the big. banks stick a different day when it comes to the debt ceiling so your desperate times call for more desperate measures i don't shock therapy is it time for the us to go to this extreme. heat. from low to you ok. and move over tea party because progressives are serving up their own hot answers to america's economic cold so could we be seeing a tea party almost. like it's a little bit of a sloppy jews and muslims to just see circumcision is now illegal now what do you

see jews and muslims rallying behind the same cause and her san francisco's proposed ban on circumcision we'll fill you in on the stiff debate. thursday july twenty eighth four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for sound and you are watching our team so we keep we're keeping a close eye on what's happening right down the street from here with votes and talks on raising the debt ceiling and all right here we are one day closer to doomsday in fact four days seven hours fifty eight minutes and thirty four seconds closer. we've reached a place where there's a bitter divide over party politics has come to a head with the clock ok it continues to tick down and so here's the question

do desperate times call for desperate measures let's head to our studio in new york or actually to new york for some answers of peter schiff president of euro pacific capital joins me say that peter a lot of people have argued and i think you're one of them that the only way the u.s. government defaults is if it really wants to is that there's funny of revenue coming in and what we're seeing you know what democrats and republicans are talking about in terms of how to get this money back is more of just an elaborate charade more political theater i know you ran for congress what would you be doing if you were here in washington regarding this whole debate well you know i don't think we should raise the debt ceiling it is a charade for now it's true default is up to us if we want to default obviously we can do it but if we don't want to there's plenty of revenue that will at some point that won't be the case with interest rates rise then we did it then we simply won't be able to make the payments but for now with interest rates as low as they are it's still our choice eventually it's not going to be but for now it is but the

real problem is not the debt ceiling the problem is the debt and raising the ceiling makes that problem bigger if i mean it seems to me like you're saying in some elements that deficit spending needs to be stopped and that in its tracks period but here's the deal the only way to stop it go over congress is progress for years to reduce spending in the future but it never happens it's just like everybody has a friend it's constantly promising to go on a diet to lose weight but it's always next week so if you're serious about losing weight you know. junk food yeah going off i don't regard the person you don't starve the person and keep them away from food for several months and if that happens i think if we stop deficit spending in its tracks there could be some serious repercussions people who rely on social security on medicare on food stamps they will be out of luck it's sounds to me very much a leader like this is survival of the fittest so you know make the case for me that

you're not saying that we're going to toss all the poor people the hungry people the disabled to fend for themselves. well remember one of the reasons that there are so many poor people in so many and unemployed people is because of the government because of all the resources the government is draining out of the private sector so the government actually stop spending all this money we have a stronger more productive economy and so we would have as many poor people would have as many unemployed people but who's talking about starving and government is still collecting over two trillion dollars a year in taxes that's funny money because that's all the government was spending around ten or twelve years ago so let's talk about starving to government i just think there are a glut i mean there are totally way overweight they need to come down to just eat a reasonable diet and i think the tax revenues that they already collect is plenty in fact if we can cut enough out of the budget maybe we can have some tax relief because i think americans are overtaxed and putting this government deeper into

debt which is we're forcing even higher taxes on the american public and if you sure that is the way of solving our but the fact is peter i mean i think a lot of people would be offended at the statement that that there's so much gluttony going on certainly not about the government as a lot of people would probably agree with you but let's talk about who these in heilman programs actually affect who that money trickles down to these are people who maybe you're right maybe in the long term i don't think this is a totally invalid argument but in the long term if you have people stop relying on the government maybe it will make them more apt to go out and do stuff some people for themselves but the fact is this is also a right now problem as to what happens you know with these programs and with this money if these people thought getting these checks in the mail there could be some serious issues i mean in a way this is shock therapy a treatment that you know doesn't kill you but it's very painful so maybe you could

