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welcome to "inside story" i'm ray and we watched so you didn't have to and believe me we did you a favor. the republican candidates for president squared off in two debates last night in bolder, colorado and after two hours and 15 minutes in prime time the top of the card climbed out of the mud wrestling pit and headed for the spin room and occasionally informative and often infuriorating and entertaining if you like that sort of thing and david shooser reports. >> this is fascinating like medicaid. >> reporter: john blasted away at republican rivals and while it is true that ben carson once suggested the government get rid of medicare carson's position has changed. still with kasic firing away donald trump hit back hard. >> this is the man that was a managing general partner at lehman brothers when it went

down the tubes and almost took every one of us with us including ben and myself because i was there and i watched what happened and lehman brothers started it all and he was on the partner. >> when you talk about me being on the board of lehman brothers, i was not and i was a banker and proud of it. >> he is correct and not on the board, a managing director one of hundreds at the organization. former neurosurgeon ben carson disputed an acertain shun made about his past and denied being more than a paid spokesman for a controversial supplement company called manatech. >> i did not have involvement with them, that is total propaganda and what happens in our society, total propaganda and did a couple of speeches for them and paid speeches and it's absurd to say i had any kind of a relationship with them. >> but five years ago carson credited that company with funding a multi million dollar endowment in his honor.

>> it requires $2.5 million to do an endowment share and i'm proud to say that part of that $2.5 million came from manitech. >> the republican debate under scored sharp divisions over social security. >> yes we have stolen and lied to the american people. >> and mike huckabee and donald trump wants it and chris christie wants to cut the way. >> all that is in there is a pile of iou for money they spent on something else a long time ago and stole it from you because now they know they cannot pay these benefits because social security is going to be insolvent in seven to eight years. >> reporter: , in fact, social security will not be insolvent for 20 years and the program would still be able to pay partial benefits. as for the iou they are actually u.s. treasury notes, government bonds considered the safest bet in the world. several republicans hammered policies.

>> for the first time in 35 years we have more business as closing than starting. >> reporter: , in fact, according to census bureau data that trend started seven years ago at the end of the bush administration and carly fiorina attacked with this. >> 92% of the jobs lost during barack obama's first term belonged to women. >> reporter: u.s. labor statistics say that's not true. and to her overall point employment was actually higher for women and men at the end of president obama's first term than when he took office. altogether fact check groups said it featured more than 20 questionable claims. >> my apologies, i'm sorry. >> really doing some bad facts. >> david shoe sterwith al jazeera. show me the money and we will leave the show biz to others on this edition and concentrate on what the audience now knows about what these 14 or so candidates want to see on the economic front, once one of them

raises a right hand and takes the oath as president. joining me for that allen cole an economist at the tax foundation center for tax policy and a political consultant and principal at fdj solutions and herry steen director of fiscal policy at the center for american progress so gentlemen if you sat with a note pad in your lap and picked out the actual serious economic points can you say after having seen the three hours or so that there is a general approach to economics that's being aspoused allen? >> one thing we are seeing from republican candidates is tax reform and specifically a lot of the candidates are looking at ways to improve the incentives to work and invest in this country. one thing that a lot of them have in common is eliminating tax deductions especially the

state and local tax deduction and using that to pay for lower rates. a lot of them they are looking at is moving businesses to an easier system for accounting for their capital expenditures but on a number of other tax issues and policy issues there seems to be a lot of broad disagreement too. >> and your foundation scored the various plans, we will talk more about that later in the program. harry steen same question. >> i think you saw a definite commitment to what i guess you could call tax reform although when you look at the cost of these plans anywhere from 2-10 trillion over the first ten years alone debending on which plan and estimates you are using serious tax reform. the biggest things they all have in common is huge tax cuts at the top and wealthy individuals and corporations and what is interesting is it seems to be a price of admission for running

for president with the republican donor class all of the candidates have this in common but when you actually look at the polling of normal republican voters, only about one in five republican voters think that wealthy people are paying too much taxes and this is not a position contrary i think to conventional wisdom that republican voters hold. >> fredico did we learn anything new about the approaches or proposals to economic questions? the earlier debates were kind of all over the place, but this one was meant to really zero in on paying. >> well, there were a couple of points that i think were interesting, number one rand paul was the only one who said he would be willing to raise the retirement age and age of eligibility for medicare. he also said he wanted to get rid of or cut the payroll tax which is very unlike republican proposing that type of thing. but other than that and a couple of flat tax proposals there was not a lot of meat into what the

