mr. mcconnell was out jumping a shark which we'll get to in a moment. howard fineman of msnbc and "newsweek", many thanks. >> thank you, keith. >>> if mr. brown, massachusetts, has not yet heard from wall street he should keep his phone on. new york state attorney general andrew cuomo today filing civil fraud charges against bank of america, its former ceo ken lewis, and other executives saying the bank purposely misled investors about more than $15 billion in losses at merrill lynch not to mention huge bonuses in order to complete its purchase of that firm in late 2008. that wall street might still need reform in the wake of the near collapse of the u.s. economy, republicans now actively seeking donations from wall street by making the case they would be antireform. "the wall street journal" reporting that house minority leader boehner has been courting jp morgan chase, chief executive james dimon until now a big democratic contributor telling him congressional republicans have stood up to the president's effort to curb pay and impose new regulations a

mr. mcconnell come to the white house and let's talk about your agenda and my agenda and you will find ay medium. >> sean: you get criticized, if they listened to you they would be in a much better position. i'll use evan bayh as an example. if he came out and said no to cap and tax no to health care reform, the american people would say there's a democrat i could support. >> he's moving in that direction. i would tell you this, we need bipartisanship on a fundamental basis. we need deficit reduction and we need a real spending cut. if we that as we saw in the mid 90s with the clinton administration the democrats would win popularity. >> democrats in office now don't believe in spending cuts. they believe the way to get this when going is spending more money. they believeing in priming the pump, government spending money that's why president obama said i'm waiting until 2011 to do any deficit reduction because this year we need to spend more money. >> sean: you have been in tough campaigns you are in sort of a light blue, maybe dark blue state, pennsylvania. what is blanche lincoln, nels

mr. mcconnell: madam president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: a little earlier today the massachusetts secretary of state formally certified the election of scott brown as the new u.s. senator and the newest member of this body. he'll come to washington and be sworn in on the senate floor, as is customary, later today. and we all look forward to welcoming him. the people of massachusetts are eager to have senator brown working on their behalf. republicans look forward to having him join our conference. this was certainly a high-profile election, but now it's time to get to work. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. and under the previous order, the senate will proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the following nomination which the clerk will report. the clerk: nomination: department of labor. m. patricia smith of new york to be solicitor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, there will be 20 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled be

mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: mr. president, one of the most gratifying things about spending a good deal of time in the senate as i have is the optimism that comes from seeing talent renew itself year after year. i've had the good fortune of having many talented staffers over the years, and the staff i have now is an incredible group. but every one of them will tell you that when kyle simmons gets up from his tidy desk and walks out of his office this friday, the office they return to on monday will be a very different place. it's been said no one is indispensable, and that may be true. but few of us can imagine s. 229 without kyle simmons in it. so it will take some adjusting, and part of that adjustment involves doing something this week that kyle never did. we're going to speak well of him. we're going to

mr. mcconnell -- senator mcconnell said, let's start over. >> if we can do that, start over. >> it is timer. >> we with like to start over. >> what we want to do is start over, work on a clean sheet of paper -- >> starting from a clean sheet of paper. >> let's start with a clean sheet of paper. >> let's start with a clean sheet of paper. >> take the etch-a-sketch, go like this, let's start over. >> let's wrap the bill. >> the american people want us to scrap this bill. >> start over. >> we believe a better approach is to go step by step. >> it means going step by step together. >> they want us to take a step back and go step by step. >> move through these issues step by step. >> that's why we continue to say go step by step. >> let's take it step by step. >> what american families want is a common step -- a common sense step by step approach. >> he got sort of tripped up on his script there. actually before we have you comment on that, democrats also had their own set of talking points, not quite -- they had a little wider vocabulary, but take a listen. >> quite frankly we may be closer to

mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. connell: if i may, i missed the first part of what my friend was saying but i think i understand the gist of it because we have had the opportunity to talk a couple of times earlier today. the dilemma we currently have on the proposal that the majority leader is referring to is that i believe it is the case that not all members of the finance committee are yet fully aware of what the package may look like, and we also don't have an entire conference that understands it yet, and if we are talking about a roughly $80 billion package, no matter how it may be labeled, whether it's another stimulus, whether it's the jobs bill, whether it's a combination of both, i would say to my friend that we need to be able to feel -- my members need to be able to feel like they understand what they are being called upon to support. so the sooner we could get the parameters ofhe final package i think the better. mr. reid: i will -- i hope to be able to get something to the republican leader very soon. i

mr. mcconnell: mr.president, this morning, we received the administration's budget for the next fiscal year. while there are plenty of issues raised by the fundamentals are clear, this budget is more of the same. more spending, more taxes, and more debt. i think everyone can agree that last year's budget spent too much. with a trillion dollar stimulus bill and massive increases in optional spending, the administration and the democrats in congress spent too much and took us into record territory. but the administration assured us it was an anomaly. that we just needed to get through that year and then we'd get serious about spending in 2010. fiscal hawks on the other side of the aisle told us the same thing every time we raised the issue. but now they've produced yet another massive budget filled with even more spending than last year's record totals. the president proposes to increase spending by anothe another $100 billion despite having already increased the size of the federal government to unpreced

mr. mcconnell talking about how the two support republicans in support nuclear energy or clean coal technologyd the president's response was, of course, they like fats republican ideas we are offering in the name of bipartisanship and so what's going on here is the reverse, harry reid taking out the one democratic idea. >> to think helping small businesses grow by allowing to write off part of their spinach years is just something that's democratic idea? do think extending the highway trust fund extension is somehow a uniquely democratic idea price i think if you were to break the four components of that bill out individually in which each of those would garner strong bipartisan support. look, i think we are in an in some ways over reading some of this because again i think personally i believe that the four components of this bill, several components that are in the bipartisan bill but aren't in the read bill barstow be bipartisan. i don't think any of the ideas i've listed here today are uniquely democratic ideas that have dispensed with republican ideas in their step. >> could you set us st

mcconnell was. as soon as it was thrown to him saying, mr.president, lamar alexander is going to present our case. i thought lamar did the best job i've seen him do in a long, long time. >> tennessee senator, former governor, and communications secretary under george bush 41. >> they didn't buy the car last year, it cost too much. we need a new model. let's go piece by piece. and then he went after reconciliation as a terrible thing. sure enough, harry reid comes up and, three times, you're entitled to your own opinions, my friend, lamar. you're not entitled to your facts. frankly, it was a terribly partisan moment for the democrats. you went back to the republicans and tom colburn was very good, he had good ideas. obama himself agreed about these undercover patients going in, and schumer. president's opening remark were terrific. the republican party has done itself well and credit not only goes to lamar and colburn, but mitch mcconnell who strat enjoysed this and realized they had a tough time in baltimore. i think the democrats are the one

. >> senator mcconnell, mr. boehner, did you make any progress on the jobs legislation?xchange any ideas? >> there were a lot of conversations about various parts of it. the house has already passed a stimulus bill, it's over in the senate. i yield to the senator. >> we discussed the senate package that's been percolating if you will. it's kind of a work in progress with some members of the financial committee. frankly it's not ready yet. most of my members have not seen it yet. we are certainly open to it. there's a chance that we could move this forward on a bipartisan basis. we hope it's not just another stimulus bill. we hope it is truly a job generator. we know that wasn't the job generator. but i think there's a chance the senate could get there with a small package. >> concerns about the health care cost? >> yeah -- >> a good way to start would be to listen to the american people. they are overwhelmingly opposed to the 2,700-page bill that the house and senate have looked at. what we need to do is start over. go step by step on a truly bipartisan basis, and try to

