captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: emergency officials ordered tens of thousands of people to move away from rising floodwaters in pennsylvania and new york today. good evening. i'm judy woodruff. >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. on the newshour tonight, we have the latest on the evacuations and the swollen susquehanna river. >> woodruff: then, we preview president obama's jobs speech to a joint session of congress later this evening with economists douglas holtz eakin and jared bernstein. >> brown: ray suarez reports on the verbal jousting among g.o.p. presidential hopefuls at last night's debate.

>> woodruff: tom bearden continues our coverage of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 with a look at how life has changed for air travelers since the terror attacks. a lot of americans don't feel that they should be patted down, that it's not necessary to be patted down. but when you try to take things on the plane that don't belong, then it is necessary. >> brown: and we close with a conversation with author amy waldman. her new novel imagines a 9/11 memorial designed by a muslim- american. >> woodruff: that's all ahead on tonight's newshour. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ ♪

moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> auto companies make huge profits. >> last year, chevron made a lot of money. >> where does it go? >> every penny and more went into bringing energy to the world. >> the economy is tough right now, everywhere. >> we pumped $21 million into local economies, into small businesses, communities, equipment, materials. >> that money could make a big difference to a lot of people. >> and by the bill and melinda gates foundation. dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live a healthy productive life. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations.

and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> brown: the numbers from the mid-atlantic and northeast outlined a growing flood disaster today-- up to ten inches of rain in a matter of hours, and 100,000 people forced to evacuate so far. all of this caused by remnants of tropical storm lee, already blamed for nine deaths since it struck the gulf coast last weekend. by this morning, downpours in northeastern pennsylvania turned even peaceful waterways into torrents. loyalsock creek raged through montoursville, 30 miles outside wilkes-barre, and fast-rising water threatened the region with the kind of flooding not seen since hurricane agnes almost four decades ago. >> well, i lived here all my life, 56 years now, and it's the worst i've ever seen.

i went through the '72 flood, and this actually is probably going to end up beating that. >> brown: in all, 70,000 people along the susquehanna river and its tributaries in pennsylvania were told to evacuate by late this afternoon. the orders stretched south to harrisburg, the state capital, where crews sandbagged the governor's mansion. governor tom corbett said some waterways are four times beyond flood level. >> some flood gauges can't give reliable data because they're so far underwater. we face a clear public health emergency, because sewage because sewage treatment plants, such as the one near hershey are underwater and no longer working. as you know, flood water is toxic. if you don't have to be in the water, stay out. >> brown: the susquehanna was headed toward a crest this evening in wilkes-barre at 41

feet. elsewhere in the state, flooding in dover township engulfed a mobile home community. >> it's a nightmare, and we pray to god that it soon stops and soon recedes. i'm hoping people don't lose a lot of their belongings, but it looks like there's going to be a lot of water damage. >> brown: and near silver spring, pennsylvania, the conodoguinet creek was flowing out of its banks, leaving nervous homeowners to decide whether to go or stay. >> i've never had it-- this much fear going into this as i do right now of what the potential damage could be. it's scary, it really is. >> brown: to the north, some 20,000 people had already been evacuated wednesday around binghamton, new york, and neighboring communities. there, the susquehanna broke records and kept rising, and some people resorted to air boats to get around. across the city, it was hard to

tell where roads used to be or to find this school's football field. only the scoreboard and goalposts still rose above the huge pool of water. shopping centers, cars, homes were all submerged. >> some of them have been so bad, we can hardly control the water coming in. we're pumping it out, it's coming right back in. other residents, they've only got an inch or two in the basement. we're still trying to get everybody out to a safe spot. life is more important than people's property, as far as i'm concerned. >> it's a little scary, but i do know the emergency crews have been taking good care of everybody, and at least where we're at, they're ready to evacuate and take care of everybody. >> brown: flooding in new york also closed a 100-mile stretch of interstate 90 along the mohawk river. to the south, paterson, new jersey-- pummeled by hurricane irene-- faced new trouble as this new round of rain sent the passaic river rising again.

>> it's still raining now, so what are we going to do? you're still concerned how much more is going to come up. >> brown: in baltimore and suburban washington, d.c., water pooled when it had nowhere else to go. the rain was expected to subside over the next few days. late today two towns in eastern maryland ordered well over a thousand people to move out of low lying areas. i spoke with mayor thomas leighton of wilkes-berry, pennsylvania where a mandatory evacuation order is already in affect. mayor leighton, thanks for joining us. so you are still expecting the crest this evening. what's the situation right now? >> right now we're waiting for the river to crest at 41 feet. i believe we're at 38 feet. if you can see the bridge behind me, will you see how close it is from going over. but we're very confident in the dike system it will hold and we will be back in our homes on sunday.

