>> who was the editor? >> tom winston. >> said? >> people like to read about people. true then and true today. >> absolutely. if it's way too early, it's "morning joe." stick around, though. chuck is next. who is chuck interviewing today? >> the 2007 st. louis cardinals. >> okay. the cardinals and elton john. straight ahead. >> what? >> yeah. your favorite do-nothing congress is doing something today with a budget deal getting over the finish line this morning. is there any hope for more action in 2014? we will set the agenda. also this morning, an economic forecast with alan greenspan. he says the biggest thing we have to fear is fear itself. plus, scott brown is moving from massachusetts to new hampshire. is it the first step in a move the try to get his old job back in the senate? good morning from washington. it's tuesday, december 17th, 2013.

this is "the daily rundown." i'm still chuck todd. let's get to my first reads of the morning. congress will close out the year with more of a whimper than a roar. it's shaping up to have its least dramatic december during the obama presidency. no late-night health care votes, no fiscal cliff looming. but the calm is hardly a sign of distinction and productivity. as the senate seals the budget deal, the last big vote of the 113th congress at least in this year is congress is leaving a bunch of unfinished business on its 2014 to-do list. live pk you are which is of the senate floor where in just about an hour the senate is expected to advance a two-year budget compromise. final vote could come as early as this evening if republicans agree to speed up the process. otherwise the senate will pass the bill by the end of the day tomorrow. >> although neither side got everything it wanted from this agreement, the legislation should help break a terrible cycle of governing by crisis. >> in a new "washington post"

poll, 50% say they approve of the deal, 35% say they disapprove. majorities of democrats and independents support the bill, but republicans are split. 39% in this approved the deal, 36% disapproved. kind of playing out how you see it on the senate floor. those same divisions. republicans have responded to this deal in one of two ways. if they were against it, they came out against it immediately. if they thought they were for it, they kept their mouth shut until the 11th hour. we're at the 11th hour, so now they'll say they support it or won't filibuster it. in a statement announcing his support, here's what orrin hatch wrote. this agreement isn't everything i hoped it would be or what i would have written but sometimes the answer has to be yes. the reality is that republicans only control one half of one third of government. not an accident that all of a

sudden you see republicans support from this bill come from some of these places except for maine's susan collins. it's come from senators who are not up for election in 2014. among the seven senators who force 2014 primary challenges, four rushed to a oppose it -- enzi, graham, cornyn and roberts. mitch mcconnell's credentials have being defended today in a new ad linking him to the senator from kentucky, rand paul. but mcconnell has declined to say publicly how he'll vote. sources say he plans to vote against it. then there's mississippi's thad cochran who faces a tea party challenge from chris mcdaniel. he's not coming out for or against the agreement but has signaled he may use the military pension cuts in deal as a reason to pose it. he said there is no justification in first turning to those who have served or are serving in the military and asking them to make new sacrifices. today the other senators co-sponsoring a republican amendment to restore the pension cuts, kelly ayotte, lindsey

graham, and roger wicker, will bring military families to the senate to protest the cut. tennessee's lamar alexander told "business week" he is reviewing the bill. hasn't made a decision yet. when the senate closes the books on the budge net the next 36 hours it still has a raft of confirmation votes before christmas including the vote on janet yellin to be the next head of the federal reserve. last night the senate confirmed jeh johnson, the former general counsel for the pentagon. he's now going to be the next secretary of homeland security. overwhelming support, by the way. 78-16. but the senate is leaving a long to-do list for 2014. jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, not part of this budget bill. he wants to do that in january. democrats are expected to advance legislation to raise the minimum wage, $10.10, in coordination with a white house push that the president will kick off in his state of the union. house and senate negotiators have still not worked out a deal on the farm bill. then there's immigration reform, which is stalled in the house. democrats and republicans will

have to strike a deal as soon as mid-february to raise the debt ceiling. then there's the question of whether tax reform can go anywhere. the budget deal done, it's hard to imagine that it would but you never know. the senate puts its final stamp of approval on the budget, it means we are officially done with any real budget negotiations probably until the next president takes office. tax reform is the only budgetary item that even has a chance of being tackled by this president. it's unclear that there is any serious will to get it done. let's be realistic. though we may hear a lot about tax reform, it's likely not something this congress is ready to act on. despite the budget vote, this congress will go down as one of the least active, least effective in american history. congratulations to you. while we've charted its lack of productivity, it's important to put it in perspective. according to go, hav track has passed the lowest percentage in the last 30 years. it amounts to 57 laws on the books since the beginning of the year. before now, the least act of congress in history was 112th,

