oh harben in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture all debate lingers on whether president obama's or paul ryan's budget plans will dig the country out of its debt there's another budget plan that eliminates our deficit and actually creates a surplus in just an year break down the numbers of the people plus plus if you ever wonder who's behind the wheel of the plan to run over unionized workers here's a hint it's the same group that gave michigan governor rick snyder the idea to fire

his state's alike this visuals and his city staff and our union workers to blame for america's debt i'll talk to the author who wrote it in higher books backing that up and. there's a lot of talk about budget plans around capitol hill these days most of that talk is focus on two budget plans in particular president obama's was trimming down the deficit by repealing the bush tax cuts cutting and also tragically cutting spending on critical government services that help the poor and the republicans budget written by paul ryan that cuts down the deficit sora by privatizing medicare cutting even more government programs that help the poor and somehow includes another massive tax cut for millionaires and billionaires and while these two

budgets have garnered most of the attention in the mainstream media there's another third budget that's floating around out there that actually is what is best for our nation is the congressional progressive caucus is budget what's been named as. people's budget and it was the subject of paul krugman sunday op ed in the new york times in which crewmen said the only major budget proposal out there offered a plausible pam plan path to balance in the budget is the one that includes significant acts increases the people's budget from the congressional progressive caucus which unlike the ryan plan which was just right wing orthodoxy with an added dose of magical thinking is genuinely courageous because it calls for share at sacrifice as kirkman points of later when people's budget is projected to yield a balanced budget by twenty twenty one and the proposal achieves this without dismantling the legacy of the new deal which gave us social security and the great

society which gave us medicare and medicaid so what is it that paul krugman knows that the rest of us don't let's take a look at the so-called people's budget proposed by the progressive caucus first the bottom line this budget reduces our deficit by five point six trillion dollars that includes one point seven trillion in spending cuts and three point nine trillion in more revenue where do these cuts come from simple the department of defense the people's budget ends our foreign wars brings our troops home and clogs up a black hole of defense spending that is not actually making our nation any safer and we've these new savings the budget invests more than one point four trillion dollars into a brand new jobs program the focus is on job creation education clean energy broadband infrastructure housing research and development basically unleashing

a twenty first century redevelopment of america it's long overdue and putting tens of millions of people back to work to make it happen. the president's budget and the republicans budget do nothing about our foreign wars only the progressive budget does but that's not all this budget immediately strikes down the tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires got extended at the end of the last year the bush tax cuts and then puts in place a new tax system that levies a millionaire tax with a top rate of forty nine percent meaning america's oligarchy will be back to paying their fair share as they did during the forty years of economic growth in america that saw the rise of the middle class from one thousand nine hundred one nine hundred eighty it also makes billionaire hedge fund managers and trust fund children like paris hilton who earn their living sitting around the pool collecting their dividend checks pay their fair share too because instead of capital gains being taxed at a measly fifteen percent be taxed as regular income just like you and i are taxed

on the money that we are as far as corporate taxes go before aggressive budget closes corporate loopholes and taxpayer subsidies to big oil companies and keeps wall street speculation in check by taxing derivatives those little complex financial instruments that wrecked her economy three years ago the people's budget creates a public option for people who can't find out insurance the private market which will force abuse you for profit health insurance companies to actually compete in the marketplace and finally unlike the republican budget the people's budget keeps intact medicare medicaid and social security in fact it raises the cap on social security to make sure that the rich are paying the same percentage of their income as you and i are to keep our promises to america's retirement generations so what do all these details translate to a budget surplus by twenty twenty one just ten years from now take

a look. here's the this is very straightforward here's the president's budget here's the house g.o.p. budget and here's the people's budget the progressive caucus budget twenty twenty one we're we're actually showing a surplus the ryan budget and the president's budget are both still in deficit both of them are going to take some years until they actually show you know a balanced budget so the progressive caucus the house progressive caucus in ten years we can do this all this without throwing the working class of the bus and really not hurting anyone including the residents of the rich will hardly notice a couple of bucks are missing and their billion dollar paychecks and as paul krugman said achieving savings with out dismantling the new deal the most important thing that this budget will do though is reduce reduce the wealth inequality gap in america which is higher today than it any other time in american history except for right before the great depression this budget will lay reaganomics for good and it

