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welcome back to "morning joe." now it's time to talk about what we learned today. >> our good friend wendy harvey, we wanted to congratulate her. one year of good health and keep it that way. >> she was diagnosed a year ago. >> yes. >> and see has been fighting but doing great. >> now the cartel, great movie. eight cities? >> that's right. eight cities opening weekend this friday. what i learned today is you have a room that looks like a starbucks but it's not a real starbucks. no music, no starbucks feel. >> look at him. >> by the way, waiting for superman also another great film. a lot of great films out on this topic. what did you learn today, mr. halperin. >> i need to ask you for frequently for app recommendations for the ipad. >> outstanding. >> reuters has one of the best apps so far. i'm waiting for the "new york

times," they've got a chopped up app. give us the whole newspaper. >> i learned it's official we're going with the sunday morning show live from the white house 8:00 in the morning on sunday. we'll be live after the white house correspondents dinner. do we all have to be there. >> phil griffin is here. thanks for apple tv. phenomenal. if it's way too early, what time is it? >> it's "morning joe." time "the daily rundown" chuck and savannah. >> it's just politics. raw bair knuckle politics. the kind of stuff that americans are so sick of it, they want to throw up. >> ah, politics. but whose fault is it? the first wall street reform test vote goes down to defeat. and washington's other favorite ritual, corporate honchos from goldman sachs called to the carpet on capitol hill today. good morning. it's april 27th, 2010. i'm savannah guthrie. chuck is traveling with the president to the midwest. we'll be back tomorrow.

at the top for us that, made for washington hearing, and it is expected to be a heated one for goldman sachs on capitol hill today. in just an hour from now, seven current and former executives from the wall street giant goldman sachs will come before a senate panel anxious to assign some blame for the financial crisis. let's get to nbc's kelly o'donnell on the hill for thus morning. okay, kelly. what can we expect? >> this will build like any good drama with three different panels where they break up these seven witnesses building toward the current chief executive officer lloyd blankfein there to answer perhaps the toughest questions. a lot of what we'll hear about today will deal with the product of an 18-month investigation by a senate committee that is headed by carl levin, democrat of michigan. they have been pouring over documents, examined e-mail. they've looked at all kinds of evidence that they say shows that goldman sachs a premiere banking and investment firm, really engaged in practices that

amount to selling a security and then betting on that security to fail. and misleading clients. of course, goldman sachs says it did not do anything wrong. it followed appropriate practices, but would in fact agree that maybe it needed to be a little clearer about some the things it has done. that sort of sets the outline. but one of the things that makes this all interesting is when you get to look at e-mail from inside the company talking about some of the things that might get them into trouble and there's one particular former employee who is being talked about, actually, i believe he's still currently there, fabrice tourre heads a london office. there were e-mails that the committee uncovered that dealt with some of his communication, personal stuff he wrote but on company e-mail. it goes like this. remember his first name is fabrice. when he refers to himself as the fabulous fab standing in the middle of all these complex highly leveraged exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all the implications of these

monstrosities. . that kind of a comment where he seems to imply that there is some sort of misleading nature to this and he seemed to have kind of fun with that. now, that's e-mail from awhile ago. he'll be asked to answer for that. he's one of the employees named by the s.e.c. in some separate civil charges. so expect heavy-duty politics today. a lot of defensiveness perhaps from goldman sachs based on what we've read what they're planning to say and it should be an exciting back and forth about an issue that's got a lot of people around the country quite angry. >> a lot of e-mails. that's one of them. it always comes back to bite people. kelly o'donnell on capitol hill for us, thank you. politicians on both sides think the gold man story is giving gas to the fight for wall street reform. so what happened last night on the hill? the first vote to poof debate forward failed. now the blame game. >> the only thing republicans stand for is standing together. >> the days of taking the democrats' word for it are over.

