to the holidays? i say to the american people, thousands of people are working 24-7, 364 days a year to keep the american people safe. my. good morning. it s tuesday, december 21st. with us here in washington is contributor mike barnicle and nbc foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell and host for politics daily, matt lewis. help us out here. if jennifer politan no says we don t have to worry about terrorism because we have people working 364 days out of the year, will they give us a heads up to know the day they re all taking off so i can keep my family home? one person takes out a different day. that s the deal and they re all covering for each other. i don t know. maybe it s christmas day. what are we hearing? every holiday season we hear terrorism threats are on the rise, hearing about the possibilities in europe. same thing here? do americans have reason to be cautious? i think americans always have reason to be cautious. they say there are no specific th
desk. peter doocy is live in washington with the details. peter? good morning, brian. you heard it just before the final vote was 277-148 and even though it got a majority of both democrats and republicans, the breakdown was really close. 139 democrats, 138 republicans but with that, the house passed this tax rate compromise bill and now just needs to make its way down to the other end of pennsylvania avenue to get president obama s signature before it becomes law and when it does, it s cost of $858 billion will be added to the deficit but families at every income level will see their tax rates remain the same for two years. the long term unemployed can look for their benefits to be renewed and there will be a one year cut in social security taxs that affects almost every american worker. you ll remember this is the bill that the president noshegotiate with the republicans in senate. a lot of democrats were sore about that. after making a lot of noise, it made its way throu
senator demint who i know and like and respect and jon kyle owe harry reid an after polling. i will say there. i will go there. it is unchrist-like to judge another man s faith in the way they have judged harry reid s faith, a devout mormon, a devout christian. there is nothing biblical ability that. nothing. this rises to the level of self parody. if stephen colbert didn t already tear it apart last night, we ll do it tonight. this is on the level of freedom fries. these are the kind of things that people look at and say our politicians are not adult. could this be kind of the newt gingrich airplane moment? i think this could be a blowing it moment. the interesting thing is when you hear this, when you hear things like this from kyle and demint, do they really think we re that stupid? do we really think that we buy this stuff?
how insulting do an american citizen to think that they think this will score points, people will really react when i say, you know, they re not going to have time to wrap the presents because of what we re doing here in washington. talk about out of touch. i ve seen jon kyle s remarks. i haven t seen senator demint s remarks. i guess we ll get to them. i don t want myself to be guilty of judging what jim said. i m going to look at them. the bottom line is you don t, you were told not to judge others. they are judging harry reid s faith and suggesting that he s being disrespectful of christianity. they need to look in the mirror this morning and ask if that s really where they want to go. if not, they really need to apologize to harry reid. this is a horrible way let s put up demint s comments. this is a horrible way to go into a new congress, questioning another man s faith.
things like the start treaty. the senate has to get through that today before they can even move on to other business. what is actually going to happen? the spending bill but fights are going on all over the place now. could the government actually shut down? the problem is this, gretch, that is that the way they line it up, first we ll do the start treaty and then we ll take up spending. what s your hurry? the government is going to shut down on december 18th. that is absolutely the drop dead date. keep in mind right now, on capitol hill, there are two bills. the house has passed a continuing resolution. they re done with it. they ve passed theirs but the senate goes no, we have this other spending bill. this is the one with, you know, it s like $1.2 trillion and it s got all those earmarks in it. there s a big battle. so jim demint and others are saying they got to read the bill verbatim by the clerk, could take 30 or 40 hours, not just for the spending bill but also the