well i'm starvin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture so much for bipartisanship the republicans got exactly what they wanted in the debt deal scream mainstream fifty wall street solution government program is first on the chopping block this trillion dollars. and america did vote for change and pretty sure sky high unemployment is not what they've argued for president obama has basically caved in to the very party who wants him out or his chances for clinching the trunk twelve

presidential seat better known or worse. you need to know this looks like our nation will avoid default now that a lot of their a deal has been reached but this is not a victory for the american people past us presidents have always taken a tough stand against terrorists it was ronald reagan i believe it is high time that the civilized countries of the world made it plain that there is no room worldwide for terrorism and there will be no negotiation with terrorists and then he. and george w. bush in two thousand and eight. some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the church and radicals basis some ingenious argument or persuade them they had been wrong all along. we have an obligation to call this

what it is the false comfort of appeasement which has been repeatedly discredited by your street unfortunately today we now appear to negotiate with terrorists and this debt limit debate we witnessed far right wing terrorists within the republican party members of congress that even vice president joe biden said acted like terrorists threaten america would totally economic destruction if they didn't get everything they wanted in the debt limit deal and as we near the end it looks like they'll get damn near everything they asked for that's trillions in spending cuts without one penny of tax increases and billionaire hedge fund managers subsidize billion dollar oil corporations and subsidize billionaire corporate jet owners it's as though the president was totally unprepared for this is salt by the republicans but that is if he wasn't warned in there that they were planning to play us to. take a look at this q. and a in which market am bind a reporter for the right wing national journal informs the president the united

states about what the republicans have up their sleeve and at first the president doesn't understand it and then says he doesn't believe it's possible this is from his december seventh two thousand and ten press conference nine months ago when he announced that he got a one year extension of unemployment benefits an exchange for a two year extension of the bush tax cuts for billionaires. and how did these negotiations you know she should search and publicans about raising the debt limit as it seems. that she had a significant amount of leverage over the white house now going in was there ever any attempt by the white house to be. raising the dead mother's part of this when you say it would seem to have a significant model number with one of those women and sense that that you know will say centrally or not and raise the than we're not going to agree to it unless the white house says. if we're going to the pretty significant spending cuts

across the board that probably go deeper for the what you're going to do well and look what levers have more go to yours my expectation. and also john boehner is more. that nobody democrat or republican. is willing to see the full faith and credit of the united states government. collapse it's amazing nine months ago his first response was what do you mean leverage then you know it's not going to happen so i'm take those words back maybe joining me now to talk about this issue is jane hamsher author and editor founder and editor firedoglake dot com jane welcome back thanks for having me tom thanks for joining us why didn't the president take mark and viner's warning seriously back in december i mean mark basically laid out the whole republican game plan for him in that press conference. but i have to say i take issue with that whole idea that the tea party determine the outcome of this i mean mitch mcconnell several

weeks back operate the president a clean debt ceiling limit our raise and that could have passed the house with the non tea party members i think believe there's like four hundred thirty five members of congress and seventy who are in the in who are tea party identified so that leaves you know not to take my shoes off the count but a whole lot of democrats republicans who couldn't pass a clean debt ceiling limit next really extension and they did the president did not want that he rejected that so he put himself in the hostage taking position every day so that this was what he wanted so i can't i'm not really sure if you take the president at his word he got what he wanted that's pretty astounding i mean i know that there was a vote on a clean debt ceiling ceiling bill in the house some weeks ago and half the democrats voted against it all of the republicans voted against it but you're saying that it could have passed the house this time. mitch mcconnell said that he