you can make the analogy to rehab yes you know if you stop taking drugs and go through it all there is some pain there but there's a lot of reward as a result the problem is if you keep doing drugs because you don't want rehab you end up dying of an overdose and that's what's going to happen to the u.s. economy yes it's unfortunate but a lot of people revise on promises from politicians. that can't be kept but the problem is to try to sustain the lies that's what's going to destroy the country the first step is admitting that our politicians lied and over promised and let's deal with today's reality the money is not there and we can't keep borrowing we can't keep printing it we need to deal with reality i think it's a valid point peter seriously but rehab is different than throwing people to the streets with nobody to help and by the way some people can't afford rehab and i need help for it obviously when the government is figuring out where to cut the

spending they don't need to throw anybody to the streets you know there are a penny plenty of people who are collecting social security checks right now that are pretty rich that are pretty well off they just they're so security money to pay the dues that their country clubs they don't need that money yes are there people that if you took away their so security they would be off the street so let's not take away from the people but there are plenty of people who do not need that money and the taxes are being taken from younger people who are struggling to get by we're paying a lot more and security payroll taxes and they are in income taxes we don't want to raise taxes on now if you've got out wealthy people that have a decent net worth they've only done so security check but when you say i mean just allow at least two to a small extent that your argument is very darwinian it's very survival of the saddest and the people at the bottom are really the ones who lose out and have less of a chance even they have now of ever recovering from the what are already losing you know look at the cost of living look at the disparity now between the richest and

the poorest that's a result of these policies that's a result of central planning and central banking leads main street and feeds wall street that's passed to come to an end and it's not going to come when if we keep on running up these deficits all the employment opportunities that are being destroyed by good big government who does that hurt. people who are trying to work their way up the ladder and the government has taken the ladder beyond their reach all right certainly a different way of looking at it in some ways that you can almost interpret what you just that is arriving from the rich wall street to help the others but not totally yourself i want to thank you so much as always for being on president of euro pacific capital in westport connecticut all right all this talk of how to deal with the nation's debt and sometimes you just gotta wonder how lawmakers measure up in terms of what they say needs to be cut and to be funded and what

regular old americans think well i wonder that all the time so we sent our intrepid producer lindsay garfield out into the hot summer streets to talk to people visiting washington and find out how they would spend the money a little experiment here and i think i may say a whole lot about the divide between washington and the rest of the country where the august second default deadline that's approaching those in congress have been discussing where to spend and where to say we came to the streets of d.c. to ask americans where they want their government spending money we laid out six stars and only gave people five pennies where did they want to see their money go. oh you got a lot of interest here what would make a good like balance. we're just going to put north korea off the side and. i think that if we develop infrastructure. will definitely have to. infrastructure i think there are

a lot of people who would say the military is super important for sure military is the first where am i going to put any infrastructure for sure. just because everything is crumbling military and foreign but i think we spent too much moments or so there's a really still probably security officer a look logan want to put in health care maybe two and i would definitely give the last to sit in the military i will tell you i will not be putting any military they're going to put money in military no matter what i'm. going to do social security because that definitely affects me in the future everybody deserves how care and that's something that is needed right now i'm not going to give any more of my money to wait for nothing for deficit. reduction and those planes so much politics in the games it's a really they just get down to business and securely i understand that there are a lot like fewer pennies and more of you know that's.

that's politics. there you go so what have we learned today americans want to see most of their money going towards education and other social programs and on the deficit talks are taking center stage in congress not so many people are concerned about it and where does the government spend most of its money that people care about the least. the military lindsay garfield artsy washington d.c. all right so from the average joe to president obama everyone in america seems to have an opinion on the budget crisis and the tea party is of course no exception an opinion on everything yesterday a small crowd of them gathered on capitol hill but won't hold the line against a deficit reduction compromise. meanwhile today a group of progressive featuring van jones and representative keith ellison also gathered on capitol hill to talk about their demands that congress not gut social security medicare and medicaid so what exactly is going on here are van jones and

