an idea that might be called counterterrorism accept neither the white house nor congress wanted to grote government so they said but don't spend it to hire more federal employees because people won't like that so go higher contractors. and the fog was to give them their say, that this would be cheaper because you wouldn't have federal employee benefits. you could fire contractors easily. hasn't turned out that way at all. there are not many contractors who have been fired. what happened was these companies went in and tried to do not only the job they were given but all the jobs they sought could be done so they started proposing new jobs themselves. and they're not paying the same salaries as federal employees the two or three times as much so that they could pocket some of the money in overhead so that these grew to be very expensive proposition to hire contractors. the other byproduct of that was people in the federal government who were working very long hours and getting hammered upon for failing to stop 9/11, senior most intelligence officials and military officials would leave gov

dennis grote the united states is very successful and a kind of an -- against coat there was a u.n. security council resolution monster, which was the toughest that it's ever been put in place against iran. it gave all kinds of powers to intercept shipments and various other financial powers. the europeans and other countries have scaled back in trade with iran. they have scaled back their financial dealings with iran. to then threatened with them if they do not go all the way and completely and dealings with iran, it is an extreme threats. it could not only upset this fragile coalition, but it could have an impact on oil prices. it would not be helpful. host: where are the chinese on this? guest: they are all over the map. they abide by the u.n. resolution, which they agreed to. they trade with iran. they are iran's largest trading partner. they take a lot of iranian oil. i have spoken to experts to suggest that people in china, while they did not necessarily want to see iran get nuclear weapons, they like the fact that the united states was pinned down in the persian gulf. if iran

republicans in 2009, their answer to what the economy needed to grote was a payroll tax cut. -- triboro was a payroll tax cut. well, let's do it. the president wants to do it. he wanted to extend out for a year. and when that was not achievable with a bipartisan support, a compromise was reached in the senate. >> so, what is it you think speaker brainard -- >> i think i have made clear that there is an issue here about what one subsection of the party is dictating. you have seen from some of the reporting and statements about not wanting to give president obama a victory. but we do not want to be against tax cuts unless obama is for them. is the kind of stuff that the american taxpayer can be rightfully angry about. we should do this because it is the right thing to do. >> [unintelligible] >> harry reid had worked very closely with senator mcconnell to achieving bipartisan agreement on saturday. his position that the house ought to pass this is our position. >> what about the report that the position was, this is it. >> as i have been saying, i'm not going to predict what happens if rep