good evening i'm lucy cropping up in for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on live big picture unfortunately it's gridlock on capitol hill again as lawmakers duke it out over the budget and with less than fifty hours left before the government goes dark we're going to explore what's at stake for americans if a shutdown really takes place plus i think you're not footing the bill for afghanistan think again i want to break down the actual figures that you and i are

shelling out and you warn anybody and if the war costs don't make you sick there's always seafood to do the job especially if it's coming from japan we're going to talk about how that country's radiation leak could hurt the global food chain for all of us. are right you need to know this when the clock strikes midnight on friday april eighth it is now all but certain that americans will experience their first federal government shutdown in fifteen years and president barack obama is meeting with congressional leaders this evening in a last ditch effort to come to a deal on the budget as both sides remain billions of dollars apart and odds over where to find savings the house republicans have proposed put posted a clock on their website counting down the days hours minutes and seconds until the government shuts down i mean i wouldn't be surprised if these guys are stocking up

on confetti and noisemakers while they're at it earlier today house majority leader john boehner told the press that the government is on the brink of a shutdown because of failed leadership from the white house. but a president isn't leading if he didn't lead on last year's budget and he clearly is not leading on this years but can remember that the democrats had a majority here last year super majorities in the house and senate they had the white house yet they failed to pass a budget fact they could even agree on the budget after the election and in december they just counted until love until this month. always insightful analysis from mr boehner now unless a deal can be reached and reached very soon and come midnight on friday expects expect most of the federal bureaucrat excerpts is to come to a grinding halt so what exactly does this mean for you and i know new passport approvals no new tax returns no new medicare claims no new social security

enrollees public parks and museums are going to be closed and for those of us living in washington d.c. trash collection will cease and of course if you're a federal worker get ready to pack up for a long on paid vacation. but there is one thing that's still up in the air if the government shuts down which is what happens to our troops abroad not to mention the numerous ongoing military campaigns that we have in the middle east to meet out to break down all of this is ben armbruster he's a reporter and blogger with think progress dot com and thank you so much for being here before we get into the implications of the potential shutdown let's just update our viewers on the latest i know that president obama is meeting with leaders but my understanding from what i've been reading is even if they do reach some sort of a deal tonight it's too late for the shutdown is that correct i'm not exactly sure on the details i know their meeting tonight late and i think it highly unlikely that they're actually going to get a deal given what's happened in the past few days so i think i heard from sources

that works on capitol hill he said they were having a bernstein meetings and they're basically saying that the shutdown is probably going to happen well it does seem like all the sides of sort of dug in their heels on this it's as much of a political fight as a financial one but let's start with the most egregious example example of who could be affected by the shutdown and you've written a piece about the potential impact on our troops can it really be that our men and women are abroad could fight without getting paid because of this political game right if there's a shutdown that's exactly what's going to happen because. in this in the event of a shutdown all essential federal employees will have to go to work and that includes our men and women fighting abroad but also includes f.b.i. agents who are you know maybe undercover or anything like that so they're going to be working without pay and what that means is there was a lot of discussion about whether or not they would actually be earning their pay and they will earn their pay but they're not going to get paid until. the

government passes some sort of budget continuing resolution so essentially what that means is for those folks in the military particularly who are perhaps living paycheck to paycheck to paycheck as many are in this certainly doesn't pay that right. it's not a really high paying job so you know they're going to have to go to their landlord and say hey look we've earned the money but we don't really have it and i'm not exactly sure that that's going to be a really great excuse for people who are not paying rent utilities and all that sort of thing and it actually had a few commenters on my story from spouses of those in the military and they're really worried about it it's really just unfortunate now i do want to ask you do you have any sense whether the government has gotten better at this whole shutdown thing since the last one took place in the clinton era because i remember i was reading some eight hundred thousand federal employees were furloughed we saw toxic waste cleanup at six hundred nine different sites stopped that the data got

a vacation from child support payments i mean have we gotten better at this whole thing or it's actually gotten worse because during the ninety ninety five shutdown there was there was funding for the department fact so our military was funded at that time. and this time it'll happen again another eight hundred thousand federal employees will be for load and it's not quite clear whether they're going to earn their pay like those who are being forced to work without pay so those folks who are you know being sent home indefinitely don't really know if they're going to get paid or not. so i mean i guess they really haven't really learned much from the last time could there be a devastating effect on the economy if the government shuts down yeah i mean i think what's going to happen is the federal housing administration is not going to be issuing any loans as it stands right now the f.h.a. gives out thirty percent of home owners loans right now and obviously were and you know it downturn economy this is very important also. the small businesses