but they passed 67 laws by this point. that's the last congress. harry truman's notorious do-nothing congress of 1947 and '48 passed more than 1,700 bills through the house. according to vital statistics on congress, a joint effort by brookings and the aei, but the numbers have been sliding ever since p in the late '60s, just about 1,200 bills got through the house. by the end of the '70s, the number was around a thousand. fell to 968 in the 101st. from 1989 to 1990, ten years ago congress passed just 801 bills through the house and the number for the 112th congress was 561. tough to do your job if you are not there. at a time when full-time employees at america work an average of 42 1/2 hours a week, the house and senate was in session for an average of 28 hours a week according to "the new york times." although it doesn't include members, the work they do in the districts while they're not in washington, still says a lot. the u.s. senate spent 99 days casting votes in 2013, the

fewest since the days of the first bush administration more than 20 years ago. it's not just the number of laws that aren't getting passed. the problem is the big things aren't getting done. with the house done for the year, congress has failed to pass a farm bill or immigration reform, just to name two big things. we should note the 113th did accomplish one of the most significant changes in decades when it comes to how the senate does business. that was when harry reid used the nuclear option to change the fill buster rules. by doing so he may have also been ushering in an era of even more gridlock. joining me now, two men who have been kron lg this for the last several years. together they wrote "it's even worse than it looks." and they are here now. all right. that was a lot of statistics, a lot of data. you guys are mr. vital statistics. tom, you guys were quoted as saying if you wrote the book now than two years ago you'd then say it's even worse than it looks part two.

is that right? even worser? >> even worse than we said back then. and, chuck, your numbers are revealing, but the most important thing is that they did destructive things as well. it wasn't just not attending to some of the major priorities of the country. they shut the government down. they threatened a public default. they allowed much of the sequester to happen which took some juice out of the economy when it really needed some help. the best thing they did is what's finishing up this week in the senate. the budget deal. because they followed the important rule first do no harm. >> right. >> they set aside all the talk about we've got to deal with deficits and debt. they undid some of the sequester. >> norm, it's interesting, and

i'll have a conversation later with alan greenspan about this, but one of the things he's been saying is is this government uncertainty has made business act differently. now, republicans want to say, oh, it's all health care. democrats want to say it's -- but the fact of the matter is this collective dysfunction has had an impact on the economy simply by being dysfunctional. forget any policy they've done. >> no question. we've still got the corporations, for example, sitting on a mountain of cash that they have been reluctant to spend. >> because they don't know how to forecast. they'll pay higher rates or do whatever it is. they just want to know what it is. >> i think there's another element of this, too, though. imagine in a private business if you were trying to plan for the next month or year or five years you have no idea what your budget would be, no idea if you would have a budget, that's what government managers have had to deal with. and for all of the areas that affect the economy, from transportation through food safety, we have a similar kind of dysfunction.

the 80th congress not only did 1,700 laws, it did the marshall plan. if you did only one it would be incredible. this minuscule budget deal or the shutdown are the two biggest accomplishments so far, not saying much good about the 113th. >> one of my other wise men of washington, part of this circle of wise people in washington, wise guys sometimes, he thinks now what this budget deal means, tom, is we're not going to have this conversation again or significant conversation and a potential idea for a grand bargain 2018 at the earliest because it will take the next president, whoever it is, democrat or republican. it's just the nature of where we are and the decision the two parties made with this budget deal. >> that's the good news. >> why is that good news? >> well, the bad news is that paul ryan is now, after having done some good with this budget

deal, getting extraneous matters and the possibility of a shutdown off the table. now he's saying well, we haven't decided what we want for a debt ceiling increase. so that's coming up in february. i mean, the whole idea that they would raise that specter of a public default again is terrible. the reason is the deficit is not the problem right now. the deficit has been reduce ld by 50%. >> do you think the debt's the problem? >> no. it's there but it will eventually be a consequence of health care cost increases and the aging of the society. eventually to deal with both of those we're going to have to raise taxes and we're going to have to slow the rate of health care costing -- right now we need to get the economy running to make these other things possible. >> it seems pretty clear, one of the things is that this budget deal has now done is -- we

