well on target in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture nearly a decade ago democrats warned of the dangers of president bush's tax cuts today the gang of six is aiding in that disaster pushing our nation further into a hole we need not be able to get out of it was the u.k. is taking back control of its are saturated media america take a hint and reclaim democracy and real news in journalism.

you need to know this yesterday the senate gang of six announced that it's reached a consensus on a framework to raise the debt ceiling and trim the debt by nearly four trillion dollars with both spending cuts and revenue raisers upon hearing the news president obama and mediately faced white house reporters to throw his weight behind the senate deal take a look. here's where we stand. we have a democratic president and administration that is prepared to sign a tough package we now have a bipartisan group of senators who agree with that balanced approach and we've got the american people who agree with that balanced approach. my hope and what i will be urging speaker boehner. nancy pelosi. as well as leader reid and mitch mcconnell is that they tomorrow are prepared to start talking turkey

well when lawmakers start talking turkey one thing that's off the table in negotiations is the boats bush tax cut for millionaires and billionaires no where in the gang of six plan does that discuss ending those irresponsible tax breaks which is ironic because almost ten years ago today august first two thousand and one the associated press ran this prophetic article just as president bush was dishing out his first round of tax cuts and titled us to borrow billions to cover tax refund checks the article goes on to read democrats urged that president bush's one point three five trillion ten dollars that trillion dollar ten year tax cut package which includes the rebate checks is too large and expressed fears at all so the seeds for a return to the days of government red ink and you say i told you so here we are ten years later and our government is indeed a wash in red ink and on the verge of defaulting on our debts. because we were giving millionaires and billionaires massive tax cuts so the gang of six plan is

really the right way to deal with our debt if it too doesn't call on millionaires and billionaires to make sure it's their faces here to offer his take on the issues the reporter and blogger at think progress i think progress and said welcome back thanks for having me first of all congratulations on tracking down did you know coming up with that a.p. story and sure and thanks for sharing them think progress. it was it was great it's just it's marvelous and please the show to our viewers why haven't democrats continued to hammer republicans on this really since the reagan years i mean reagan ran a three trillion dollars in debt george bush had another almost two trillion dollars in debt george w. bush had admitted five unchanged trillion most almost all of this debt was run up by three republican presidents i never hear democrats talking about now and that's exactly right i think one of the things that really gets a lot of our debt debates is to tell americans what actually caused that yeah i

mean you point to the bush tax cuts since two thousand and one both rounds of bush tax cuts through two thousand and ten through the through the ten years now almost cost the country two and a half trillion dollars that's a two and a half trillion dollar hole in our and our budget deficits and you know americans can look around and see if it was really worth it if it really did what it said for the country and the other large short term sort of driver of our deficit are the bush war in afghanistan and iraq and to his discredit obama is not moving in the right direction on those either unfortunately he's moved slightly out of the somewhat much quicker to draw down but i know what's not responsible for the deficit or social security medicaid are you know power grand things that are you know right wingers are taking big aim at unfortunately obama seems to be leaning in their direction in some ways it's it's confounding frankly we have a graphic here that lays. i believe we have yeah here it is ok this graphic

shows the the yellow at the top is the amount of the debt that is contributed by the bush tax cuts and the red below that is the amount of the deficit that is contributed or rather this contributed by the wars in the blue below that tarp tarp fannie mae recovery and the large who actually is the economic downturn but the fact of the matter is that if we did away with the wars we could end the wars and if we did away with the bush tax cuts we'd have pretty much a balanced budget you know other than the recession we'd be on the way there so why is it that the gang of six is proposing to do something other than looking at what so obvious with this graphic and it's really fascinating if you look at the actual document that they put out about their sort of budget deal as they actually say social security has nothing to do with the deficit and then the next line they say oh we're going to alter it anyway and then they plan to make a number of changes of security which i don't think are very very good for the