>> cnbc's chief washington correspondent john harwood joins us now. what happened in the democrats scheduled this vote knowing well it would fail. now what happens? >> part of the point was to get that statement from harry reid and the headlines we see in the newspapers this morning, republicans block wall street reform. democrats love that. that's why they're not eager to make compromises. here's why i think there is going to be a deal. there will be another test vote. i don't know if the first next test vote will succeed or the one after that or the one after that. but the reason is, there are three big issues outstanding. one is how you pay for this winddown fund. do you raise the money before or after a firm fails. do you make big banks give up their derivatives deck, some of these complicated instruments kelly o'donnell was talking about and the senate bill would require them to give up those debts, sell off those items. the third thing is consumer protection.

on two of those, the administration agrees with industry and republicans. they're not in favor that have senate provision on districts desk. they're not in favor of advance funding. there's certainly the groundwork for a deal there. >> i know aides think there will abe deal. in the meantime they're going to vote and vote to keep the pressure on. thanks. in arizona, the battle over that new immigration law is only getting hotter. civil rights leaders are spearhead ageighth straight day of protests against that law. demonstrators used refried beans to paint swastikas on windows of the state capitol. opponents are circulating a petition to put the measure to a public vote and urging the white house to step in, too. there are also calls for other states to stop doing business in arizona. the governor of that state says a boycott 0 would not have the impact some people might think. big numbers out this morning from the ford motor company. they posted a $2.1 billion first

quarter profit. a sign that the troubled auto industry might be rebounding. cnbc's phil lebeau covers the car industry for us. what a difference a year makes. it seems like everybody was writing off the american car industry a year ago and now we're hearing about profits? >> exactly. in fact, this is the biggest quarterly profit from ford in six years. you have to go back tock 2004 to find four consecutive quarters where ford earn aid profit. that's what it's done with a profitable first quarter coming in earning 46 cents a share, well above what wall street was expecting. wall street was expecting 31 cents a share. how did ford do it? essentially this is a company getting better sales, greater sales. when i mean better celts, we're talking about them being able to charge more per vehicle because people are willing to pay for things like sync, for other content added into the vehicle. so the profit margin per vehicle is increasing at ford. that's the reason why the

company made $1.2 billion in north america. you compare that with a year ago, that's almost $2 billion better. clearly big news from ford and expected to be solidly profitable for the remainder of the year. >> real quickly, phil, i can't but imagine that toyota's troubles have to factor into this. toyota's loss is ford's gain? >> absolutely. i think there's no doubt that the problems with toyota at least brought people into ford show rooms to look at vehicles. the research has shown for all the american automakers, once you get people into the show room, you've got a good chance of closing the sale. >> phil lebeau, thank you so much. off the coast of louisiana, that massive oil spill may reach land by saturday and crews are working around the clock to stop that. nbc's ron mott is in new orleans this morning. ron, what are they doing to try to stem the tide of this massive oil spill? >> reporter: hey there good morning. you can see the agitated lake

pontchartrain behind me. officials off the gulf trying to scoop up all that oil have their work cut out for them today. probably are dealing with six to seven-foot swells down there. they're trying to shut off a valve on the seafloor, 5,000 feet below the surface of the water. they're using remote-controlled submersibles. they can't get the valve shut off, we're perhaps looking at months before they can plug the oil leak. the plan b is to drill a second hole, relief well, where they will go down 18,000 feet into that oil seam to try to then draw that oil out of the second hole to releave the pressure on hole that's leaking right now. so it's a delicate process. it's a time consuming process. today is a big day. they hope to have answers whether they can get that valve shut off today. >> ron mott in new orleans for thus morning. thank you, ron. next door in mississippi, it's cleanup time. residents there are trying to get back to normal after this weekend's record-breaking tornadoes. jim cantore is in mississippi this morning. what's the situation there?

>> reporter: it's cleanup and continued the cleanup. there's a lot of homes in this kind of shape here. maybe 150 to 130 as estimated by the county. chaets just chock at all county alone. there are as many as 600 to 700 statewide in this type of shape. this one will be bulldozed a little bit later on this afternoon and we've been talking to the homeowner ethyl rogers saying insurance won't cover all i've had in there. this is a northern community in mississip mississippi. this is timber country. they're continuing to take matters into their own hands. the president talked to the governor yesterday expressing his concern. i don't know if that point governor barbour asked for assistance. a lot of volunteers with the big equipment they use in timber are going to remove all this pushed right off the slab that's existing here and they're going to take that pile, put it in a truck, take it away.

ethylrogers is eventually going to start over. this is a long, hard arduous process. seeing this bulldozer take the rest of this down is going to be very tough on her later this afternoon. back to you. >> we can only imagine. jim cantore in the middle of it. overwhelm og look at the pictures and the cleanup ahead. coming up, the fight to find a fix for wall street. republicans say "let's make a deal" and not vote until we do, but democrats argue they are just playing politics. coming up next, we're going to get both sides of the debate from democratic senator jack reed and republican senator kay bailey hutchison. plus a new twist in the lost iphone caper. why did police just raid the home of the blogger who exposed details of the top secret pro prototy prototype? first a look ahead at the president's schedule. he heads on the road today to the midwest. at 9:45 this morning, some remarks on financial reform and the debt crisis in this country. you're watching "the daily rundown" on msnbc. [ male announcer ] let's take the garden into our own hands.

