captions paid for by nbc-universal television >>> hello and goodmorning. i'm lynn berry. today, we begin with legislative logjam. a final vote on the president's tax cut plan should happen today in the senate. however, a trillion dollar spending bill proposal and a plan to repeal don't ask, don't tell could keep congress on the hill well into their holiday break. nbc's tracie potts joins us with the details. >> reporter: lynn, good morning. as you can see, there is a lot going on. let's start with taxes. the final senate vote is scheduled to happen today. then it will move on to the house where despite the opposition of many democrats, how democratic leaders also say they think that ts can pass. republicans have warned them, don't change the bill or we won't approve it. even more urgent now, though, is the government spending bill, trying to keep government running and preventing a shutdown. their deadline, saturday. that's whe temporary funding runs out. democrats have put forth a $1.1 trillion bill that republicans want to take another look at. they want to pass ather t

. >> reporter: goodmorning, at our location, it has been snowing for an hour. the ground is so cold, the snow that falls is not going anywhere. this is a secondary stree through the area. you can see, there is a lot of snow covering the lanes here. most folks seem to be going to the far left lane, more clear than the two right-hand lanes. we even with that, we are seeing accumulation. the plows have been out there, they knew the storm was coming. fied with salt, sand, they have their people on the schedule. out there on the roads right now. one driver thinks he will have been a long and busy day. >> g out, spread a bit of salt, try to stay ahead of it. it is bad, we will put a plow down and put out more salt. >> you can see, this parking lot is all snow covered we are seeing accumulation on the street as well. slippery conditions on the condary streets n areas not treated. you want to keep your speed down. anything that falls on an area that isn't treated, it is going to be on the on-going situation. we are not expecting any kind of warm-up here. give yourself

#i >> goodmorning. time is 6:44. a nice looking shot from the bay this time from the south bay. the sun starting to come up. temperatures slightly warmer, but it is looking to be colder for the weekend. rob will update. >> researchers found a way to treat the depregds and bipolar using substans in your body creatine energizes the brain and good for fighting bipolar illness. energizing the brain makes it more effective. they are still in the testing phase, but the result are are good and results are good. >> the two things that are remarkable about that are it's a large effect in that we see whoolths happening quickly. >> it's also being investigated as a therapy for huntington's disease and parkinson's disease. >> we want to check the commute with bisy ones. along 880. >> a couple of incidences both in the southbound direction. the traffic is building to build. here we had reports of a stalled vehicle and a hit-and-run reported through the area. more activity going on on the shoulder and broadway there may be another incident or a repeat of activity. a couple of issues. if you c

tracee, goodmorning. >> reporter: good morning. this gives you a good idea what the road is going to look like. right now the snow is not sticking to the roadways. really stick to go grassing et cetera. in terms of the roads, the service road is a good example how the roads are looking this morning. but road crews have been preparing for the worse. they are taking care of pretreating of the roads just in case. they were preparing for the possibility of slick spots given the snow that we're eecting this morning, also the rain that we had yesterday. and so they've done most of their work. what they're waiting for now is force to have had accumulation. they're expecting to get up to an inch. when that accumulation happens they take to the roads and get shuttling and getting the roads cleared out. what they're concerned about, what you should be concerned about when you leave are the slick spots. >> it would be important for drivers to be careful. >> i'm going to take it a little slower, to leave enough room in between the car in front