other progressive trying to start their own sort of tea party only on the left for more on our studio in los angeles we're going to go to richard s. count senior fellow at the campaign for america's future and they're right there i want to talk to you about this new progressive movement that we're seeing a little later and so far i would have to say a little less powerful than what we've seen the tea party do what is this progressive movement trying to stay here where. they are basically expressing the viewpoint of most americans according to the polls including most republicans and surprisingly even in some cases most tea party members what they're saying is that there should be no cuts to social security or medicare as part of a deficit discussion that social security should be fixed by raising taxes particularly the payroll tax about one hundred six per thousand dollars which is

current limited that military cuts should be a big part of any long term plan and that we need aggressive action now to get jobs to turn the country your own i'm going to or we start talking about cuts i'm going to have to jump in there for a second go because you said a lot of the tea party think this way i'm going to have to argue that most of the tea party doesn't think that we should raise tax revenue and they also don't think that we should cut they also are ok instead of with cutting things like social security when you say. well not according to the polls is it as far as social security is concerned yes on the taxes and remember you know the tea party has a great advantage over the people who are trying to organize the rest of the country which is they have a coherent narrative and they have called politicians arguing for that narrative on a national scale the the other side doesn't have that so the tea party gets very confused we saw it during the health reform debate when people were say get the government's hands off my medicare which is a medicare which is a government program so they don't really know exactly what they're for or against

they're against taxes because they think x. increases mean means increasing their taxes when it really means for the wealthiest americans but the polls show that they do not want to see their own social security or medicare cut so they're very confused but they're being given an easy story to swallow and that's what they organized around i think that's an interesting point you make i know i was covering a tea party rally once and one of the people said you know he was getting that fringe benefits that he doesn't think that you know government run health care should should be part of the system and i said i think you're getting government sponsored health care but anyway i digress here's the deal lot of time exactly i go to these you know these progressive they get together it's usually much smaller groups but here's some of their reasoning and they say here's what we need a third we need this elimination of this hierarchy that we have now in america with this huge middle class they say let's figure out a way allocate economic goods to satisfy the human need and they think should be

more collaborative well guess what those philosophies last time i sat at socialism so what's the difference why are these people simply just saying hey we're going to socialist in america and we're going to be proud of it. well look there really say you know you can argue about what is and isn't socialism what they're really arguing for are the kind of policies that were put in by franklin roosevelt in the one nine hundred thirty years and we had that same debate about what to label with them but those policies saved the capitalist system there really arguing against dismantling the system that's been in place and kept this country prosperous for seventy five years and that's what we're seeing today on the other side so what they're really saying is let's preserve the kind of social contract that worked so well for seventy five years and let's then build it and modernize it and make it work for everybody is that socialism if you think medicare is socialism then it's socialism if you think social security is socialism and it's socialism or right now

most american households haven't saved even ten thousand dollars toward their own retirement so it's all it's a choice between starvation or socialism call it what you want i don't think people will pick starvation i think it's an interesting point and finally richard i want to know you know we're doing this kind of comparison and we're selling the tea party members and we're selling this what we saw today right down the street here in washington with these progressive people getting together with van jones sort of leading the movement one of their strongest arguments and what's going to take for them to sort it be get on the level of the tea party. well they start they were off to a good start they have many more house parties than the tea party did at the beginning remember they're brand new but i think what they need to do is they need to build a very clear simple direct message to the american people the tea party says get the government out of your life well that doesn't really make sense but it's simple so i think the challenge for this opposition to the tea party movement is to get a message that's that simple that resonates with people that they can understand

that will get people all across the political spectrum so yeah i bet it makes sense to me that's there it's i was going forward certainly can't argue with that is definitely one thing the tea party does really well richard ask our senior fellow at the campaign for america's future. all right moving on from cutting the budget to cutting well something else i'm talking about for skin and more specifically whether or not circumcision should be made illegal in this country and one thousand nine hundred ninety six along came into effect that criminalize circumcision or any other cutting of the genitalia for females under eighteen years old now a group of people in san francisco think that law should extend to males to boys as well at least in their city but a judge in san francisco now says that measure doesn't hold water because regulating medical procedures is actually a function of the state not cities and it will most likely be taken off the ballot fill this issue was one that divided quite