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well, senate democrats may call tore another vote on wall street reform as early as today. all to keep the pressure on republicans, and that pressure may build with goldman sachs execs being grilled a few rooms away today. rhode island senator jack reed is a senior member of the banging committee and joins me now. good morning. >> good morning. >> so what's the story with these votes? when do you expect the next vote to happen? if you know you don't have enough to get it through, why continue having these votes until you've got a deal and can go forward. some might look at this and say here the democrats are holding

these votes to make republicans look like obstructionists. >> i don't think we have to do that. we just have to point out the record. we started deliberations on this bill last november. and we stopped to allow senator shelby and our republican colleagues to work together. senator dodd's been doing that. we had a markup on the committee a few weeks ago. we're ready to go to the bill. this vote is not on passage of the bill. this vote is simply to take it up and start debating openly amendments to change the bill. >> that's true. but senator, under the procedures in the senate, isn't it true that if you go and try to change the bill that way via the amendment process, it's much harder for republicans to make any changes to this bill? i mean wouldn't you agree as a matter of strategy, it's better for them to try to force the concessions they want now? because once you're on the floor, it's very easy to vote down amendments. >> well, it depends on the amendment. there are amendments that i think are going to draw

bipartisan support. others might be advanced by democrat taz won't get sufficient votes but the way you ultimately do legislation is by going to the floor, by introducing amendments. we've had committee hearings. we had committee markups. this is simply to start the debate. i mean, this is not final passage. this is not the deal. there is no deal. i think what's going to happen is we're going to bring a bill to the floor that's been through committee. regular order and then we're going to vote on a series of amendments. some of which i think will have bipartisan support, some opposed by bipartisan votes. then at the end of the day, we'll have to take another cloture vote to end debate into final passage. so if republicans or democrats feel they haven't been well served by the process, there's another 60 vote hurdle just to get the final passage. >> stopping this vote is delaying the process. >> do you think republicans are being disingenuous by saying a vote against was really a vote

for a bipartisan deal. negotiations have been going on for months and months now. do you think they're just being obstructionists basically? ? >> what's happening is throughout this legislative session, not just in terms of banking but in terms of health care, in terms of unemployment compensation extension, it takes weeks and weeks and weeks to do what at the end of the day we get votes that are 90-10. so i think the procedural delay is something they built into their playbook. i hope in this case it's not something that they will use the because the american people are demanding overwhelmingly we get on with financial reform. >> real quickly, senator, as you know, the subcommittee on investigations will be hearing from goldman executives today. was the timing hf of this hearing politically motivated? do you democrats feel like this gives some wind to the sails and is that appropriate to use an s.e.c. investigation in that way

for political gain? >> well, this is not an s.e.c. investigation. the committee. >> correct. >> that senator levin has been chairing has been investigating goldman for 18 months. and in fact, what i heard all last year were outcries about why haven't you got these people for an exhaustive hearing on what happened. that's because senator levin to do it carefully, consciously, to build up the record. over a million documents they've subpoenaed. and he's ready to move. i don't think it had anything to do with the timing of this legislation. frankly, we would have preferred to move this financial reform legislation weeks ago or months ago if we had the opportunity. >> all right, senator jack reed from the banking committee. thank you so much. we appreciate you for that. coming up minutes from now at 9:45 eastern, livera, from president obama. he's meeting with members of his deficit commission at the white house. and then he plans to speak from the rose garden. we're going to bring you live coverage this hour of that. well, both sides say they