mr. obama, has earned some tentative support from republicans like senate minority leader mitch mcconnell. >> there are some areas of potential agreement-- nuclear power, offshore drilling, clean coal technology. >> ifill: in order to win over those republicans, the white house has acknowledged they may unnerve some democrats. >> i think the president, a week ago in here, said that he was going to make some decisions on energy, and i think he reiterated it today, that might not make everybody in his party completely comfortable. >> ifill: the obama budget for the coming fiscal year triples loan guarantees for nuclear plant construction. it would rise from $18 billion under the bush administration to nearly $55 billion. we have our own debate on whether the new push for nuclear is the right way to go or not. scott peterson is vice president of the nuclear energy institute, the industry's trade association, and erich pica is president of friends of the earth, a national environmental advocacy group. welcome to you both. scott peterson, is what we're seeing here the beginning of a shift back

mr. john stuwart entering the no spin zone and breaking news. that vote in the house. is it a done deal? senator mitch mcconnellcconnell and senator arlen specter up next.oe in the north of england to my new job at the refinery in the south. i'll never forget. it used one tank of petrol and i had to refill it twice with oil. a new car today has 95% lower emissions than in 1970. exxonmobil is working to improve cars, liners of tires, plastics which are lighter and advanced hydrogen technologies that could increase fuel efficiency by up to 80%. a day on the days that you have arthritis pain, you could end up taking 4 times the number... of pills compared to aleve. choose aleve and you could start taking fewer pills. just 2 aleve have the strength... to relieve arthritis pain all day. or annuity over 10 or even 20 years? call imperial structured settlements. the experts at imperial can convert your long-term payout into a lump sum of cash today. one pack. 6 days. that's elations. new elations. clinically proven to improve joint comfort... in as little as six days. drinking it every day keeps it working. elations h

mcconnell said: "after trillions in new and proposed spending, americans know our problem is not that we tax too little, but that washington spends too much. that should be the focus of this commission." mr. obama had wanted congress to form a commission with the power to force lawmakers to vote on deficit cuts after the november elections. that idea failed in the senate last month. i sat down with the two chairs of the president's new commission in the eisenhower executive office building this afternoon.Ñg and/called erskine and he said, you know, what we need to do is push the balfour ward and do it for our grandchildren. that's what we're here for. sounds corny, i know, but that's the way it is. >> woodruff: erskine bowles, help people understand how overwhelming is the job you've been asked to do? >> it's staggering. we have a deficit-to-g.d.p. ratio today of 10.6%. we got $1.6 trillion in new debt coming on to the country. judy, i'm a university of north carolina now and i know if we don't get our people educated, we're going to be a second-rate power before you know it. and if you just think about the interest on the national debt over the next ten years it's going to increase by $

minority leader mitch mcconnell talks about president obama's proposed budget request for fiscal year 2011. from the senate floor, this is 5 minutes. >> the republican leader. >> mrresident, this morning we received the administration's budget for the next fiscal year. while there are plenty of issues raised. the fundamentals is clear. this budget is more of the same, more spending, more taxes and more debt. i think everyone can agree that last year's budget spent too much. with a trillion dollars stimulus bill and the massive increases in optional spending, the administration the democrats in congress simply spent too much and took us into record territory. but the administration assured us that it was an anomaly. that we just needed to get through that year and then we'd get serious about spending in 2010. fiscal hawks on the other side of the aisle told us the same thing every time we raised the issue. but now they produced yet another massive budget filled with even more spending than last year's record totals. the president proposes to increase spending by another $100 billion despite having already increased the size of the federal government to unprecedent

mr. mcconnell: mr. president, earlier this week the white house unveiled its latest iteration of the democratic plan for health care reform. and to put it quite simply, it was a major disappointment. it was our hope that when the administration called for a health care summit at the white house, it would be an opportunity for both sides to come together and to start over. now it's perfectly clear the administration had something else in mind entirely. the plan we saw monday is hardly a starting off point for a bipartisan discussion on commonsense reforms. it's really just more of the same: a massive government scheme with all the flaws of the previous proposals that the american people have already seen and rejected. changing the name and increasing the cost is not what the americans have been asking for, and it certainly is not reform. to make matters worse, even as lawmakers head down to the white house for this health care summit tomorrow, democrats on capitol hill are working behind the the scenes o