i spoke with amy cramer, the chairman of the tea party express and she told me she and a few other activists camped out in senator jim demint s office reading through the bill as he threatened to read through the bill putting pressure on the senators saying it filled with too much pork and they didn t want it to pass. they were joined, the tea party express was joined and basically threatening to mount primary challenges against republican senators that voted for this thing so a lot of drama unfolding on capitol hill and the tea party movement is claiming victory for this for harry reid not having the votes. shannon, what happens now? technically we re out of money to pay the bills by this weekend and the senate passing a stop gap measure i guess. that s right. when the spending bill comes back again, will it be stripped of all the earmarks? remains to be seen. as you just said, there s a stop gap measure, a temporary bill to
an overwhelming majority of the senate votes it and the majority don t want it, i think he s made that clear. do you expect that to happen let s put those two unlikely possibilities together. that there is some stall that works in the senate. do you think that the president will do that in short order? yes, he will drop had his defense. the argument have been, you re the defense. you have this obligation. i think that s generally right. we don t want the presidents picking and choosing what they defend in court. this will have lost its legitimacy. it won t a case people can argue overturning the will of the public. but i am confident and i give the president credit. joe lieberman and harry reid and great leadership from steny hoyer and nancy pelosi. i am overwhelming confident we will get rid of this. representative barney frachk, thanks for your time. everything is going fine in
house. whether it s george bush or barack obama. i m going to fight as hard as i can against president obama on these earmarks and my republican colleagues who hate to vote for them but love to get them. this before air tonight. mr. reid blinked, as we told you earlier. said he wouldcconnell on a temp spending extension. joining us now, howard fine man, senior political editor of the huffington post. the continuing resolution they ll work on essentially means the new congress, the republican house and almost republican senate get to write the 2011 budget. is that correct? what are the implications? that is correct. the main headline is that the tea party s in control, at least for now in the senate. what happened here is that they took down the bill with all the earmarks in it. harry reid can wave the copy of the constitution.
let s turn to congressman barney frank in massachusetts. that s for your time. the good news part of this. is there depend upon it hope this could get done this year? absolutely. joe lieberman deserves a lot of credit. joe said if we were to send over don t ask, don t tell separately that he believed he could get through both the procedure hurdles and get enough votes. we did that. we did it to be cooperative. for one of the rare examples of good cooperation. we got 25 more votes 35 more votes for it this time than we did last time. the momentum is on our side. senator reid filed cloture tonight. the vote will be saturday. the republicans had been hiding behind the argument we had to do
funding. reid said nine republicans, complaining about earmarks, some marked by republicans, that reneged on their commitments to support that omnibus. the house on the road to ramming through a trillion dollars in tax cuts that our kids will have to pay for. democrats battling republicans, battling democrats. in the final days of the 111th congress. we begin with $858 billion in tax cuts expected to pass the house tonight. debate beginning hours after how house leadership would give progressive democrats their opportunity to open the bill and force the new version back to the senate. originally pelosi planned to bring two versions to the floor. the one passed by the senate the and another with a higher estate tax. progressives wanted to vote the for a higher estate tax without going on record for the bush tax cuts for the wealthy as well. pelosi predicting the vote would come tonight. house members hoping to leave before the snow in washington