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Sen. Kay Hagan held her regular Wednesday conference call with reporters this morning. The focus of her opening remarks was on jobs and the economy. She said that North Carolina's Employment Security Commission would be getting a $946,000 grant from the federal stimulus program. The grant will pay to catalogue and promote so-called green jobs in the state.

"The number one issue on everyone's mind by far is jobs - jobs, jobs, jobs," Hagan said.

Even though the health care debate has eaten up the lion's share of time and attention this year in Congress, some polling has shown that employment - or lack thereof - is an equally pressing concern for a lot of folks. So it's not surprising to see Hagan and other Democrats shift their attention to jobs. (More here and here.)

You can hear more of the jobs discussion below.

I asked Hagan about two unrelated matters that have been lurking around my notebook for the past couple weeks.

First, Mel Watt has been getting a fair amount of attention for his work with a bill that would open the door to audits of the Federal Reserve. From A Bloomberg News story:

U.S. Rep. Mel Watt has denied gutting legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, as the bill's sponsor, Texas Republican Ron Paul, charged.

The proposal, which has 308 co-sponsors, would allow audits of the Fed's monetary policy deliberations. Fed officials oppose the bill.

The Fed has drawn scrutiny from Congress and the public after it bailed out financial institutions and doubled its balance sheet to $2.16trillion in the last 14 months to stem the deepest recession since the 1930s and unlock frozen credit markets.

"We don't want to have politicians second-guessing the Fed on monetary policy," said Watt, a Democrat from Charlotte. He wouldn't say what specific changes he made in the legislation. "When Ron Paul says I gutted the bill, he's exaggerating. I support auditing a number of transactions."

Click here for the whole thing.

I asked Hagan where she was on the matter.

"That's one of the issues - with health care, climate change, the jobs, the recession - that I know we will be taking up more in the first of the year. I am looking at different factors having to do with that and I have not come to a decision on that at this point, but I'm studying it," Hagan said.

Also, my Washington Watch column this week I reported Sen. Burr had some fairly strong objections to bringing terror suspects connected to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to New York for trial.

“These are some of the most dangerous terrorists in the world,” Burr said in a written statement. “I find it shocking that the administration would choose to bring the self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11 attacks to our shores." (Click here and see the second item.)

I asked Hagan her thoughts.

"I think they definitely need to be brought to justice. These are monsters that have killings in our country and I'm pleased that the administration is bringing them to justice. I think they've been sitting for years and years and it's about time we take them to court," Hagan said.

The follow up question asked whether she had misgivings about bringing them to mainland U.S. soil for those trials.

"Regardless of what court they're tried in, they've got to be brought to justice," she said.

Click on the audio player below to listen to the full call. There are a couple patches toward the end of the recording where she was doing Q+A where you'll hear "dead air." Because of how this was recorded, my voice doesn't carry onto the tape.