>> brown: that dike system is a levee system that i guess is relatively new. has it been tested at these kinds of heights? >> not at this kind of height, no, this will be a newecord for this dike, the levee system. but you know, we're very confident that we're going to be okay. >> brown: now how is the evacuation going so far? >> the evacuation, the city wilkes-berry went very smooth. we put our emergency operation in effect starting yesterday. we knew we were going to have to evac yalingt-- evacuate people in the low lying areas and we have done that we have he's great cooperation from all level of government, the state government, county, local school district with the evacuation centers and residents. the business community cooperated when i asked them this morning to close their business to eliminate 15,000 people in our downtown so we could avoid a traffic congestion. so things have run smoothly so far. and under some real adverse conditions. >> brown: and what are you telling people about how long they might rab way for what to bring what to prepare for? >> we told the people, you

know, plan on being out of their home for 72 hours this was to the going to be a 12 or 24 hour evacuation. we have to make sure once the river starts to recede that it's going to stay within the banks. and the city of wilkes-berry we have four creeks that run through the city. the one in south wilkes-berry is the one we're really concerned about, the salomon crook and this will be the third time in the last two weeks that we've had to evacuate the people from south wilkes-berry. so we want to make sure that before we put the people back in the comfort of their home, that they are out of harm away. >> brown: so are there place for the people to go? are they going to shelters, do you know? and how are they handling it so far? >> they're handling it very well. the shell ters are full right now. the shell ters in the city of wilkes-berry are full. we opened one in hanover township at the hanover high school and we have one opened up in plains township outside the city limits. and it's been very-- very smooth operation so far. >> brown: people make the comparison to 1972, hurricane agnes, the big

flood you had. but that's a long time ago is this something that the city and its people prepare for in some way? >> well, we have prepared for it. this will be my 7th flood incident since i became the mayor in 2004. we have experienced this in 2 o o-- 2004, september of 2004. we experienced it in 2006. so we have an operation, an emergency operation plan that we follow. and you know we've been following it so far. and knock on wood, everything we have asked has been done. the residents have been very coop rattive. the red cross has been out, you know, all night. our police, our fire personnel. everybody's really working hand-in-hand. it's been a solid cooperation. >> you mentioned the help are you getting from other parts of government. what kind of-- what kind of emergency help is coming in. >> well, we have f-- pema, and fema officials coming in, i have a meeting i have senator casey coming in, i

have spoke when the governor last night and first thing this morning, made him aware of the situation. we've also spoke tone other officials it in the governor's office. i spoke with the senator and state representative. they are all concerned. they're all here to help. and you know once the river goes down, and we have time to digest what we just went through, we're still going to have millions of dollars worth of damage. we have creek walls that have pulled away from the ground. we have infrastructure problems that we're aware of. we'll be sitting down, i think i heard a number in the city of wilkes-berry close to $3 million estimated damage right now. >> brown: what is your sense of how long this goes on when are you talking about when the river starts to go down? >> the river should start going down based on the prediction and we'll get an update in the next couple of hours but it should start going down sometime in the middle of the night. that's when we'll start-- we won't be relaxed until we get the people back in the comfort of their home. but it sudden start receding this evening. >> all right, mayor thomas -- >> or early this morning. >> mayor thomas leighton, thanks so much for joining us.

and good luck. >> thank you very much. >> woodruff: still to come on the newshour: another in our series of stories about the tenth anniversary of the september 11 attacks. tonight, tom bearden looks at the decade of change for air travelers. but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: the cost of those texas wildfires rose sharply higher today. state officials raised the count of destroyed homes to nearly 1,400, all of them in bastrop county, just east of austin. as of today, the bastrop fire was about 30% contained. at least 5,000 people have been forced to flee that area, but some could be allowed back in tomorrow. two more nato troops have been killed in a roadside bombing in southern afghanistan. there was no immediate word today on their nationalities or the precise location of the attack. meanwhile, the afghan defense ministry said five afghan soldiers were killed yesterday in the east. in economic news, federal reserve chairman ben bernanke said today the fed will consider a number of stimulus steps at a meeting later this month, but he gave no specifics. that disappointed wall street,

and stocks fell in the closing hours of the session. the dow jones industrial average lost 119 points to finish at 11,295. the nasdaq was down more than 19 points to close at 2,529. the watchword was "compromise" as a congressional super- committee on the deficit met for the first time today. the panel was created as part of a deal struck in august to raise the nation's debt ceiling. the six republicans and six democrats have until thanksgiving to find at least $1.3 trillion in budget savings over the next decade. members pledged today to put aside partisan differences. >> a successful final product from this committee will not be one that any one of us would have written on our own if it will have to include compromises on all sides. >> i do not believe this committee alone will solve our nation's debt crisis. but a bipartisan negotiated reduction in the growth of our nation's debt would be a wonderful, needed, hopeful

step in the right direction. >> sreenivasan: a failure to reach consensus would trigger automatic cuts of $1.2 trillion dollars over the next ten years in both defense and domestic spending. but republican senator jon kyl of arizona said today he would quit the committee if it considers additional defense cuts. the committee resumes its meetings next week. a federal appeals court in virginia has thrown out two lawsuits that challenged the president's health care overhaul. the suits, including one by virginia state attorney general ken cuccinelli, charged the federal government has no power to make people buy insurance. the court did not rule on the merits of the case. instead, it said the plaintiffs have no legal standing to sue, in the first place. similar challenges are working their way toward the u.s. supreme court. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to judy. >> woodruff: and to the debate over creating jobs, and the president's efforts to frame that agenda during his address. >> holman: president obama sets foot in the house chamber tonight for a high-stakes speech that could be crucial to the economy and his presidency.