ministration world stop giving out loans to small businesses and i see that's going to have a huge impact in this economy so it's going to be pretty tough and it doesn't seem like particularly republicans really care too much about it because. so you know people like mike mike pence who is the third ranking republican and the house saying you know shut it down if he doesn't get what he wants. so you know i think it's really going to be a big deal you know in some ways it could be argued that this whole argument over the budget is a warmup for a bigger fight that's looming which is over there whether or not to raise the debt ceiling do you expect the lines in the in the sand to be drawn along similar lines here and could we see a stalemate over that yeah yeah i mean i think you're seeing a lot of the same republicans who are saying shut it down also saying we will not raise the debt ceiling the treasury treasury secretary come out and say you know to the house republicans look this out there we have to raise the debt ceiling or we're going to default on our loans. but these tea party backed republicans are you

know they're sort of beholden to this whole you know right wing faction and they're not budging so i think there's going to be a lot of parallels between the two arguments here and i'm sure we'll hopefully we'll have you back on when that takes place to break it all down for us thank you so much for you. all right now while republicans play politics along capitol hill and dangle our economy over the ledge they're depending on our soldiers to keep up the fight abroad so i came up with a little bit of an idea that should speaker boehner and his cohorts over to afghanistan for a few months why not maybe then the adults in the room will step up and get the people's work done. all right it's time for our daily poll your chance to tell us what you think about the issues that matter and here's today's question if a government shutdown does happen and it does look likely will congress be up for the challenge on may sixteenth when the united states hits its debt ceiling and

your choices are yes congress and the tea party's lapdog speaker boehner will do everything that's in the best interest of america or no they will risk economic collapse of this country for political means that so far over ninety percent of you have said no you can log on to thom hartmann dot com to tell us what you think the polls will be open until tomorrow morning. all right it's time for the good the bad and the very very hideously ugly first up the good democratic congressman gerry connolly the republicans on the house energy committee you met nana mostly passed a bill to strip the e.p.a.

of its power to regulate carbon now mind you these are the same guys who happily took piles of cash from the infamous koch brothers well congressman connelly decided to fight prop him up a little bit of fun while he was at it connally's pushing to have the g.o.p. bill officially renamed and the following ways. to head in the sand act. then there is the oil producing economy which alicia knocked. then there is the middle eastern economic development and assistance act and of course my personal favorite the koch brothers appreciation. well done congressman well done and now the bad republican congressman jeff we're entering now some folks may say that there's something a little bit unfair about the fact the big oil c.e.o.'s are nearly in some salaries weaken massive boluses when all of the eight of taxpayer subsidies don't forget now this was just the disruption discrepancy that was raised at last week's house natural resources hearing and if an oil executive gets four hundred fifty million

dollars for his job a gas station owner gets paid sixty grand for the same amount of work with no help from the taxpayers but according to jeff landry there is absolutely nothing wrong with this picture take a look at it he said. that you know we're going to joke about it but it american dream about it might not be real good to me he grows up. in a poor family works as we'll leave it off should you be able to make as much money as he possibly can and work as less always as you can if you catch more good i mean should we destroy the american dream to which you can reach you need to declare you amount of right the american dream is to make as much money as possible while working as little as possible on the backs of taxpayer dollars not sure about that one so much for j.f.k.'s ask not what you can your country can do for you but what you can do for your country advice and then there is the very ugly henry's

turkey sausage service started turkey service now this i don't based company is being sued by the u.s. equal employment opportunity commission for abusing thirty one mentally impaired workers for more than two decades now according to this lawsuit employees working full time at the starkly processing plant were paid a stunning sixty five dollars per month that's absolutely illegal and way below the minimum wage they were captains of horrible conditions and i had access to medical care subject to verbal and physical abuse and i'm talking about hitting kicking and in at least one case that i was handcuffed and disabled worker with and popped this whole case illustrates exactly why government regulators are needed to protect workers abuse of corporate owners can be very very ugly. all right after the break if you weren't in support of cutting the federal funding of this war you might switch sides i'm going to show you just how much of your funding comes directly out of your pocket.