program and then they also lay out some steps in the future to take a container deal with the protesters just to you know take off the cap i think most americans don't realize that if you're in over one hundred sixty thousand dollars a year you don't pay a penny in social security taxes after that point so somebody makes you know million dollars a year they're making. eight hundred nine d. four thousand dollars of income there are paying one penny a social security tax right and that's not fair and what they're actually proposing to do is the it's to change the way that the program calculates the place it costs right now there's a certain inflation cost for a cost of living and i just mean here by year and then with the way that they want to change if they want to adjust to what's called chained c.p.i. under chained c.p.i. seniors are actually getting a lot less money because the inflation will be calculated frankly if you're in your fifty's if you're in your sixty's you'd be getting the average senior would be getting laid by hundred sixty dollars less a year although we have to like your ninety's to be getting thirty eight hundred dollars less a year and that's a lot of money to someone's. at all especially when so many seniors the right now

are in poverty in this country forty seven percent i think are under the two hundred percent of poverty and twenty seven year. why this. is a possible that the reason that obama is the president obama's going for this this grand plan even if it may have destructive pieces to it is that he's trying to stake big flags in history we've big footsteps behind you know johnson he's the guy who brought us medicare you know the new deal franklin roosevelt that kind of thing is it isn't possible this is just legacy thing or or. you know i.q. or has he it is he the best republican president ever i mean i don't get it oh he's still in that title from go clinton if that was true but you know what whatever's going to his mind i can spend all day guessing but i'll tell him this that polling shows that doing these sort of regressive changes to medicare and social security to medicaid are actually fairly fairly unpopular so if obama's advisors or they get this is going to help him out there on history or is going to even help him in the next election you know there's a there's sadly mistaken but that's my concern and you know harry truman famously

said if if voters are given the choice between a democrat who behaves like a republican or a real republican they'll choose the republican and you know and of course vice versa and. i just don't get why he's not. in any case this is in wild variation from the progressive caucuses pleasure progressive caucus put out a budget plan that actually balances the budget in ten years it depends on and you know or so is that why you know why is the progressive caucus the largest caucus in the democratic party ninety four members of the ninety seven million why are they being ignored marginalized by the white house you know i think part of is the fact that you know the republicans control the house of representatives you know we have a more conservative set in i think a lot of progressive ideas which really are centrist ideas if you put them on the public they're actually fairly popular are kind of pushed on the wayside and i think a lot of democrats just don't want to approach them because they think they want passed but i mean the republicans passed a you know a budget that if. privatized medicare and they they were not afraid about it

because what they wanted to do they wanted to shift the debate to the right and the democrats unfortunately to some extent allowed the debate to be shifted far enough to the right to where now the president just keeps talking about the debt we're the biggest crisis we have right now a crisis is a job. that's true and it's a huge mistake and i agree thank you so much for being here is the way it's great to see it we'll revisit this topic in just a few minutes and tonight's long liberal debate. it's time for ideally pull your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question doesn't gate prove that no one or no person or no company should have that much media power your choices are yes that's not democracy it's corporatocracy or no it's just fine the republicans have to kiss the feet of fox so-called news log on to tell our and our com selves what you think the poll be open till tomorrow morning. crazy alert protesting in the nude like everywhere else in the world the nation of

the ukraine is dealing with its share of civil disobedience in recent months although the protesters have some different tactics namely nudity the women's activist group famine f.p.m. showed up topless outside the georgian embassy on wednesday and clashed with police to protest the arrest of three photographers in nearby georgia this isn't the first time feminism pulled a naked protest or last week they jumped in a key fountain topless to protest water shortages and last december they assembled outside a cabinet building in a birthday suits their protest the lack of female representation in the prime minister's new cabinet unclear how effective the new campaign is for famine but let's just hope it's. the not so fit tea party here in america doesn't get any ideas male or female. after the break conservatives jamie weinstein and daniel helper drawing me as we do crowd politics biggest topics in the lone liberal blog.

website with twenty four seventh's live streaming what to do about the ongoing financial hurricane unlimited free high quality videos for download. and stories you never find on mainstream is. going to get themselves a political. posting aren't.

