so with the republicans plan failing the health now voting on the democrats fiscal year two thousand and nine budget this is a fifteen minute vote we expect a vote following this on a suspension bill that was debated yesterday and then  the chamber will be closed for a security sweep as members will return at about eight o'clock for a session a secret session a closed session on final legislation and we'll have more information for on that for you a little bit later as this vote continues we're going to go back to today's white house briefing with deputy spokesman tony committee for moving this bill quickly and certainly want to see it not get into law so the president can sign it this is a wonderful program for american tax dollars and american ingenuity and how we designed this program considering a new farm bill for for quite sometime last fall to provide more time to consider changes in agriculture policy congress passed an extension of the current farm bill law that extension is set to expire this saturday a yesterday congress passed another extension of the current law to provide another month for considered can duration of these issues shortly we will release a statement by the president indicating that he intends to sign this additional extension and this statement will also we reiterate the president's desire to sign a reform minded and fiscally responsible farm bill that is based on the principles the administration laid out early last year and without it we have to take  like oil have in any specific way on the u s economy i think we've said for quite a while now that rising energy prices act as a tax on the u s economy and taxes are contractionary that take money out of the economy and slow growth and so we've been dealing with the headwinds of higher oil prices for some time and not just very recently they've come to you know record numbers recently but they've been rising for a number of years i think it's largely attributed to rising demand rising global demand for the use of oil and other energy sources the president has taken action that will try to put us in a good place over time to reduce our reliance on foreign sources of oil oil generally but in particular foreign sources of oil in ways that we can use more renewables immoral turnit of energy sources that's the way we're going to have to tackle this and also by conserving more in ways like the the energy bill that we passed last year which followed the president's proposal for the twenty in ten point one to reduce the use of gasoline in cars so those those higher cafe standards will have an impact and in the amount of foreign sources of oil that we use that's why we're going to have to deal with it but it's it's certainly a global problem remember that those those high prices aren't just prices that we're dealing with here other countries that are also that also use crude oil are facing those same high prices and that's a drag on the global economy and so we're concerned about it we've we've obviously let our views be known with oil producing nations including including the  countries and we'd like to see higher production in order to meet the higher demand that we're seeing today is a very satisfactory answer for consumers and most of these high energy bills  i don't think there is any one satisfactory answer for that for from our perspective what we need to do is keep this economy growing and focus on rising wages and job growth so that people can can deal with the reality of higher oil prices the higher oil prices and higher gasoline prices are not going to go over way go away overnight there is no way to do that and no one should hold out the prospect that there's some kind of lever or switch that you can pull that will lower gasoline prices for americans so it is going to evolve difficult choices for americans we're very concerned about low income americans that use a higher proportion of their income to pay for energy is why we have programs like like the b low income housing energy assistance program to help low income americans deal with higher prices and we have you know fully funded that program so there are some things that we can do to help low income americans deal with th price increases but our focus has to be on growing the u s economy growing wages so that people can deal with these because it is going to take a long time to deal with changes in transformations in the energy markets  we've talked a lot about the economy the president has over the past few months as we've gone through this transition into a into a slower economy after a very long period of strong economic growth and a record fifty two months of job growth the president was very transparent in saying that we are headed towards a period of slow growth he was transparent in saying that we're going to need an economic growth plan to deal with that and try to raise growth in the coming quarters we were able to introduce that plan and get it passed in congress very quickly and i think we're going to start to see the benefits of that soon so he'll talk about how he sees the economy today where the things that are that americans are dealing with  and where he sees us going and in terms of the policy responses we'll talk about some of the things that we've already done and he'll talk about some of the things that we should avoid doing math the latest numbers on spending labor market the news getting worse by the day how is the president going to allay america's concerns that the economy's heading for recession or in a recession but look you can try to put labels on what the economy is i mean it's it's very low growth and it's much lower or slower than we would certainly like to see what we're focused on is the