turns out this is exactly what the american people want according to a new study out of duke and harvard university's it turns out that ninety two percent of americans are democratic socialists or do i mean by that all the study revealed that americans vastly underestimate just how large that gulf air is between the rich and the poor in america today the top twenty percent of americans control eighty four percent of the wealth most americans thought that number was around sixty percent they were way off but here's the kicker when americans were shown two charts the first being a chart that shows america's wealth distribution the second being a chart that shows sweden's wealth distribution ninety two percent of americans preferred sweden's economic model take a look why is the gap between the rich and the poor narrower in sweden than in america. because the top income tax rate there this is the top here is the top in sweden the top income tax rate in sweden the mind bogglingly rich pay up to fifty

six percent income tax and the people's budget fulfills the wishes of ninety two percent of americans by jacking up our top income tax rate to forty nine percent much closer to the sweet spot. no matter how you look at it debt reduction balancing the budget preserving key social programs strengthening our defenses reducing wealth inequality public approval whatever the criteria the people's budget by the progressive caucus blows all the other budgets out of the water it's hands down the right choice for our nation and the more of us who start talking about it and hyping it up and the more the mainstream media will focus on it so call your congressperson call your two senators and tell them to support the people's budget it's the best way forward for america.

crazy alert people who don't care about the middle class for a thousand dollars alex turns out the despite his high profile campaigns to shut down the government defund planned parenthood and n.p.r. and or kill obamacare a lot of people actually don't know who oust majority leader eric cantor is at least in jeopardy contestant stone last night all the three contestants on a game show were stumped when alex asked for the name of the house of the republican house majority leader no one even attempted it yes take a look. in two thousand this virginian won his primary by two hundred sixty three homes now house majority leader. eric cantor. not a good sign for a guy who probably dreams of being president but i'm sure after back would have refit phrased the question with the answer to say he is the guy who want to show a war on women and things medicare should be privatized then maybe somebody would

have correctly guessed eric cantor. coming up next the cat is out of the bag on who supports the right wing's union busting tactics so what are american middle class workers up against. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime. i think may be the one well. we never got the chance to keep him safe get ready because their freedom.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

we're learning more and more about who's behind the nationwide right wing efforts to screw over organized labor reason article by any croll and mother jones magazine identifies an organization known as the state policy network appears to be behind many of these union busting policies from tennessee to iowa to nevada fact michigan governor rick snyder got his idea to take over cities in his state and fire the elected officials and replace them with his own czars known as financial planners from a state policy network think tank operated in michigan. so is this what progressive's

are up against a well organized national campaign by republicans to take on american working working americans for more on this i'm joined now by any real sociedad editor of mother jones magazine any welcome thanks great to have you here with us tell us about the state policy network and i think most people probably never even heard of this it's little known snot on the political radar but it's an hugely influential sort of constellation of conservative free market think tanks that were founded by the same conservative ideologues behind the heritage foundation and the reagan revolution in fact the intent of these this network was to bring the reagan revolution to the state level to influence the legislators and get you know the kind of policies that they wanted a union anti-tax implemented in the states whether they're starting to accomplish that and i think there are there are thirteen states i believe that that have republican governors and legislatures something close to that i mean we've seen this is now michigan indiana. it's moving around the it's moving around the country

this is exactly what the network was put there for the the state takes that i chronicled in the story in there in all fifty states and they're all basically pushing the same agenda you know the board of the state policy network said we're comrades in arms they were there and they've been laying the groundwork for quite a while for this legislation but when you had a wave of republicans elected around the country as you said you saw this legislation get fast tracked and now the kinds of the bills that they want the reforms that the right wants are now moving their way really quickly through through the states i'm guessing you're familiar with naomi klein's thesis of the shock doctrine that these guys have been for a long long time just waiting for disasters to happen disaster capitalism and his case of big disaster governments and then once once there's a problem that's for them an opportunity is that what's going on here yeah they have this these kinds of legislation and these ideas. on the shelf waiting for the

moment when they can put them into action when they have friendly like minded legislators and place who can put these bills in the table and get it passed you know wisconsin is a great example of this you know last fall we saw the entire government there flip the governor you simply the senate and what do we see we see tax breaks for corporations we see regulations stripped away we see collective bargaining bans come into place right off the bat and and this really isn't just a. no no no it's not about labor at all it's the the policies that the state policy network pushes and that its members push range from health care environmental regulation commerce but all across the board the union battle is just one piece of this but i mean you know they want to privatized state run health care programs they want to convert public education into charter schools they want to privatized it across the board to what extent is the is you

