oh i'm sorry washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture so much for bipartisanship republicans got exactly what they wanted in the debt deal spring mainstreet of benefiting wall street so which government program is first on the chopping block this trillion dollars spending and america did vote for change and i'm pretty sure sky high unemployment is not what they've argued for president obama has basically caved in to the very early who wants him out or his chances for punch in the two

thousand and twelve presidential see better now or worse. you need to know this looks like our nation will avoid default now that an eleventh hour deal has been reached but this is not a victory for the american people past us presidents who always take a tough stand against terrorists it was ronald reagan and 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 any ground. and george w. bush in two thousand and eight. some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals basis some ingenious argument were persuade them they get 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 we 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 it's not as if he wasn't warned of the day that they were planning to play hostage taker take a look at this q. and a in which market am binder a reporter for the right wing national journal informs the president of 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 an a one year extension of unemployment benefits and exchange for a two year extension of the bush tax cuts for billionaires. and how did these negotiations in fact you know she should search option publicans about raising the debt limit is it seems. that they have a significant amount of leverage over the white house now going in was there ever any attempt by the white house to include the raising the debt limit is part of this when you say it would seem to have a significant amount of leverage with what does worry me the sense that you know they'll say essentially we're not raise the them enough and agree to it unless the white house is. even more appealing to the pretty significant spending cuts across

the board that probably go deeper for them what it really is well let me but like you have more go to yours my expectation. and i'll tell you john boehner in his worth. batt nobody democrat or republican. is willing to see the full faith and credit of the united states government. collapse amazing nine months ago his first response was what do you mean leverage then no that'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 and 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. well i tend to say i take issue with that whole idea that

the tea party had to turn me out and i guess 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 and i believe there's about four hundred thirty five members of congress and seventy who are in the in who are tea party identified so that leaves you know i have to take my shoes i have to count a whole lot of democrats republicans who couldn't pass a clean debt ceiling let alone an extremely extension and they did the president did not want that he rejected that so he put himself in the hostage taking position every day 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 on 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 it that he offered the president clean debt ceiling bill. and whereas we saw when mitch mcconnell gets behind something it happened that was what we were waiting for was for mitch mcconnell to get behind it and when he did die it's what happened i mean the president rejected it out of hand so i don't think we ever got to cast that so the president did not matter personally did not want that and he that's why he said i don't want it 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 son of god 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 next one 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 no the country hostage is this is the whole story here i mean the people who wound up passing this bill were not actually a party they voted against it your face 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 right the second it seems to be a pretty effective strategy whether it's just republicans or republicans and a 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 hostages taken 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 they're going to hostages taken their mark and their discretion was

absolutely right and there were people on the progressive side like me and i believe you at the time and said why doesn't the president include 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 negotiate with somebody when you have a strong hand and last time you had a strong hands last year you know well that's certainly the case now of 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 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 get a gang of twelve is going to work out these super congress things work which is that they. take the they basically tied the hands of congress ties its own hands and

gives its power over to a small body and insulate 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 its 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 they pick out a commission didn't have the extra parliamentary powers that this commission has so we know they've wanted this ever since they got into optus the white house has and now they've got it and they are tasked with writing so security in medicare that is what they are supposedly going to change is twenty seconds to go here how badly has he burned his base will recover from i mean i don't think that it's just his base i think eighty two percent of the country does not want to see such security and medicare benefits cut and that is what we're looking at we are manifestly looking

at god is what will come out of this cat food commission and if it doesn't there are going to be counties that neither party is going to want to pay so they are absolutely going to go come in track and psychotic this is and i don't think that's just its base that's going to care and this is why where politics again thanks so much thank you so now that we can avoid default economic doomsday at least for now what will this debt limit deal mean for a limping economy 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 since white eisenhower was president but at a level that still loves us to make job creating investments in things like education and research we also made sure that these cuts wouldn't happen so abruptly but they'd be a drag on the fragile economy but economists 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 mohamed arianne echoed these concerns about the debt limit deal saying a potential budget agreement does nothing to restore a household in 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 of what many have been saying all along 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 an associate professor at rutgers business school because fiber welcome thanks for having you 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 this 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 that could have the same effect as doing nothing because it is as soon as we start to pay a higher percent of the revenues that we have coming in in interest payments that will have 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 step 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 debt rating raises the issue of ratings agencies if the ratings agencies i mean there's one suggestion actually dream hampshire being the suggestion in a column that they're just playing chicken with the gun. and to try and keep the prosecutors away but you know looking at it