policies that will return us to higher growth that's the only thing that we should be focused on are making sure that we keep taxes low making sure that we get these checks out and get more more money in the hands of consumers that we keep our economy open to investment that we continue to look towards opening markets for american export ours those are the kinds of things that the president is focused on he's in a focus on the economic fundamentals and that will take care of growth going forward we know lots of people want to try to find labels for headlines but we're we're going to focus on policy feelings about labels for headlines but how much like a logical people are feeling that it's not helping people here more and more that they don't stay home there's no question that that you know comp the competence of americans in american businesses and sport and we understand that your confidence can be shaken you know when you see volatility and markets and you see you know record high prices for things that we all use like oil the important thing remember is that this economy there's never been an economy like this in the world we have very deep liquid markets they provide great benefits to the country in terms of our ability to invest  direct capital to to businesses who are trying to expand and grow it's an asset that we have that very few countries in the world have in the in the same same quality we have an entrepreneur entrepreneurial spirit in this country with people like to try to find economic opportunities and make a growth a going concern of of business ideas and as long as we continue to fund those ideas we can we can continue to grow this economy present will talk about confidence about the importance of understanding that we have these attributes and that what we're dealing with in terms of housing at least is a relatively temporary phenomenon we had a very rapid run up in housing  and we had a situation where certain kinds of mortgage instruments the subprime loans are are causing stress in credit markets and in the ability of financial institutions to lend we want to deal very you know we want deal with those problems we know exactly how many subprime mortgages are out there so it's a it's a discrete number of of mortgages that are that are out there that are in that category and that are going to cause problems we also can look at the housing stock out there and the number of americans who will be you know moving into home buying the home buying part of their lives and so we know that over time we're going be able to work down those inventories of houses as long as we let the market adjust that way and do those kinds of things in this economy will return to growth because as we as we have been saying as we even as we acknowledge weaknesses in the economy as we've been saying the underlying fundamentals of this well i mean it's it's not a positive sign we would like to see that he did economy continue to support the consumer continue to support this economy we think as long as wages continue to grow and there isn't a you know a sharp drop off in in jobs we saw more americans working than ever before so we have a lot of americans working we saw a relatively low unemployment rate and so they should still be there to support the economy and and what we see from private sector forecasts is that the economic growth package will have an impact in the second and third quarter of the year and and and will support growth as a matter of tomorrow's the on monday or ha do to help make sure that our markets are are strong in the future we need to we need to do is focus on on what are the problems try to address the problems and help people to understand that you know there is a brighter future is the year ease from the definition of surveillance some things that are currently considered stupid twenty i'm not sure what exactly speaker pelosi is referring to but let's be very clear about what this democratic proposal does or purports to do it purports to be as a announced that was a compromise and i'm not sure who they were compromising between because what this bill actually does is take us back words not just backwards to before the protect america act it takes us backwards has to it into the thoughts that never even occurred to the original drafters of the five the bill makes changes in this bill that would require our agencies to conduct surveillance to see court approval to conduct surveillance on a foreign terrorist in a foreign land now i don't think anyone  thinks this is a wise idea and why it's in this bill i can only i you know they can try to explain it themselves but this would hamstring the intelligence community it would throw roadblocks at every effort to try to collect intelligence on the foreign terrorists and people who are planning attacks on the homeland and as a president said earlier today if this bill would come to his desk which i think we're pretty confident that it won't but we're this bill to come to his desk he would veto it now we know it won't say we're pretty confident it won't come to his desk because we know that it's unacceptable in the senate a number of the provisions that that they put in this bill were considered on the senate floor they were considered in the senate intelligence committee and these provisions failed every time and there's a reason that they failed is because they're on wise and they would damage the ability of our intelligence community to conduct surveillance when you say far more to conduct available foreign terrorists in a foreign land is that because medication is being routed through the united states no that's not what this bill does this bill says if you're going to conduct surveillance on