that's what's at stake and in a few short hours the government will shut down this unless lawmakers come up with a quick fix for spending but is it really a budget battle or an ideological one. and if a government shutdown wasn't bad enough corporate giants are negating on their piece of the tax high and here's the kicker financial murder they're getting away with it's legal. and the u.s. has been here before a place where top economic giants are trying to make over the global economy welcome to bretton woods two point zero.

good evening it's friday april eighth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy catherine of and you're watching our t.v. just four hours left until the current funding for the u.s. government runs out even if lawmakers managed to reach some sort of a deal on a twenty eleven budget in that time both sides agree that it is now too late for congress to pass anything before midnight now a stopgap measure covering just a few days is own is the only way for lawmakers to prevent a shutdown from happening and we're going to keep tracking that for you here on our team but i have to say it is not looking likely at this point but regardless of how this budget fight actually ams the fact that it has gotten here is likely to be a black mark for both parties earlier i spoke with ryan shanika of the young americans for federal debt awareness and he's also the co-founder of we can't pay that tab org and he said that lawmakers need to look at the bigger picture and start thinking about more than just their next election. well i think there's

certainly a bigger picture but if you look at it discretionary non-defense discretionary spending is about twelve percent of the entire budget and that's really the only the only area we can become seem to focus on we haven't heard we haven't really dealt with medicare now paul ryan just recently released a plan that actually deals with medicare he was attacked a little bit but he's at least put a plan on the table he's put a plan he says you know it's going to require larger payments from from individuals but you know he believes the government should be less involved in pain and i think he should be commended for his twin and it's hopefully a great thing for us to start off with but the bigger issue here that you know we've taken the political debate to this point this last minute deadline we're running up against the clock with the shutdown and lawmakers in all fairness i want to really start addressing the issues that have led this economic situation into being a little bit difficult for me on the one hand to say yes it's good that they're talking about spending priorities and cutting priorities when they weren't talking about this one when it really matters so what do you think they're actually serious

about changing the way to put country management well as the debate stands right now i don't think they are serious because they were serious they would be talking about the larger picture they would say you know we have this issue we have we got the budget for last the rest of this year and we need to move we need to pass something we need to move on let's talk about you know then we have six eight months to debate the larger spending bills but you know because they live in a world of sound bites illuminate the live in a world of hyper partisanship right now they can only fight about the small things in election cycle so it's not you know why right focus about ten years down the line when you have your election a few months away right you know when you're when maybe your every two years you know when you're constantly running for reelection so so why not i think that they go fight because where it might not get you might not again know that well some folks that are paying attention or should be paying attention to the long term picture are people probably a very denying age the younger generation that's really going to be dealing with the consequences of inaction on our on our debts on our deficits what is your.

doing to sort of get folks more interested involved in this because i mean you know if i had a choice between watching jersey shore and thinking about that i'm sure some would probably erin especially the traditional yeah well i think what we're focused on is this is a strictly complex issue and it's most people can understand what's going on so what we try and do is break things down and make them or something and say this is how it's going to end and you know lately look the focus alliance taxes because i think people between about the ages of eighteen and thirty to the millennial generation who we focus on can understand that i mean you're if they're employed if they're employed we tend to we tend to want to go out to the people of africa ology and because they do have jobs they do understand that hey you know if we don't fix this you know twenty years down the road thirty years down the road we can be seen fifty sixty percent taxes and that's just to pay for things like interest medicare social security that doesn't include all the things the government does right now all the investments they might be making you know we talk about clean energy a lot but the u.s. is falling behind in clean energy we're falling behind to china and china just

outpaces us every year and they grow and grow and grow and we're not making those investments in right now that's all we're talking about cutting we're say looking at that twelve percent that might actually help us down the road and we're saying that's only that's only thing we want to deal with because entitlements and and i think the age factor is the thing because older people tend to be the ones who vote . the consequences are real for that you know when you're younger your whole life ahead of you don't really think about what you're going to need from social security or medicare or no you know what happens when you get sick. so i guess a difficult situation but a very briefly what do you think needs to happen to sort of change the thinking on and capitol hill so that we stop focusing on the short term immediate needs and actually focus on the issues that will bring this country back to where it needs to be for the world or for i think we're going to see real need to see real live leadership from the president i don't think he's shown the leadership that he needs to be showing right now and i mentioned before paul ryan came out with

