in. ireland. the eyes of seventy four in the maze are twenty six the motion to concur in the house of memory since the bill three sixty five is agreed to all right so there you have it but the question still remains with all the politicking to get to this point is the way the system is this the way the system is actually supposed to work or is it broken and as tea partiers gain ground are progressives now working to play catch up and if so what would it mean for the presidency. shouldn't take the risk of default. the risk of economic catastrophe to get folks in this town to

work together and do their jobs but it did so who are the winners and losers of the budget negotiations and doesn't even matter as the bark just keeps getting passed around. and tens of thousands of protesters will ram is really streets of protest for social change so why isn't anyone in the mainstream media. it's tuesday august second i'm christine for zero in washington d.c. you're watching our t.v. . well let's start out the way we've been starting the most days lately with a look at the very latest in the battle over the debt ceiling budget battle over the debt ceiling and the default and all the strings attached to this debate and this deal that have dominated our national discussion for the last several weeks

within the bill a plan to cut budget deficits by two point one trillion dollars and the next ten years yesterday we saw that deal passed the house with two hundred sixty one voting for it one hundred sixty one voting against today the senate also passed the bill seventy four to twenty six and shortly after president obama signed it but not before he said that. voters may have chosen divided government but they sure didn't vote for dysfunctional vets so does the government in this case solve the problem or did it simply create new ones joining me for more on this is the columnist and former reagan administration official public record roberts and their doctor robert a lot of people you know have been talking about this debate and they say this is just washington politics as usual people even say we you know we saw this with president reagan and we're just seeing more of the same today from your perspective i mean you worked under president reagan in treasury is this pretty common for the

way this all went down. well no just a normal a a debt ceiling increase is a routine thing if you. members of congress get up and complain about the debt with piling on grandchildren but they just turn around and vote the increase so it's not unusual for them to make such an issue and to go right down to the wire are threatening default when the central banks of the entire world hold their reserves and treasury bonds and the congress is threatening to default so this is highly unusual and so level of the responsibility that's not there i was time so do you think that it was positive that some of these conversations started to come out onto the national front in terms of how much we're actually spending how much how deeply we are actually in debt. or do you think it was you know a lot of people are calling this political theater whether just. well i said it was political theater i see it is an assault of the social safety net.

by the republicans who believe that. social safety net is the source of the moral degeneration as well as economic degeneration and they want to get it under control. but on the whole i don't think the united states any good to. go right down to the why are threatening default when the dollar is the reserve currency and. central bank reserves are in balance is just not a sensible thing to do it's my wondering you know a lot of people are keeping their eyes really closely on wall street during this whole process the last few weeks of the back and forth and the threats and wall street didn't seem to react very dramatically have seen kind of like investors knew all along that everything was going to be fine do you think what do you think about

this i don't think wall street starting with the felt i think wall street would like to have a chance to dramatize medicare and social security because it would give them a view to income scheme i think they're grown out of schemes now. and so they may or they may have supported the republican push but i don't think. any that's what. it's really interesting just sort of watching how this is all played out especially in the last twenty four hours nobody is really throwing a party today other than maybe the fact that this is over nobody's celebrating you know the gains that their party got in this deal everyone seems to at least out front. you know angry or playing down how this all happened and wondering what you think in terms of the system was this the system function properly here. well

no i don't think anything has been achieved because christine look the u.s. economy is not recovered it's continuing to weaken i'm convinced we're going to decline further and as soon as the economy declines they have to make huge deficit projections and the next five years that was jackson's most likely will show that the deficit has grown by more than this spending cuts even if they aren't acted which we don't know and. we've reduced so that we will see on the whole the deficit is going to grow regardless of the. spending cuts simply because the economy is continuing to weaken well do you think i thought do you think there were any clear winners or losers in this. well i think

in some sense. everyone lost the democrats lost because they did not and the social safety net very strongly and i think republicans lost because they made an issue out of a nonissue. you know when the whole world is concerned the dollar is not to be threatening. it when the dollar is already dropping or an exchange markets i mean. it's it's certainly worth anything in terms of swiss francs. and gold prices rising is not the time to make an issue like the republicans maybe one can understand they want to just get there. but they're not going to be able to get the debt under control as long as the economy continues to be all sure and as long as they continue to want to fund these wars by carrying social spending there's not enough social spend to fund the wars now very very interesting perspective i think