plans they were saying and mr. i forget your name sorry so you were tax foundation was quoted as saying mr. carson's plan would blow $4 billion and the deficit would increase and a lot of these proposals so i think that as side from a couple of writers like for example getting rid of interest like mr. trump and cruz would say i believe there was a lot of rhetoric about the 1% but most other policies would favor 1% and would actually expand instead of addressing it's. >> more commonalities or differences, he mentions that trum ee ee eel trump is virtual talking about the hedge fund loophole and hearing ben carson saying he would go to a flat tax of an undetermined rate and get rid of all the deductions, is that politically plausible? >> not all tax plans that are produced in primariesare necessarily

politically plausible but they do tell you about the kind of broader vision that the candidate is astousing and none of the things i examined or looked through are necessarily filled with the sort of detail that you would see in a real legislative text. that said, dr. carson has been unusually low on specifics to the point that actually we haven't yet modelled any proposal of his because we are short on the details that we would need in order to do so. >> we will talk more about the scoring a little later in the program. gentlemen stay with us, one of the few moments where there was some kind of attempt to hold a sustained give and take on a pressing issue was on social security and medicare, we will take a look at current gop thinking on the two massive programs and their future if these men get their way and one woman carly fiorina show me the money, it's the "inside story."

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government debt. eventually you get a benefit back. maybe it's not worth it, maybe you'd rather have the money now or invest it yourself, and it's fair to build on. to say the system is particularly opaque or difficult to understand, i don't edon't think that would be fair. other retirement plans function in a fairly similar way. you contribute and get something out at the end. >> government hucklebee is one of a few candidates to push back, when it comes to tinkering with medicare. he made a point about preventible disease that you don't hear in discussions with medicare. it has to do with finances, and how we pay to keem people well -- keep people well 10, 20 years from now.

the big for are preventible through lifestyle changes and people save money. it was refreshing in a way. >> i think there's two different ways, i think, of going about reforming the health care programme. medicare and medicaid. one way is you can slash people's benefits, and that's the wrong approach. the other way is to make the programs be more efficient. and it doesn't get a lot of credit. but the obama care, affordable care act, it has a lot of money invested in just that, in prevention, and actually, unfortunately, that prevention is one of the places that republicans in congress try to go to when they repeal the affordable care act to take money out of the fund. >> before the brake, campaigns - and you worked on campaigns, are they a good time and place to

talk to people about big complicated issues like medicare and social security. president barack obama and hillary clinton respect didn't talk about the commission until after it was approved. you see it going into a campaign promising huge entitlement reform. the idea that was presented in the debate. rand paul would be the exception. getting rid of the payroll tax, though he said the employers would take it on. other than that, there's a lot of promises and rhetoric and not a lot of detail. detail. >> regular viewers know we looked at two core propositions as republican economic theory on the program. balanced budgets and tax cuts, without a hint of worry that one works against the other. the candidates talked about

auditing the federal reserve, no matter where they roamed they came home to tax cuts and balanced budgets. show me the money. it's "inside story". >> ali velshi, lifting the lid... >> cameras in place for money and not safety. >> on the red light controversy. >> they don't give two cent about your safety. >> there's an increase in rear end accidents. >> ali velshi on target: hitting the breaks.

it is a simple flat tax where for individuals a family of four pays nothing on the first 36,000. after that you pay 10% as a flat tax going up. the billionaire and the working man, no fund manager pays less than a secretary. >> the problem is we never get d done.