would have passed and that he offered the president clean debt ceiling bill. and we as we saw when mitch mcconnell gets behind something it happened that was what we were waiting for was from mitch mcconnell to get behind it and when he did that's what happened i mean the president rejected it out of hand so i don't think we ever got to test that so the president did not matt grassley did not want that and he that's why he said i don't want to even though harry reid and nancy pelosi both endorsed it so you know the president said that what he wanted was a big package of cuts he wanted four trillion dollars in deficit reduction he wanted some of the to be in in in revenues i believe it was last year with john boehner actually had eight hundred billion in revenues and the president said he wanted four hundred billion more and speaker boehner said no i'm not going to give you that not when he walked away but this deal actually has no revenues so what happened. at the end of the week was the president was very upset because they saw that the numbers tanking the president's numbers tanking and they said fine we'll

take the deal well not a deal had gotten worse so i don't think that the tea party holding know the country hostage is this is the whole story here i mean the people who wound up passing this bill were not the tea party they voted against it here they say they still write yours so you're suggesting basically the president was complicit in this in this theater of hostage taking i mean right now the f.a.a. inspectors are having to do their work without pay they're also being held hostage for a second it seems to be a pretty effective strategy whether it's just republicans or republicans and the president with the unemployment extension running out in december i'm guessing that the unemployed are going to be the next hostages what's your take on i think they'll be a lot more hostages before then i think we'll have to just take it when they want to extend the bush tax cuts as well i believe there's a continuing resolution that's going to come up on the budget that's going to be a fight and that are going to be hostages taken there where candor discretion was

absolutely right and there were people on the progressive side like me and i believe you at the time and said why hasn't the president included this debt ceiling increase at the same time when the republicans want something which is the extension of the bush tax cuts he didn't do it now whether that's because of poor negotiating skills or because this is a situation you wanted to be in with his own party i don't know but it's manifestly true that if you you negotiate with somebody when you have the strong hand and the last time you had a strong hand was last year you know well that's certainly the case now. you know what's going to come out of this is basically a gang of twelve. and we've seen government by gangs here in the past it didn't work all that well and trying to it's not working that well here jane hamsher what's your best you know what are your thoughts about how this gang of twelve is going to build a gang of twelve is going to work house these super congress things work which is that they. take a they basically tied the hands of congress ties its own hands and gives its power

over to a small body and insulates itself from taking painful votes so when you deal with cutting social security and medicare that's something that people like jim cooper judd gregg can't conrad have been trying to put forward for a long time ever since the president came into office in fact congress actually took this act in two thousand and nine and the president endorsed it congress didn't pass it and that's when the president empowered his cat food commission but the cat food commission didn't have the extra parliamentary powers that this commission has so we know they've wanted this ever since they got into office that white house has and now they've got it and they are tasked with hiding some of the charity in medicare that is what they are supposedly going to change is twenty seconds to go here how badly as you burn his base really recover from i mean i don't think that it's just his they think an eighty two percent of the country does not want to see social security and medicare benefits cut and that is what we're looking at we are manifestly looking at got is what will come out of this capture

commission and if it doesn't there are going to be penalties that neither party is going to want to create so they are absolutely going to go come in come back and swipe at it this is and i don't think that's just is based it's going to care and this is why we're politics again thanks so much thank you so now that we can avoid default need anomic doomsday at least for now what will this debt limit deal mean for a limping economy last night president obama said this. the first part of this agreement will cut about one trillion dollars in spending over the next ten years the result would be the lowest level of annual domestic spending sense to eisenhower was president but at a level that still allows us to make job creating investments in things like education and research we also made sure that these cuts wouldn't happen so abruptly that they'd be a drag on a fragile economy but a crowd of us aren't so sure that a question. just how wise it is to cut trillions in spending during a bad economy is to the c.e.o.