let's not. good thing we are right. well. whatever the government says they're safe get ready because freedom. of. will.

power. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here so you saw the part of it and realized everything you saw you don't. charge. for.

now whether or not our government does shut down at the end of this week a war in afghanistan the longest war in our nation's history will continue now if you thought that this war could rage on without having much of an impact on your life here in the united states think again the group rethink of ghana stand just put up a new website that allows you to calculate exactly how much of your tax dollars go to dropping bombs over in afghanistan for example you can make thirty thousand dollars a year and regulations you spend one thousand one hundred eighteen dollars on the afghan war now let's say you make sixty grand a year congrats you contribute three thousand and sixty four dollars to the war effort then if you make a cushy one hundred thousand dollars a year then nearly six thousand bucks and out of your pocket to pay for that war still think that it doesn't affect you but anyway joining me now to talk about the

costs as well as some of the more recent disturbing developments in afghanistan is their quote from we think. again a san there it is great to have you back thank you so much for being here thanks for having me now something is a little bit out of sync here and i'm hoping that you can help me understand it on one hand we're supposedly broke right we have all these budget issues and congress is wrangling over exactly what to cut on the other hand this country seems to be more than happy to spend more than one trillion with a t dollars on the war now of course i'm talking about the combined total of what we spend in iraq and afghanistan so explain to me i mean how is it that we're too broke to pay our teachers and starving americans with food stamps but when it comes to military action it seems like there's all the money in the world well i think you put your finger on it right there it just turns out that we have plenty of money in the united states for things that our policymakers make their priorities but none for the things that uphold basic social services they keep people from slipping below the cracks here in the united states one of the things that are

calculated shows is that while some people have decided that the war is just going on in the background it's actually hitting our pocketbooks unseen every single day and a lot of people are going to be surprised to find when they visit rethink afghanistan dot com they are paying thousands of dollars in some cases to support a war that most americans don't support yeah i mean i think that calculator is really great but do you think that it's the american story just connected from the coast cost of war or perhaps the politicians the guys that really are setting the policy here. i think it's both honestly i think the way the war has managed to go on in spite of massive public opposition is that we don't have a draft in the united states and so it's hard for people to feel this specific direct cost to them and understand it that's what they're feeling and that's what we're doing with this calculator is that we're showing as taxis coming up on april eighteenth day you're about to write a check that a good chunk of it is going to go to war it figures that this calculator is based on our from the national priorities project and they've shown that out of your

income tax dollars a civically twenty seven point four cents out of every single dollar you pay to the federal government in income taxes goes to fund military spending in afghanistan or in afghanistan around the world and when you look at what our leaders are doing in washington right now they're lavishing billions of dollars every single week on a war effort that is frankly not making us safer as i'm sure we'll discuss in a minute but it's also not supported by the american people want the same time they're telling us we have to live with things like a possible government shutdown that's really going to affect everyday americans who rely on basic government services to keep from falling through the cracks and as we just discussed in our previous segment for the men and women who are fighting in afghanistan now it has been the sort of feeling war effort and i do want to say way into that there's there's been a really disturbing development afghanistan now we know that president obama over and over and over has said that our war effort there the objective there is in ny al qaeda a safe haven now the wall street journal is reporting that bin laden's network is

indeed on the rise in afghanistan especially the northeastern part near the pakistan border where much of the troops have sort of pulled out what are the implications of this. well it shows that the folks who were at the beginning before president obama went through his escalations the folks who express deep reservations and said that the escalation was actually going to serve counter to american interests infuse the taliban and al qaeda closer together so those folks were right i mean the fact that the pentagon is expressing surprise and shock now and al qaeda is infiltrating back into afghanistan and the taliban hasn't cut them off from the relationship just shows that they haven't been paying attention to the experts that have been warning about this for a year now there was a recent report that came out almost two months ago warm day current u.s. policies of night raids and targeted assassinations of top taliban leaders was actually radicalizing the organization above and beyond where it was already in

causing the promotion of these younger more radical leaders who have never known afghanistan without war and who are much more open to the overtures from al-qaeda now we've known that for months but the pentagon has stubbornly pushed ahead with this escalation policy this military first policy instead of looking for a military solutions to the political problem in afghanistan and now they're seeing exactly what experts have been warning about for months and the surprise is frankly not very convincing it just shows that they had a policy they were going to pursue no matter what they were convinced they were right and now that it's falling apart there are they're trying to say nobody could have seen this coming but very quickly we're almost out of time but how do you think. the effort to draw down american troops. well the because you're going to try to say look this means we can't go as fast as the american people want but if the situation were reversed they would just say well it shows that we're winning and we can't stop now the basic fact is this war is consignor two billion dollars every single week and people who go to rethink afghanistan dot com can see what

