torrential rain triggered a massive landslide on indonesia s main island of java. close to 0 hopes were burieburi. dozens of people are reported missing. a wild police chase in texas ended with the suspect actually leaping from his moving car and trying to escape on foot. he didn t get very far. it reached speeds up to 100 miles an hour. the suspect was wanted for parole violations and faces multiple charges. he could have blamed toyota for an acceleration problem. up next, firing teachers for failing kids. is an entire high school faculty to blame? we ll hear from both sides coming up.
it was a fun day for the head of toyota usa today. james lentz had to appear in front of congress to be yelled at by men who don t do anything. he maintains the acceleration problem in many of his cars is a result of misplaced floormats and sticky gas pedals rather than the more serious electronic issues that congress wants them to look into. and in addition to removing floormats and replacing the accelerator mechanisms, toyota is now recommending that owners replace their wheel and tire mechanism with these cement blocks. safety first. terrible. no doubt about it. hey, with us now, let s bring in senator from new hampshire and ranking member of the budget committee, senator judd gregg and democratic senator from oregon, a member of the budget committee, senator ron wyden. they re proposing to simplify the tax cut.
revenue, once the money is sprinkled around in real estate, and restaurants and all of the other things that you can spend billions of dollars on. bill: washington, too. martha: indeed. but it is for many, a bitter pill for taxpayers to swallow when they hear the numbers. bill: and watching new developments on the hill today, top executives for toyota, coming face-to-face with the lawmakers today. the house committee expected a grill toyota on the sudden acceleration problem and how the japanese carmaker responded, to the concerns of american customers. senior correspondent brian wilson is on the hill, this morning, there. wonder how things can get any worse for toyota these days, brian? good morning. reporter: good morning to you, it is hard to find a way it could be much worse for toyota now, 8.5 million cars are being recalled, production lines are shutting down, cars are stacking up, on the dealers lieutenants, and they are taking a big financial hit, at the same time, toyota is
recently on this. here is an la times story from november, reported since 2001 their vehicles accelerated on their own. that didn t get picked up. there was a story the new york times gave, four paragraphs on the auto section saying that ntsa has publicly rebuked toyota accusing it of putting out inaccurate and misleading information about this acceleration problem. why didn t that set off more alarm bells in the press? i think it should have set off more alarm bells in the press. i think the way toyota has handled this situation, first hey say it was pedals that could get stuck under the accelerator. they sat s not a problem with sudden acceleration. then a couple weeks ag gee, they recalled millions and millions of cars because of this potentially sticking medal issue. now they re saying people are saying is it the electronics on
around. sure. with the sudden acceleration problem, have you figured out what the problem is? toyota has, the sticky accelerator pedal. yes, yes. and they have had their engineers work 24/7, came up with a repair. presented it to nhtsa. they have approved it, we ve implemented it. we just need people to bring the vehicles to us so we can take care of it. and you really want people to do that. yes, we do. so what did you bring me here? you brought me the fix here? gears and nuts and bolts, what do you have here? this is the gas pedal, accelerator pedal off a vehicle. and this is made by cts, which is the first phase we re doing at this time. and what we re doing is putting a reinforcement bar internally into this pedal to reduce friction and wear as the pedal goes along. okay. you have to pop this backing plate off, take a feeler gauge, stick it in, take a measurement. you go to a chart and it will