a few people but it also brought to very unlikely groups together muslims and jews and also brought the question of whether this is right or wrong into the national spotlight now i just returned from san francisco and here's what i discovered when i was there. it's one of the most colorful cities in america as full of flavor as it is people with home stacked on top of one another like building blocks san francisco california has always been a place where the hills are steep and so too are the issue. this time around the battle is over circumcisions to be or not to be forced circumcision is fundamentally a human rights violation i feel that. children whether boy or girl have a fundamental rights to all the body parts that they were born with jonathan conti is part of

a group that collected more than seven thousand signatures in favor of banning what they call male genital mutilation within the city limits and after with the issue on the november ballot if passed the circumcision of anyone under eighteen would be a crime resulting in jail time and a one thousand dollars fine this outrage religious groups who see it as a direct attack on their religious rights jews like audi porth have joined forces with muslims to defend age old traditions this is a hate fueled campaign to curtail civil liberties in calif and in san francisco she and many argue it's a parent's choice. the majority of american men are circumcised and according to the world health organization circumcised men have a lower risk of penile cancer sexually transmitted diseases and the sixty percent less chance of contracting h i v but at the center of this debate religion people want to have their kids circumcised they should i mean major religions believe in

it for over two or three thousand years so i think it's a little bit of a sloppy jews and muslims to just say circumcision is not illegal your freedom to practice religion and someone else's body religion is not a blank check to inflict harm upon your children and the vast majority of the world . central america south america new zealand australia most of europe the practice is virtually unheard of some have taken it a step further matthew hass the author of the bill is also the creator of the comic for skin man the superhero that saves babies from the evil doctors and parents trying to circumcise them this comic book has some of the most disgusting vile anti-semitic images that appeared to be lifted out of nazi era propaganda the idea of a you know for skin man is an area looking superhero who's going to come and save babies from the evil jewish you know blood thirsty rabbi is disgusting the

debate over circumcision has polarized this city with people taking sides on both religious and personal grounds well we'll all come to a head here at san francisco's civil court where a judge will decide whether or not the issue will be left up to voters some of whom say bilbo to leave things as they are to make a law that it's legally defined a lot of people way there's a lot of history there let them make their own decisions and i trust them they make the right decision for their children to you and others who say they may be children at the time of the procedure but it's a decision they have to live with when they grow up this is a baby a life. and it's not baby decision vote or no vote the battle lines over circumcision have now expanded far beyond the borders of san francisco becoming a national debate bringing what was once a purely private issue into the public domain reporting in san francisco christine for zero eight. and it really was such a private thing

a lot of people did not talk about it and it seems appropriate at least to me that san francisco is at least where this debate is being had this is of course where you know the game gay rights movement essentially started a lot of things happen a lot of discussions happened and what i learned is that everyone in fairness is. it seems to have an opinion about it but it is very important for us to talk about a lot of what your opinion and joining me now war from our l.a. studios katherine schneider vice president of community engagement with the jewish federation of los angeles catherine thanks so much for coming on i do want to tell our viewers that we tried to get somebody in favor of the van the van to come on as well so you guys could have a little debate they never got back to us. so let's talk about this why do you think this issue came up now and why do you think it's caused such a stir i think it's caused a stir because you know this is a parental rights issue and in california in los angeles choices is very important

and this is a diverse community many different faiths many different ethnicities and we recognize that parents get to make decisions for their children and that those rights could be taken away by a locality was a frightening thing not just for the jewish community but for the general community but what about this argument that a lot of people make that you know parents might make these decision for a baby it's not a life or death it's not even a health thing for some people in lives some people but it's a decision that even ones that baby grows up and becomes a man that they still have to live with well i think that's the nature of family and parenting parents make decisions for their children across the board that they will have to deal with for the rest of their life in this case this is this is a religious decision this is a decision this is a decision that parents will make with their clergy with their doctor with their families and parents make decisions like that across the board that's the right of