believe new financial regulations will be passed eventually and both sides say the bill can and should be improved. the question is, how to do that. >> hardly do we claim perfection of what we've written here. hardly. but we believe it's sound ideas that deal with these very issues ta caused the problems in the first place. and what we need do is to be able to debate those ideas. what's the point of having 100 seats here coming from 50 states when a major issue affecting our country cannot even be the subject of a debate? >> coming up, we're going to talk to senator kay bailey lichison for the republican perspective on reform. also coming up, the class action suit that could have walmart paying billions to female employees. in today's decision 2010, kentucky's tea party star releases a new ad. today we're off to stealth. but first, washington speak. you're going to hear the ceo of

goldman sachs today probably defending the firm over its shorts in the housing market in 2007 and 2008. that brings us to the short and long of it. short means to beta investment will lose money and long to bet that the investment will do well. we're going to hear a lot of those terms today on capitol hill. this is "the daily rundown" only on msnbc. [ crowd cheering ] [ male announcer ] competition... it pushes us to work harder. to be better. to win.

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okay. let's get the republican perspective on the financial reform fight. we turn to senator kay bailey hutchison, republican of texas. good morning, senator. >> good morning. >> so senator, last night obviously you know this key test vote to move the bill forward failed in the senate. democrats say republicans are standing in the way of changing wall street. what's your perspective? >> oh, no, republicans are trying to stand firm to protect main street. we are very concerned that if this bill goes to the floor

without the negotiations that were promised between the chairman and the ranking member of the banking committee, that we will not see the protections on main street, community banks, small businesses that we think are very important for our economy as well as the overall national input. >> well, senator, that's fair enough. how then do you explain the fact when this bill was in committee, republicans didn't offer a single amendment and let it pass right out of committee? >> that was because, again, the negotiations had completely broken down. we have been trying to have input on this bill before it goes into committee or to the floor. so that it is really a bipartisan bill. the president says he wants bipartisan handling of the economy. he says he wants bipartisan bills but then we see what happened on health care and republicans got completely jammed and i think the american people did, too. so we're trying to stand up for

with the power that we have to say negotiate so that we at least have a bipartisan beginning rather than another completely partisan bill like we saw on health care. >> as you know, there are bipartisan negotiations going on right now between senators dodd and shelby. for you, what would have to change before you would vote for this bill? >> well, first of all, we would have to make sure that too big to fail is gone away, that taxpayer bailouts will never happen again. and this bill does not satisfy the republicans that it will end the advantage that big financial institutions have over our community banks. number two. >> would you support that -- i'm sorry. let me stop you right there because i'm curious. would you support a measure offered by senator kaufman that would actually set hard limits on how big banks could get in. >> no, because i want our banks to be able to compete in the

global marketplace. i just want to make sure that we have the regulations in place that keep them from doing the crazy swaps and distributes that they were doing that was a part of this financial fallout. but i don't want them to not be able to compete with european banks or asian banks. we need to be globally competitive. we also want to -- this consumer agency that's in the bill, that was my number two point, is overreached in regulation and it will hurt our community banks. we don't need another agency over laying our banking regulation. what we need to do is regulate the transparency in derivatives which is what really cause this had problem. >> all right. senator kay bailey hutchison, republican of texas, thank you for your time this morning. we appreciate it. >> thank you so much. at 9:27 on the east coast, let's take a look at head lines.

a federal praels court cleared a lawsuit to move forward that accuses walmart of discrimination and how it pays female worker. former dict terror manual noriega is in paris to face charges of money laundering. he arrived this morning after being extradited from the united states. french prosecutors allege he laundered $3 million in drug proceeds by purchasing luxury real estate in paris. things got a little bit out of hand today inside ukraine's parliament. opposition lawmakers started hurling eggs and smoke bombs in protests over the government's decision to continue leasing a key naval base to russia. aides had to use umbrellas to try to shield the speaker from the flying objects. no flowing of anything at mark murray, deputy political director stepping in for chuck as he travels with the president. >> big shoes to fill. supersenate tuesday is just three weeks from today.

