steve skully, and meanwhile at the bottom of the hour, we will have a conversation with senator john thune who is putting forth legislation to stop of the big bonuses for fannie mae and freddie mac executives, and he will be here to talk more about that in 20 minutes. >>> meanwhile negotiators on the capitol hill in extending through the end of the year the payroll tax cut worth $1,000 for the typical worker, but lawmakers are far apart on how the pay for tex tepgs as well as jobless benefits for millions of unemployed americans without swelling the national debt, and the house senate panel beginning the negotiations on the payroll tax figuring out how the pay for it, and the lawmakers working on the conferee saying they will start with the second tier issues like overhauling unemployment insurance. secretary of state hillary clinton says that russia and other countries must ask themselves if they should stand with serious people or the dictator, and the secretary state saying that they are hoping to win council approval of the arab resolution, and calling on syrian president assad to leav

. >> romney supporter, republican senator john thune of south dakota joins us now? there's been a lot of talk in the party, republicans upset about mitt romney. you've heard from rush limbaugh, we've heard from, you know, "the wall street journal," and "the weekly standard." people asking, what is going on here? and is he a weak front-runner? >> no, i don't think so, andrea. look, this is a long campaign. these candidates have been through somewhere on the order of 25 debates. lots of things get said, lots of things get pulled out of context, and lots of attacks are going to be made by the democrats before this campaign is over with. and i think the romney campaign is prepared for that. they're ready for the long haul. his focus is on going to be on getting the economy growing again, getting people back to work, and reversing many of the policies that the president has put in place, that have really hurt the middle class. >> at the same time, when you have "the wall street journal" suggesting, you know, that there should perhaps be a truth squad to go out of republi

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. >> as if for republicans using this going forward, senator john thune, the republican of south carolina said, quote, i think they've awoken a sleeping giant with this issue. the press secretary jay carney also pushed back in reports that suggested vice president joe biden had raised early concerns about the potential backlash over how the provision might be received by catholic voters, particularly those in key battleground states. secretary carney saying that's simply not true. >>> a new study shows drops in teen pregnancy and abortion rates in recent years. according to findings of a non-profit health research group in 2008 the teen pregnancy rate fell to about 7%. that is the lowest in more than 30 years. the teenage abortion rate meanwhile fell to about 1.8%. that is the lowest rate since abortion was legalized. the report suggests that the drop in teenage pregnancies was a result of a higher use of contraception. the authors point to reduced sexual activity among teens. >>> overseas, activists in syria are increasing their calls for international help as government forces continue

. >> south dakota senator john thune, thank you for joining us on capitol hill tonight. >> thank you, steve. >> this is washington today on c-span radio, and we will have more in a minute, but first other news today. >>> on wall street the dow up 83 closing 12716. nasdaq up 34. s&p up 11. indiana's governor has signed a right to work bill and that state is the first rust belt state to enact a labor union law known as "right to work." the federal labor department has agreed to modify a plan intended to keep children away from the most dangerous farm jobs. there are proposals for exemptions of children whose parents own a farm or substantial interest in a farm or partnership or corporation. farm groups said that rules would upset traditions where the children work alongside parents and relatives to learn how a farm operates. >>> in detroit ford and chrysler reporting better sales for january although gm says that the sales fell 6% compared to a strong month a year ago. ford sales were up 7% on the strong demand for small cars and suvs and chrysler says that the january domestic sales ro

you can see him with john thune there. nevada caucuses tonight, but mitt romney not in the state. confident he will come out on top. he has a quite hefty comfortable double-digit lead over newt gingrich. we'll be watching that. just getting started here on cnn. mr. wolf blitzer and mr. john king join us to analyze exit polls to give us an indication who had a good day in nevada. stay tuned. >>> keep it here for a special edition of "the situation room" with wolf blitzer at 6:00 p.m. eastern. >>. >> what issues are most important to nevadians? we are asking a man with his finger on the pulse of nevada voters. ough. here's an update on outhe progress. we're paying for all spill related clean-up costs. bp findings supports independent scientists studying the gulf's environment. thousands of environmental samples have been tested and all beaches and waters are open. and the tourists are back. i was born here, i'm still here and so is bp. hohow w arare e yoyou? wewe'r're e gogoining g toto h e inintetervrvieiew.w. jojohnhn, , jijillll.....m.mr. whwhatat's's i it t lilikeke d e fufusisi

