the debt ceiling is really really becoming the elephant in the room on capitol hill why are the republicans continuing to be so difficult in passing a limit increase and the minimum wage salaries of corporate america's c.e.o.'s released why their so called money battles are insulted when compared to the middle class of america into the lights really. it's was the time for the lone liberal debate take on two expert conservative commentators on the week's top stories on our pals and i have to serve up conservative strategist and managing owner for forty group public relations and jamie weinstein deputy editor at the daily caller welcome to both of you to be here great to have you both back with us republicans played a fun little game of political theater yesterday with the nation's debt ceiling starting with the house. speaker of the house of john boehner brought

a clean bill to the floor raiser nation's debt ceiling exactly what most economists have been saying needs to be done republicans had no intention of passing it both in nearly unanimously against their own bill they just want to force democrats to vote for a debt limit increase so they could run campaign ads next year saying democrats support unlimited deficit spending so why is it that when our nation is facing enormous challenges republicans are playing games in the house of representatives especially games that could collapse the entire global economy i mean this this is outlandish tom i know i'm i'm i'm astounded that back to the matter is that republicans have stuck their neck out in support of something that's politically unpopular away even when he knows how to give me to let me finish but i didn't i agree necessary and that is major entitle that reform it is the democrats who have been demagoguing these issues how the republicans have been courageous led by paul ryan and this is not the end of the game you talk about playing a game but what the republicans not is they need. we have limits on spending they

want to cut some programs in the white house and saying no we're not going to do that so we have until august they know that the deadline approaching and they want to know why is that they were going after so enthusiastic three years since then and the year before that the year before that the year before that the year before that the year before that eight years of the bush administration in passing a clean debt limit increase bill every single time and now all of a sudden they're hysterical because rating agencies are now talking about rising level of our debt with fourteen trillion dollars in debt nearly you know continuing to rise eighty trillion unfunded liabilities the debt ceiling is going to pass in fact in fact the house voted to raise raising the debt ceiling when they voted for the ryan plan it's going to pass but all they're having is worth let's start with major cuts now which are necessary while democrats get behind that because the cuts are insane we have we are right now at about ninety percent of g.d.p. our debt is about ninety percent of g.d.p. japan's of course two hundred eighty percent of g.d.p.

we were one hundred twenty six percent of g.d.p. after world war two we get out of that in five years how do we get out of that good old fashioned republican to eisenhower poured money into a high national highway system into employment into the g.i. bill giving people free college giving people free government subsidized home loans and boom we grew our way out of that economy we want that you want to play these risky games i mean there's the risk of here's the senators that are working in turn called black swans when we don't know these type of financial crises arise and if you want to get up to that border thinking that you know we always want head around cut and then you have another crisis and we're you know we're we're greece or we're ireland read michael lewis's recent accounts from greece and ireland and you travel he's probably the best financial probably best nonfiction writer there is out there it's scary we should be taking proactive steps to reduce our debt now thank god we have someone like you paul ryan it really is meaningless to you know the federal government thinks it can function differently from a regular house i mean you know if. if i have

a credit card debt that is you know out out of the roof then i do something about that guy and the federal government just says oh we can make more money i know they're going to start actually ronald reagan said it's exactly what george herbert walker is that we're back on george w. bush that this is this is been the plan ever since ever since you know seventy four when and when what's his name came up with his is three are two santa claus theory and said you know we borrow like crazy when you're in power and scream about the debt when the democrats go by the way and this idea of republicans voting for getting increases and democrats also opposed getting reasons at one time party switch power and you know there's some time to this political game changing but the reality is right now we need to start cutting we need to start reforming republicans have a plan where is the democrats' plan. that's that's a really good question we'll see where we're at where it goes voters remorse a sweeping the nation a new poll by public the public policy polling shows that seven republican governors including wisconsin scott walker and i was john case they would lose big

of last year's election were held against and they also paul ryan's plan to privatized medicare was soundly rejected by voters last week and special election in new york's twenty sixth district and now house leader eric cantor is nickel and dime in tornado victims in joplin missouri saying that any relief package must be offset by cuts elsewhere the work is families don't have unlimited money and really neither does the federal government but there's no question there is a federal role here to play in congress will fund the money it will be until the president never has our government been stingy when it comes to helping victims of natural disasters in america or elsewhere for that matter so how surprised are republicans that they're far right wing agenda is not resonating with the american people and how many republican governors will be required in two thousand and twelve for one thing we don't have a month to month lease on our governors you know there's a reason why we elect them every two to four years who knows next month they might say we love our governor whatever reason and who's to say also. so the reason that