looking ahead to may 18th, an ad roundup. first our installment of the revenge in the bluegrass state. two weeks ago, kentucky senator jim bunning endorsed rand paul over trey gray son. a payback move since grayson was hand picked by mitch mcconnell, mcconnell ushered bunning into retirement. today paul is out with a new ad touting that bunning endorsement. take a look. >> jim bunning's always fought for us. as our senator, bunning stood up against the bailouts, even when other republicans didn't. now jim bunk's endorsed rand paul. calling him the only true conservative in the race for u.s. senate. >> before nungs his retirement, bunning was the most vulnerable gop incumbent but had a renaissance of sorts after temporary balking the democrats's jobs bill. voters go to the polls in pennsylvania's 12th district to pick jack murtha's replacement. pennsylvania 12 is the only

district in the country that voted for john kerry in 2004 and john mccain in '08. republican congressional campaign committee has been pouring money into the race so far. $480,000 and the d.c. cc has spent $298,000. both candidates are running on jack murtha's record. here's an ad from democrat mark kriz, murtha's long time stafferer running to replace him. >> born in westmoreland county, mark critz went on to become murtha's economic development director. tim burns support outsourcing. burns' own company got up to $6 million in tax breaks for out0 sourcing our jobs. tim burns, out for himself, not us. >> critz is running on the jobs murtha brought into the district but today republican tim burns signals he plans to bring murtha's record against the democrat. take a look at his new ad. >> mark critz, a washington bureaucrat bang rolled by

pelosi. critz was investigated by the ethics office and in charge of the finances for a company caught not paying their taxes. two candidates, one clear choice. >> speaking of special elections if it's tuesday, somebody's voting somewhere. and today voters in the seattle area decide whether keeping three ambulance is work the tax hike. voters in everitt, washington, will decide whether to end a 1% cap on taxes to fund medic one. homeowners would have to pay $50 to $75 more out of pocket to meet inflation on the program. we'll have your results tomorrow. >> we'll wait for them. mark, thanks. we'll have chuck i believe from des moines tomorrow morning. thanks so much. coming up, our supreme close-up of secretary janet nepalton know again on the short list this year. what is the case for and against her nomination? plus, was it a lucky find or an attempt to leak top secret

information? there's no drama in the saga of that lost iphone. and president obama is set to speak minutes from now on financial reform and the debt crisis in america. stay with us for live coverage from the roads ga-- rose garden. which state has the highest percentage of hispanic residents? the answer coming up. [ tires screech ] an accident doesn't have to slow you down. from new car replacement and guaranteed repairs to 24-hour claims assistance, we do all we can to help you move on. liberty mutual auto insurance. responsibility. what's your policy?

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health. we're just half hour away now from the start of what's billed to be a grilling for goldman sachs on capitol hill. top executives for the company will face a senate subcommittee over allegations that the company misled investors. and mexico has just issued a travel alert to the its citizens who have plans to travel to arizona. and for those who either reside or study in the state due to that immigration law that was just signed by the governor. well, the story starts with a mistake in a bar. an apple employee who left the iphone prototype by accident and now it's a full-fledged police investigation. authorities raided the home of a blogger who got his hands on the phone and then published the first photos of apple's next generation device. jeff ross son joins us with the details on this story. the plot thickens. this is not the person who found the iphone pro foe type, but the person who what, bought it and talked about it? >> can i say one thing. who has a prototype and leaves it in a bar?

who is this guy? >> it starts with a mistake in the bar as many stories doo. >> i've said that a couple of times. >> how does it end. >> what happened was, this apple engineer has this prototype of the phone, brings it to the bar, leaves it there. somehow the employee apparently leaves it, leaves the bar. the person who found it else is it to the man on your screen right now and his website reportedly for $5,000.jason chen works for a website called gizmodo.com. jason chen makes this whole web video where he's talking about all about the new iphone months ahead of the phone's release. the actual new phone supposed to come out in june and so jason posts that. he's the blogger. now apparently apple executives according to many bloggers out there say that apple is really pushing police to get to the bottom of this. how did he get the iphone, how much did he pay for it really, was it illegal. so police raided jason chen's

house in the past week. they pulled out hard drives. they pulled out his american express bill, checks. his cell phone. they pulled out all of that trying to get to the bottom of this. it's becoming a serious caper. it is pretty interesting though. i mean, was it illegal. he's saying, jason chen is saying i'm a journalist. you can't confiscate anything that i have. using the shield laws. we'll see if a blog ser really a journalist. we're about to see. >> i guess this puts an end to the conspiracy theorist who's thought this this was a big publicity stunt by apple. >> if the police are involved and apparently apple is driving them to investigated this, it doesn't look like it. steve jobs doesn't really need the publicity even though i'm a blackberry guy. >> me, too. that's only because our company pays for it. thank you. with the i caper, appreciate it. let's do the trivia. which state has the highest percentage of hispanic residents. the almanac of american politics