of the global investment firm pimco. echoed these concerns about the debt limit deal saying the potential budget agreement does nothing to restore our soul to corporate confidence so unemployment will be higher than it would have been otherwise growth will be lower than it would be otherwise and inequality will be worse than it would be otherwise it was very weak economy so withdrawing more spending at this stage will make it even weaker and quote many have been saying all along the republicans are trying to crash the economy to be president obama in two thousand and twelve it appears this debt limit deal could do just that for more on the economic effects of this deal i'm joined by professor susan feinberg economist and socio professor at rutgers business school professor feinberg welcome thanks for having me thanks thanks for joining us as an economist what's your take on this . well i think it's hard to view this is purely economic because as your previous guest mentioned there's a lot of politics in this is well you know our ability to keep spending money is contingent on our ability to borrow and i would suggest that with as high of debt

as we actually have it's contingent on our ability to borrow it very favorable interest rates and so even if there were a loss of confidence or a downgrade for the u.s. if interest rates went up i could have the same effect as doing nothing because it is soon as we start to pay a higher percent of the revenues that we have coming in in interest payments that love the same contractionary effects are not the same but will also potentially have a terrible contractionary effect so given the fix that we're in as far as how much debt that we have we don't have a lot of options and that's part of the problem for the whole the whole issue of our of our debt rating raises the issue of ratings agencies if the ratings agencies i mean there's one suggestion actually jane hamsher the suggestion in a column that they're just playing chicken with the gun. try and keep the prosecutors away but you know looking at it a larger sense if if i'm

a debt rating agency and i'm saying ok we don't trust the u.s. you know the u.s. government that means that they don't trust the dollar which means that they would have to be downgrading all dollar denominated securities and there's a zillions of them out there besides just the treasuries and they're not talking about that so they've got to be talking about the size of their mouth if i understand this right but that was a complex issue that you raised but if you for example look at the exchange rate of the dollar against both the euro and again. it. common sense would suggest that given the problems in the euro zone the dollar should be doing better against the euro than it actually is but i do think that the dollar's weakness. has been. that the dollar has been very weak against your own certainly very weak against the again over the course of the past number of months as you know it was silverado you know no one knows exactly what makes exchange rates move but i think if you look at

it there are a lot of real issues out there in the economy the fact that the fed has printed up a lot of money that there's a lot of money out there that may not use q e three most people are point ahead and so you know while it's not immediately a concern certainly at some point inflation will pick back up again demand will probably have to pay down the cross service and that that gets very and that's right and so you know i think it's jonathan shier of the new republic was talking about the fact that there are no good options there really are just there you know and this is not most of this is not of president obama's making you know. you look at what makes up the debt virtually none of it's of his making in fact arguably he minimize the damage of the but in any case herbert hoover's treasury secretary the multimillionaire and so famously sold hoover in the face of the great depression

liquidate labor liquidate stocks liquidate the farmers liquidate real estate purge the rottenness out of the system high cost of living and high living will come down enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from was the people you know if bush is followed that advice relative to banks we might not have too big to fail banks might that have been a good thing or was that just absolutely insane advice because it does seem to have brought us or worsen the great depression. all except that hoover didn't fully follow you to fifty if you know one of the things that we do know about the economy snow a lot less than you see. they know about how to solve problems exactly. is that recessions that are accompanied by. banking problems throughout our economic history been much more severe than just your sort of word marry demand or inflation or other kind of perception and are much much harder to get out of and so that's kind of the fix that we find ourselves in now there's a grain of truth and there's certainly

a grain of truth to what. you know what herbert hoover says in the sense that. it's through the price mechanism because this is well. that we often get ourselves out of recessions and usually because interest rates get low this is what's obscuring now interest rates are lower and weary and boy you know class of call macroeconomists would have called the liquidity trap where interest rates are so low they can't get below zero and that tool is really gone but you know we are at this point depends upon borrowing large sums of money at very low interest rates and that really ties our hands as far as you know our ability to continue borrowing i think it's nice that we are in borrowing it's a from what in just twenty thirty seconds or what should we be doing. well you know call crude man talks about raising more about about actually having more stimulus

into your holds in other words you heard it works in an ideal world if we were or weren't already the size of our total income in the economy that might be something we can chew but i don't think that it is and not with the debt crisis in the resume you know i think i think president obama needs to be strong on the bush tax cuts and i think that he needs to be so the extension of the bush tax cuts and i'm a little bit more optimistic about the commission than maybe some people or because social sign. just know it's easier to reach agreement in small groups than it is in large diverse groups so assuming the people of reasonably good minds are sitting around a small table i retain a smidge of optimism that they might be able to come up with the right one so as the user would like service or thank you.

