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Year as the gop swept both houses of congress that time around. the senate and the house. congressman, welcome, good morning to you. a pleasure. martha: when you look back at 94, there was the same kind of excitement and enthusiasm that things were finally going to change in washington. what s disappointed what disappointed you back then and what would you advise these new members? i think the things that you discover when you get here is that this is a very, very hard town to change. you arrive, and you run into the old bulls who like things the way they are, there are traditions and there are customs and there are people with power already accumulated and trying to change those things becomes very, very, very difficult. and i heard adam and i think he s right, he needs to pay attention to the people who elected him, not to the people in this town and he needs to do what he told the electorate he would do, but it turns out, that s pretty darn hard. this is a town that resists c ....
Republicans, and he initiated this process himself. he faces a long list of charges and according to the new york post he may be facing a brand new charge today. molly henneberg, live in washington for us. so molly, the congressman as we just saw from a little portion of his opening statement, he s defending himself. what can you tell us about the that? reporter: hi rick. he is a lawyer, having been an assistant u.s. attorney before being first elected to congress in 1970 but obviously it s been a while since he s been a practicing lawyer. rangel and his high powered washington lawyers hat a had a parting of the ways after he paid them $1.4 million to defend him against these ethics charge. he also said he couldn t afford to keep paying lawyers that much money. head going this trial today, rangel had not indicated he had a lawyerenting him and that he would defend himself against these 13 alleged ethics violations. there s also a report today from the new york post , owned by pa ....
Been very clear, that if we re going to keep those tax rates for anyone, we re going to keep them low for everyone. so i don t see this happening. one other point i d like to make, rick, in washington state this year, there was a millionaire tax on the ballot, in liberal washington state, and it failed by about 65 percent of the vote. americans know that rich people, whether they re talking about warren buffet or bill gates or lead gaga or tiger woods, those are the people that create the jobs in this economy. rick: republicans have been saying if you only keep the taxes lower for those making less than 250, you re going to sock a lot of small business owners. that s right. iraq rick these are small businesses that really do create the bulk of the jobs in this country. by raising it to a million, senator schumer says that would really include virtually all small businesses. is he right? well, except here s the problem. as you increase the income threshold, $500,000, a million, 50 m ....
Are you? i mean, does it feel different this time around? are the american people more engaged than they were then? how does do you feel different? glie think it is different. i think it s very different. in one way, i think that our class came in after four years of not having been in power, we didn t realize any mistakes that we were about to run into. this class has seen not only the preceding majority, the democratic majority not listen to the american people and not fulfill their promises, but they watched republicans who elected who were elected in 94 promise to change this town and ultimately quite frankly as a group let them town change them so this class is on notice they d better be paying attention to the american people, they d better be keeping the promises they made and that they d better make progress. i think they have a much better chance than we had. martha: i think a lot of americans truly hope so and we re just looking at pictures of the contract with america a ....
Want it to happen this way. this was his idea. excellent point, rick. rick: crazy town. martha: it is. go figure. rick the president has returned to that town, he s back in washington after a difficult 10-day trip to asia and coming home to a whole new polit dal reality that may not be easy, either. we ve got a fair and balanced debate on the new normal on the hill. that s coming up. martha: it s foggy down there in washington today. trying to stop the violence at the u.s.-mexico border, casey stegall live at border with details and the new effort there. casey. reporter: good morning. armed soldiers are stationed all across the u.s.-mexico border here, but is their presention having an impact on the human and drug smuggling trade? a live report headed your way in just three minutes. ....