always hear the term low-hanging fruit when it comes to cuts in government. well, they got the low-hanging fruit the first time with budget control. then it went to one more level, which was sort of the tougher things to do, this touching military pensions, first time they've touched something like that. i'm told there's nothing else, that basically if you want government -- at this oint, if you don't touch entitlements and taxes and you can't to try to cut other parts of the government, you this make the other parts of the government to a point where they don't work. >> what's interesting now is the unemployment insurance. you'll have to fund it. that's something that john boehner has made clear. what they'll probably do is use for the 33rd time revenues from spectrum auctions to do that. but then -- >> eventually we're selling air. >> yeah. >> by the way, i have some air to sell. i have a lot of hot air to sell. like selling radio waves.

>> your point about tax reform is a critical one. democrats wanted tax reform to raise revenues. and they're more than willing to do some things that would be pretty dramatic changes in the tax system. if revenues are off the table, the incentive to do a tax reform becomes that much less. so big things -- stan is probably right. big things are gone for now. what will be interesting is after we get past this primary season in the senate, it's not going to affect mitch mcconnell. he'll still be absolutely paralyzed over the notion that the right will stay at home. >> of all these guys he's the only one that has to worry about november. >> and when he cut a deal ending the shutdown, it was deeply unpopular in kentucky. but the bob corkers of the world who may be hangi ining because lamar alexander or lamar alexander, if they move into problem solving mode, we could see some action. that's the only optimistic note

one could make rugt now. otherwise this budget deal is not a harbinger of a new tidal wave of problem solving. >> on our to do list, what's the most likely thing you think happens and the least likely thing? tax reform you think is the least likely. most likely is what? >> the farm bill has to get done. >> they have to do that. >> the dock fix has to get done. the debt ceiling has to be increased. except for, that i don't see much. >> unemployment insurance? it looks -- it should be a gimme, but it's not. >> minimum wage? >> i think it's very unlikely you'll see minimum wage make it through the house. we may see small progress on immigration reform probably not next year, though, probably not until the next congress. >> tom and norm, worser than it looks? >> worse than it was. >> worse than it was. that's the sequel. then what do we have? return of the worst? >> running for your lives. >> friday the 13th part four. all right. up next, a brownout.

you know what they say, if at first you don't succeed, try moving to another state. well, that's what scott brown may be trying to do. we'll dig into what does this move mean and is he aware that new hampshire politics is a lot different from massachusetts republican politics? and unconstitutional. a judge deals a potentially lethal blow to the surveillance of americans' phone calls. first today's politics planner. if it's tuesday, there's somebody voting somewhere. bradley byrne will become a member of congress this evening most likely barring a bizarre upset. you'll hear various music today from those rock and roll hall of fame inductees. go out with a little peter gabriel. ♪ big time ♪ [ female announcer ] just about anywhere you use sugar, you can use splenda® no calorie sweetener. splenda® lets you experience the joy of sugar

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developing now, we just learned that six american service members were killed this morning in a crash in southern afghanistan. the cause of the crash is still under investigation, but initial reporting indicates there was no enemy activity in the area at the time of the crash. as soon as we get any new developments on this, we will bring them to you. again, we have just lost six american service members in afghanistan. former republican senator scott brown is closing the deal to sell his massachusetts home this week. while we don't typically report real estate transactions on "the daily rundown," we're making an exception because of the political implications of his move. brown is packing up and officially moving to new hampshire, the latest sign that he appears to be preparing to challenge incumbent democratic senator jean shaheen in 2014. he already owns a vacation home in the granite state, has made

public appearances there this fall. he's scheduled to headline the republican holiday party thursday night. shaheen is under new pressure. ending new spending is trying to draft brown to run against her. the group is bankrolling web ads that slam shaheen for supporting the president's health care law. >> on health care, jeanne shaheen didn't tell the truth. >> you can keep your insurance if you like it. lit increase choices for families and promote competition. >> more than 20,000 new hampshire patients have had their coverage canceled. next november, if you like your senator, you can keep her. if row don't, you know what to do. >> a tag line i expect we will hear in other ads throughout 2014. we should men if brown decides to run in new hampshire he'll be trying to accomplish something that hasn't been done in the modern era -- get elected to the senate from two different

