ought to be and secondly historical comparison might not work now because we weren't drowning in debt when those loans were made. today we're drowning in debt. and we just can't keep going and having headlines that half a billion or a billion dollars are lost again to the taxpayer. my time is more than expired mr. chairman, tharnk you. >> senator coats questioning steven chu about the president's budget and energy department budget.

as we've been hearing all week other topics coming up including the solengra loan guarantee. the u.s. debt is growing now at more than $15 trillion. it is, by the way the largest in the world. and so we want to take a look back at how we reached this point and in 2009 shortly after taking the oath of office the president delivering a speech before a joint session of congress had this to say about the debt and the deficit from february 2009. >> yesterday i held a fiscal summit where i pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office. my administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. as you can imagine this is a process that will take some time but we've already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade. [ applause ] in this budget. [ applause ] >> the president's comments

before a joint session of congress in february 2009, of course now as we enter the fourth year of the obama presidency and the growing debt and deficit it's one of the issues republicans will use in this 2012 campaign. we asked you this week whether or not you think washington is paying enough attention to the deficit and the overall debt. here's what some of you had to say. >> yes, my name is suzanna and i live in burke, virginia and do i not think that congress is paying enough attention to the deficit. i don't want this country to be the next greece or italy and i'm concerned that that's is going happen in my lifetime. we need to get our fiscal house in order. thank you. >> hi. i'm a democrat from washington state. i don't think they are paying enough attention to the federal deficit. i think that we need to make any cuts necessary to get the deficit down. it needs be our number one priority.

i can't imagine why they continue spending the way they do and i want will take sacrifices on the government's part and on the people's part to get our deficit down to sustainable level. so i hope that washington can do that. thanks. >> hey, i think, yes, we are paying a lot of attention to the federal deficit but the republicans in congress especially the tea party section refuses to give on what virtually all the economists out there say we have to do and that is to raise revenue. they are absolutely against raising one penny of revenue, all of their presidential candidates, all republican presidential candidates unanimously refuse when asked if they would accept $1 in debt for

$10 in additional -- $1 in spending cuts for additional revenue in $10 spending cuts. they unanimously rejected that deal and i think they are the problem. thank you. >> just some of your calls on the debt and the deficit is washington paying enough attention to this issue. our phone lines are open at c-span radio's listener feedback line. here's the number 202-626-7962. we'll use more of your comments tomorrow on the friday edition of washington today. give us call and whether you think washington is paying enough attention to the overall debt in the year to year deficits that we're facing in this country. the phone number is 202 hfr 726-79962. you're listen to washington today. >> more washington today in a moment but first some other news on wall street the dow gained 123 closing at