a larger sense if the palm of their 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 size their market i understand is right but it's a complex issue that you raise but if you for example look at the exchange rate of the dollar against both the euro and began. it. common sense would suggest think 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 yen over the course of the past number of months as you know so it was a single drop 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 that's better than most people are going to have so you know while it's not immediately a concern certainly it's some point inflation will go back up again demand will probably have to pay money for servicing that that gets very i don't suppose is right and so you know i think it's trying to think china is the new republic was talking about the fact that there are no good options there really are just there are hints you know and this is not most of this is not of president obama's making you know. look at what makes up that virtually none of it's of his making in fact arguably he minimize the damage of but in any case herbert hoover's treasury secretary the multimillionaire and so famously told 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 the 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 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 worse than the great depression. since the hoover didn't fully follow you did you know one of the things that we do know about condoms know a lot less than us. they know about how to solve problems for certain exactly. is that recessions that are accompanied by. banking problems throughout our economic history have been much more severe than just your sort of ordinary demands or inflation or other kind of for sessions 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 there's 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 and keynes recognized this is. that we often get ourselves out of recessions and usually it's because interest rates get low this is what's so scary now interest rates are lower and. you know classical 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 here we are at this point depends upon borrowing large sums of money at very low interest rates and not really ties or hands as far as you know our ability to continue borrowing i think if the piece that we've been in borrowing it's often what in just twenty thirty seconds or what should we be doing. well you know how crude man talks about raising

more about about actually having more stimulus through the olds in a noisy and working in an ideal world. or weren't already the size of our total income in the economy that might be something we can do but i don't think it is and not with the debt crisis in the years and two you know i think i think president obama needs to be strong on the bush tax cuts and i think that he needs to veto the extension of the bush tax cuts and i'm a little bit more optimistic about the commission than maybe some people are 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 it's no use only lots of us are 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 v e viewed as a weaker president your choices are yes because giving in to hostage taking doesn't work well the tea party party caucus hold hostage next unemployment or no you'll be seen as the adult the room and this deal will help him get reelected they are going to. know what you think the polls will be open until to par. coming up prior to last night's deal the debt limit has been raised one hundred times without a media frenzy so by this increasing unemployment. being ignored by the media while they turn their attention from bad crisis to the so-called debt crisis. it's twenty four seven live streaming news towns like you about the ongoing financial hardship unlimited free high quality videos for download. all the.

stories you may never find one mainstream is. going to be. the political. person more aren't let's just say. the debt limit fiasco during a conclusion no one has to wonder just where it came from to begin with and that

when it 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 back seat to those manufactured crisis of the debt limit and gallup poll taken a few weeks ago showed that a majority of americans would. eight percent agreed that jobs and the economy should be issue number one whereas only sixteen percent of americans thought the debt was it from number one the media thought differently last week cable news outlets mention the words unemployed and unemployment five hundred 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 a crisis isn't the only role the media played in this debt limit debate they also

created the solutions for more on 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 at difficult college jeff jeff welcome good to be with you thank you jeff first i'd like to get your take on 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 stronger argument could be made to change 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 the debt limit could assist that salt but that's not something that was for and i think obama came into the white house this is not something reported in mainstream media

and 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 but obama's advisors to. so 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. why would they touch the notion of why wouldn't they touch the notion of this is a hostage taking it's. well again here what you have to understand about mainstream recorders is that they're not in the business like you are 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 equally distant 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 loathe the elite parties and you know i wrote a column this week talking about how you know if you were recording on this from the sky box you know at the top of a stadium and you're looking down on the big picture you'd say look he's collaborated in giving us these waters that have racked up trillions of dollars the bank bailouts big gave tax cuts to the wealthy first bush and then obama extended and they both coddled wall street i'm glad 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. is the big issues and it's over here at the right to fight the other. 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 in 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 the paint bailouts and tax breaks for the rich that's all the table that would be in the middle of the field with their having a fight over here on the way to the right wing of the feel then the reporters can get with that and you hear headlights like extremists of both sides obama and the republicans intransigent. and you get this misleading coverage that's based on reporters believing that could be accuse the pious if they don't place themselves in between the two parties without acknowledging that both parties are debating over here on the right wing or longer corporate to find the 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 to vietnam war you didn't get any real questioning in mainstream media till 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 we gonna write a gender or a corporate agenda the way to fix it is support of course this is like tom hartman 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 painter 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 if it was

the public as you pointed out once johnson address that wasn't happening in the last month most of the public wants these wars and it did have racked up trillions of dollars in debt so it's 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 it's when the two parties that's not exactly journalism but it's what passes for it today welcome to the world of in fourteen with jeff thanks so much thank you tom new york times op ed column op ed columnist and 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 and 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 surrendered on a grand scale to ixtoc 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 russ 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 trans transformational presidents that his hero was abraham lincoln or ronald reagan that they were truly transformational presidents and that bill clinton wasn'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 for

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 was that a compromise in the war of eight hundred well i don't think so i don't recall you know abraham lincoln compromising with jefferson davis or robert e. lee it took a few years but he kicked their plots right across the country was in a compromise i don't recall f.d.r. compromising with adolph hitler or dwight eisenhower for that matter belgium would became president he was he was f.d.r.'s prime general in world war two we needed churchill churchill that was the guy who compromised who was neville chamberlain remember he came probably don't i go most people aren't old enough to remember but

the story we all know it never chamberlain came back to his meeting with hitler of the 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 to attack top tax rate from seventy four percent on the 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 and 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 made it work president obama read the woman.