states. the last senator to give it a serious shot and get as far as he got was a guy named william brock. he represented tennessee in the u.s. senate for a term in the '70s and later served as chairman of the republican party. he was a member of reagan administration. in '94 he tried a senate rupp in maryland. he got the gop nomination but lost by nearly 20 points to paul sarbanes. kevin landry gan is a veteran political report we are the national telegraph and joins me now. former republican senator bob smith ran a quixotic race for the u.s. senate in florida, didn't really go anywhere in the primaries. he may come back to new hampshire and run. i want to talk about scott brown as republican nominee. one thing i want to -- help me educate viewers on why the new hampshire republican party is not the massachusetts republican party. explain. >> yeah. it's clearly not, chuck, and particularly in a state election rather than a presidential election, the ideological extremes dominate in these

primaries, so very conservative tea party-like republicans have a huge voice in the primaries in 2014. that's why the importance of bob smith is critical here. i'm not sure he can win again in new hampshire statewide but he's proven himself to be a real infighter in primary politics. it's how he first got his house seat back in the 1990s. if scott brown is there and bob smith is there, too, bob smith will try to fillet him like a bay state founder on issues like guns, abortion, gay marriage, all issues that are anathemas to very conservative republicans. >> it's been interesting about scott brown, national republicans are excited about this because they think we can put new hampshire in play in a way that we didn't think we could put in play before. you've heard kelly ayotte's been

positive about scott brown running but almost didn't get the nomination because she was too moderate. won by less than 2,000 votes over lafontaine, who's been sort of a rock conservative there in the state for years. came so close. the vote was split or ayotte wouldn't have gotten the nomination. >> i think one of the reasons why republican establishment folks are excited about at least the prospect of scott brown running is they have a huge hangover. it's not because of too much eggnog. it's really about the last november election where barack obama pasted john mccain here. maggie, the new democrat, replaced john lynch, winning 7 of the last 8 democratic races for governor. the largest swing in legislative seats of any state in the country, republicans lost 3-1

majorities and lost new hampshire house. they're in need of some positive buzz even more than scott brown is. >> has he done the legwork? i mean, i have heard he's not started making the right calls you need to make to certain parts of the republican party, that he's basically done the big things, shown up at some events, but hasn't tone the little things yet. what have you done and heard and seen? >> yeah, chuck. you're absolutely right about that. he's freelancing right now. by that he doesn't have staff or consultants so he doesn't have the folks saying you've got to call this person. don't forget to visit that person. he's made a number of very positive visits. but he hasn't -- certainly hasn't organized a network of supporters yet that could rally behind him and provide him a lot of backup were he to become a u.s. senate candidate. and as we're finding at this party fund-raiser on thursday night, one of the things he is attracting is opposition from

the right. the new hampshire firearms coalition, which is the most militant and probably most effective pro gun owner organization, plans to protest that fund-raiser in nashua thursday night against scott brown because he was the first former republican u.s. senator to support a ban on assault weapons after the newtown tragedy a year ago. >> what's the bigger sin as far as new hampshire republicans are concerned? that he's a moderate or that he's from massachusetts? >> probably that he's from massachusetts. as you know, that's not always the worst thing to be. as mike dukakis, who won new hampshire, john kerry, paul tsongas. but there isn't any question that he's going to have that carpetbagger tag to deal with, particularly in a general election against jeanne shaheen, who as your video pointed out in the opener, she's under some

assault over obamacare. no question about it. but this lady's the gold standard in democratic politics. since she had the killer rolodex for jimmy connor in 1975 she's been a rock star. she lost one election when she committed the venal sin -- she supported a sales tax. and as governor lost the u.s. senate race. six years later she takes out a rising star in new hampshire politics, johnny sue knew, retires him, and now she's in the senate and doesn't look safe but looks very strong. >> kevin, one of the veteran reporters that i have followed for years, knows new hampshire politics inside and out. good to see you. thanks for coming on. >> same here. thanks, chuck. up next in our "databank," who wins an award for most trusted profession in the u.s. hi hint, it's not the members of congress and it isn't us in the media. meanwhile, facing the music. a big day for some of your favorite bands. first today's trivia question.