a lot of people here especially today will agree with that statement columnist and former reagan administration official paul craig roberts. well you could say everyone and no one is happy about this and we move forward with a bill that is largely considered nothing short of what so were there winners and losers in this fight and if so who are going to help answer that question i spoke to see the president of less government and dr caroline hellbent professor of politics at occidental college i asked them first what they would have done if they were in charge of crafting this bill to come out of the hole cut up front because that's only thing they can control this congress with the only thing they can control i would also tied a debt ceiling to a balanced budget and then we have a two thirds super majority to raise taxes all right caroline your current. well if we hadn't seen dysfunctional government this time around we'd certainly see it if we had a super majority for a budget but what i would do is get rid of our structural deficit problem by

a same week that the federal government can negotiate with prescription drug companies over drug prices which jacked up our structural deficit problem and president bush passat a few years ago b. i would get out of the wars in iraq and afghanistan and see i would restore tax rates on the wealthiest americans which would contribute three trillion dollars over the next ten years all of which would address this issue which is nothing three trillion dollars over ten years is three hundred billion a year that is one component of three if you dress all of our structural deficit also is one of them is it not have we done that ten years ago we got the ball that's not true because the economy would have grown and i would have been lost money from a smaller part of the economy didn't grow it was the slowest and growth rate in seventy years under george w. bush that he only did. that's a totally fraudulent number one bush ran for reelection in two thousand and four the aggregate unemployment rate for the year of two thousand and four was four point five percent i think we'd love to get back there at this point the problem is

you guys worry about obsolete by that you're talking about something different i'm talking about the growth of the economy yes no is what you get you again you're taking you're playing with the numbers for seven and a half years as economy was very good it crashed in pm because of freddie and fannie mae and freddie mac. and government regulation of the housing industry if you take now very fast because wall street started acting like a casino yes you could be related. clinton they were forced to get a gun and were going to decline and close finish starting with they were forced to go before the c.r.a. i guess i can finish the they were for selling i've you're going to bring up a lie because you are you can't remember sorry guys are you guys the community reinvestment act forced these banks or sense of of. as they were in some ways the economy with all these flowers at gunpoint bad mortgages packaged up in other mortgage with other mortgages. they were poison pills all throughout the world so that when the housing market went down the government forced mortgages destroyed

the global economy i know there's a lot of people that would disagree with that scene and it was not enough regulation really really forces that are forced to make this work i think that those are a ghost team because they're all interesting point let's move on i want to talk about you guys are bringing up former presidential bring up lawmakers what about the american people i mean if you look even at the latest washington post pew research poll and the way people looked at the negotiations over the past few weeks these are the words that they're using they're using words like stupid ridiculous discuss things pathetic and it looks like nationwide seventy two percent describe them in negative terms with just two percent using positive terms and eleven percent being neutral on this caroline what does this say about the system here i think that there's if there's anything that you two agree on it's that this process was a little ugly these lawmakers were elected to represent the people and it doesn't appear that's what's going on. well i would argue that on many counts certainly the

system is dysfunctional this is the first time where we were able to politically cause our manufacture a crisis with the debt ceiling since one nine hundred seventeen this is the first time that it has been aligned with a debt deal there's no magic debt ratio to g.d.p. ratio we have seen it this high post world war two so all of this you know the crisis that we're supposedly dealing with it is a manufactured one and unfortunately it's one that may now have an effect on our rating not because of the debt but because of the wrangling in washington what it means for a broken system of government that's totally fraudulent analysis the reason that your credit rating is going to go down is because they said we needed four trillion dollars of cuts over ten years we did we barely got one it's not about the debt ceiling it's not about the wrangling in washington it's about spending more money than we take in we're not spending we're not we're spending way too much money we're not cutting enough and that's where we're going to lose our credit rating i

