still out for the u.s. government. both sides in washington are playing the blame game while some much-needed services are being shut down. who is to blame? and an offshoot of the occupy wall street movement, plans to create their own debit card. they are even forging a connection with these up. we will tell you more about the occupy debit card coming up, and the nsa center in utah is

literally melting down. congressional scrutiny is heating up. more on that later in the show. it's wednesday, up over nine. we begin on capitol hill. lawmakers may be feeling anxious over the possibility of a default. they can relax at the house jim. while services across the country have been slashed, furloughing 800,000 federal workers. the house gym, which boasts a swimming pool, sauna, and basketball court, has been deemed essential.

it has been reported towle service has been discontinued, so i guess the pain is spreading around. republicans are pushing forward to reopen parts of the government. today they passed legislation to provide funding for families of soldiers who died overseas and the shutdown. five members of the military were killed in afghanistan over the weekend. normally money is paid for funeral costs and other expenses. since the shutdown those checks have been with held. democrats are opposed to this piecemeal funding strategy, perhaps because it will probably be another 10 weeks before republicans got around to fully funding the government, if indeed they fill out the rest of

that height chart. maybe that's the point. we are seeing more clarity on what the u.s. government will be facing. the treasury will not be allowed to borrow any more money, meaning it will have to cover daily expenses with whatever tax revenue is coming in that particular day. the government will be living paycheck to paycheck. the u.s. government receives $7 billion a day in revenue. let's look at the calendar. on october 23 the government will owe social security beneficiaries 12 lien dollars. -- 12 lien dollars.

$7 billion will cover that. huge benefits will come due totaling 58 alien dollars. next another 12 alien dollar social security payment comes due, and on november 15 the treasury needs to pay at 25 alien dollar interest rate payment. that's an important date. if the u.s. cannot reach that obligation, it will be in default, so the strategy of prioritizing to avoid default may work, but it will only work until november 15. that's what the united states is looking at if no deal is reached. i was talking to ben swan, and i first asked how the government should be covered by the media.

>> i struggle with balanced, because balanced indicates there are only two sides, the right side and the left side, which the media wants us to believe there is. obviously, there are a lot more sides than that. edi is constantly running a clock, trying to determine where the pulse of the american people is to decide are they angry at republicans, democrats, or washington or the way they are conducting the shutdown. are they mad at congress for having their gym open? it is a 24/7 game to try to engage were the people are. instead of talking about the real issues, which comes down to the fact we have a law which was legally passed by congress, signed into law by the president, and it was upheld by the u.s. supreme court. it should be passed into law.

>> there are a lot of similarities between the parties, and you can invite both of them on how they respond to war, surveillance, coziness with wall street, all those things you can find problems between republicans and democrats, but there are huge differences between the parties on this obama care law. that seems to be a sticking point. i guess the other sticking point is this idea of the sequester and bending cuts, which democrats and republicans aren't on the same page. am i right that it is fueling the shutdown, and does media have the right to point out that republicans are being troublesome in this area? >> i think the left and right are much closer on this issue than we give them credit for. even though there is a part -- an appearance they are working

opposite each other, the issue that is not addressed is if congress was truly interested in providing fairness, because he keeps talk about delaying the individual mandate until 2015, then they would talk about the fact that essentially if you want to have a fair law, apply it equally to everyone, and that doesn't just mean the employer mandate. it means for every exemption that has been granted. we have john boehner and harry reid working together to try to preserve a subsidy for staff members. or they are more cymer all -- more similar than different is republicans and democrats have gone along with the idea certain groups should receive exemptions and they should receive subsidies whereas others do not. if you want to make it fair,

everyone is going to be subjected to it the same way. if we are not going to have it you release everyone in the same way. we don't have that argument right now. it goes back to the issue of the debt ceiling. the fight is going to be over where the spending cuts are going to happen, but neither side is going to talk about the fact that under the 14th amendment the u.s. government must service the debt first. it must service outstanding debt. after that, everything else, including entitlement programs, come later. 200 lien dollars is what the u.s. brings in tax revenue -- $200 billion is what the u.s. brings in tax revenue. everything comes next. that's what the battle is over. both sides are going to say the full faith and credit are hanging in the balance, but that is untrue. >> you said 200 lien dollars a

month on a daily basis, and the treasury is not going to be able to ring on tax revenue -- to bank on tax revenue at the end of the month. when we get to one of these payments that exceed $7 billion, isn't this a serious problem? it might not be so bad for a few weeks. is that disingenuous? >> they say it won't be so bad until something they believe in has to be cut. it's possible to do this, to keep the debt being serviced. the problem they are going to run into is when they realize they don't have the money to pay veterans the check they are deserving, then republicans are going to say, now this is a problem.