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it is great to be here and i'm told that i can holdover my former colleague john thune. prior to tonight, he held the biggest crowd but tonight we beat that at 604. i'm going to take credit for that. thank you. many of you have noticed that i had a different neckwear on when i first walked around but they told me that they want to auction off this tie. so i -- and they wanted me to wear it. i am wearing the tie. i will now take it off and sign the tie and then you folks -- i'll do it right here in flont of everyone -- should i sign on the back or the front? the back. okay. i didn't know if you wanted a signature tie. we'll sign it right here. in front of god and country. there we go. now it's worth a nickel or a dime more than it was before. all right. thank you very much. it's great to be here in colorado. i think it's our second day of campaigning here in the last week i was on the western slope this morning and didn't have any snow over there. i was sort of surprised but we were very pleased when we flew in from missouri last night and we had a great crowd here and i

our new conference chairman, john thune, conveyed that issue. i will call on him in a minute. we would like to address another issue that has risen in the context of obamacare. he has gotten the government involved in all aspects of our health care. he may have gotten us involved in other things as well. we have three senators with us who have been involved in developing a response to the most recent discovery of yet another government interference with our lives in obamacare. we will do that shortly. with that, let me call on our conference chair, john thune. >> we had a good discussion this morning. the thing you are reminded of is we are an entrepreneur we have a lot of people with really good ideas about how to move our country forward. the one thing i think i would say and everybody agrees on is the president's policies have made our economy much worse. because his policies have made our economy worse, he is trying to distract and divide americans by and talking about divisions and those sorts of things to get groups of americans pitted against each other. we think there

senators like john thune comes out and says i can't believe what the republican house is doing, i can'ting ahead with the payroll tax cut without any offsets. meanwhile, what's the good economic news if you believe these numbers mean for president obama's fortunes? it means a lot. it means he's up around 50% approval according to "the new york times" poll. >> to most pundits is the break even way of looking at it. once you get to 50%, you're in pretty good shape when you're looking at re-election. more americans see the economy improving than they did last month. so they approve -- >> of the way he's handling. >> the same. 43% better. 34% worse. 22% and people who don't know anything about the economy as far as its growth, 1%. but the overall feeling you get from this poll is that in the last month, i believe that president obama has gone up six points in approval as to how he's handling the economy. and i guess, guys, that kind of makes sense because some of the numbers we've been reporting, unemployment has gone down. more jobs have been created. now you can argue about how those numb

i have been told that this is something i can now hold over my former colleague in the senate, john thuneew the biggest crowd but we have 640 tonight which takes the record so i'm going to take credit for that. thank you. many of you notice i have different neckwear on when i first walked around. they told me they want to auction off this tie. so i -- and they wanted me to wear it. here i am wearing the tie. i will now take it off and sign the tie and then you folks, i'll do it right here in front of everybody. want me to sign it on the back or the front? the back. i didn't know whether you wanted a signature tie or one on the back. so we'll sign it right here in front of god and country. there we go. now it's worth probably a nickel or dime more than it was before. all right. thank you all very much. and it's great to be here in colorado. it's i think our second day of campaigning here in the last week. i was out on the western slope this morning and they didn't have any snow over there. i was sort of surprised but we were very pleased when we flew in from missouri last night. we had a g

senator john thune senator kelley ayotte. they were there and participated and asked questions. i think we all agree that it was one of the worst witness performances in terms of being responsive to the questions that we've seen in our time in the senate. i hate to say that. i know he was told not to say anything, just to keep repeating the talking points. but when america is facing a financial crisis and you're asking the budget director fundamental, simple questions, you expect and have a right to expect answers. not for me but for the american people. he does not work for the obama political campaign. mr. zients works for the american people. he's a man that has access to the foot-thick, four-volume budget that was sent out. and he helped write it. under his supervision, it was written. so we should be able to get straight answers immediately from this gentleman. for example, i asked a simple question right off the bat: did -- does the president's budget spend more money than the agreement we reached last august over raising the debt limit for america? does it spend more or l