nathan hurst is following all of this for congressional quarterly and joining us live on the phone here in washington. thanks very much for being with us. >> thank you for having me. >> let's begin with the political divide within the house of representatives because clearly, the speaker of the house is having a challenge among congressional republicans. he met with them yesterday. what's the issue? what's the price tag of the transportation bill that the house is wrestling with and what is the senate looking at? >> well, in the house you're looking at a five-year $260 billion bill that will committee chairman john mica from florida introduced january 31st. and there were a number of issues in the bill that split off those moderate republicans, what they were irritated with was a canceling of the mass transit account which takes part of the highway trust fund money and puts it toward public transportation. a lot of moderate republicans representing suburban districts, that was a no go. a number of tea party freshmen who are concerned about the amount of money being spent in the bill hav

nathan hurst, cq roll call. . >> as the "new york times" noted, soon after he became the fifth head of administration in jlt of 2010, john is the unwitting face of everything americans hate about airport security in a post 9/11 world. every time we are asked to take off our shoes and pull out the laptops or submit submit to a pat-down, we have his agency to blame. he spent most of his career chasing the bad guys and he can take it. as he toll the times, my hope is whatever people want to call me, they recognize we are doing everything we can to work with people to provide the best possible security. the son of a church of god minster, he graduated from anderson university in indiana and indiana university law school in indianapolis. he joined the fbi in minneapolis. he went on to work in new york before moving to the bureau's headquarters in washington to supervise organized crime. since 1999 when he helped lead the inquiry into the crash of egypt's flight 990, he worked on some of the nation's highest profile cases involving national security. after the 9/11 attacks, he was put in cha

nathan hurst joins us tonight, thank you very much for being with us. >>> it's 11 minutes past the hour. this is "washington today." >>> let's go back to those amendments. the republican of tennessee. >> last august, the country watched as we almost shut the country down. during a debt ceiling debacle. we agreed during that, that vote, that what we would do lower the debt ceiling in order to lower deficits and we had language regarding deeming a budget resolution. last week unfortunately, we overrode that. but the fact is, is that this bill violates the budget control act that we put in place just last august, seven months ago, for this bill to be truly budget neutral, as was as outlined in the spirit of this bill as it was put -- >> time has expired. >> we have to offset discretionary spending by $11 billion which is what this does. >> the senator from hawaii. >> madam president, this will lower the discretionary spending by $11 billion. to offset transfers from the general fund necessary to repalestinish the highway trust fund. this amendment is a clear violation of the budget control