think you know this is an interesting point because you know you feel we look across the ocean we look to you know great britain where this conversation has also been had about austerity measures and what to implement it seems like when we bring that conversation up here in the u.s. and that sometimes it's a little too nasty or a little too non politically correct for people to talk about actual cuts at least until they're forced carolyn what do you think about that. well i would he was saying that we do have a structural deficit problem however the big difference between great britain the united states is great britain cannot coin the euro and have it have almost no effect they we have that ability to do that that's why putin got so angry at us because we are the big economic goalie but we don't actually use that because when we talk about the u.s. government being like a household we don't have to balance our budget in the same way and it is dishonest to say that we do and it's generally done in the service of trying to get wealthy people tax cuts which is precisely what we just saw i can't believe you're still sticking to the the rootless notion that we don't have to balance our budget that

is just absurd of course we have to grow we haven't for that for many years where it's why we're in the situation we're in i want to see what is in our way and what's if you wait for two not israel and what situation we're fourteen are going to factor in situation we're fourteen trillion dollars and get on a fourteen trillion dollar g.d.p. that's terrible but no steak i use that terrible tell me the magic number seeing please some a con every every dollar. because every dollar the government borrows is from the same pool of money that entrepreneurs would otherwise borrow from it which would create jobs create wealth and actually grow the economy being there's so many instances of some of these big companies getting tax breaks and some of the mid-size companies getting tax breaks now with under the notion that they're going to create jobs and they don't but now there's the other side of the coin is the regulatory and also broccoli bombers dropping all over the economy grabbing control of the internet with net neutrality regulating. applying cap and trade as if it

were passed even though it wasn't via the e.p.a. applying hard chekhovian or of even though it hasn't been passed a lot of these situations these are regulatory assaults on the private sector that cause people to be uncertain and not hire people but i think the last two years that are here are what's happening since i was a little last year i haven't had the regulation when it's when things become deregulate. did that's when you know that is the reason the things i'm not likely to do it was regulation that caused the crisis in the first place i mean really you say you are going to do it was allowing the law including close lending institutions thanking institutions was a surprise for all of me as i had every major economies with the largest underclass i was forced foreseen by a bad loans on scenes that they didn't want to otherwise made it's an option that is that so much as a leader is already i don't know we're going to agree to six a year this is not things like nobody's mind is going to get changed or you're not i want to or if i can i just add something yes i let him go i can i had something

to terrify church sixty one percent of subprime loan holders qualified for prime loans which went means that there was mass fraud in that market which was one of the primary drivers blaming it on the c.r.a. is a red herring since twelve or so qualified the other forty didn't and that's what destroyed the economy all right that was the only president of less government and in our state in our studio and also dr caroline helpmann in los angeles she is a professor of politics right off the college. all right so we talked about the game about how it's been played and about what people think i think it's also important to talk about how this changes the game and what we can expect to see ahead especially in terms of how this plays out for both president obama and for his supporters in order to decide to discuss the plight of the progressive i spoke earlier to our to their own tom hartman host of the big picture i asked him if the disappointment stemming from the debt deal was the last straw for progressive and if so if they're done if the president has to take. this is just it's

a defeat it's it's a short term defeat i think that what happened frankly was that barack obama tried to do a bill clinton he tried to triangulate he thought that he would cut a deal in fact i think he thought he already had a deal he was asked back in december but i recall a reporter for the national journal a conservative publication what are you going to do why didn't you know when you got the debt ceiling or when you got the extension of bush tax cuts why did you get any put that in the debt ceiling and the guy said this is going to give the republicans leverage president obama's answer was how do you give them leverage i mean if you did so in the start treaty and the repeal of don't ask don't tell i remember with the extension of this best buy stock cut but it could an interesting opportunity you've got people are calling in theory is that was there a commonality in terms of the things that seemed to really bother people the most well it did he try to triangulate and it blew up in his face because he did miss misunderestimated the tea party or because he's getting on the job training or is