any kind of surveillance you need prior court approval that wasn't required for the original files a bill that wasn't required in the protect america act and it's not required in  in the senate bipartisan bill got sixty eight votes now what we did agree to in that bill was to allow prior court approval for the procedures that the intelligence comm would use to ensure that they are only targeting people who are appropriate to be targeted this bill would require the intelligence community to go to the court before they can initiate surveillance on a foreign terrorist i mean there are let me ask the question of another matter yesterday officials here briefed on the colombia free trade agreement right and said that they had no idea why speaker pelosi wasn't agreeing to the path that would lead that to a vote this year both houses of congress on on t a a legislation you know the president believes that that it's important to help those individuals who are adversely affected by trade which we should you know always remember our are a minority of people you know we know that broadly speaking the economy derives great benefits from trade we also know that certain industries you know when they're exposed to new competition you know may be adversely affected by by trade and foreign competition we want to help those workers get the skills and training that they need so that they can compete in this economy baucus halfway along with some of his you know wish list on tuesday i'm going to let are going to let our negotiators who will be up in the you know work with work with members of congress to try to find common ground on on to i don't think it's it should be so the house has passed the budget resolution and now a vote on the spent in bill that was said debated yesterday we then expect the house to recess for a few hours as the chamber is prepared for a closed door session to discuss foreign intelligence legislation that session is set to begin at eight eastern the last about an hour things change earlier we said that they would continue debating the f i the legislation tomorrow now it's unclear we're hearing that there may be more debate on pfizer tonight we'll keep you posted we'll get some background now on the pfizer debate from a reporter on capitol hill well we're joined by tom farrar reuters how is this revised fines a bill expected to fare when it comes up in the house well it will likely pack or house the to be in the senate that's not going to pass the senate and the president says that he's not going to sign it but house democrats and senate democrats who are supportive of it they don't think it's going become law but what they hope to you do with it is getting it to get a new beginning new dialogue to get a new discussion compromise they've been tweaking it since the last time they came up what changes did house democratic leaders make to the earlier version to get more support the well you know i'm not really sure it's kept up more support what they did though they made some major changes the major stumbling block has been that bush has wanted retroactive immunity to any telephone communication company that participated in his warrant domestic spying program begun shortly after the family love and the tax push said it unless these companies are given such protection doubly less likely to cooperate in the future and that would subject the united states to increased risk now democrats say they don't want to give these companies immunity they say that they're interested in what what these companies did there even more interested in finding out what the administration did the critics charge that the president's program the swarm of program illegal bush maintains it was it was lawful he claims that he had wartime tower to do it he subsequently though he put the program under what's called the foreign intelligence surveillance act he put it under the supervision of that but the terms remain remain secret so what what exactly does it does but it is unclear what the democrats have suggested in free press and replace of immunity is letting these companies make their case in a closed court room with the given access to classified documents the president reiterated today that he doesn't like that he says it will just mean a result in litigation really billions retroactive immunity so where it stands now that's what the house is don't know another another section of the bill of course is this bill would replace a law that expired last month that law a temporary one was approved under pressure from the white house last august and what it did to what it did was broaden the power of federal authorities to track suspected terrorists without a court warrant one more thing any indication how those twenty one blue dog democrats along with republicans favor the senate passed by the bill any indication of how they're going to go today you know there were democrats democrats say they they're confident the bill will pass the twenty one blue dogs and some some news have been buckling you know they just want to get this done some democrats been subjected to you know advertisements saying that congress and so on so opposes you know subject it renewing the law and protecting the country about the foreign intelligence surveillance legislation coming up in the house today thanks to you and that interview from earlier today as the negotiations have continued behind the scenes that a closed door session for a congress on actually for the house on foreign intelligence legislation that session expected to start at eight eastern it should last about an hour right now the house voting on a suspension build evaded yesterday a measure commending the fighting sixty ninth infantry regiment