house speaker john boehner said today the country and congress are eager to hear the plan. >> i think it's important for us to wait and listen to what the president has to outline, and do so in a way where, in my case, i'm going to be looking for where's the common ground, what is it that we can agree on? we know that the two parties aren't going to agree on everything, but the american people want us to find common ground, and i'll be looking for it. >> holman: the president's jobs pitch-- a package of tax credits and targeted spending increases that may total at least $300 billion, and maybe much more. it's expected to include, among other things: a continuation of payroll tax cuts for workers; extended benefits for the long- term unemployed; and new spending on public works. gene sperling is director of the president's national economic council. >> the president's task tonight is to make clear to the united states congress and the american public that, when comes to

getting jobs growing and our economy getting stronger, "no" and "nothing" are not options. that we have to take bold action to get more momentum in the economy, more demand, more customers, more jobs. and we have to do it in the context of having greater long term confidence in our fiscal situation. that's what our economy needs now. >> holman: indeed, mr. obama will go before the congress at a critical time, with unemployment still above 9%, and new applications for jobless benefits up again last week. the president's plan, dubbed "the american jobs act," will arrive here as legislation next week. with tonight's speech, mr. obama hopes to show what he's willing to do to jolt the economy. but white house officials say he'll also urge republicans to join him in solving the country's economic woes. >> we've had a lot of bad breaks >> he's going to put forward an

american jobs act proposal tonight that's very clear that, here, here's what we can do together, democrats and republicans and the american public that will have a meaningful-- and i mean meaningful-- on creating jobs on spurring growth and on lowering unemployment. >> holman: congressional democrats, like virginia congressman gerry connolly, complained today the president will not get a fair hearing from the other side. >> the president tonight will be putting forward his jobs creation proposal. unfortunately, some on other side have already decided that they're not even going to come and respect the president's joint appearance tonight. talk about closed minds. >> holman: but senate minority leader mitch mcconnell insisted republicans are standing on principle when they criticize the obama policies. >> there's a much simpler reason to oppose the president's economic policies that has nothing whatsoever to do with politics-- they simply don't work. yet, by all accounts, the president's so-called jobs plan is to try those very same policies again, and then accuse anyone who doesn't support them this time around of being

political or overly partisan, of not doing what's needed in this moment of crisis. this isn't a jobs plan; it's a re-election plan. >> holman: tomorrow, the president takes his plan on the road, with an appearance in richmond, virginia. >> woodruff: we get the views now of two economists with long experience in the policy debates and politics of washington: douglas holtz-eakin is a former director of the congressional budget office, and served as chief economics advisor to john mccain during his 2008 presidential campaign. he is currently president of the conservative american action forum. and jared bernstein, who was chief economist and economic advisor to vice-president biden. he is now a senior fellow at the center for budget and policy priorities, a left-leaning public policy center. and gentlemen, we thank you both. and by the way, we are now hearing the white house is confirming that the president's jobs package that per's going to hear about tonight is going to

total something like $450 billion. we had been hearing over 300, the number has gone up. but let's start by asking, and jared bernstein i'll start with you. knowing this president what would you like to hear him say tonight about jobs? >> i think there are three things, judy. first of all, you really want to hear a package that is of a magnitude to really move the needle on unemployment and jobs. and a number in the neighborhood you just mentioned, north of 400 billion certainly accomplishes that. secondly, this is a plan that needs to be plausible, at least in normal times on a bipartisan level. that is, in congress particularly house republicans are to block this plan, he has to be able to go out to america and explain that these measures that he's proposing, you mentioned some in the clip there, are measures that republicans would typically support. and third, he has to just really convey the urgency of working together. i mean the debt sealing is behind us.

these guys are coming back from their recess. they got an earful from their constituents that, you know, enough already with budget deficits and debt ceilings and baselines. what we care about are our jobs, our paychecks, our kid's economic opportunities. that's the urgency of working together in the moment. >> woodruff: douglas holtz-eakin, what would you like to hear the president say tonight. >> i would like to hear him express a slightly different philosophy than he has in the past, which has really focused very much on a temporary stimulus measure, something focused around government programs. and instead, express-- express a vision for long-term economic growth, with a real commitment to the private sector, something that has been missing. and in doing that, i think it's important for him to take on the single biggest crisis that we face, the immediate jobs crisis and that is the debt that face us. so unlike past efforts, i would like him to talk about how he's going to pay for this, and how these efforts fit in with the efforts of the deficit reduction committee and the congress.