it's time for ideally pull your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question once this deal goes through will president obama be a viewed as a weaker president your choices are yes because giving into hostage taking doesn't work well the tea party party caucus hold hostage next unemployment or no he'll be seen as the adult the room and this deal will help him get relighted going to. know what you think the polls will be open until twelve more. coming up prior to last night's deal the debt limit has been raised one hundred times without a media frenzy so why is increasing unemployment. being ignored by the media while they turn their attention from that crisis to the so-called debt crisis. twenty four seven live streaming news tells 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 be. a political. person more aren't just. the debt limit fiasco during a conclusion no one has to wonder just where it came from to begin with the debt

limit has been raised over one hundred times before now and more often than not it was raised by a non-controversial one sentence piece of legislation just to raise the old limit and wrote a new but that's not how things worked out this time instead we were all told there was a debt crisis and for the last month or so the real crisis facing america was our lack of jobs and that took a backseat to this manufactured crisis of the debt limit a gallup poll taken a few weeks ago showed that a majority of americans with. eight percent of create the jobs and the economy should be issue number one there is only sixteen percent of americans thought the debt was issue number one and the media thought differently last week cable news outlets mention the words unemployed and unemployment five hundred two times but they mention the word debt seven thousand five hundred eighty three times i guess it's pretty easy to believe there's a crisis when that's all the evening news is covering and creating the crisis isn't the only role the media played in this debt limit debate they also created the

solutions from our what i'm talking about i'm joined by jeff cohen founder of the media watchdog group fair and now director of the park center for independent media as well as a professor of journalism a difficult college jeff jeff welcome good to be with you thank you jeff first i'd like to get your take on jane hampshire's. theory that the president could have easily gotten a clean debt ceiling raise at any point in time that mitch mcconnell was willing to go along with that and that he didn't do so because he himself wanted all these cuts i think a strong argument could be made that chain hampshire is right that the president could have they could have had a clean vote the tea party might have been the only one saying ok don't raise that they could us in default but that's not something that obama was for and i think obama came into the white house this is not something recorded in mainstream media

he came into the white house with a lot of wall street democrats as his advisors and they want to tighten down on social security and medicare the public doesn't put obama's advisors through. it's interesting why did the corporate media go along with the g.o.p.'s narrative or perhaps the g.o.p.'s narrative and obama's the debt ceiling had anything to do with the budget deficits why were they. touched the notion of why wouldn't they touch the notion of this is a hostage taking. well again here what you have to understand about mainstream reporters is that they're not in the business like you are of offering the big picture you know they don't step back and look down on the field and give the big facts what they do is they position themselves they position themselves equal distance between the elites of the two major parties and if the elites of the two

major parties are yelling about the debt crisis and ignoring unemployment in the mainstream reporters the elite parties and you know i wrote a column this week talking about how you know if you were reporting on this from the sky box you know at the top of a stadium and you're looking down i'm a big picture you'd say look both parties collaborated in giving us these wars that have racked up trillions of dollars in the bank bailouts they gave tax cuts to the wealthy first bush and then obama extended them they both cuddled wall street and said that the recession which is surging deficits if you were offering the big picture from the sky box of the stadium you would be saying hey this this debate is the big issues and it's over here the way to get the five yard line but mainstream reporters they're not offering the big picture what they are is there