it's going to cost them on tax day and we do not have the resources just in this kind of money in afghanistan all the way to twenty forty we just don't have the resources for that if that if what they're telling us is true we are truly in a budget crisis all right well gerri thank you so much for your time and everyone to rethink afghanistan dot com you can check out that calculator right there. thank you now it seems that these days the policy interests of the poor and the middle class have fallen by the wayside at least when it comes to our representatives over on the hill and whether you like it or not the fact of the matter is that the wealthiest americans are often the ones with the most influence in our political system and as a result it shouldn't be a surprise that economic and fiscal policy suffers but inequality of doesn't just the story matters and policies here at home foreign policy is at stake as well are the top one percent of americans rarely served in the armed forces and of course there's very little economic pain for those folks in the nation goes to war after all borrowed money will take care of all that now with the top one percent in

charge there's very little in the way of expanding our wartime adventures abroad and for the people in charge the war simply has gotten cheaper than ever but for the rest of us the costs financial moral visible only soar and tom recently took on the cost of war in afghanistan and here's what he had to say on the issue. we're spending sixteen billion dollars a month sixteen billion dollars a month in afghanistan and what is upon us the number of soldiers we have wounded since the afghan war started nine thousand nine hundred seventy one including iraq forty one thousand american soldiers wounded. the number of soldiers killed in afghanistan fourteen hundred thirty seven including iraq fifty eight hundred fifty nine. in our soldiers killed in afghanistan under george bush this was the entire era from two thousand and one to two thousand and eight six hundred thirty. and were soldiers killed in afghanistan under obama in the last two years eight hundred

seven tell me this war is going well. and that's the that's the last source like that ok so let me get back to this so we're we're likely now to spend over one trillion dollars one trillion dollars in a country with a pre-invasion g.d.p. of two billion i just think about this for a minute the entire economy of afghanistan before we invaded them was was two billion dollars a year average income of the average afghan citizen was three hundred dollars a year two billion was their annual g.d.p. the g.d.p. of the state of wyoming is thirty seven billion dollars the g.d.p. of the city of chicago is five hundred seventy four billion dollars and chicago police are as thirteen thousand employees and the d.o.d. the departed if we get thirty four thousand dead civilians in afghanistan you know if we just took that one trillion dollars that we're spending in afghanistan at one

trillion and we gave it to the twenty eight million people in afghanistan that's thirty five thousand seven hundred dollars per afghan. in a country where the average annual income is three hundred dollars they would all be rich we wouldn't have a war without the same amount of money but frankly thirty seven thirty five thousand seven hundred dollars you could just take the seven hundred dollars and give it to every single one every single person in afghanistan and you would have two years' worth of income for i mean this is absolutely insane but we're too. crazy alerts i have an eye on that as that's a promise that's good you know that in less than a one month from today i'm a fan of our nation is going to hold it flush no they have player well if you didn't know then you are likely unaware of the apocalypse the consequences that we could all face if you don't pray that day luckily the sponsors of the national day of prayer have released this exciting video to warn us take

a look. holy

crap if we don't pray next month giant massive terrifying death clothes are going to the entire nation's capital engulfed god will make it rain and maybe some lightning too now perkins pardon me if i'm wrong but i thought the whole point of an afterlife was that you know we're going to be judged for all the crappy stuff

that we do here on earth like the need to ugly people and lying and all that stuff but i guess it turns out that we have to praise that god doesn't come down here and destroy everything with nightmare rain clouds go figure. and how after the break the results are coming in from wisconsin is a vote for a new state supreme court justice will the labor workers be able to snatch control from scott walker and his supporters tight grip. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime.

i think. even one well. whenever the government says there's a few safe get ready because their freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so sleek you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you sure see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw you don't. are welcome to the big picture.

welcome back to the big picture i'm lucy carlton ok and for tom parker coming up in this half hour it has contaminated people it has caused one country to already banned imports of seafood from that from japan so should we as well plus the fate of the.