is when is it i don't have time for the lone liberal when i debate two expert political commentators on the big issues of the week our panel tonight daniel help or any online editor of the deal at the weekly standard and jamie weinstein senior editor at the daily caller jane thank you probably because it was hard to get started here democrats are using their secret weapon in the debt limit debate ronald reagan take a look at this new message released by house democrats yesterday. congress says. it's. before. this chips is the government supposed to rely on social security benefits but interest rates would skyrocket. would occur in financial markets and the federal deficit would soar you know it's it's actually responsible. to be good so yes it means we

have a reputation for reliability and critical to such part much. so daniel other republicans turning their backs on reagan now that sounds more like darth vader than ronald. coase are you i think those that are or where with that or where was that. book anybody can turn around what obama said in two thousand and nine when he said raising taxes in an economy is bad idea around or a marine tax eleven times on this and raise the debt ceiling eighteen times regular it is that any number of things can be taken out of context and used your political advantage just like president obama raising the debt ceiling eighteen times in your eight years that's not taking anything out of context. i don't think it's serious and so twenty times. but here's i mean i think i think what we see happening is there's there's going to be some type of deal whether it's the gang of six deal or it's the mcconnell plan the debt ceiling is going to be raised well i just hope

that after we do it with whatever deal is going to happen we continue to get serious about tackling long term fiscal problems that we must tackle in order to continue our a a rating it's not only the debt ceiling that threatens that rating it's also our long term fiscal problems but the but the reality here is that the republicans are creating a crisis when there isn't one there's a difference between important and urgent i agree with you that the u.s. debt is important but it's not urgent so what if it doesn't become urgent well look you know what's the threshold technically it becomes urgent at the point at which people will not buy our bonds and we have put you know to that pressure and poor's said that unless we have a long term long term plan to deal with our to nothing to do with the debt that has to do with the debt ceiling this is this is this is bad thinking i think there is something called a complex one and it's when you get something you don't expect occurs and it needs to happen all the time and it makes us plunge even worse into a situation so the idea that we can wait just to the point where ok now it's time to deal with it right before we thought of that cliff is i think suggesting that we

should but what i'm saying is that what the what the republicans are doing right now is they are holding the nation over an arbitrary line in the sand that was drawn by a previous congress and and that doesn't make any sense in every throughout the reagan administration throughout the bush administration to both bush administrations whenever the time when it whenever it came time to raise the debt ceiling republicans said fine listen to it no problem if you're in the clinton ministration they yell and scream they actually shut down the government during the carter administration want to make said that it only happens when democrats are to make sense when we're in such a fiscal straight as we are and you have a president who has not been particularly serious about tackling our long term fiscal problems and you need something to get his way and you're saying this after george bush had a five and a half trillion dollars who are we are in a different situation right now as a result of the crash site doesn't. excuse the problems in the bush administration's what i mean i think i think we can play politics when you try to assign blame i think ultimately the problem needs to be dealt with just like the president you guys fans of the gang gang of sixty think i think it is and i think it's i'm against banks ok but there's and i know i'd have to see the pacific's but

you know i tried like tom coburn i think there's a possible deal here i don't think we'll do enough and i think i hope it doesn't raise taxes to reform the tax code maybe but i but i'm i would like to see ways it's not appropriate i got a plan everyone says the devils are details no the plan is in the details you have no plan without the details and with just talking points right now i'm with you and not just talking points but republicans talking points being put forward by a democratic president there are sized to anything except in some lower corporate tax like why don't i get a very old and he actually does raise taxes the united kingdom is waking up to how destructive murdoch's media empire has been it's corrupt to scotland yard their equivalent of our f.b.i. it's corrupted the metropolitan police their equivalent of our you know arguably new york city police department or maybe actually much marja them much more important that in one thousand nine hundred three in the united states we've got a graphic on this site i believe it here is in one thousand nine hundred three fifty corporations control the majority of us media the two thousand and four this