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we'll get an earful about government surveillance today with a conference. we are owned by comcast. president obama's attempt to improve healthcare.gov is something the white house wants

on the agenda. we'll see how much of it comes up. today's meeting comes a day after a federal judge ruled the nsa's call tracking program is most likely unconstitutional. judge richard leonov the district of columbia, appointed by president bush, departed from a 1979 supreme court decision that said, "people have no expectation of privacy many the records of their phone calls, not the content, but the actual idea that the call itself was made. this is what judge leon wrote. the almost orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone meta data of any telephone user in the united states is unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979. the question is what will the administration do? will they appeal the ruling or announce reforms that render the decision moot? politically you would think they would do the latter. the judge put a stay on this ruling to give the government time to appeal or essentially respond. may not be an appeal, meaning nsa can continue to collect the data in the interim. there are at least three other lawsuits related to this meta

data program that are in progress, and if the white house doesn't act the issue seems likely to make its way to the supreme court. on friday a group the president tasked with reviewing the data collection program issued more than 40 recommendations. the white house says the president will announce which ones he plans to adopt sometime next month. there was an expectation that it would happen this week. but now they want to hold off a little more time. the white house also repeated on monday that the u.s. will not consider granting amnesty to nsa leaker edward snowden. this morning snowden is requesting asylum in an open letter to the brazilian people, a country that has been especially critical of these u.s. surveillance programs. time for "the daily rundown" databank with some newsy numbers for you, including a first for the u.s. navy and the for a famous garage band. the number is 82, the percentage of people in the latest gallup poll who rank nursing as the most trusted profession. they score 12 points higher than any other profession.

54% of police officers are considered trustworthy. then below 50 starts with clergy members. they're at 47%. who is in the bottom half? well, we start with newspaper reporters. they're considered more trustworthy than lawyers and tv reporters. then there are advertisers, state office holders. they rank even lower. car salesmen rapged low, too, but they're not the least trustworthy. in fact, people trust car salesmen more than members of congress and lobbyists. heck of a job, washington. one is the number of female four-star admirals in the u.s. navy. president obama nominated vice admiral michelle howard for a fourth star. the senate confirms her, howard would be the first woman and first african-american to serve as the navy's second in command. negative 27 is the temperature in saranac lake, new york, overnight. the coldest temperature in the country. new york! in madison, wisconsin, it was so icy a boeing 737 slid off the runway into a snowbank.

luckily, nobody was hurt. the so-called alberta clipper is still dutching snow in the northeast. 250 flights have been canceled. ouch. and finally, one. nirvana made it into the rock and roll hall of fame on its first nomination. how about that? tom seaver-esque. they'll be inducted in april along with kiss, peter gabriel, hall and oates, linda ronstadt and cat stevens. a big no for our friend at yes. but don't forget it's sort of like jack morris. you're starting to get a good enough percentage, i think you'll eventually get into the hall. craig biggio knows he'll get there. so will yes. next up, a deep dive into the future of the economy with alan greenspan. this is the quicksilver cash back card from capital one. it's not the "juggle a bunch of rotating categories" card. it's not the "sign up for rewards each quarter" card. it's the no-games, no-messing-'round, no-earning-limit-having, do-i-look-like-i'm-joking, turbo-boosting,

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2014? one of the most powerful financial advisers of all time says we need to rethink some of our basic beliefs if we want a real economic forecast. alan greenspan says he got it wrong. the man nicknamed the maestro admits a flawed philosophy may have contributed to the worst financial crisis since the great depression. >> not since the great depression has the federal government stepped in to help a failing financial institution in this country the way they did over this past weekend. brokering a deal for jpmorgan chase to step in and take over bear stearns. >> in the months after the collapse of bear stearns in 2008, we watched huge financial institutions from aig and washington mutual that simply fell apart. the man who had been a high-level financial adviser since the nixon and ford administrations then served as federal reserve chairman before the collapse was suddenly admitting to a house oversight committee that he'd been working on a mistaken assumption for

decades. >> you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right. it was not working. >> precisely. that's precisely the reason i was shocked because i had been going for 40 years on more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well. >> after spending most of his life studying the intricacies of wall street and the complexities of the global economy, alan greenspan has spent the year since the 2008 financial collapse trying to figure out exactly where things were miscalculated. today dr. greenspan joins me now with some of these answers in his new book "the map and the territory: risk human nature and the future of forecasting." the goal of this book was try to figure out how can we find a better economic forecast, because you believe the models you dealt with and your successors dealt with were just flawed. >> most everybody else dealt with -- >> right. everybody in the community.