that's crucial for long-term growth. we can't sail into a fiscal crisis and expect to succeed. >> woodruff: quickly, you don't see the urgency of a jobs creation plan right now because you're talking about deficit cuts. >> i believe that, in fact, this has been the problem the administration faces. they view this as job creation plan over here, in isolation from the other problems that face america. these are not initially exclusive. and you can do both. and the president needs to express this. >> woodruff: let's talk about what we do know, at least what the white house is confirming so far that he's going to talk about. one thing is extending and expanding, jared bernstein, the social security payroll tax cut. how likely is it that that move will have an effect on jobs? >> i think that it's significant. because they're talking about cutting the payroll tax that everybody pays on their paycheck in half on the employee side, 6.2%. they are talking about talking that down to around 3. now if you earn $50,000 bucks a year, that is about

median earnings, this year 2011, are you getting about a $2,000-- sorry you were getting about $1,000 from that payroll tax cut. but next year if this plan passes will you get $1500. now families are struggling right now. their paychecks are falling in real terms. they're having difficulties making their budgets. they will spend that money. and that will reverberate throughout the economy creating more economic activity and creating jobs. >> woodruff: and douglas holtz-eakin what we are hearing this is going to add up to more than $100 billion in government spending. is that likely-- what do you see this, the effect it's having on jobs? >> part of this will be business as usual, it's already in place. so represent those real change in the economic situation, hasn't done much so far, and unlikely to do much going forward. the new part comes in two pieces. some exemptions for businesses and some exemptions for businesses with new hires. the latter is something that has-floated before and we're never sure if we would be able to implement it effectively. we'll let that play out the way it does.

i think the bottom line is if you look-- . >> woodruff: so are you skeptical. >> yeah, i mean, jared is giving you the textbook explanation of how this should work in a world where on a blackboard. but the reality in the past has been we didn't get the bang for the buck out of these that we had hoped. when we look at these efforts in some of the private forecasters' models, they did some estimates of things that look like the president's policy and they didn't do much. so i think, you know, we should look at these. i think the republicans are going to listen to the president. this is an area where they have worked with democrats in the past. but we can't be sure of success. we're not really changing the play book. >> so let me speak to that. because doug raises a critical issue, and it's a critique i've heard, that it doesn't work why do more of it. if you do a very simple exercise and you look at how gdp and jobs were trending right before the recovery act came into place, you will find that the economy was just cratering. i mean the gdp was contracting at a 9% rate in the fourth quarter of 2008.

now in the fourth quarter of 2009 it was growing at 3%. what happened is as the stimulus began to fade, that's when we got not kind of trouble that we're facing right now. these measures have worked in the past. and they will work again, if congress gets their act together and legislates them. >> woodruff: let me ask you about another element of what the president is proposinging douglas holtz-eakin and that is infrastructure job. we're told work on highways, working on schools what is your sense of that in terms of creating jobs. >> we know as first principleses and experience that high quality infrastructure is essential in a modern economy. about that there is no dispute across the aisle. what there is skepticism about is whether you can flick a switch, start a new program, spend the money quickly, pick projects in an intelligent fashion and jump-start the economy. we heard this about the recovery act it didn't happen. jared is about to give you a testimonial that says if we do this in schools, honest, doug, it really will happen. i would hope he was right. i remain skeptical. >> i was working to in the

green room, i almost had him. look, i had been talking about a measure, fix america's schools today. and it's not named fast by accident. and this is something the president, i believe, is going to speak to tonight, perhaps not by that name, but school repair. we have 100,000 public schools across this country, they all have a maintenance backlog. they've all been squeezed in the budget crunch, and they've got lots of work that's ready to go. it's labor intensive work, insulation, windows, painting, boilers, roofs. this kind of work could get construction workers, who face very high unemployment right now back to work quickly. >> woodruff: but you're still skeptical. >> we heard this in 20089 about the recover act. and that has been extremely disappointed by the return on the infrastructure t just didn't work. >> it's not that it didn't work, its a he that the infrastructure, it took about a year for the infrastructure programs to get into place in the recovery act. and by the way, we needed those programs in 2010 and we got them. we need them in 2012, we

will need some of them in 2013. fast, by the way, the working on the maintenance backlog of the school,s that could be started up very quickly. >> woodruff: and speak of -- >> last thing on this topic. we have a hundred transportation infrastructure programs. we have millions more in energy. >> woodruff: are you saying already out there. >> yeah. so we don't need more infrastructure programs. jared is creating a bigger bureaucracy, we need things to work. >> woodruff: one thing know the president will say is giving money to states and school districts to limit layoffs of teachers and first responders or hire those back that have been laid off. quickly s that something that makes a difference? >> it always sounds great, and lord knows we need teachers and emergency responders. but remember, the philosophy has been targeted. so veterans deserve some help. teachers deserve help. actually, every american deserves help. why don't we get a plan that actually raises the economy as a whole. >> the target is very important here. every month we have been adding private sector job, not enough but we have been adding them and laying off teachers, police, firefighters. by targeting those workers, not only can we have important jobs in our

community, but a lloyd-- avoid layoffs and get some people back to, without it is one ofs programs that worked quickest in the recovery ac. >> woodruff: fast, you both know the congress pretty well. what are the odds that the president going to get all or just some this out of the congress? >> i think there's a real chance for some of this to happen. we've seen payroll tax agreements in the past. unemployment insurance agreements in the past, infrastructure agreements within i agree. >> there are things out there about which progress can be made. >> i think that's great. it is a good place for us to sum up. i think that those measures, payroll tax, unemployment insurance and some of the infrastructure could clear the political-- political bar and that is the president will hit very hard tonight. putting all of this self-inflicting wounds behind us and start working on stuff that really matters to people. >> woodruff: jared bernstein, douglas holtz-eakin, we thank you both. >> thank you. >> brown: the economy was also a big topic in last night's republican debate. there were eight candidates onstage at the reagan