parents. what about this you know we talked a little bit about this law that came into effect president bill clinton signed this law in one thousand nine hundred six that totally made it criminal to perform circumcision or any sort of cutting on a girl's genitalia and yet it's not the same and a lot of guys that i spoke to in san francisco people behind this bill they say it is the same you're taking away nerve endings you're taking away some sexual stimulation and this should not be a women only or girls only build it it should extend across the board but i think what we're talking about in terms of circumcision is it's a standard medical practice and you know i think that it isn't clear there isn't a clear study that says that it does or doesn't do this and there are many studies that suggest there are in fact out benefit so it's not it we want to compare them but they're not the same they're in fact very different you say they are not as you

say this is a standard medical practice but in fact it certainly is here in the united states every figure i've read says that you know more males in the united states are circumcised the not that's not the case though in the rest of the world. and i think you know we are not advocating for circumcision. we seem to we seem to have lost our guest there hopefully we will be getting her back in a second i know that she was in our studios katherine schneider vice president. katherine schneider you back hey there we lost you for a second i don't know what happened there sorry about what were you just saying i had asked you i had said this is actually not the norm in the majority of the rest of the world in fact some people are very surprised when they come to this country how prevalent it is here. you know we're not advocating for circumcision that's not what this is about this is about parental choice and religious freedom we respect

those that choose not to circumcise their sons and we would defend them and their right not to do that this is really about parental choice and giving families and parents the opportunity to act in accordance with their faith or with their medical preference or health preference this is about choice and what about this i think that last i checked i've been trying to keep on top of this a judge in san francisco has now said you know what this doesn't go in accordance with with the state law so it's not even going to be on the ballot but what about leaving it up to the voters don't you think voters would make the right decision. you know that's a great question i think the issue with that is more of a technicality and this is something that we haven't talked about yet can we really want cities setting medical standards is that something that belongs to the state which is essentially what the judge said and the other issue when this is set to city by city it there are key issues right now in california that we have to deal

with we are still in the middle of our recession and i think that for most voters they want the state to regulate medical practices and they want to ensure that they have jobs that they have quality of life that the key issues that we're struggling with are dealt with and this is really a tremendous distraction no matter what katherine to have to say it was really interesting just to have this be a discussion looks like it most likely won't be put to voters regardless we do thank you for coming on the show katherine schneider bice president of community engagement with the jewish federation of los angeles. thank you very much. all right so i got to bring something up because i've had sort of an unprecedented week for the first time in my two and a half years on twitter i am getting twitter hate mail or twitter hate mentions actually over a segment i did earlier in the week about comic-con interviewed a woman a costume enthusiastic and frequent comic con attendee and much of the anger is coming from a question i asked her about why this convention draws so many people this year i

think it was one hundred thousand to san diego which by the way is my hometown so here's the question i asked her. we're in really tough economic times i mean i know that right outside the convention center as we just saw in this story that we just showed homeless people galore really really terrible rate of homelessness there and yet people as you say they're spending a thousand dollars why do you think they're not spending this money maybe even half the money coming to washington to protest the economy or choosing an issue that's going to make a difference for the world or giving it to a charity why are they spending it on comic-con. all right so i got dozens of tweets about this and i keep getting on i want to read you a few so bought con wrote me and said fancy just wondering how many vacations you take the year last we checked humping money into a local economy is a good thing arced says i should be ashamed of myself that i am a bully and

a failed reporter and finally one of my favorites at reporter wrote and simply said hooker backed us off all right so here's the deal i actually thoroughly enjoy comic con and had i attended it for several years and i already mentioned that is my hometown and i love it san diego is economically stimulated by the surge of people coming into town my apologies to our guest and to my twitter haters if you think i would ever discourage you or anyone from having a good time i'll just say this and believe it here i'm just raising the point that it's comic books and cost play that draws one hundred thousand people out in this country and not the fact that millions of americans are unemployed not the fact that big banks and big oil companies are making more money than ever the hard working intelligent people are having to make the choice between their heating bill and well there jim.