what went wrong is there is a fundamental asummings in what we call classic economics, the things that everybody has been dealing with over the years, in that we presumed that the degree to which people act irrationally -- and everybody admits they do that quite a great deal of time -- was random. meaning it didn't matter. it wafshed out and was only rational thinking. >> you didn't believe irrational economic behavior was something you could forecast. is that the fair way -- >> that's the conclusion i came to as a consequence of the assumption, which everyone -- every major forecast implicitly had that assumption. what this book every defrs to do is to demonstrate that that premise is wrong, that is irrational behavior, emotional behavior, is systemic. fear is an extremely dominant force, far more than euphoria

and greed. and when you calculate the implicit numbers underlying those changes you have a whole series of additional human propensities or inbred propepsies which govern human behavior and essentially is covered in the new form of economics which is called behavioral economics. it's a special science which essentially says that the presumption of human beings are acting fully rationally in their own self-interest is false. and that is basically what i've tried to do is to marry the two different forms of economics. >> well, it seems as if, for instance, one of the things that this administration got wrong and some of their fixes was assuming consumer confidence. everything was always -- whether it was the stimulus and the different things that consumer confidence -- the consumers would act in a way to jump-start the economy, that if you gave

them more money they would spend it. for instance, in 2009 they totally missed the idea that, hey, guess what, consumers were actually going to act more conservatively, small c, and pay down their debt and they didn't spend the money on the economy, therefore blowing the forecast of what the stimulus would do. is that right? >> that's right. and in a sense that's what happened in the business community as well, that what the data show is that there's an extraordinary amount of uncertainty that is in the economic environment essentially deriving from the crisis of october, september, the latter part of 2008 and going forward and that those uncertainties have suppressed long-term capital investment. that is all sorts of structures, which historically are recovering from the recession led the way -- housing, factory

buildings, all surged forward. this is the first time in ten recoveries since the end of world war ii that that did not happen. it happened very slightly, very marginally, but not much. >> so this is bringing forward, we've got a couple debates that are taking place that will dominate 2014. one is this issue of the economic inequality. how much of a crisis do you believe this is? >> i think it's quite significant. that if you look at the various technical measures we have of income e ine equality or wealth inequal, they're rising very steadi steadily. they were reasonably stable for a decade or two after the end of world war ii but they've since been moving higher. and the reason for that is looking at the data is there are two seg. s of the population who receive income. there are those who receive it

from wages and salaries and essentially are what we would call either production workers or nonproduction workers. it's a big part of the labor force obviously. there is a significant part of the society which directly or indirectly get their incomes from the value of assets. >> right. >> and look at the data, the value of assets have been going up like that. the value of wait a minutes and salaries has not. >> does government have to step in here and fix this? is this going to be -- when i say government, could be the federal reserve, could be -- but some sort of governmental entity have to help correct -- force a correction? >> i don't think that they can. the basic problem that i see is for reasons i discuss in the book the growth rate of the economy has been very sluggish, say 2% a year. it used to be 3%, 3.5%, 4% or

more. what that has meant is that the income of the average worker has been extraordinarily dampened. >> right. >> and the only way to get that change is to remove this whole aura of uncertainty which, to give you an example, corporate investment as measured by the amount of the investment as a share of the cash flow, the money that's coming in, a year or so ago it was at the lowest level since 1938. it's come back a bit, but it is still very suppressed. it's a level of uncertainty and economic suppression, psychological suppression, we really haven't seen since the '30s. so the question is what do you do about that? >> and is it government that's causing this? is it the dysfunction of washington? >> well, this is where the big political debate is. and i discussed both sides of the debate.

i think it's mostly government which is acting in a manner which is creating uncertainties. and i think the data do show that. but i'm the first to acknowledge that it's a hypothesis, it's not proved nor is the other side proved. and this is where the big debate will continue. what i'm reasonably well convinced about is there's no simple government program which is going to change this. >> alan greenspan. the book is "the map and the territory: trying to make a better economic forecast." you and i trade a lot of maps on politics and political dysfunction, which you deal with also in this book. some people around here know you as simply mr. andrea mitchell. so i always want to say that to you. good to see you. >> i'm delighted. >> you like to have that title. >> i like that title. >> thank you, sir. in all seriousness, the last chapter of the book deals a lot with politics and it's an interesting way that dr. greenspan deals with it.