a plan a agree with that or disagree with that he put all his cards and save and said here's a way to solve our crisis so you know democrats you know come back and say this is what we disagree with and here's a point here's our plan and then let's hope we try to meet somewhere in the middle and the president i think one of the problems is that people just aren't educated enough on the budget we just don't understand the basics i mean some polls will say that a lot of americans think we spend twenty five percent of our budget on foreign aid in fact it's less than one percent and and so we get people educated and get them to realize what we're spending our money on and what's really going to cost us down the road i don't think we're going to move much because politicians are only going to go out so far eastern eye wall more more education and more action hopefully for politicians thank you so much for your time. now i do want to update you very briefly we are getting reports that lawmakers have agreed on a little bit of a deal over some of the more controversial portions of the budget they were talking about the issues relating to planned parenthood funding and an e.p.a. but final numbers are not out yet we're going to keep tracking the story for you so

at this point it does look like a looming government shutdown so we're means ahead now that the government shutdown fight wasn't enough this whole issue that i'm about to bring up just adds insult to injury when it comes to people like you and i you see the wealthiest individuals and corporations in this country apparently found more and more ways to beat the system when it comes to paying their share and this means paying just a fraction of the tax rate that most of the rest of us do at the expense of this country's fiscal future so why are these corporate giants getting their way parties christine first out has a story. it fuels the economy with innovation with jobs and yes with wind but it turns out not with tax dollars general electric one of america's oldest corporations is also one of america's most creative at least when it comes to doing taxes a new york times investigation found that in two thousand and ten g.e.

reported worldwide profits of fourteen point two billion dollars five point one billion of which came from its operations in the united states but its tax bill in the us was zero in fact g.e. claimed it tax benefit of three point two billion dollars according to g.'s website the company paid what it owes under the law and g.e. is right thanks to heavy lobbying legislation passed allowing companies to keep much of their profits overseas or tax rates are lower and it's not alone google also benefits from laws passed here in washington because it keeps its money here in ireland near its dublin headquarters while the corporate tax rate in the us is thirty five percent it's just twelve percent in ireland from their profits are sent to its brim unit subsidiary a mailing address where the tax rate is zero if the practice bloomberg news reporter jesse drucker says is common the question is does it make sense for a company to create intellectual property in really us as the majority of its

employees in the u.s. is it sound tax policy to have the bulk of its profits overseas attributable mailbox and bermuda it's a question many are asking especially in the midst of an economic crisis economists estimate that the u.s. is losing between sixty and ninety billion dollars in tax revenue but corporations say the tax rate here should be lowered the argument is if they bring a home cash from overseas or a tax break to do that but that will enable them to spend cash in the economy no but. u.s. companies are already sitting on a record pile of cash almost control your dollars according to the federal reserve jordan asked about with national people's action says lawmakers wrangling over the budget are missing the point that it's not a budget crisis but a revenue crisis if the matter is governments on the state and federal level are not raising enough revenue. his organization protests against what they see as corporate greed bank of america in two thousand and ten actually got

a tax refund of six hundred sixty six million dollars that's on top of their two thousand and nine refund of three point five billion dollars. and don't forget they gave america was given billions in taxpayer dollars in the bailout corporations are now campaigning for a tax holiday like the one in two thousand and four it allowed corporations to bring back profits from abroad at a tax rate of only five and a quarter percent resulting in a two hundred sixty five billion dollars cash injection it was called the american jobs creation or one of the most interesting examples coming out of that tax holiday was true at packard which brought home fortunate half billion dollars under the holiday that same year announced it was lying off more than fourteen thousand people perhaps because most of the money was used to buy back shares of its company it's not creating jobs helping these guys i was like creating jobs or just lining their pockets kids this season especially with the tax day right around the corner

to be grudgingly on the government but the government provides services that people use and enjoy every day whether they realize it or not things like road repair for the most part the government also fund them or. like firefighters. on the street that you actually need and for those of you who say your tax dollars are going down the toilet. well some of them pay for make one in the toilet go away from the source and that's not the only kind of waste removal the guy. verman pays for they also pay to get rid of your guard. every day services increasingly funded by those making the least well companies making the most use the system to get around it christine for sound r.t. and the story doesn't exactly end there well the budget battle rages in washington corporate titans and their lobbyists are now gearing up for a different sort of fight one to overhaul the corporate tax rate to make it even