down on the field in between the two major parties and if the two major parties are yelling at each other like they've been the last couple weeks and they're throwing invective in anger at each other then of course they're not thinking about the big issues jobs the wars but the big bailouts a tax breaks for the rich that's all it's able to be in the middle of the field because they're having a fight over here on the right the right wing of the field and then the reporters get in there with them and you hear headlines like extremists of both sides obama and the republicans intransigence. and you get this misleading coverage that's based on reporters believing that they'll be accused of bias if they don't place themselves in between the two parties without acknowledging that both parties are debating over here on the right wing a longer corporate defined that gender we're. two questions out of that hasn't always been that way and how do we fix that. it's often been that way i

mean think about the vietnam war from you know it was a democratic war the republicans were encouraging it and since there was no elite group opposing the vietnam war you didn't get any real questioning in mainstream media till one nine hundred sixty seven or sixty eight so there's a it's always been a problem but they put themselves equal distance between the two parties when sometimes the two parties are in a right agenda or a corporate agenda the way to fix it is support of course this argument democracy now truthout common dreams you know we have a big independent media now and the independent media gives you the big picture it doesn't just focus on the minutia of what it baner say about harry reid today and what the american public really needs is the big picture because you know most of the public want social security medicare off limits they're not in that the baby

was the public as you pointed out once jobs address that wasn't happening in the last month most of the public runs these wars and it better racked up trillions of dollars in debt so instead you know what you need to get the big picture is to consult independent media because the mainstream reporters just position they don't give you the big facts they position themselves between the two parties so they can say hey i'm not biased in either direction i'm right between the two parties that's not exactly journalism but it's what passes for it today yeah welcome to the world of infotainment jeff thanks so much thank you to the new york times op ed column op ed columnist the nobel prize winning economist paul krugman wrote yesterday republicans will surely be emboldened by the way mr obama keeps folding in the face of their threats he surrendered last december extending all the bush tax cuts he surrendered in the spring when they threaten to shut down the government and he is now surrounded on

a grand scale to extent raw. over the debt ceiling now assuming that there was actually a debate between the president and the republicans about all these cuts and we just had two guests pushing back on that but assuming that that's the case paul krugman is right and president obama is about to lower a very tough loss or maybe not but here's the narrative that the president is pushing the narrative that the president has been promoting throughout his presidency basically is that compromise is what makes trance transformational presidents that his hero was abraham lincoln or ronald reagan that they were truly transformational presidents and that bill clinton doesn't and therefore he needed to compromise so is the notion that the great presidents of history were compromisers in fact he said this is a quote from president obama this nation was founded in compromise i don't frankly recall george washington compromising with king george the third in fact he thought a war that's that's about as far from compromise as you can get i don't recall

james madison compromising with the brits and the canadians when they came to washington d.c. to this town to burn the white house and james madison the only president of the united states first of all the father of the constitution but also the only person the united states to leave the white house to lead troops into battle. i mean think about that for a minute is that a compromise in the war of eighteen twelve i don't think so i don't recall you know abraham lincoln compromising with jefferson davis or robert e. lee it's a few years but he kept their butts right across the country wasn't a compromise i don't recall f.d.r. compromising with adolph hitler or dwight eisenhower for that matter alternately became president he was he was f.d.r.'s prime general in world war two neither did churchill churchill that was the guy who compromised was neville chamberlain remember he came you probably don't i go most people aren't old enough to remember

but the story we all know it never chamberlain came back with me with that words of oh we can have peace in our time we've worked out a compromise you know. it wasn't it was churchill who said no i'm not going to compromise i don't recall l.b.j. compromising over medicare i don't recall reagan compromising about his tax cuts or is spending binge now it's a fact top tax rate from seventy four percent down to twenty eight percent and just said the democrats say if you don't like it tough obama needs to read some different biographies apparently kearns goodwin books was too heavy on compromise i suggest that he should start with frances perkins the woman behind the new deal this is the cover of the book it's a brilliant story of america's first female labor secretary who actually was the woman who authored much of the new deal and never compromised she pushed this thing through she and eleanor roosevelt franklin roosevelt made it happen and made it work president obama read the woman behind the new deal.