is from the bend. he updates every couple years two thousand and four was lost i mean updated it five corporations control the majority the media in the united states is a troubling that the only way that a republican can get any kind of national office now is to go through fox news if you don't have murdoch's and force just like in the u.k. you had you've had five prime ministers that have had to literally go to murdoch and beg for his indorsement tony blair convinced him to flip parties even and every single time or endorses them they win and same thing here in the united states if you don't if you don't have sean hannity on your side you're maybe you're out of luck maybe just the opposite he's endorsing people that he sees are going to win and he wants the current. who is ever going to win the fact of the matter is we have more choice in our media today than we have ever had in the history of the entire work not in terms of the you could just in terms of the constant terms of the internet and there's a zillion different providers on the internet sure everybody this is this this

scandal which while awful in this specific case is fleet street fleet street generally british tabloids are notoriously you know pushed the edging out to go over the edge i don't know what this has to do with fox news well. there are some concerns that well first of all you've got the guy who is the head of the doubt of dow jones of the wall street journal murdoch's crown jewel and his us empire has has retired shall we say and headed back to the u.k. where he may be a question in much media right these days you have two choices you have big corporations your view of state owned the local affiliates those are not the affiliates the local in the smaller regional papers or not stations the stations are different the publications are are going out of business but this is all can't sustain themselves either have state run or you could have a larger thing larger publications that are actually supported by various other various other conglomerates but so the reality you're laying out though daniel is

the result of ronald reagan in one thousand nine hundred two suspending enforcement the sherman antitrust act which led to this insane period of mergers and acquisitions made the michael milken of the world and now an icon solid off elisa you know that's not the case as through it has to be free content on the internet it's not that complicated i mean look it all kind of is why there's a small number of companies that own most of the media i don't care less about is what i was actually able to get my dad to write a book again you have more choice and more opinion that you can find today easily at a tip of your finger than in any time and in a world history think of what it was thirty years ago when i don't know what but what they're using to go everything to america had a look at news it would be but they had only three networks they could turn on the t.v. which all the similar. same type of left wing or liberal liberal slant type news right now you have more networks then water have i was a liberal. that's how news was going there's no question he was a little yeah but his is news you know that outrage over rupert murdoch as opposed

to any of these other media organizations is so out it's so nonsensical it's it's it's i just can't understand it i mean you're i mind with the new york all the time and it's having to go through fox news in order to become to go to new york times obtain information he legally and publish it in the form of wiki leaks that that was state secrets and that caused people that are not what i do believe it or not because there are others for the response to these what if there's delete legally i don't know why we're talking about fox news sure with wonder group or i did i just say murdoch in what murdoch did in britain i can see not his crimes is not a solid medium a physical poised. to democracy that's in him for some years some of who is the sort of the here who is the one who's the front runner for the republican nomination right now mitt romney how did he go through murdoch again to get this front runner status he barely gives any interviews as far as i know i haven't seen a mitt romney interview on fox in a long time yet he's on the on the glide path of the republican nomination who's

who's number two if he jumps in rick perry rick perry is fox news this guy this isn't this is nonsense i think you have to go through if that was the case john bolton would be the head would be your nominee because he's on fox news all the time and considering a run you wouldn't be flailing yeah ok you got me but it's rare but ok no lizabeth war consumer financial protection bureau richard cordray is is the guy who is going to go in and republicans are saying that they're that's not enough they're going to vote on legislation fact they probably had to vote already today to weaken the consumer financial protection bureau how is this good politics to say you know we're going to destroy the agency is going to send consumers because there's no proven track record at the agency can in fact because it hasn't start of course that it's because it hasn't started but republicans are fun. expanding government i don't think it's any surprise to you that there would be would be inclined to be against it without hearing further we drank the relative the banks that brought us a disaster jew here the details the details are alarming you have this you have

this stand alone bureau which is which is basically a subsidiary of the federal reserve except the federal reserve has no with the word of over it except nobody really has any overt authority over it except the president and it's part of executive branch it's part as are all the regulated says it's part of it's a gross expansion of government and into our regular where we need it we had to face or not it robs installers they robbed us of their credit cards they're they're fine pretty nice to their hamburger is their go out about things but. we here guys are and here's here's the thing i mean it's another layer of government regulation which is which i think is always prudent always problematic when one of their missions is like to create fairness i'm always worried when like me like your role is to create fairness that sounds like well how do you do that what are you going to do to create friends you say things like you can't have language in your contracts that's undecipherable for the average person and then a year and a half down the road they discover that all of