know obviously has been a multi arguably multigenerational certainly twenty thirty maybe even forty year project if it goes back to the early you know get a coke and chose your whores richard mellon scaife and all those get. to what extent is it about achieving this ideal the kind i ran and libertarian objectivist fantasy that has frankly never worked in any country in the world. versus just good old fashion hey you know if we can get if we can privatized the schools us our bodies can make a pile of money on those schools we can privatized the power plants us in our bodies can make a pile of money on those power plants i mean or has it over time even more from some sort of idealistic positive vision of america into a gimme because a certainly seems like there's a lot of guinea going on right now. the creation of the network i think had ideological and ideological foundation i think you you had funders you were talking

about the bradleys in wisconsin the corps foundation these are pillars of american conservatism that have been funding these kinds of right wing networks for decades and so i think you have that but you also have the opportunists and the prophets years in the short term who see these networks and these waves of republicans elected into office as a chance to you know whether it's outsource and make money or cut deals for their power plants or their corporate buddies and then in turn they get campaign contributions and they get reelected and there's a lot of there's a lot of pieces at play here but i think both of those that you mentioned come in effect it's not just politicians and neil bush raised. thirty million dollars close to that from a chinese businessman in the saudi prince for his privatized school program you know the putting his goals and i mean it's just this is really quite extraordinary is anybody pushing back i mean here we have in every single one of our fifty states

one of the state policy network institutions they've got employees they go offices they go oh no they've got you know the customized legislation is anybody pushing back no one's really pushed back so far i think right now we're starting to see. an uprising of sorts especially in michigan wisconsin new union centric states against not only the state policy network or the affiliate in that state but also alec the koch brothers that people are really just starting to grapple with what they're up against if they're on the left and they're seeing these think tanks they're seeing the cokes they're seeing the bradleys they're seeing alec and they're just getting a clear picture of it i think you know it's in the media as well or try to open things up as well and make it clear what they're fighting against do you think the average american gets not yet i think they're on. way but i think there's more work to be done reporting it and organizing to to fully understand what the conservative

movement is built all of these all these years and it's really it's it's it's an amazing it's an amazing creature they've created and thanks so much for granted you are to have you with us and he's reporting proof of the need the union busting that we're seeing around the country is not just a coincidence but instead a coordinated attack on democracy in the workplace an elected union answerable to its members and that attack is coming from well financed sources but the question is are these armies or right wing think tanks justified in going after unions or public unions what's really bankrupting america professor daniel to solve all think so he's a professor of political science professor at city college of new york and author of government unions and the bankrupting of america and he joins me from our studios in new york. professor diff solve it welcome to the program. thank you tom it's my pleasure to be with you thank you for joining us any research that you authored you praised governor scott walker for saying and i quote we can no longer

live in a society where the public employees are the haves and the taxpayers foot the bill are the have nots. did you really agree with that i mean that the teacher that makes fifty thousand bucks plus health benefits as i have with the banks there is who wrecked our economy and still collect multi-million dollar bonuses or the have nots. well i think what governor walker was picking up on is a divide in the broad middle class between workers in the public and in the private sector and in so far as public sector workers only constitute about twenty percent of the labor force the other large part of the labor labor force which is in the private sector feels left out and you can imagine that say for instance public sector pensions are quite high compared to what most people can expect to receive in the private sector and he was i think picking up on some of those frustrations

of private sector workers so what you're so it sounds like what you're saying is because you and i both know that these the situation was reversed thirty years ago before reagan became president in the private sector you could make a whole lot more money but even now private sector public sector employees make less than private sector employees have the same level of. experience and education but thirty years ago there was you know much better pay much better benefits in the private sector and now after thirty years of reaganomics thirty years of offshoring thirty years of insane trade policies we've been seeing you know public public service or private employees rather just basically wiped out money and reduced to poverty and all that's left is the is the government jobs they're the only ones that are still left with a decent he's in salary and a decent pension plan shouldn't we instead of saying you know hey let's let's take

it away from these guys like we took it away from the private workers should we be saying let's actually bring everybody back up to where they used to be before reagan started all this. well that might be nice but i don't think they are i don't see any movements of their being forthcoming the private sector you know the people in wisconsin were shouting about that. i believe they were shouting about it but i don't see a strong overall labor movement other factors in society that would push us back to where we were thirty years ago at the same time many of the policies that businesses had in place thirty years ago like defined benefit pensions turned out to be a disaster just as taxpayers who paled out g.m. and chrysler g.m. actually had a solders over pension. and the private sector is of course been buffeted by. julie all of us trying to change the generating profits for these companies.