presidential library in simi valley, california, but most attention was focused on the two leading contenders for the nomination. ray suarez has our recap. >> as a matter of fact, we created more jobs-- . >> suarez: from the outset, the new republican front-runner texas governor rick perry and his top rivals former massachusetts governor mitt romney clashed sharply over who had the best record of job creation. perry slammed romney's record during his time as governor of massachusetts. >> governor romney left the private sector. he did a great job of creating jobs in the private sector, all around the world. but the fact is, when he moved that experience to government, he had one of the lowest job creation rates in the country. >> the states are different. texas is a great state. texas has 0 income tax. texas has a right-to-work state, a republican legislature, a republican supreme court. tech as has a lot of oil & gas in the ground. those are wonderful things. but governor perry doesn't believe that he created those things.

if he tried to say that, why it would be like al gore saying he invented the internet. >> michael dukakis created jobs three times faster than you did, mitt. >> well, as a matter of fact, george bush and his predecessor created jobs at a faster rate than you did, governor. (laughter) >> that's not correct. >> suarez: former utah governor jon huntsman is far down in the polls, but he tried to inject himself into the jobs debate by pointing to his own record. >> we're going to find solutions. and i have an offer for the two great governors over here. and i hate to rain on the parade of the great lone star governor, but as governor of utah, we were the number one job creator in this country during my years of service. that was 5.9% when you were creating jobs at 4.9%. and to my good friend mitt, 47 just ain't going to cut it, my friend, not when you qb first. we've got to remember, that to beat president obama, we have to have somebody who has been in the private sector, understands the from gilingity of the free market system, has been a successful governor as it relates to job creation, and

knows something about this world. i've lived overseas four times. i've been an ambassador for my country three times. i think i understand that. >> suarez: but the focus remained on perry and romney who also slugged it out over social security. debate comoderator john harris of "politico" wanted to know about a passage in perry's book "fed up" which said the program was ill conceived from the outset. >> i think any of us that want to go back and change 70 years of what's been going on in this country is probably going to have a difficult time. and rather than spending a lot of time talking about what those folks were doing back in the 30s and the 40s is a nice intellectual conversation. but the fact is, we've got to be focused on how we're going to change this program. and it is a monday truss lie lie, a ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 35 or-- 25 or 30 years old today, are you paying into a program

that is going to be there. anybody that is for the status quo with social security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids. and it's not right. >> our nominee has to be someone who isn't committed to abolishing social security but is committed to saving social security. we have always had at the heart of our party a recognition that we want to care for those in need. and our seniors have the need of social security. i will make sure that we keep the program, and we make it financialically secure. we save social security and under no circumstances would i ever say by any measure it's a failure. >> suarez: perry has skyrocketed to the head of the pack less than a month after joining the race. and he drew fire from others on the stage as well. >> i am offended-- . >> suarez: former pennsylvania senator rick santorum took issue with an executive order issued by perry in 2007. it required that school girls be vax yated against hpv, a sexually transmitted virus that cause cervical

cancer. >> if governor perry is out there claiming about states's rights and state's rights. how about parental rights being more important than states's rights. how about having, instead of an opt out, an opt-in. >> suarez: the texas governor in turn appeared to take the criticism in stride. >> i kind of feel like the pinata here at the party so -- >> welcome. >> suarez: former house speaker newt gingrich said the candidates should be taking their shots at president obama, not each other. >> i for one, and i hope all of my friends up here, are going to repudiate every effort of the news medica to get republicans to tight each other, to protect barack obama who deserves to be defeated and all of us are committed as a team, whoever the nominee, we are all for defeating barack obama. >> (cheers and applause) >> suarez: minnesota congresswoman michelle-- michele bachmann endorsed that sentiment but a peeled for voters attention, after perry's surge eclipsed her win in last month's iowa straw poll. bachmann argued that her leadership on pushing for

repeal of the president's health care law has been unmatched. >> and with all due respect to the governors, issuing an executive order will not overturn this massive law. this will take a very strong, bold leader in the presidency who will lead that effort, none of us should ever have ourselves think that the repeal bill will just come to our desk it will take a very strong leader. >> suarez: texas congressman ron paul also had his moment in the spotlight defending his limited government view, especially when it comes to disaster funding. >> the question s federal aid, something like fema, if you object to what it's become and how it's run, your position is to remove it, take it away, abolish it. what happens in its absence? well, what happened before 1979, we didn't have fema. and fema just conditioned people to build where they shouldn't be building. we lose the market effect of that. but yeah, my position is we

should have never had it. tlts's a much better way of doing it. i mean this whole idea that the federal government can deal with weather and anything in the world, just go to the federal government. fem a is broke, they are $20 billion in debt -- and from back in the pack former godfather's pizza chief executive herman kane touted his business background and own plan. >> let's cut to the chase. this is what businesspeople do and politicians don't do. here is how i would fix this economy. first eliminate the current tax code it is a drain on entrepreneurs. it is the biggest beforier that is hotting this economy back. what i would do is to propose a bold plan which i've already released. i call it my 999 economic growth plan. throw out the current tax code of 9% tax on corporate income. a 9% tax on personal income and a 9% national sales tax. if 10% is good enough for god, 9% ought to be good enough for the federal government. >> suarez: the republican contenders are scheduled to meet for two more debates this month. the first coming next monday in florida.