tells us it is new mexico at 44% although many are native, the state has a below average percentage of foreign born residents. our close-up of supreme court nominee janet napolitano is next. does she have the write resume for the nation's highest court? >> we'll ask supreme court litigator and all around expert tom goldstein coming up next. first the white house soup of the day. this is a new one. ribollita for those of you playing the home game, that is italian for reboiled. maybe it's ribollita. it used to mean reheated minestrone. it's made from bread, beans and vegetables. you're watching "the daily rundown" only on msnbc. boy, do we miss chuck because he would have some kind of remark here. to deliver technologies that anticipate the future, today. and help protect america everywhere...

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trial of john w. hinckley junior who shot four people including president reagan began in washington. the trial ended with his acquittal by reason of insanity. he is still in custody. janet napolitano says she has her hands full with her current job, sect of homeland security. nevertheless is flattered to be on the short list for the supreme court. she has a formidable resume. she served as a u.s. attorney, the first female attorney general of arizona, and the governor of that state. and with me for this edition of supreme close-up, tom goldstein. he has argued before the supreme court, teaches law at stanford and harvard and founder of scotus law. tom, let's talk about why no napolitano is on the short list, someone the white house likes very much. >> she not only is a relatively young woman, she has the political experience that a lot

of people think the supreme court desperately needs as a group of people who have always been judges. having been a governor, having been involved in legislator, also the prosecutorial experience both for the government and for the state would be very different from a lot of the members of the supreme court. >> we always return to that issue the c word confirmability. is this somebody you think would have trouble in a hearing? everybody remembers recently in the abdulmutallab case when she said the system worked a statement she said was misconstrued. >> i think everybody at a confirmation hearing is going to have some kind of hiccup. that would be hers. she's pro death penalty, heavily involved in law enforcement, has tremendous respect for her management of the gargantuan department of homeland security. i think she would be confirmed in a walk. >> and does she have the kind of background that personal narrative that i know the white house doesn't put at the top of the list but finds very appealing. they certainly had it with seasonal so the mayor, the

self-made woman coming up from nothing and making something of herself. does she have a personal story. >> not as much as sotomayor or ruth bader ginsburg but does have the anti-elitest sentiment behind her because she went to santa clara and uva and then was in arizona rather than being an east coast ivy leaguer. it brings geographic diversity and not the big name schools. >> you mentioned she's got that kind of hard political experience having run for office herself, something that the president frankly has talked about privately, he would like to get somebody who has real world experience onto the court. do you think that's the number one plus factor for her? >> i do. it's what differentiates her from elena kagan or some of the judges that are being considered. it's something completely different and it's important if the supreme court's going to evaluate laws, strike them down,

having somebody on there who's been involved in law making can bring something to the table. >> let's talk about, we mentioned the system worked comment. but beyond that, we've done the as a for her. what's the case against? >> the case against her is ironically, she's too good. weirdly when you talk about somebody in politics you might put on the court, you need somebody not incredibly busy. it's hard to identify somebody in the cabinet who is in a more critical position than homeland security, not just with border security disasters but also immigration reform coming. she's doing such a good job with the 22 agencies that make up dhs, the truth of the matter is they probably can't spare her for the supreme court. >> i've heard senior aides saying that that homeland security position is so difficult, so difficult to do well that losing her is a real consideration. let's just talk quickly before we let you go, what's your understanding of the timetable? obviously, i don't think we're going to see a nomination this week but maybe next week or the next? >> maybe the one after.

so i'd say probably about 17 to 20 days or so out. they're pretty far along in the process but want to vet this incredibly well to make sure they've got the right person. what they're trying to do is calibrate is to the july 4th recess of the senate. the hearings might happen a little bit before the sonia sotomayor ones did last year but i think they feel like they're on track and getting closer. >> tom goldstein, our resident expert. thank you so much. coming up, the yankees descend on the white house and we are waiting the president's remarks from the rose garden as they open up the deficit commission for the first time. we'll be right back. [ male announcer ] where are people with moderate to severe