it is the last chapter. for political junkies, you should read of course the entire book. much more ahead on "the daily rundown." today's high-flying anniversary and my take-away on health care countdown. first, the white house soup of the day. coconut red lentil. i have to stretch this out because it's cat stevens, man. see you. be right back. ♪ oh, baby, baby it's a wild world ♪ and now my journey across the country has brought me to the lovely city of boston. cheers. and seeing as it's such a historic city, i'm sure they'll appreciate that geico's been saving people money for over 75 years. oh... dear, i've dropped my tea into the boston harbor. huhh... i guess this party's over. geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

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some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney problems. if your pill isn't giving you the control you need ask your doctor about non-insulin victoza®. it's covered by most health plans. diarrhea, gas, bloating? yes! one phillips' colon health probiotic cap each day helps defend against these digestive issues... with three strains of good bacteria. [ phillips' lady ] live the regular life. phillips'. daily flashback, it was this day in 1903, folks, when orville and wilbur wright made their first successful airplane flight. it was near kitty hawk, of course. it stayed airborne for 12 seconds. as every president has for the past 50 years, president obama issued a proclamation declaring today wright brothers day. two sitting senators are

former cabinet members. one was lamar alexander, bush 41's secretary of education. mike johans was bush 43's agriculture secretary and he is retiring after one term from nebraska. congratulations to today's winner, our returning champion, michael diamond. send your suggestions to dailyrundown@msnbc.com. shout it out for kiss who took way too long to get into the hall, but they're in. ♪ if you don't feel good, there's a way you could ♪ [ sn] i better take something. [ male announcer ] dayquil cold and flu doesn't treat all that. it doesn't? [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus fights your worst cold symptoms plus has a fast-acting antihistamine. oh, what a relief it is!

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so i got the windows nokia tablet. it's, well, impressive. it's got the brightest hd screen, super-fast 4g lte, so my son can play games and movies almost anywhere, and it's got office for school stuff. but the best part? i got the lumia 928 for my daughter for free, with the best low-light smartphone camera this side of the north pole. dad for the win. mm! mm! mm! ♪ honestly, i want to see you be brave ♪ developing now, live pictures of the senate floor where they're just minutes away from the cloture vote on the budget deal. you will hear things like alexander, alexander aye or nay. it's the start at 10:00 a.m. and will need 60 votes to advance and we'll have debate throughout

the day. today's takeaway, it is all about health care. as healthcare.gov continues to improve technically in seeing more visitors. white house is hoping 2014 is kinder to them than the past four months. the website is now stable and saw 500,000 visitors this weekend alone. later today president obama meets with tech leaders where he wants to bring up the website's progress. of course they want to talk about nsa data collection. just six days left. that's what you need to remember. to sign up for health insurance if you want coverage to start january 1st. the ad wars are starting. according to our friends at kantar media, health insurers in state-run exchanges and the federal government spent $194 million on tv ad buys in local markets between october 1st and november 10th. that's just slightly less than the $216 million spent in all of 2012. according to an analysis that

was done by the trade association tvb, the december pace has begun to pick up with insurance providers now trying to urge consumers to buy their plans. they didn't do it when the website wasn't working so well. they project insurance will spend $500 million on ads on local tv stations in 2014. think about when that will be, probably the first three months of the year. one held off while website kinks were being worked out. they plan to spend $100 million at the end of this year on tv, printing, targeting healthy consumers. one thing to keep in mind on this health insurance. the unintended consequence, while politicians fight over health care, negative ads and all this stuff, the insurance companies are sending a different message. what's that going to mean for the political debate? something to chew on. that's it for this edition of "the daily rundown." coming up next, chris jansing & co. she'll be watching the senate vote but also thinking about smelling like teen spirit in honor of nirvana.

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the first test for the bipartisan budget in the senate about to happen right now. there's patty murray. we'll bring you the vote. even if it passes, the budget does not include an extension of unemployment benefits, and one congressman is making it his mission to make sure the unemployed aren't left out in the cold for the holidays. and massachusetts republican scott brown is packing up his house and moving to new hampshire. does this mean he's set his sights on challenging senator jeanne shaheen? plus their approval ratings are in the toilet. a new poll shows they're less trusted than car salesmen, but just how hard does congress really work? get this, a new survey suggests they're probably working harder than you. do you buy it? good morning, i'm chris jansing. right now the senate is about to take its first vote on the budget deal. 60 votes are needed to move forward. it appears the deal has not only the votes to pass this first hurdle,