easier for these companies to keep their profits out of uncle sam's reach and i spoke earlier about this issue with melanie prince she is the author of this book here it takes a pulitzer behind the bailouts bonuses and backroom deals from washington to wall street and i asked her why it is that the biggest companies seem to dictate how america spends its finances here is her take. the biggest companies also pay for the most lobbying to create tax law benefits for the best and brightest and largest accounting staffs to help them navigate the laws that they create and really gain the entire tax system in their. a for that for their benefit so that's kind of how we get here and what's going on now is there's this philosophical myth that has been taking lauching tim by storm it's always been around but for some reason recently it's been inflamed that somehow if these companies that have shirked tax law they have taken

a lot of their money off shore so that profits can't even be judged let alone tax are somehow if they get a lower tax rate going to bring it all back create more jobs and i don't know fire their accounting staffs and take back their loopholes which is ridiculous but it is the argument that's going on right now in washington president obama a democrat in his state of the union address promised to close these loopholes and reform the tax rate and now we're sort of seeing the administration itself and those promises talk about what's happening behind the scenes there and i thought you know this is this is the to be a republican versus democrat issue right. it's a corporate verses regular people issue more than anything else and we we have a government that is not just run by corporations it's funded by corporations in terms of the law but it's not funded by corporations in terms of taxes the revenues the tax revenues which were you just talked about in your earlier segment which we

don't have enough of which is why we have a budget problem we're two point one trillion dollars last year only eight point nine percent of them were paid by corporations so one hundred eighty seven billion dollars out of two point one trillion were paid by corporations almost eighty percent of what went in came from us it came either from social security benefits or direct individual taxes so we pay and corporations get the benefit not just of services but of continuing to dictate the policy that happens the united states when obama originally campaigned on a platform of helping individuals of standing up to wall street all of that happened in a time where it seemed to him and it was politically expedient to recognize there was a problem that there was a crisis that the banks had screwed everything up and now two years later the banks are sitting on a lot of profits they're not paying taxes bank of america is one of many of the six biggest banks have nine hundred city areas they've created offshore to avoid paying taxes and in

a protection of part of their profits and it's not expedient anymore to somehow talk about this it's as if none of that happens and none of the crisis happened and we are not really as individuals footing the majority of the bill for everything that happens in this country well in bank of america and exxon mobil and g.e. i mean the list goes on but you know you hear from the conservatives and from from the president lawmakers that this country has one of the highest tax rates for corporations thirty five percent much higher than a lot of other nations and if we need to lower those tax rate or otherwise all these businesses will just go to our rivals how do you respond to that i mean the fool playing with the numbers here. well exactly and that's where creative accountants comes in that the tax rate is thirty five percent and on the face of that is higher than that than most countries but the effective tax rate what actually comes in on average is only thirteen point four percent which is actually lower than a lot of countries it's not lower than the zero percent that you would get in an offshore account in grand cayman and cayman islands but but it but it's certainly

lower then then then many other countries in the thirty five percent figure it gets thrown around as if that's actually what was happening thirty five percent was the actual figure then instead of paying one hundred eighty seven billion out of two point one trillion dollars corporations would have paid closer to over a half a trillion into the two point one trillion which is still a smaller portion than individuals but certainly much more so than the five percent is really a meaningless number and therefore it is equally meaningless actually more dangerous to discuss policy right now which would reduce the thirty five percent to twenty five percent which is what's being discussed right now. and public and holes because that just takes us down almost why bother collecting taxes at all from corporations their percentage relative to everyone else is still very low so it's really the wrong direction obviously to go and i mean it just baffles me there were at this time where you know this entire country does actually finally seem to be focused on our spending issues our spending problems now that the government

shutdown is looming. and i just don't understand why nobody neither in the mainstream media and either some of the politicians i mean not all politicians are beholden to corporate interests so why is it that nobody is bringing up this point that we're centrally asking this country to sacrifice on the backs of the working class while giving these giant companies a complete break a free pass i don't understand it. you know it's like those voices have disappeared and certainly are not coming from the administration they're not coming from the republican party they don't seem to be coming from the democratic party and yes there are some politicians who might see this but somehow the dialogue has transformed from the budget being an actual revenue problem not collecting anough taxes not having enough money go into the government and almost have and having such a very small percentage coming in from corporate america anyway to begin with into us having a spending problem now our spending did increase our debt increased by four

