the doors weren t responsive in the attempt to stop it. don t do that! you do a tremendous say a tremendous service to say don t do that. subway, elevators, we re used to it magically drawing back. not necessarily the case. you should be careful. mig smig it the duty of the maintenance company to make sure the elevator responds to that or is it the manufacturer? because already we re seeing lawsuits and apparently a probe by the new york city building department found that maintenance work performed by the contractor, transell elevator themed probably led to this death. that s a really good distinction you are making. look, they owe you a general duty to reasonly maintain the elevator so you safely ride in them and the question is did they breach it. you establish negligence and the way you do that is a they either didn t do the maintenance which is four times every two years, to inspect. four times every two years. yes. the secretary of defense part of it, though that does
details actually matter. bill: it is all fascinating stuff. what does it tell you the terror alert level has not been raised or there has been no solid warning, you know, the train alert at the end of the week last week but people thought it was squishy. what does it mean to you? that is a great point, bill, the fact dhs did not even go to one of the two levels, the first and lower level, called elevated and the second is imminent where we have specific actionable intelligence, the alert that was given on transportation or rail did not even reach that elevated level. so, you are exactly right. the good news, so far, is that the team that is racing against the clock, to save lives, has yet to uncover anything specific to the homeland, and that doesn t mean there aren t plots abroad or americans traveling abroad are not at risk. so, we have to keep vigilant on this and. bill: that is a good point, can i have one more question, real quick think compound itself, is
specifics, the measured approach, he s also being fairly aggressive on sures such as tr thip to latin america. that doesn t mean there aren t issues he needs to devote his attention to. he s putting the call back to congress and say you guys be creative, innovative, come up with ideas. he s setting the tone, injecting a bit of civility, kind of the antidote to the cowboy style during the bush years, and i think that s something the american public is welcoming. let s hop off on that, the styles of the past. it s been said that president obama early on took on the idealism of jfk, and now taking on the balanced approach as eisenhower said. what do you believe is next? i think i almost disagree with that. in both kennedy s case and eisenhower s case, we knew where they stood.
about very small numbers relative to where we need tho be. if you look historically we ve taken in in revenues about 18% of gdp every year over the past 30 years. raoeuft now we are spending 25% of gdp. even if we were to raise taxes and get it up by one percentage point. get it from 18% to 19%, 19 1/2% which is what the president has in mind we are a long way from closing the gap. there is no way of changing the strubgt usual of the tax code and closing loopholes is going to solve this problem. that doesn t mean there aren t many things we can look at in our tax codes to row form it to make it more efficient. jenna: that seems to be what the treasury secretary is talking a lot now. from this administration as we waited to see from other administrations as well we ll satan see what happens. good to see you. thank you. jon: breaking news remember where captain sully safely put down that keup eld airplane?
republican gop in a tough position going into 2012. jon: i don t know if you heard jenna s interview with jeff sessions. he s irtaeulted. he s essentially telling the republicans, you have to be the bad guys, you have to propose the cuts in social security and medicare, and some of those entitlement programs where serious numbers, serious dollar numbers need to be shaved if we re going to get the budget under control. why doesn t the president do that? reporter: the problem is whatever cuts happen have to happen from the house, and the republicans now one of the great things of winning the house of representatives is you have to be part of the government and actually start proposing some cuts. it s not going to work that he proposes things and the house doesn t work with him. so i think he s right. how the house and the president work together along with the