>> we have talked about tax reform in every election for decade. it never happens welcome back to "inside story", i'm ray suarez. the moderators tried to get the candidates to talk about the relationship between the large and broad based tax cuts and balancing the budget. we had talks of tything, a 3-page federal tax code and no serious sustained explanation of how you make the cuts and balance the budget while expanding military spending at the same time. something supported by virtually all the candidates. alex and others are with me. their foundation has scored the fairs plans that came out. does anyone have a trajectory to balance. >> the candidate who is closest to that is probably rand paul.

rand paul - one would think would be a big tax cutter. actually he has a 14.5% income tax that is broad-based and a 14.5% subtraction method added tax. putting them together with a sufficient degree of getting rid of deductions, it's not that high of a price tag. it's somewhere under $200 billion a year. and rand paul is the candidate. he's a libertarian, he is willing to go out there and say cut. >> what about marco rubio. there was back and forth between the moderators and the candidate over whether, in fact, their tax cuts would be irresponsible. because they would increase the size of the deficit. >> the back and forth between rubio and the moderator, was more about who would benefit

from the rubio tax cuts, wealthy americans and poor americans would benefit from the tax cuts. the wealthy from the elimination of capital gains taxes, and the poorest americans from the big tax cut that he proposed. does anybody, harry stein, have a plan that also lays out what you cut to get the balance, because if you're going to take away revenue from the federal government. it has to cut things expending on the balance. >> i don't think anyone is laying out the detail that tells you what needs to get cut. i would say the closest that you get to it, and this gives you more than is deserved is john kasich laying out a plan, specific about what he cut. vague in that a lot of cuts are cutting a big, you know, cutting big programs like medicaid, sending it to figure out how to

make the cuts. a lot of the deficit comes from higher revenue. how does that happen. john kasich is proposing - saying that not only will the tax cuts pay for themselves, they'll generate a bunch of extra revenue from cutting taxes. again, this is coming from the person that's supposed to be the serious guy in the room. the guy that started the debate. donald trump and other guys. they say taxes pay for themselves should be enough to get you laughed out of a budget conversation. he is going beyond that. it's appealing in the ears of voters to hear about cutting spending, and cutting taxes. do we take into account in our political conversations that when you cut government spending, you cut things that middle class and working class people and poor people like they

get from the federal government. that there would be pain and people. >> not in my backyard syndrome. to go back to medicare, we just have a house speaker elected who decided to privatize medicare in a controversial budget. and they wanted to get rid of the i.r.s. and pay income tax the the proposals which didn't work and increased the deficit by billions if not trillions. it's not an evidence-based of process that the candidates are going to do on their proposals. >> at long last, is there any evidence, because it's embedded in a lot of these plans that cutting taxes raising government revenue. the tax plans that they looked at. they'll grow g.d.p. similar, but

they cut revenues by a larger percentage by the amount by which though grow g.d.p. e don't typically pay for themselves. the only way to get to that point is by getting rid of some bad taxes, putting in some taxes that are a little better for the economy. and running a balanced approach. so far what we see o from republicans, more along the lines of across the board cuts, itself. >> i want to thank my guests, alon col, harry stein, the director of first call policy at the center for first call policy, and a political consultant and principle. i'll be back in a moment with a final thought on the refrain. the real refrain, yes, but. stay with it's "inside story". >> every saturday night.

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candidate for 'ems like last night is a blessing and a curse for some that follow the issue. the blessing comes when it's brought up as part of the conversation that some of social security's problems come from the grand bargain putting it on solid footing and allowed congress to spend the surpluses. the f.i.c.a. taxes that you and i paid that didn't getpaid out in benefits to parents and grandparents. then there's yes, but.

the same ronald reagan celebrated in the debates was the president that oversaw the grand bargain that got us to today. personal responsibility is beloved of the candidates and drives a lot of they arizing, and turning it more into a retirement savings plan and less social insurance, yes, but some privatisation would not protect people from their choice, and would force them to fear the impact of them as in a great meltdown, when it became apparent from millions of americans. that they haven't saved enough for retirement, unless they count enough to get them through a year or two of requirements as enough. there's more to the story, and these debates give us an opportunity to hear candidates say nice things about their parents. it never people like there's enough time for yeah, but. i'm ray suarez, that's "inside

story". bsh on "america tonight" - stopping syria's downward spiral. is the u.s.-led effort working. >> in fact, it hasn't turned the war around it's simply stabilized the situation more or less for the moment. >> for the love of the game he gave aum. did he sacrifices his life. >> he would say mum, something is wrong with me, my brain is not working life.