trillion dollars in the last two years when the treasury department issued another four trillion dollars worth of treasury bonds to effectively help the banking system and the corporate system that funds itself through the banking system continue to chug along that's why they have an extra two trillion dollars of cash on hand that's why there's an extra trillion dollars just for the banking system sitting at the fed doing nothing except basically being there as a cash reserve for for the banks and you have money around you have revenue around you have the ability to to tax and to take back and to balance the budget in a different way and instead the argument continues to focus on cuts and we can cut and cut because the reality is if revenue doesn't get increased it won't matter because there is too much of a gap in terms of what comes in that was no reprints author of it takes a pillage. from a government shutdown to tax breaks for corporate giants sometimes it seems like this country's financial problems are simply too big to resolve so handful of

economic leaders have gotten together to discuss what's ahead for a post u.s. dominated world it's called the bretton woods conference and is going on right now in new hampshire you may recall back in one thousand nine hundred four this was the birthplace of the world bank and the american dollar as the reserve currency now it's now it's the place where a think tank backed by george soros has brought together some big names to quote remake the financial order so what people around the world think about this conference or laurie are finessed of the resident dot net decided to take an economics pulse check on the streets of new york take a look. they never investor george soros is holding a conference to be attended by the world's richest and most influential people on the agenda to reform the global monetary system how do you think the world's economy this week let's talk about that world number one this billionaire and these people that they're getting together with you know trying to figure out how to fix

the economy they're trying to repair to a was already going on which is the government's long since lost control of monetary world and it's because. corporate. but what i do i actually draw a line between the two. corporations and government which right now that line is very blurry i think of lots of economies actually probably economy added to the environment actually in terms of fuel efficiency and still needs a lot of the problems that are causing the economy could be remedied by fixing environmental issues my and most important economic trade which is triple bottom line which means you look at what's best for not only the businesses not only for the employees involved in businesses the society as well so if that becomes your economic standard then you're improving not only the companies and the global economy but the. the area that that that company's working in as well from

a strong perspective everything seems to be going to talk of the ball of parity with the american at the moment so i wouldn't change much all would. do more free trade agreements. it's going to be global argemone as well they will try with a waiver without having barriers which is not necessarily good for the missing economy but from an international perspective it is a lot better because a lot of people feeling like it's time for the dollar to step down because there's always been animosity against the u.s. why. well best. doesn't tell. you i think a lot of people are jealous what we have were a free country you can come from nothing and make a million dollars or you can make a million dollars and lose it all but you have opportunity do you think people are willing to bet a global economy on a petty emotion my jealousy i love things you can love the americans and everything

it stands for and i think america it's strong it will. pick up and it will get better time do you think that whatever america stands for is still something that the dollar can stand for out there as well absolutely yeah i just got middling and i got crushed by the. thirty percent of the dollar's losing weight no matter what we look i remember back when i used to go through the six the yen to the dollar and i would say maybe a hundred eight. times for a global monetary system do you think you've been either a socialist. no matter what you or i think should be done to improve the global economy the bottom line is those decisions will always be made by those with the most money for better or worse. please make sure to tune in to our team because we will have coverage of this event all weekend long parties financial correspondent is there in new hampshire and

we'll have live reports through sunday april. now the u.s. state department issued its annual human rights report today hitting hard at china iran venezuela and all the regular usual suspects but their part came at a sort of interesting time in world history right amid the arab spring awakening for citizens across the middle east it up to brutal regimes in many cases only to be silenced with bullets and missing from both the u.s. report and the mainstream media coverage is our own little questions about our own role in supporting these regimes and talking about egypt saudi arabia bahrain yemen which are now to discuss this and much more is the legendary norman solomon is the founder of the institute for public accuracy and the author of many books including this one here made love got war close encounters with america's fair state government thank you so much for being here it's really quite an honor oh thank you i don't actually want to focus on this human rights report what i want to talk about is why there seems to be so little honest discussion in the media in our