>> woodruff: next, our continuing look at the impact of 9/11 a decade later. tonight, we focus on how it's affected air travel. newshour correspondent tom bearden reports. >> reporter: this is where the greatest number of americans have been affected in the post- 9/11 world-- the nation's commercial airports. passengers have been walking through metal detectors and had their carry-on bags x-rayed since the late '60s, but aviation security changed dramatically after september, 2001. prior to the attacks, passenger screening was done by private companies who were supervised by the federal aviation administration. after 9/11, the government created the transportation security administration, which was the largest single federal startup since world war ii. terry crosby went to work for the tsa almost from the beginning. he signed up eight years ago because the attacks made him

want to serve his country. he rotates through several different jobs during his shift, from running the x-ray machine for carry-on baggage... >> guy left his liquids in there. >> reporter: ....to hand- searching for suspect items... to physically searching passengers. >> okay, i'm going to go inside your collar. >> reporter: it's not his favorite job, but a job he says needs to be done. >> a lot of americans don't feel that they should be patted down, that it's not necessary to be patted down. but when you have things that come in that don't belong, or try to take things on the plane that don't belong, then it is necessary. >> reporter: some americans believe those "enhanced pat- downs," which started within the last year, violate their constitutional rights. they're just one part of a raging debate over how far the tsa should be allowed to go. since 9/11, security procedures have steadily escalated after a series of failed terrorist attacks.

after 2001, passengers had to walk through security in their stocking feet after richard reid tried to detonate explosives hidden in his shoes. in 2006, people started having to carry liquids in small containers inside a plastic bag after a plot to detonate liquid explosives was uncovered. and when umar abdul mutallab tried to set off plastic explosives hidden in his underwear in 2009, the government spent hundreds of millions of dollars to speed up deployment of advanced imaging technology machines that can peer beneath clothing. some accuse the agency of simply going too far. take the case of nick george. in august of 2009, he went through security in philadelphia on his way back to college in california. he was taking an arabic language course and was carrying a stack of homemade flash cards. >> there were about 200 of them, and most of them... the vast majority of them, are just vocab

words from a text book, things like "to graduate," "to smile," the color "purple"; these sorts of, you know, things that anyone learning any kind of foreign language would be learning. there were about ten of the flashcards that said things like "bomb" or "terrorist". i'd been recently trying to read more of arabic news media and these are words that, you know, come up. >> reporter: george says he was detained for more than four hours, half of it in handcuffs, and intensively questioned by the tsa and the fbi. the american civil liberties union has filed suit on george's behalf, claiming his constitutional rights were violated. >> if you open the door and say evidence of committing terrorism is that i'm learning arabic, that's really, really dangerous grounds. >> reporter: ben wizner is the litigation director of the aclu's national security project. he represents george. >> we've seen abusive and intrusive searches that go far beyond any legitimate security rationale.

we've seen extreme individual cases where travelers have been arrested for things that have nothing to do with legitimate security. >> reporter: wizner is particularly troubled about another post-9/11 aviation security measure-- the government's "no fly" list. the list is a subset of the terrorist screening database maintained by the fbi. its purpose is to keep terrorists off commercial aircraft. >> american citizens can find themselves on a no-fly list with no meaningful opportunity to get off, without being told the reason why they can't be able to fly, without having a chance to have a hearing to get themselves removed. i think what we've seen, over the last ten years, is a massive overreaction to the last threat in a way that has violated rights without making us much more secure. >> reporter: abe mashal is apparently on that list. masal is muslim, a marine corps veteran, and is now a professional dog trainer. >> sit! >> reporter: he lives in a chicago suburb. his troubles started last year

when he tried to fly out of chicago's midway airport. >> when i attempted to check in, the lady took my license and went in the backroom, and several minutes later, she came out. when i turned around, i was surrounded by tsa agents who notified me that that the fbi was on their way to the building to talk to me as, apparently, i was on the no fly list. >> reporter: mashal tried using the online redress process. seven months later, he got a letter from homeland security saying there was no change in his status. but he says they won't tell him what his status actually is. the fbi web site says the agency cannot reveal whether a particular person is in the database because terrorists could circumvent the list by knowing which of their members might be detained. >> i think there is a logical hole right at the center of it. if the government really believed that these people were terrorists, it shouldn't be turning them away from airports; it should be arresting them and putting them on trial. >> reporter: mashal suspects, but cannot prove, that he was put on the list for a reason. after he was turned away from the airport, he was invited to

meet with two fbi agents in a local hotel. >> they told me that they would get me off of the no fly list if i became an undercover informant for them, and went undercover at various mosques and told them about certain people that they wanted me to find out information for. >> reporter: mashal is part of a class action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the no- fly list. an fbi spokesman told the newshour the agency could not comment on mashal's allegations because of that pending litigation. tsa administrator john pistole says americans should look at these kinds of incidents in a broader context. >> each day, tsa screens approximately 1.8 million people, 12.5 million a week, over 50 million a month, and over 625,000 million a year. so it's a significant challenge to make sure that each and every person doesn't pose a threat to aviation security. >> reporter: but the internet is full of anger and frustration over other cases involving physical searches of people who fail the scan or refuse to take