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live picture from the rose garden at the white house. we are waiting for president obama to make a statement any moment now after meeting with his deficit commission. stay with us. we will bring you live coverage right here on msnbc when it happens. but before we go this morning,

we'll dip our toes in the shallow end. the new immigration bill in arizona allows police officers to stop and question anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant. last night "the daily show" took a look at just who might fall into that suspicious category. >> this guy right here walking down the street looks fine, right? >> i guess he looks fine. >> he is. but what about this guy? >> fine. >> no, he's not. he's reasonably suspiciously illegal. all right. let's try it again. this guy? >> no -- yes. that's jeffrey dahmer. he's a canable and killer. >> no. this isn't hitler's germany. you can't pull people off the street for being hungry. i'm going to give you one more final chance.

what do you do? >> you arrest her. >> just her? >> you arrest the monkey, too. >> why? because he's gay? you disgust me. >> okay. "the daily show." now for something completely different, the president from the rose garden on the deficit commission. >> three distinct but closely related challenges. one is a financial crisis born of reckless speculation that threatened to choke off lending to families and to businesses. this crisis in turn led to the deepest recession we've known in generations, costing millions of americans their jobs and their homes, closing thousands of businesses and devastating main streets across the country. over the past two years, this downturn has aggravated an already severe fiscal crisis brought on by decades of bad habits in washington. as a result, the day i walked into this door, the oval office, the deficit stood at $1.3

trillion with projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next 10 years. partly this was caused by the recession, which meant the government was taking in less while demand for assistance for those who had lost their jobs was far greater. another contributor to our deficit has been the rising cost of health care. each year more tax dollars are devoted to medicare and to medicaid. but what also made these large deficits possible was that for years folks in washington deferred politically difficult decisions and avoided telling hard truths about the nature of the problem. the fact is, it's always easier when you're in public life to share the good news, to tell people what they want to hear instead of what they need to know. and as the gentlemen behind me can attest, this has been the norm around washington for a very long time when it comes to our finances. now, over the past year, we've

had to take emergency measures to prevent the recession from becoming another depression. at a time when millions of people are out of work, we'll continue to do what it takes to spur job creation while investing in a new foundation for lasting economic growth. but the emergency measures have added about $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years. as a result, even as we take these necessary steps in the short-term, we have an obligation to future generations to address our long-term structural deficits which threaten to hobble our economy and leave our children and grandchildren with a mountain of debt. that's why i asked congress to restore the pay as you go rule. this rule says congress can't spend a dollar on a new tax cut or entitlement program unless it saves a dollar elsewhere. it's what helped lead to the balanced budgets of the 1990s. it was only by abandoning pay as

you go that record surpluses ran into record deficits. line by line, identifying $20 billion in savings alone. we've cut or identified scores of outmoded programs and began to reform our bloated contracting system. we've also successfully challenged the custom in congress of courting favorite contractors by approving weapons systems the pentagon itself says it doesn't want or need. because in these hard times, we have to save where we can afford, so that we can pay for what we need, the same way families do. finally, i've proposed a freeze in government spending for three years n this won't affect benefits through medicare, medicaid or social security, and it will not affect national security, including benefits for veterans. but it will affect all other discretionary spending. my budget ends loopholes and tax giveaways for oil and gas companies and for the wealthiest

2% of americans because we just can't afford them. i kept my promise to pass a health reform bill without adding a dime to the deficit. in fact, by attacking waste and fraud and promoting better care, reform is expected to bring down our deficits by more than $1 trillion over the next two decades. but all these steps, while significant, are simply not enough n for even as we rein in waste and ask the congress to account for every dollar it spends, this alone will not make up for the years in which those in washington refused to make hard choices and live within their means and will not make up for the chronic failure to level with the american people about the cost of the services that they value. this is going to require people of both parties to come together and take a hard look at the growing gap between what the government spends and what the government raises in revenue. it will require we put politics aside, that we think more about the next generation than the

next election. there's simply no other way to do it. that's why appointed national commission on reform based on a proposal originally presented by a bipartisan group of senators. and today the commission will have its first official meeting. i am grateful to all of its members. democrats and republicans, folks in government and folks from the private sector for participating. i especially want to thank these two men for sharing the commission. they may have different political affiliations but they share a strength of character and ability to work across party lines and a willingness to tell the hard truths even when it's hard. these qualities will be essential as will the courage they have already shown by taking on this assignment.