they don't like the governor this month is because they're quote unquote anti-abortion you know anti-union agenda polling firm the stimuli pulling for another chance guys ran on what they're doing right none of them no you know i mean people progress the center for american progress went back and looked at all their campaign commercials none of these guys said that when they came into office they were going to bust a public employee none of the thing that was the first thing you do either they can ask what kind of having that case he was talking to my point is i believe in a birkin style of representation well then let's go back to seventy nine he. answered and bernie was right and let me let me let me finish you know you don't have to go back in time he said principles that stand there universally yes or no the refreshing not. only of his principle was that people will elect representatives if you don't like them then they vote him out but they should act the statesmen and operate what is in the best interest of the country and that's what a lot of these governors are doing it taking difficult issues that are always popular

and you know the polls chris christie wasn't included in this poll but he has taken on those issues and his poll numbers have gone up which he's taken a great risk to go after these popular programs so we should apply the law is the incredible if you have a lot of reaction what you just said absolutely one of one of sir edmund burke because principles that has become that was part of modern liberalism frankly as liberalism liberal enlightment was was that you know this whole concept that not only do we have representative government but we don't like leaders that we elect representatives that our representatives are supposed to do what we want is actually actually wrong he gave a famous speech where he said you know they would he would be represented a town i think he supported free trade and it was a port town they didn't want free trade and he said i'm going to go on my conscience if you don't like me next time out but yeah and he actually was elected in a different district he believe it states mean you had to operate. right in his to i mean i also want to be clear that eric cantor. it's not be smirched here too

because you know what he said on face a nation was that you know the federal government will take care of joplin but just as any family operated set aside ten thousand dollars to buy that new car at disaster happens you've got to revaluate where that ten thousand dollars goes the new car were to address that disasters exactly the federal government house to do we will help the people of joplin but we also have to realize that there are things that we thought we were going to subsidize can't be done and that is that will make off than a stooge that says not your there's a little word for the sad people of joplin will be taken care of like as a whole and already are doing is just to me after i throw grandma off those who are off the cliff that are no no it doesn't bother you that. because it is and exactly why you as you say that you know the medicare plan that ryan is on your no there is no work out here to voters you are going to see seniors. women are what is going to already happened there's only. in fact the state of arizona is having some trouble

meeting its medicaid obligations earlier this year governor jan brewer removed certain life saving transplants from being covered under medicaid decision that led to the deaths of at least two individuals now arizona has a new idea they want to change the charge childless adults who are on medicare an extra fifty dollars a year if they're obese or smoking currently about half of arizona's medicaid recipients either are smoking or are obese so when obese poor people are told that their medicaid costs are greater than their income and they even that program and die for lack of health care job charges and slaughter. i think is a thing that liberals you know they don't like smokers and they seem to have a problem. you know because you don't smoke anywhere and they also restrict what you know what i think he you know you make sure that i do believe this right everything but when it comes to taking care of them health wise oh we have to you know i don't it's not that i mean the drugs in my face that i mean i'm not a fan of crack at exploring crack in my face here but i think it. highlights two

things one again that highlights the serious problem we have with medicare which again highlights we have only one medicare and medicaid thank god we have someone like paul ryan to put out a plan for just killed two people in arizona and you and your number of paul ryan's going to do the same thing that's not that's not overplaying i don't know if i can see i don't i don't know guys agree with an airplane i haven't read it all but there's also interesting aspects i do agree with and those include the incentivizing of medicaid in the state where it used to be incentivized by how many procedures are done which is a given set of doctors to keep doing procedures as opposed to you know treating the patient and i think the bigger issue too is that governors are having to make hard decisions but the reality is they are pressed for catch you know and so there has either any real interest taxes on rich people or corporations and they want to do it they might be unwilling to raise taxes you know how to cut spending what's wrong with that well the whole thing is i as a result of that i have a problem with what i understand all i'm saying about health care and i know you

should be appeased understand i i don't people to die either and that's why i think we need medicare reform because medicare reform medicaid medicare reform that will be there for those people if you don't if you don't address it i mean all those holes the republicans drilled into it you know three hundred twenty eight billion dollars is the amount that the federal government is going to spend that they wouldn't have to spend if they were able to negotiate the price of drugs that was something that was put in there by billy tauzin the republican majority so that so the pharmaceutical company would get billions of dollars in thousand got to know your job it's not weaseling need we need leaders who are willing to make some hard why we can all just take on even there we don't want to shoot three hundred thousand of the one issue billion what i call has refused to listen if i think what you're talking about is right i think it's more complicated than that because the question is who's drug manufacturers if you if you go and get your marriage drugs it cuts out the drug manufacturers had invented a new life saving drugs people in the first place said we want to have more lives.