country when it comes to that reality of our foreign policy so for example we don't talk about how the united states essentially supported the mubarak regime until it becomes so close that the regime falls we don't really talk about yemen and there are some reporters doing an investigative reporting and and sort of showing how our operations there are undermining both the security of the people but also supporting the regime but again there really isn't any incentive it seems for honest discussions about this new life in georgia or will sort of very well those who control the past control the future those who control the present control the past and the capacity to rewrite history and to be silent about inconvenient aspects is really crucial and so for instance if we look at the u.s. support for various regimes in the middle east it's very convenient to omit that support when they fall out of favor or they're about to fall overboard because of the rebellion of their own people i think they're sort of very symptomatic problem which is certainly true in the united states and elsewhere in the world there when

you have government and media so closely tied to the. other than the deceptions and the tap dances coming from government is reflected in the media for to a large extent i sort of sum it up by quoting the great journalist who worked in this town for many decades of stone very independent who said all governments a lie and nothing they say should be believed well he wasn't conflating all governments they don't lie to the same extent but you can't take or shouldn't take anything they say on faith and to the extent that mass media are doing the bidding largely of the media in terms of messaging and you can't really trust media too much either and this is something you got into an ornate easy but since then we've had this huge explosion in social media and social networking sites and alternative blogs and sort of the internet and so i wonder shouldn't all that have changed the debate shouldn't that have sort of allowed the actual message to come through through the gate keepers who are seemingly fairly trying to sort of keep the flood

i think e-mail the unit social media have helped in that you might say the ecology of the media has diversified still in all of the mainline media the most powerful networks print outlets and so forth i cast a very large shadow and you might say more diversified media outlets are trying to shine a light in different places so this is a struggle really for the capacity to get information from different sources it's really stunning and i mean i think this is true again whether you're talking about the major countries such as the united states china russia france britain they've engaged in very deceptive and destructive military actions and at the same time very are own media have a largely been willing to parrot the line and it's the reliance on official sources by media that has so damaged people's capacity to act in

a democratic well informed way at the grassroots in those countries. well focusing back on the united states i mean we we've seen very little questioning in my opinion of the intense and how this military operation in libya is actually can get played out and so i wonder if you can compare contrast are the propaganda. issues that you've raised in the buildup to the iraq war and vietnam and now libya you know world there is a continuum whether the vietnam war or today in terms of libya afghanistan and so forth we're the assumption often implicit is through the media that uncle sam has a halo over his head and he's trying to do really good sometimes he screws up but basically the usa has the best of intentions now if there was no oil in libya or rock and the main export say was cucumber is i don't think the u.s. would have invested billions of dollars in military actions what that is part of

the equation that's often left out when the news media explain events to us but what's wrong with this picture that i mean we've seen how we were misled and lied to essentially in the ramp up to the continuation of vietnam we've seen this in the rock there's been i mean we're media has a movie it's john fund a very famous guy narrated it why has nothing changed the system why are people not willing to ask the tough questions and sort of look beyond the spin that where we're forced well that were made easy a movie based in my book was shown nationally in twelve countries mostly in europe but not in the united states on any major network and it's just a very big painful it's a painful reality in terms of. us coming to terms with our own country the shadow that is very different than what we like to tell ourselves and i think that's an ongoing challenge i call it in terms of policy and media coverage and sort of a repetition compulsion disorder we're we're in that pattern a new world comes along and the details are different but the paradigm underneath

is often the same one arm and i hope that you keep calling attention to these issues and keep right. because we really do appreciate your work thank you thank you was norman solomon founder and president of the institute for public accuracy now a quick update on the budget battle here in capitol hill we're hearing some reports that the white house and congressional leaders may have come to a bit of an agreement over some of the controversial policy riders in the stalled funding bill now these are the house backed amendments on things like defunding planned parenthood or preventing the e.p.a. from regulated greenhouse gases and the white house is reportedly getting some reports reviewing a framework that includes thirty eight billion dollars in cuts but no official agreement at this point on the final numbers meaning that is shut down at midnight is still unfortunately likely now that does it for now for more on the stories we've covered please go to our t. dot com slash u.s.a. and check out our you tube page it's you tube dot com slash r t america and feel free to follow me on twitter as well it's at lucy catherine of one board have a great.