well g.m. and chrysler both defaulted on their pensions to their workers and had to be bailed out it wasn't a resurrection plan some pension plans were fine the. and beyond that again why why this drumbeat to say let's reduce everybody to the lowest common denominator what happened to america what about lifting people up. well i think that there's also a side that is there to lift people up which is the part of the problem with public sector unions is the inefficiencies that they introduce into the day to day processes of government and for thinking about middle class people that depend on government services on a regular basis we want those services to be efficient and effective and and worth every tax dollar the economy to live as a vehicle to pay for the census that it costs to send a letter from hawaii to maine is inefficient are you trying to tell me that the fact that social security has never ever in seventy years failed to write

a check is inefficient or you tell me that our military is inefficient that our bedrooms administrator well our socialized medicine system is in of fish. i think you're conflating two things mostly what i'm writing and i'm talking about government employees it's. yes you are but we're talking mostly about this state and local government employees ok you try to tell me the terms are inefficient. i think that there can be reforms in education that's why it's one of the top priorities nationally and in state governments throughout the country i'm assuming if you're talking about the city familiar with all of the research that has been done that shows that when you compare charter schools private for profit corporate charter schools to public schools when you're comparing apples to apples same economic and demographic backgrounds of the children at the for profit private charter schools actually end up lower than public schools in terms of outcomes how could they be i'm not sure that that's the case though it absolutely absolutely is

the case i have for over twenty years been the that and the president of the board of directors of a private school unfamiliar with us and has great britain seven books on it it would do your research. i am doing my research and. rather than engage in ad hominem attacks i'm saying that there's a large debate about the merits of charter schools there is up in the national the national and state governments throughout the country that issues about teacher tenure are on the table because people on the right and the left believe that there can be greater efficiency and a better product delivered in terms of education throughout the country and that there's widespread agreement the teacher's union stand in the way of much of the reform i have and that widespread agreement is there because there are people like yourself who are out there saying oh it's the teachers union when before ronald reagan came along and put bill bennett who's who is proclaimed goal of life was to end the department of education in charge of the department of education and now

we've got people like neil bush making a profit on privatized education that our schools are working just fine thank you very much. well i think the nation at risk report was something that set off an alarm bell of performers throughout the country in the mid eighty's it's also important to remember that teachers' unions and other unionized workers in the public sector are much different than the private sector and didn't frankly even exist before the really the early one nine hundred sixty s. than one thousand seventy's and some states public sector union ism didn't even arrive until the one nine hundred eighty s. professor de salvo thanks for dropping by tonight my pleasure you know there's frankly nothing courageous about going after the working class or teachers and service like a path of cells in the back for taking on the unions but the real courage is telling millionaires and billionaires to get the hell out of our government enough of this divide and conquer nonsense we need to unite and go after the real leeches in our economy the banks toure's. just.

the. it's the good the bad the very unbelievably i'll believe first the good shepherd smith of fox news really this guy is the anomaly the one reasonable anchoring in protein outfit while the rest of the talking heads of the network have turned a birth or is a shepard smith used to show last night advocate for rationality take a look. well he has produced a birth certificate it shows his mother gave birth to him and why it is stamped and sealed by the state of hawaii it is confirmed and fox news can confirm the president of the united states is a citizen of the united states period today now only if he can get his colleagues on. the bat donald trump transitioning from the birth or issue the donald is now going after president obama's education records in an interview with the a.p.

trump said if the president about the president or her he was a terrible student terrible how does a bad student go to columbia going to harvard i'm thinking about it i'm certainly not going to do it let him show his records so we have trump looking for the president's birth records now is education records what's next as it's a president's flossy habits are terrible just terrible and the very very ugly congressman allen west village reality republican was speaking at a women's event last week when he made this out of left field take a look. at the women in our campaign he should say with the way. that you actually know you come here a lot and trace through the oil to the fight or these are where the go on. the cold it women that. all of these women who have been doing to me to bring

a little more of this incredible we let them know that we're not going to have it because of sort of. the best names you can do. neutering american men allen was makes the very very ugly list so many times i'm thinking about naming after it and after him blatant sexism from allen west anyone surprised that's very very. coming out the state department is not only requiring a picture of you but also a snapshot of your life when applying for a passport why officials are now calling for work history and addresses after the break.