he a stalking horse conservative i don't frankly believe that but there are people who are starting to think that or was he just blindsided you know somehow and and i think frankly that he thought he had a deal with john boehner i think john boehner thought he had a deal with john boehner that included raising revenue and they were both going to get gregg at the end of the day at that that they succeeded and eric cantor blew it up that very very interesting answer africana rushing to be very pleased to hear that right now. you know in his speech today the president is on with doing anything but celebrating but he did sort of seem to want to make sure that his base knew that he was still fighting for them i want to play a little bit about what he said and i will talk about it. and since you can't close the deficit with just spending cuts we'll need a balanced approach where everything is on the tape yes that means making some adjustments to protect health care programs like medicare so they're there for future generations. it also means reforming our tax code so that the wealthiest

americans and biggest corporations pay their fair share. and it means getting rid of taxpayer subsidies to oil and gas companies and tax loopholes that help billionaires pay a lower tax rate. teachers and nurses all right so it sounds a little that like we're seeing candidate obama reemerge and making sure that you know his base is supporters know that he's still on their spine he's in full blown campaign mode right now and that's why i think that this was a failed effort a triangular ation and which would have been a good campaign move for him but you know we'll see where it goes so it's i don't even know if you answered before about do you progressive the band and president obama at this point or i don't think so i think there's going to a rough time just just like after health care just like after the extension of the bush tax cuts there have been a number of times where you know people have to get used to the fact that politics is messy and the compromises involved and nobody on either side everyone's compromise and let's talk about the tea party i mean despite the many members of

the tea party not voting in favor of this bill it was largely their rhetoric which is you know less government spending less government involvement no revenue no tax increases and actually not the tea party rhetoric they're not at all i mean less government all the tea party right and i mean that was what they used during the health care crisis get the government out of my doctor's office that's that's the koch brothers rhetoric that's dick armey is right well that is what fungible partly responsible for the founding of the tea party and you're certainly federating it but last week in st louis there was supposed to be a big meeting of the tea party three people showed up in the party is as a populist movement is dying is not dead the average person ever see party or was in their fifty's or sixty's and white and middle class they're the people who want social security who are freaked out that they're going to lose medicare so that's very much not the tea party rhetoric that's dick army's rhetoric in the koch brothers rhetoric and that's what's being put and to an extent eric cantor is about a lot of power in this is you know just mentioned their message that these people are scrambling laded gulleys their message that leading up to the two thousand and

ten election that's friends late into action here in washington i'm wondering what you think if the. aggressive they're looking at this and they're saying you know people even last of the average moderate liberal saying you know what maybe we should learn from this maybe we should mobilize and make sure the twenty twelve the house looks a little different in terms of the elections is there anything like that happening a mobilization it's happening hugely and there have been huge demonstrations all over the country that haven't been covered so much by the mainstream media you've covered some of them but by and large they haven't seen van jones has you when he rolled out the rebuild the dream dot com the first nationwide means more than twice as many people show up for more than twice as many meetings as the cheaper it at its peak and so it's like you know it's happening and people move out or all these other organizations they are mobilizing and that was argued down tom hartman host of the big picture. well you may be surprised to hear that in israel right now the biggest anti-government protests in decades are taking place police estimate as many as one hundred twenty thousand people have turned out in the streets speaking

again and speaking out against it syria reading living standards thousand also gather outside the home of minister benjamin netanyahu to make sure they were heard and there is massive unrest right now across the entire country that you may know nothing about it because this is the story that very few are talking about are these policy or however it is talking about it and brings us more with this report . tens of thousands on the streets of israel angry. and protesting for change but is anyone listening when it comes to a lot of the foreign media want to see more of an action movie and this has been very. very haven't been violent and also very positive. well into week three the largest demonstration in israel in over a decade and how did a.b.c. c.b.s. and n.b.c. cover that they didn't a young woman set up

a tent while the editors of france twenty four b.b.c. and sky coughed up just a few meager seconds perhaps not even that interesting. back you know back in the studios ok there's a protest well what exactly is a protest a social protest for the river. it's not the same kind of story the pollution is not as big and dramatic as some of the bigger revolutions happening around the middle east and i'm here because russia isn't surprised by the worldwide lack of media interest he's worked in the israeli press for decades reporting from media both foreign and local there is a box that the international media has put israel in and that is the israeli palestinian conflict also israeli lebanese and syrian conflict and anything that doesn't kind of fit into that. immediate type of of news item which is unfortunate that just makes hundred reyes and others angry for nine days she's been

