so it is pretty fraught for him to get too far into it. charles? let me see say that seeing tomko burn tells me how much we are going to miss him. he has the best hair whisker compensation in all of washington and it will be missed. look, i think obama s problem with obamacare that it is a disaster. i suspect what he will do is do a couple of antidotes there are people who have been helped, and he will find them and make it sound as if that s emblematic of the country it is not and i think it will be highly antidotal and he will simply be implying stay the course. the problem is the promise that he made about the plan that you can keep your plan if you like it is what undermined him entirely. i don t think you can recover. okay. panel, thank you. that s it for the panel. stay tuned for some reaction to president obama s diplomatic nominations this week.
the appropriations and budget committees. representative ryan, thank you for joining me on this saturday morning. great to be with you. may i get your reaction, sir, of this phone call between the president and iranian positive. sure. positive first step. you can see by the recent reporting that it s a very ditch issue in iran. it s also a very difficult issue here. but i think it s positive. i think we just continue to move forward, have these kinds of conversations. and i m glad the president is engaging at this level. okay. . all right. we move to the possible government shutdown. republican senator tomko burn talked about it yesterday. let s take a listen to this. the only time you shut down the government is when you shut it down and refuse to open it until you get accomplished what you want. we ll fold like hot cakes if they shut down the white house. tomko burn is a republican.
finance, by us. by taxpayeçz ì(lc% that s a striking scene for me. tim russert obviously a giant. i was sitting there, i was a guest. i was struck by everyone just throwing business cards around and working it. it was about them. i think that made the larger point, both placing us in hestry history and the character we are talking about. in 2008, barack obama planned to change the culture of washington. to what degree have he and the team around him fallen subject to the rules of this town? well, i think, look, i think it is pretty self evident. there is an anecdote in the book where in a soul searching meeting, former white house press secretary says, did we change washington or did washington change us? i think if you look at how many people around about president obama, the president who would close a revolving door had gone out and sort of dove into this permanent futile class as tomko
the commander s name and it has never become public. the irs reports its punishing two staffers who went to a conference that cost taxpayers more than 4 million bucks. officials say it has to do with a party in a private suite where somebody apparently broke the rules about giving out free food. the source says the two staffers are now on leave and may end up loading their jobs. the inspector general says the anaheim get away was one of more than 200 conferences that cost us taxpayers $50 million. and gave us the entertaining video of irs workers learning to dance. but one senator says the administration put a much lower price tag on the events last year. mike emanuel is live for us on capitol hill. mike? well, shep, oklahoma senator tomko burn is demanding answers. coburn sent a letter last year to then treasury secretary tim geithner about conference spending. treasury official responded that the department had spent less than $500,000 now coburn wants an
earlier this year, tomko burn and jim imhoff voted against the package in hurricane sandy. he said this won t change his attitude, that it should be matched by spending offsets, that is, by cutting money from something else. many lawmakers disagree, including democratic senator mary landrieu from louisiana, a state who has seen its share of storms. same with tom coburn from oklahoma. coburn and his colleagues may not have to vote a funding bill this time around. they have more than $11 billion in its disaster relief fund. probably enough to help oklahoma, but natural disasters like this won t stop happening. we ve hardly heard the last of this debate. i guess that s what s striking about this is, initially when we had the disaster this week, i think there was an assumption that that means we re going to have to go to congress and look