31 past the hour. you re taking a look at a live shot at ground zero here in new york city where the twin towers came down ten years ago tomorrow. of course, a commemoration ceremony was scheduled for tomorrow morning. it will include moments ever silence along with the reading of the names of those who lost their names in the attacks. we will bring you that ceremony live right here on msnbc sunday. two months after 9/11, congress established the transportation security administration or tsa and completely changed the way americans fly. it s hard to remember a time when you could keep your shoes on while working through x-ray machines. the former head of tsa security policy, vice chairman of wexler walker. tom, with a good morning to you, it s nice to see you again. talk to me about tsa in terms of how critical it has been since
republicans understand when you re in congress right now, and your approval rating is 12%, you ve got trouble. and you bet dor something. the folks out there are mad and angry as i have ever seen them. they want action. they don t want gridlock. they want action. they re tired of politics. last word, pat. yes. the general obama strategy, i think people have compared it to harry trumen in 1948 where he went up to the congress in the late summer of 48 and said, look, i know i m in trouble, we re all in trouble, the country is in trouble, i need these five things. one of them civil rights and from other thing. the 80th congress said no, no, no, no, no, five times. the president went to the country said no-good, do-nothing congress, can t work with they will. you ve seen what they did. this is what obama is setting up and the republicans are smarter, i think. they re not going along with it. they re grab one, two, three or four of these things and say we can go with these and here are
out. creating trouble. i tell you guys. pat, you just heard the president there. will there be some compromises from the congress or will the eternal optimist be let down. i think he has a case. it was a rally speech in terms of mood but it was a moderate speech. he has a number of ideas in there, extending the payroll tax cuts, tax credits for hiring long-term unemployed, roads, bridges, schools, rebuilding them. he says i m going to pay for it down the road and i ll show you how. that s a moderate speech and it s got a lot of ideas in there that will appeal to conservatives and republicans. everybody went home, the president and the republicans and found out the country wants action for the unemployed. i m optimistic as is the president. okay, peter, all of the hype leading up to it, we were talking about it last weekend, looking ahead, did the president live up to it? i definitely think did he. i agree with pat on a lot of
democracy as we know it simply won t work. what we re talking about health care and you re using the term bribe there. you use terms like bribe, like impeachable, the subpoena power. the question is, is this going to be another 80th congress. like we had right after world war ii, where they used to say, they open every day with a prayer and ended it with a probe. are there going to be a lot probes like this going after people like rahm emanuel and people who you say took bribes in the health care bill? well, i wish, i wish rahm good luck in his campaign. the truth is we have a problem in congress with earmarks, we have a problem in congress with trading something for a district, for something else in somebody else s district. and yes, i m going work with, i hope, speaker boehner, to end the era of earmarks no matter where they come from and get back to accountable spending. transparent spending. that is something i want to work on. it s not the issue of my committee, but it is the
white house conversations or alleged conversations with joe sestak? the democratic for the state of pennsylvania. that investigation has been pretty well been completed. it s not an alleged allegation now that we have e-mails and conversations with joe sestak and with romanoff. what we re trying to get to the bottom of in the next congress, is this business as usual. something that happened under what we believe probably happened under the bush administration and as governor rendell says well you don t change everything. will the american people want us to change that, to quit in the future, using taxpayer dollars and positions? to influence primary events. or save their party money? i think the answer is, we re going to have to try to get compliance. well, that s the question. okay. well that s the question. are you going to spend the next several months if you get to be chairman of the reform committee, subpoenaing people like rahm emanuel, perhaps