on the left it is going to be an issue. that's what we really see. it's possible for the government to continue to function by just serving the debt. what's not possible is for every project they support. all of a sudden there is going to be the gnashing of teeth when their project cannot get funded. there is a real back-and-forth. when they say it will not be so bad they are being disingenuous. it won't be so bad if your stuff gets cut but not if my stuff gets cut. >> looking back to 95 or 96, the republicans lost. all of this makes the government look bad. it makes congress look bad.

doesn't that benefit political parties that have believe systems based on scaling back government? government isn't as necessary as we have been led to believe. >> i think the one group that is saying we told you so are libertarians and groups that say, we see this incredible crackdown on national parks because you cannot allow someone to go into a national park if it has been shut down by the government, or parts of the ocean have been shut down because people cannot go fishing. what we are seeing is there is an attempt to inflict pain on citizenry in order to make sure they get congress to move on this. that makes them look very bad. it highlights the point of a lot of people have been making, which is that government does not act as a representative of the people.

>> that is an interesting point. these libertarians happen to be benefiting. we are out of time. thanks so much. now we are going to hear from noam chomsky, but first, we interviewed him on this crisis, and we will bring you what he had to say. he has been following these issues for quite a while. what did he have to say about how government should be working versus how it is working? fax he said it was a sickly one party, but he pointed out a new faction has been born, and that is democrats that have moved to the center. >> it used to be the united states was a one-party state. it had two factions, democrats

and republicans. everyone was happy. it's not anymore. the u.s. is still a one-party state, but there's only one faction, and it's not democrats. it's moderate republicans. democrats are shifting to the right. >> he thinks there has been a shift. he has been around for so many decades. he has stayed the same, but the parties are evil thing. >> i think that is visible in this debate when you have a spending number. democrats are willing to sign on. the idea that the democrats have shifted to the center. i talked about this and how the media should be covering this. fair and balanced reporting. we see the media blaming both

sides. did professor chomsky assign blame to one side or the other? >> he thinks the entire situation is a farce. he did talk about how republicans have gone overboard. it becomes something that should not the real. it becomes such a farce, and he did talk about that. >> by the most respected conservative elliptica analysts. the american enterprise institute is mailing -- maybe the most respected political analyst on the right. when there is a radical insurgency, it does not work in politics.

that is what has happened. >> that party is who the president is trying to negotiate with. >> they have done this with the shutdown where they are piecemeal inc. funding for the th a opting in choing if we get to the point where they pick and choose, that seems to be pretty radical. what else did the two of you discs? haening about diplomacy. we talked about iran and the new president. chomsky seems fairly pessimistic. he thinks the ball is in washington's court. until the west stops in terms of supporting israel completely,

there is no way the situation is going to change. >> thanks so much. it has been more than two years since those ways. -- those days. the latest is and occupy debitte cooperatives. it will provide the basic financial services people need and use on a daily basis without the cost or for a regular bank account. the occupy cooperatives is working with visa. there will be no upfront fees to obtain the card with typical atm

fees like $.99 for balance inquiries. members of the cooperatives hope their card will get millions of dollars in access for low-cost financial services outside the banking corporation. is this something i can get them to challenge over te banking system? does that undermine the anti- corporate greed message? i first asked how this idea was conceived of and what the intended goal was. >> the goal was so the public are actually in control of it.

because it is a co-op, people will be part of the company providing services and they will profit from it. >> just so our viewers might understand, how is a coup operative run differently from goldman sachs or jpmorgan? >> it is for members. it is owned by the people who use the services. if you have a bank account with us you automatically become a member. it is not comparable at all. this up and running?done to get what will it used for, and what

type of timeframe are we looking at? >> we have to raise capital for two reasons. we have to have a minimal number of staff to service it. i think it is $12 for car. we hope it will become self- sustaining and won't have to rely on donations from other people. >> what is t targeted audience. what sort of fees might apply? how will they use it around town. >> they cannot get proper checking accounts, and there is a lot of them. there are 40 million people

denied checking accounts. they are denied access to the financial system where they cannot get ahead. there are a lot of prepaid cards out there already. there are a lot of hidden fees. what we aim to do is to provide a card where the fees are absolutely transparent and where we tell the user how to minimize the fees. that is a fundamentally different thing about the card. we aim to be totally transparent about everything, including how we spend every dollar. >> there has been some flack about a potential relationship with visa. how do you respond to this criticism? is there a way to respond to this undertaking without working on the inside?