it, from the six-year-old patted down, despite her mother's objections, to the 96-year-old woman who allegedly was forced to remove her adult diaper because it was wet and couldn't be checked. a japanese comedy show was inspired to satire. ( laughter ) even president obama joked about it while promoting high speed railroads. >> for some trips, it'll be faster than flying, without the pat-down. >> reporter: but for yukari miyame, this is no laughing matter. she's a professional translator and an independent community radio host who was commuting from her home in northern colorado to a job in phoenix. on the way home in july, she says she asked to go through a metal detection portal rather than a body scanner because she is afraid the radiation emitted by the machine would harm her health. she also says she has an uncontrollable aversion to being touched because she was briefly abducted as a child. she says she was told she would have to submit to an enhanced pat-down if she wouldn't go through the scanner.

>> this tall, blonde, white woman, tsa officer, was called to explain to me how this whole thing is going to work. and i thought i'm going to get that horrible pat-down again and, so anyway, she said, "let me show you how its going to be done." and so i just was like this with my... and accidentally, that was her breast. >> reporter: the tsa agent told a different story. she claimed miyame twisted her breast. miyame was arrested for sexual abuse and spent the night in jail. a maricopa county court released her the next morning, saying there was no evidence of a sexual crime. she could still face a misdemeanor charge. her case has become something of a cause celebre. the "acquit yukari miyame" page

on facebook has been "liked" by nearly 5,000 people. tsa administrator pistole told us the agency investigates these cases thoroughly. >> the first thing we want to do is get all the facts that we can, and that may include the closed circuit tv coverage of the checkpoint if there is, if that's available. obviously, interviewing the passenger that is making the allegations, interviewing the security officers who were around that situation, so part of it is just trying to get the facts. i will say it seems like at least, in my slightly over a year as head of tsa, much of the time when there is an allegation of something that first instance is reported, is not actually what happened as we get the facts all fleshed out. >> reporter: the aclu's ben wizner. >> americans have a lot of experience in times of threat with reducing civil rights and civil liberties, but then coming to our senses when the threat has passed. the danger, this time, is that we've defined a war against

terrorism which literally takes place everywhere and may last forever. >> reporter: tsa management frequently points to several public opinion polls that indicate an overwhelming percentage of americans don't object to the scanners, although a fairly large percentage do object to the pat-downs. security officer terry crosby says a few people complain about it, some pretty vocally. >> to see grown adults having temper tantrums. you generally don't think that you would have people doing stuff like that, but it does happen. >> reporter: but he says many people actually thank him for his service. pistole says the agency is listening to the public. they've modified the pat-down policy for children, and have installed new software in the scanners to address complaints that the machines revealed too much about people's bodies. is this a permanent part of american life? will this ever go away? that's a good question. i think for the foreseeable future, we will have this i think terrorists will look to exploit any weaknesses or vulnerabilities, and so i think

for the foreseeable future we'll have clearly some type of layered defense which has manifested itself at the checkpoints. looking to the future, pistole hopes to consolidate all of the various security sensors into one tunnel-like installation that might function a bit like the one arnold schwarzenegger went through in the sci-fi movie "total recall." tsa is also rolling out a trusted traveler program to simplify security for frequent travelers. and over the next ten years, pistole plans to use behavioral profiling techniques to identify problem passengers quickly and move away from the "one size fits all" philosophy to make aviation security both more effective and less of a hassle. >> woodruff: tomorrow night, from cairo, margaret warner traces the egyptian roots of the radical islamic movement. >> brown: and finally tonight, another 9/11 story, but this one is fiction. what if a jury selected a design

for the new 9/11 memorial, and then discovered that its architect was a muslim? ten years after the terror attack, the actual memorial is just about to open. but an alternative history is imagined in a new novel. its author is amy waldman, a former reporter for "the new york times." "the submission" is her first novel. i talked with amy waldman recently. here's that conversation. welcome. >> thank you. >> brown: you were in new york during 9/11, you wrote about it as a journalist afterwards. how and why did you decide that there was a good fictional story to tell? >> i didn't think about it for a few years, and having a conversation with a friend that led us to talking about the veterans memorial and the controversy which everyone remembers around that, the may lynn, and one small piece of that was asian american and it got me thinking what would the equivalent be for 9/11 and out of that came the seed for this. and it had to be fiction,

because it hasn't happened, and was a fictional scenario, but it also, i was drawn to doing it because i felt like it was a great way into a lot of these questions and multiple perspectives around them that we've all wrestled with. >> brown: so in your case, all goes well until it turns out his name is mohammed gan, but he's a muslim american, grew up in suburban washington d.c., fictionally, university of virginia. >> right. >> brown: in many ways your average ambitious young architect who was trying to get ahead. >> it's not a central part of his identity at all. but when this attack happens, it's thrust to the center of his identity and of course after he wins the competition that's even more true. >> brown: and once you open up the story, the layers of particularly new york, but nationally as well, open up,