camping here furious that she can't make ends meet as a university student it makes me upset that when egypt decided to stand up and say we've had enough and. eleven and they decided to say we've had enough the media was all over there i haven't seen anyone from c.n.n. or fox news or any other big news channel here and it's really sad we also deserve a chance to be heard out on the streets has been. so i feel cornered by some of the people here an optimism perhaps that they can bring down the government in the way the neighbors in time his square. but where is the time as they will stop here they push you absent. television. so why is this story being so largely ignored by western media or perhaps here in the us we've had our own suffering a commie to talk about but the implications of what is going on in israel could be dire and it's really important for people to understand why what happened there

matters here and around the world now we pace is the director of communications for the new israel time and is here in studio to talk about this we saw the journalist in the report we just saw talk about the fact that the only time it's a story for largely for western media is when there's a conflict between israel and palestine israel and lebanon do you agree with that i think unfortunately there is a bias in this country to think of israel as the locus of conflict and what's interesting are the endless permutations of the peace process and what is the american government doing and what are the palestinians saying unfortunately there is a huge story in israel this social protest is huge we're very excited by it we think it really shows a change within the body politic in israel in a very desirable way desirable so there's i have there's a hundred thousand people on the streets this is a good thing yes it is a good thing look these are people who care about the quality of life it is

a middle class protest but it is also a protest that crosses political lines it crosses ethnic lines across the sector lines some people say yes we know that the left is involved in this protest but we supported anyway because we care about our future we care about education we care about housing and this is in the face of a government that has been sort of playing no no don't look at this look at that man but don't look at the man behind the curtain. because basically what they've been dealing out is fear and they've been dealing out paranoia and they've been dealing out the idea that well the only enemies that israel really has to fear are the human rights groups so let's put them out of business or the people who really are marching for democracy they're dangerous to israel where the people who say let's boycott settlement goods let's pass a law against them so who then within the country are our sort of the people that are also maybe the enemies but not for so front and center. who's causing the

strife this growing gap between the rich and the poor in israel i know that last week so many people were protesting housing conditions and housing prices who is to blame for all of us well there it goes back a long way first you should know israel has the largest income gap between rich and poor of any developed country except for the united states except for us this is an area in which imitating america is not such a great idea so there is a lot of reasons why it's happened there is a sort of imported extreme free market ideology which is popular and embraced by the netanyahu government you have also billions and billions of dollars being spent on settlements and the security to it's necessary to keep those settlements protected that's money that could be spent to repair the social safety net which is very very frayed inside israel. when you're spending your money on defense when you're spending your money on settlements and when you're not taking any steps

towards peace you're going to get you know a restive population even people who may agree with the netanyahu government on some aspects of the peace issue i have are just fed up with what's going on domestically well really really really interesting stuff and i think you're right it's very very under reported all all of those could be you know headlines as far as israel let's talk about the implications though and you know whether it's as it relates to the peace process or as it relates on a global scale why do these economic conditions in israel matter to the rest of the world why should they well they matter because it's certainly going to affect the stability of the current government the governing coalition is made up of people who have some extreme ideologies in common but in other ways they're very different you have people in this government representing poor music rocky jews jews whose grandparents come from the arab countries you see people in the government representing the. in the extreme ultra orthodox and some represent the national

religious and some the lawyers not all of those economic issues coincide it may be that this huge social protest bringing people out into the streets in this number is finally going to communicate to this government that we can't just manage the crisis the status quo as it is isn't going to work so perhaps we will see some movement not just in what israelis are getting from their government but in how israel behaves towards its neighbors towards its minorities and towards the palestinians in many ways the u.s. government is very close with the government of israel does that relationship in fact at all what's going on i don't know if there is any american input into social protests over the price of cottage cheese or the price of housing that is definitely perceived i would imagine as an internal matter but look democracy and peace for israel are inextricable you have to be a democracy to make peace and you have to.