guy benson is political editor to townhall.com, and former political adviser to senator lautenberg, let's with basically victory lap time, the president saying we've gotten the sign up, don't care about the details, i won? >> i think it's about the election that is coming up that both sides understand obama care will be a big part of the discussion. so testimonies i think rightly are finally going on the offensive about the law and ultimately they have played defense for all these years i think to the detriment of the law and for the detriment of obviously the political circumstances that have ensued because of the law. so i think it's about time that the the they stand and say there are 8 million people now insured. and most have paid their premiums. if you repeal the law, it will go back for the days when either pre-existing conditions prevented them from being covered or they didn't have access to health care. and that whee americans should though before they vote in november, it was a smart political decision by the president which is why you see him going out there or not anybody els

. >> a former political adviser to democratic senator frank lautenberg and a fox news contributor. i don't know but guys but i played a lot of dodge ball growing up in elementary school and i used to love to get hit and catch the ball. i don't think jay carney wants that question today. >> you liked to get hit? >> to catch it. >> james carney wasn't so successful dodging that ball. yeah. i'm shocked that politics plays a role in anything in washington. believe it or not. >> it plays in both ways. >> of course. >> if the president had gone asaid and said yes to the keystone pipeline, the environmental lobbyists and such would have been mad, his base. but if he said no, visa versa. >> that's why he'll delay until the mid-terms. they'll probably approve or disapprove of this pipeline as he's leaving the white house. >> is that right or wrong? >> that's the way politics is done in washington. nothing for the most part in washington is black or white. i'm not an opponent of keystone. don't mind if it gets approved. i think if you're mark pryor or mary landrieu, you want it approved quic

joining me now, fox news contributor and former political advisor to senator frank lautenberg and davido pac. a republican organization. wait a minute, the secret that none of us know is that republicans on wall street, david, like hillary clinton? >> well, let me say that just as in 2008 when hillary clinton had wall street support, she will lose the democratic primary. just because the very people who make up a democratic primary don't get to -- don't like the support she has given when she serves in the senate for wall street and for big banks, and so while republicans may like hillary, they're not going to have the opportunity to vote for her. >> wait a minute. you're kind of skirting my question by saying she's not going to get the nomination. what this article said, julie, was that it would basically be a wash to wall street bankers between jeb bush and hillary clinton. why? >> wall street always wants to vent the winner. if you look the at republican field, first they were all gung ho for chris christie. then they were looking at people like marco rubio. i think marco rubio stumb

with three members resigning the seats already and the death of new jersey's frank lautenberg, meanshe senate is experiencing its largest turnover in 40 years. only 28 members of the current senate were in office before 2000, and that includes dan coates who served in the '80s and '90s, and then returned to the senate after the 2010 elections. next year, after levin, harkin, rockefeller leave, the number will be down to 24. the last members of what is a steadily shrinking old guard. and again, the idea of having a committy gavel anymore not the same motivation, because guess what, leadership runs everything, and these committee chairs have never felt more powerless. that's the real story of these retirements. >>> up next, the tdr exclusive on the hobby lobby boss' chat with the pope. by the way, this is your last chance to vote who will go to the sweet 16 in our tdr bracket challenge. it's a good one. cast your votes. we'll unveil the winners on monday. we're getting close. remember, the presidential near-misses. live in the same communities that we serve. people here know that our o

we lived through those years, many years ago, worked with then-senator lautenberg and senator durbin led the charge in the house to stop smoking on airplanes. i remember coming home from these long trips and literally just reeking of cigarette smoke. i never smoked in my life, but just sitting around it in the airplanes. and now we're working together on n.i.h. issues and e-cigarettes. we're very upset about some of the false claims made about e-cigarettes so we want the triews truth out. before he leaves the floor i wanted to thank him. i'm only here for a couple of minutes to just express my chagrin, my disappointment, my shock that not one republican voted with democrats to make sure that women have qawp to men -- equal pay to men. what a simple concept. if you work a job that's the same as a man, the pay should be equal. and that means women can get a fair shot in the workplace. how do we know that it isn't happening? we know because there are statistics that prove that women are earning on average $11,000 less than a man for the same job and that's $11,000 a year. over the cours

fox news contributor and former political advisor to senator frank lautenberg.s it more than an exercise in futility at this point? i mean we are quite aways out? >> well it is never too early, right, to talk about, i'm sorry, not the next election, the election after the next election. not even this election. yeah, you know, it is never too early. i'm not sure how meaningful these are. i recall michele bachmann was leading iowa straw poll. jon: as i recall hillary clinton was leading on democratic side. >> i no longer will predict any presidential elections because i remember sitting on this very set, in 2006, no way hillary clinton will blow this nomination. who is barack obama. >> he came right in. >> i am no longer predicting things this far out. jon: is the interesting, is it more interesting race on the republican side, angela? it looks and we'll get to these numbers in a minute. looks like hillary's race to lose. >> it looks like it is hillary's race to loose. i think the more interesting side, hillary and chris christie have a problem with scandal. if bi

and so this is a very new set of challenges in congress worked on updating it in senator lautenberg was one who sponsored the bill and stored as stalled out after he died. so this is an opportunity to sort of re-examine and they didn't think that oppose reasonable risk because they never intended 300,000 people to have this leakage into their wallet or periods when this happened they were totally caught unaware and then oftentimes it falls upon the states to regulate. so west virginia didn't have those other structures in place to make sure something like this didn't happen. >> so the chemical spills, who is responsible for making sure that didn't happen? >> that's a good question. we think of environmental protection is the one that will interface on a daily basis are and where we had only been out to this once or twice in the proceeding of the couple of decades and maybe a neighbor complained about the smell or to make sure you permit was up today, but they really want coming out and doing very serious inspection. and these tanks were six decades old and they were sort of getting a li

that was a mission of our good friend, my dear friend, the late-frank lautenberg. avenues tireless and passionate advocate for improving our nation's infrastructure, especially our railways, because he knew it was better his state's economy and indeed our country's economy. we can honor that legacy -- his legacy by carrying on that mission. with that -- so i ask my colleagues to recognize this great need, as they have in the past. give the northeast corridor the funds and flexibility to reap the benefits of its recent growth while still providing for service around the rest of the country. with that, i'd like to turn to my frerntiond friend, the junior from connecticut, to talk about his state and especially the relationship amtrak has with commuter railroads. i yield the floor. mr. murphy: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. murphy: thank you. i thank the senator from new york for bringing us all together this evening to talk about the really vital economic porntion of the northeastern corridor to states like connecticut, new je