right? you've got politics, you've got the media, you've got class. what was that like to try to explore that large a picture? >> it was challenging, but i felt like that's this decade that we've lived through, all of those elements are very present in the debates around islam, the war on terror, how we react to 9/11, all of it. even looking at the family members from 9/11, there's such a diverse group and we talk about them as a mono lit, but in terms of class, politics, everything, they are so diverse, so i wanted to capture that. >> brown: did you explore it as a journalist? you had done interviews in the past, i guess, but did you interview actual people on which to base such these characters? >> i didn't, because i felt probably i just didn't want to ask them to give me their experiences for a novel, i thought if i'm going to do this i have to imagine it. and i also felt like i needed to be free to write the novel i wanted to write, and the journalist in me would come

out too much if i went and interviewed someone and i wouldn't feel tree to say i want that part of your experience and not that. so i didn't do any of that. >> brown: i think you were still writing when the whole ground zero mosque happened? >> i was. >> brown: what was your thought there, was it uh-oh, or i'm onto something? >> i definitely thought i'm onto something. i had finished a full draft of the novel before that. you know, it definitely made me rethink small pieces of the novel because i didn't want it to read exactly like the newspapers, and it was amazing how much so much of what people were saying was like what i had already written. but it did confirm for me that i was on the right track and that there was something powerful that needed exploring through fiction. >> brown: and you say something powerful that needed exploring, what exactly is that? because there are so many elements to this, right? >> yes. >> brown: what was it for you that needed exploring? >> the novel has a lot of different themes, but one is in the wake of 9/11 who do we

trust, how do we decide who to trust. you know, american muslims, how do we think about them. how do we understand islam when there's still so much fear and confusion around it. and i think the ambivalence of the new liberals have felt since 9/11 about how to feel about these things. >> brown: you mean wanting to be open but still very much afraid? >> exactly, exactly. and i think the conflict almost between principle and emotion i think is a powerful theme in the novel, and was very interesting to me. >> brown: we're not going to walk through the whole story here and we're not going to give anything away. but it was resolves itself after many twists and turns here, and episodes. but was it important in -- beyond the story telling of course, it has to resolve itself, right, but given these themes that you wanted to explore, was it somehow important for you to find a way to resolve this story and the dilemmas involved? >> it was. it was tricky to figure out how to end it, because i think

even now we're in sort of a precarious moment where we don't know exactly where the country is going and what direction, and i wanted to be true to that and yet also achieve some resolution. so i hope i've pulled that off in the ending, but i don't want to spoil that. >> brown: i'm curious because this is your first novel. >> yes. >> brown: did you have models? a lot of people looked atom wolf and bonfire of the vanity, that kind of big social novel, and that's essentially what you've got here because you really look, as i said, at many of the institutions of the city at street level. were you aaware of those kind of models in starting out? >> i was and i wasn't. i think bonfire of the van tees is kind of an archetype of a social novel, but i read it i think when it came out in maybe '87, so it wasn't a conscious model that i wanted to try to replicate. you know, prichd price, jonathan franzen, writers who are working very deeply with character, but the intersection of that with

politics and social issues and all of that, and i think those of some of my models, just how do you give very intimate portraits of people but also how are they changed and are their personalities and histories changing these public grand events. >> brown: and here we are at the 10th anniversary of 9/11. is it your sense now both working as a journalist and now as a novelist that we're only at the beginning of learning about 9/11? or is it something that writers will explore for a long time do you think? >> i think it's something writers will explore for a long time, partly everybody will come at it exploring a different piece of it and also i think how we look at it changes through time and the writing will reflect that. there were books and novels that came out very early on, responding almost on a prime al throfl what had happened. and then i think mine and others will come later, maybe taking a longer view, sort of stepping back a little bit and looking at what happened to the country in the intervening years.

>> brown: did you enjoy this experience enough to work on a next novel? >> oh, definitely, yes, i love fiction now, i'm totally hooked on it. >> brown: all right "the submission" is the new novel by amy waldman. >> thank up. >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day: downpours sent rivers rising across pennsylvania, new york, and other northeastern states, forcing some 100,000 people to evacuate. president obama made ready to address congress and the nation on his jobs plan. reports this evening said it would cost nearly $450 billion, including deeper payroll tax cuts for workers. and the damage done by a huge wildfire east of austin, texas, escalated sharply, as officials reported nearly 1,400 homes were destroyed. there's more about the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on our "america remembers 9/11" page.

hari sreenivasan explains. hari. >> sreenivasan: tom bearden has a blog post about changes to air travel, and our video quilt features the views of americans from across the country on what's changed since the attacks. the "morning line" has more reaction to last night's g.o.p. debate. also there, find a link to the newshour politics calendar, your day-by-day guide to what's happening on the campaign trail plus, ray previews a u.n. conference on diseases. it examines the burdens diabetes, cancer and lung disease place on rich and poor countries alike. that's on our "global health" page. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. judy. >> woodruff: and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. we'll be back shortly at 7:00 pm eastern time with full coverage of the president's address to a joint session of congress. and of course, we're always online, and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and david brooks, among others. for now, thank you and good night. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

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