drugs out there then what more people die why do we live in v.a. buy from them at wholesale why do we let wal-mart buy from the wholesale why do you let walgreens buy from them at all so difficult and i said i'm going to call it a god you don't drug companies you want to drive you want it is really not just any more you're not making huge profits compare make my master percentage they're putting it back to research and development the great know is that you receive all of her pharmaceuticals that he paid for by you and me through the national institutes of health right a vast majority more that more than half of all their r. and d. was done by drug companies modifying existing drugs you original new drugs are coming out of out of universities that are paid for by us by any means i just think the government giving them more control over the health care system is ridiculous and the reality is we need leaders who are willing to say some difficult things and suggest reforms that are going to make us feel uncomfortable even when changing my daily schedule so that i know it's hard we form is difficult but we got to do it where it is a party other than the other the other thirty three nations and thirty four

o.e.c.d. nations that all have universal health care are just wrong and we're just right here and there during our innovation they come here when they need real and when they need to get a m.r.i. they come here quickly so you get your attention because you know it well you know i lived in border states most of my life i never saw republican presidential hopeful herman cain although when i did live in montpelier every saturday the bus used to fill up at montpelier vermont to go up to canada by pharmaceutical or any other presidential hopeful herman cain released a music video yesterday the videos entitle the herman cain train take a look. we . rock it out here it's on the other republican candidates will steal cain's idea and make their own. on music videos now so which potential republican candidate will

release the banks best music video. i'm a shell of bachman with a crazy train no explanation needed or be newt gingrich would bling bling what else do you buy with a half million dollar collected credit to see mitt romney with no more money most problems i would say that i have one for obama and that's how do you like me now i think the american people going to say not so much but just to put a plug in for the daily caller we interviewed the singer of the herman cain train song on our site a couple days ago so please go to the site and read it it's very enjoyable. and that's why i think that you know you can have michele bachmann sing about the minnesota twins because she's talking about pointy engine running together the same times i'd like to see that video that you know you don't look at hers. are you going to get on the herman cain train. you know i don't know if you're a few little nelson was. ok my choice rick santorum would say my name you know to avoid people from googling it so and you know sort of. oh through

here tonight he's very good to see. it's time for our daily poll your chance to tell us what you think there's today's question a new study shows the one the minimum wage is not enough to live on so as reagan's work as the working class to result in success your choices are yes a resident of michigan needs twelve dollars to house clothe and feed well which is well over the seven dollars forty seven a wage no or no perhaps republicans will make the argument that they just need to get a credit card we're going to know what you think the poll be open till tomorrow morning . after the break it's a tale of two minimum wages and tonight's daily take. let's

not forget that we had an apartheid regime. i think. whenever the government says there's a 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 you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you saw you don't. charge the big picture.

the. girl is going to learn what do you do when you're a small time crook and former crew cruise ship lounge singer i went into business with a partner now in prison and bought a radio station that a t.v. station then a newspaper then another radio station then another t.v. station the newspaper that a radio network then c.b. network and ended up owning about ninety five percent of all the media seen in italy as a silvio berlusconi did and then he created his own political party ran for prime minister with his billions in the full support of his own wholly owned versions of pardew's box radio. newspaper and surprise he won three times

italian prime minister silvio berlusconi's trial on charges he paid for sex with an underage prostitute and abused his power to cover it up resumed yesterday a day after his party suffered still i mean losses in local lections all across italy and his lawyers probably requested that the trial be moved out of the courts and into a special ministerial tribunal considering there's been over a month since the last year in the case the spectacle will probably continue to drag out for a long time but media outlets are reporting that the trial and all the information that has surfaced about girls gone is now infamous bunga bunga sex parties is having a cultural backlash in italy where many say the objectification of women as sexual objects has become mainstream because of peerless county's media empire. some out exactly started going after companies that objectify women a practice some say their list only started with his t.v. channels featuring lots of dancing girls and. it's very embarrassing that

this is an ad for a radio i scream you think fancily clad women come with cell phones in the eat these naked women advertising pet food and this one for sausage is so sexual we can't show it because we have. a sentence and in. seeing. this means more or less the way the piece tonight she's really going to matter whether now. really really. yeah or if it's your eyes are finally decided the bats too much in the end may be near.

there are two minimum wages in america there's one for working men and women that's roughly seventy dollars an hour to any what state you live in and then there's one for corporate executives that's about all leavened million dollars a year including stock options and bonuses for example last week blue shield of california health insurance corporation made public the salaries of its ten highest paid executives it turns out the head honcho bruce but taken is bringing home about four and a half million dollars a year but that doesn't include bonuses or stock options. when you add it all together if you did but a can would probably be much closer to the national average of what top c.e.o.'s earn total compensation roughly eleven million dollars a year which is twenty two thousand dollars a week you know actually getting that kind of a paycheck or forty four thousand dollars a day which i have to get one of those checks every day can you imagine taking home a paycheck of forty four thousand dollars every single day and most of it at