a sudden their mortgage payment just double you know well that's not fair but you know the solution these organizations do things the dot frank act when somebody applying for a mortgage what they do is they send out tons of disclosures which you think i do you think well maybe that's a good idea people or disclose people are can word and understand it some people receive a pamphlet and i know this about an inch thick and they it was painful it's every time they make a certain change every time they talk to their lender practically so they're receiving tons and tons of paperwork that nobody's going to read it so it's a good idea like a lot of you are so great i would like to have a government agency oversee that stuff so you're i don't after you write it in a way like it says nice idea that a government without a government bureaucracy would be looking out for. well the problem is that they don't work the ways are simple here's the simple as it is that's just a result of very simple as it is to work from the founding of this country until nine hundred thirty thought this country never went more than fourteen years without a major bank i'm talking hundreds of banks failing major banks panics and major

crashes and start where never more than fourteen years from one nine hundred thirty five until. basically two thousand and two thousand and eight we had no major bank failures and why because of glass steagall because the and the c c because i saw the roosevelt roosevelt put in strong controls on christmas is those got blown up in two thousand i support i support a wall between commercial and so you're in favor of more government regulation i'm sometimes but i mean i don't like excessive government regulation and this seems like it's very possible and we agree on this i think you're right that the pamphlet sometimes are decipherable and hard to read and people have to read them we should only have beings that people actually read that's why i say to repeal obamacare which no one read two thousand pages this is the no one of the problem is that the problem is not the idea of it which sounds really nice the problem is that there's actually no way to really make this work look for the government programs work so well i don't think would be poor people on the street i don't think there would be people who are actually you know lyndon johnson poverty in half in the united

states and for a half years after he built the foundation he didn't eliminate. the foundation in are going to be an asset so what so you can never be programmed to build a program that works all right for a couple of years and then and others and you know what it was floundering before that before too quickly yes reagan reagan yes ross homeless people on the streets we don't want to go out is not to remember you know not why did you decide we did not have almost people on the streets before reagan i think raising a video of him kind of like that voice dragging the homeless people out on the even that money just to shut down the mental hospitals stop and the bernie goldberg in his book talks about how like when reagan no it's about homeless but the day after like couldn't get some of our own homeless recently limited there's no more stories about homelessness and everything's fine fine in the world i have not seen a failure stories where almost it's an ongoing and terrible problem. so well ok let's let's move on to quick for here. drudge is reporting that pray for rain

governor perry's rick perry's wife is encouraging him to get in the right in the race temple once he is floating apparently we don't know for sure but the reports are that this is coming out a plan to campaign and be. the concern that michele bachmann has to billeted in headaches and therefore might be having a headache when it's time to push the nuclear trigger and not be available and so of all the candidates who have declared i mean we're starting to see some of these weird flaws coming out and we'll throw rick perry into the race who is the most toxic of the republican candidates who could really blow up the republican party if their nominee this nuclear the daily caller we broke the migraine story of. anyone going from simple logic we didn't get it from complaining we got it from sources close close to the bachmann bachmann herself so we we are the purveyors of the story it started with us who is the most toxic i think ron paul would be pretty toxic as foreign policy is way out of touch ok johnson smoking pot you know who

smoked pot in the last few years and the guy is. just all he's got a lot of fans out there probably a lot of that lot of players that maybe even of the show will see will see daniel help or they will help or jamie wants to thanks a lot because for. coming out from pies being thrown to people flying in the air the circus continues so what's to become of the troubled media moguls empire and he will be there will there be anything of king murdoch's empire love to pass along to his dear james brown. we.

were never says they are safe for. freedom. around the world. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so bleak you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and cheers you some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you don't i'm sorry welcome is a big issue. about

the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour the g.o.p. opposed the new budget once again safeguarding their wealthy buddies while cutting benefits for the middle class so who is the man.