>> you have to make some compromises. we would prefer not to use a provider like visa, and maybe one day you won't have to. we wanted the card to be available to people. if you want to have a card that is nationally available and could be used in stores nationally, you have to use something like the visa network. that was something we decided. we really want to put this in people's hands so they can start getting the benefits. when we talk to potential customers they don't particularly care about visa. they care that this is much better valued and transparent. >> when the occupy movement started, there was a big push to get people to move their money out of wall street banks into local credit unions, and it was

pretty successful. where do you see the occupy part fitting into this sort of strategy? >> complementary. we support people moving their money to credit unions. credit unions are able to offer more services than we can, so we don't see ourselves as competition or taking customers away from them, but they are not allowed to have a national credit union. a credit union can only have membership from the defined membership, people who live in a certain neighborhood or veterans of the armed services. that means they cannot actually joined the credit union. it will only ever have a limited effect. what we hope to do is set up a

cooperatives that does allow the range of services. legally this is tricky. i think this is possible. >> thank you. >> edward snowden's leaks may have caused a meltdown from the top brass. spying operations are literally causing meltdowns in the utah. the wall street journal reports the nsa data center under construction is built to store everything the nsa is collecting, which includes metadata and 75% of all internet communication in the u.s. -- is experiencing technical problems. since august at least 10 electrical surges have led 10 components to melt. each meltdown has led to 100,000

dollars in damages. in order to retain the amount they are interested in, this contains 65 megawatts of electricity. that works out to an electricity bill of $1 million. it is believed they are able to cool them at the same time, but the army corps of engineers says it is unaware of what is causing the surges. some of the biggest critics in congress gathered here in washington, d.c., to discuss the legal, economic, technological, and journalistic consequences of the spying habits. we broke down what was discussed, and one of the characters is the senator, who has been speaking about these nsa secrets for a while, and now they have been exposed. i asked if he had anything to

say about it. >> he had a lot to say about it. he has received a lot of pushback from several people who did not agree because he did not have the evidence to prove it, and he has been receiving a lot of pushback from the nsa intelligence community itself. one thing he said was going to happen that did happen was that keith alexander and the nsa are going to use media mischaracterization of government surveillance programs. about an hour ago this article popped up. the congressman was there as well, and he called the senator a congressional whistleblower. he wanted them to do things he felt he was not allowed to say. there are things he is not allowed to share, but he was

very liberated to have this opportunity to speak on the record about it. i think we have a clip of that. >> in america the truth always comes out. any government official who thought there wouldn't heed disclosures about a constitutionally flawed program didn't read history, and in fact outlined that history on the floor of the united states senate several years ago when i indicated americans would be stunned and angry when they learned and that history shows in our country the truth always comes out. >> he went on to say he started asking questions specifically about coming out with court orders as a way to unravel this web of nsa surveillance that he knew about but could not tell others.

the collection has not had any material clout with the nsa terrorism programs and trying to find these people. >> they asked him as a member of congress he has the privilege to go on the floor and say anything and he has immunity and why he never thought about just exposing these secrets before. he said he might have regretted that. an interesting situation. he has moved legislation. the congressman was at this conference as well. what did he have to say about being a member of congress, trying to get the information he needs to legislate raab early? >> the first ring i should say is the entire theme is wording.

wording is very important. the wording determines how they can use the law. for instance you and i use target the way it affects one person is not how the nsa sees it. also when it comes to congress, the wording they use to ask a question will or will not get the accurate response, so he talked about having to go three or four times to ask questions and very different types of ways in order to get the answer they were looking for. we have a clip from him as well. >> you don't know what to ask because you don't know what the baseline is. you don't have any idea what kind of things are going on. you have to start spitting out random questions. does the government have a moon

base? does the government have a talking bear? does the government have a cyborg army? if you don't know what kinds of things the government might have, you just have to guess, and it becomes a totally ridiculous game of 20 questions. if you ask something in slightly the wrong way, they will say, no, we don't do that. >> it all comes down to wording. he went on to say they are pushing for the amendment and for whistleblower protections going forward. >> did we find out if the government had a cyborg army? >> we did not. >> thank you. >> that does it for now. for more stories to come go to our website, and you can follow me on twitter. we will see you right back here

at 8 p.m. thanks for watching. hole low, welcome to "newslin "newsline." i'm catherine kobayashi in tokyo. u.s. president barack obama has nominated a champion of american workers to the most powerful job in the world economy. janet yellen has spent years at the federal reserve promoting policies to reduce unemployment. if confirmed, she would be the first woman to head the