a minute at a maximum income tax rate of fifteen percent less than half the tax rate that your janitor would face if he were well paid forty four thousand dollars a day five thousand five hundred dollars an hour blue shield defended the lavish pay for this guy saying we offer a competitive compensation package to attract and retain talked quality executives necessary to maintain a high level of performance and service as in they don't have a choice as the bare minimum they can pay to keep such a top quality guy course they decided to pay their executives just a few million dollars less than they could also give little susie their life saving kidney transplant. but it today's economy eleven million dollars only gets you so far you know you can only buy so many summer homes in italy how many selling it's only so many porsches only so many private golf course memberships only so many

private jets basically had to pick money out of a couch cushions to keep yourself and go on and keep your olympic sized swimming pool clean right i mean got to have some compassion for these guys on the other side of the coin what does the working person's minimum wage get them turns out not much the organization wider opportunities for women published a new report on the purchasing power of michigan's minimum wage which is seven dollars and forty cents an hour and whether or not it can buy the basic needs that a person requires like a roof overhead food on the table and clothes to wear their report found that a single mission to a single michigan resident needs to make more than twelve dollars an hour just to house clothe and feed him or herself. a minimum wage in michigan is just seven fourteen zero and that falls well short of median someone's needs all of the health insurance executives on this minimum wage makes about sixteen bucks every two

minutes but when you throw children into the equation that picture is even grimmer a mother with two children needs to make about twenty four dollars an hour to meet their basic needs that's more than three times higher than the minimum wage i guess republicans will argue that they just need to move in with mom and dad or move into a park a tent in the park when i was thinking about the best way to walk it to show the difference between these two minimum wages. i originally wanted to show stacks of money on my desk you know one stack belonging to the working person and the minimum wage and the other belonging to the corporate executives and their minimum wage and i have i figured i'd take a hundred dollar bill and set on top of a stack of one dollar bills frankly to get a point across i soon realized that even if i pretended the one dollar bills were hundred dollar bills and we did the math i discovered i'd need to get a hold of one hundred ten thousand and one dollar bills to make that stack it was

pretend hundred dollar bills to show the salary of that guy from from blue cross blue shield to back across the street and frankly my bank account can't really handle it the stack that the average worker earns would have been a bit over an inch high but the stack of the earnings of the health insurance c.e.o.'s would have been over thirty six the clear up through a couple floors above us in this building i then thought about using these tried blocks to make the point. that the toys r us don't have eleven million and or even one hundred ten thousand white blocks. so instead we're just going to go with this graphic and it looks like our graphics engine can't even illustrate the pay disparity between these two minimum wages keep in mind one inch of hundred dollar bills vs thirty six feet of hundred dollar bills horse these two stacks are more than just numbers and pictures they translate into

a lifestyle in the case of this stack it's a lifestyle that means each and every month someone is trying to raise their kids on minimum wage as to forgo dinner or rent electricity or a new pair of shoes just to get by in america we have people going to sleep hungry in this country the richest nation on the planet now in the case of this stack it's a lifestyle that doesn't have a financial care in the world. this seem right to you it looks to me like the war that ronald reagan started against the working class thirty years ago is a resoundingly success today but i haven't i had to turn an idea to turn the tide how about instead of having the current corporate minimum wage every corporation figures you know we've got to pay at least eleven million dollars and some of them i mean you know like a united health care stephen hemsley making off with in the neighborhood of one hundred million dollars here on stage you have

a corporate maximum wage. i say we cut the pay of corporate executives down to the one nine hundred eighty s. levels right eight hundred thousand dollars each and hold it there until the minimum wage for working people in america is raised high enough for everyone to meet their basic life needs this is the way to do this by the way it was done up until ronald reagan became president and that is that you have a high tax rate on people after they make about three million dollars you know it used to be during the eisenhower administration the truman administration the eisenhower administration the kennedy administration and nixon administration but the top tax rate. was it was ninety one percent until l.b.j. came along and he dropped it down to in the seventy's seventy four percent as i recall and so you know after three million dollars people just say well you know i don't want to take all their money i take more money i don't need it you know when he's mine three million dollars to live on keep it the company grow the company there was absolutely no reason why one minimum wage requires someone to make

a tough choice of paying the electric bill or paying the car payment while another with minimum wage requires someone to make tough choices over what color their twentieth jaguar should be once everyone gets a slice of pizza everyone gets a slice and then the millionaires and billionaires can have their second and third fourth and fifth helpings after all isn't that what we were taught in kindergarten . that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we've covered visit our web site at thom hartmann dot com and archie dot com also check out our youtube pages each and dot com slash the big picture r.t. and you tube dot com slash tom and this terra show is available for free podcast on night shift and don't forget the marker see begins with you when you show up and participate it all happens to your it all sort of much.

more news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to corporations rule today . if.