obligation to contribute to the well being of their communities but in these tough economic times doesn't that mean they should pay their taxes. you need to know this let's call it the tea party tax increase today house republicans led by the tea party chose not only to reject but not even vote on a tax cut that was approved by eighty nine senators of both parties in the senate approved by the white house and approved by the speaker of the house john boehner himself all be if or eric cantor poked him in the back with a metaphorical ship that means that eleven days from now one hundred sixty million working americans will see their taxes go up unless republicans have a change of heart shortly after the vote president obama made an impromptu appearance at the daily white house briefing to blast the house republicans. we

have more important things to worry about than politics right now. we have more important things to worry about been saving face. book figuring out internal caucus politics. where people were counting on us to make their lives just a little bit easier. to build an economy where hard work pays off and responsibility is rewarded and we owe it to them to come together right now and do the right thing. that's what the senate did. but try and by trying to save face for the house john boehner also called a press conference backed by the very same tea party bozos who are now in charge of his party. and next up is clear i think president obama needs to call on senate democrats. to go back into session move to go to conference and to sit down and resolve this bill is quickly as possible i told the senate leaders senator

reid and senator mcconnell. that there would be no negotiations with the house until such time as the senate passed a bill i meant what i said. and when they were getting ready to pass this wouldn't somebody pass on the me what they thought it would look like i made it clear to them at that point that i was uncomfortable with where they were going i expressed my displeasure and once again taking the convenient route and not doing the people's work i think that one year extension the boehner is talking about is nothing more than a gimmick it will freeze pay for federal workers force that are workers to contribute more the pensions means test unemployment benefits and raise medicare premiums on high income earners it was so foul that republican senate leader mitch mcconnell blocked a vote on it in the senate out of fear that republican senators would get nailed in

the elections if they'd voted for it and it was used against them in political attack ads it was dead on arrival that one year extension is talking about yet it's the one thing that house republicans are demanding the senate consider today even though senator harry reid has already said he's not calling the senate back into session. so that's where we stand right now either house republicans kick the tea party to the curb approve the senate the payroll tax cut extension or taxes go up on all working people in america for more on this i'm joined by eric berne strategic communications consultant partner bullfight strategies welcome back thank you thanks for having us on great to have you here with us what the hell is going on capitol hill i've not really sure i mean i am not sure if cancer and boehner are intent on being the grinches that stole christmas for half of america but it just seems like politics that i can't figure out the game that they're playing oh god it seems to me that that mitch mcconnell would not have got i mean this is eighty nine

votes in the senate eighty nine to ten but my coffee that mitch mcconnell wouldn't the republican leader in the senate would not have pulled together that kind of a vote in the senate if he didn't think that john boehner wanted this thing to happen and he and john boehner i mean they're the two senior republicans yes they got to be talking to each other so boehner had to have said to mcconnell sure go ahead and do it will you know we'll be able to pass it which means that when it finally got passed and it was dropped and boners lap my guess is eric cantor he turned around he says what's that poking me in the back and turned around and it was eric cantor with the shift you know well you know look i mean i've long said you know john boehner has become kind of like the speaker in name only eric cantor really runs the house of representatives on these any real question about that we this is the first time that bayer has been has been pulled back on his leash you know by by mr cantor and we know from what senator schumer said on saturday that they did have a deal that better you know came to the table the mcconnell had requested kind of

a pre-built conference with the house and senate republican leadership they had an agreement so the house because it really yes he's either he's lying and anybody doesn't realize he's line assumes he's incompetent we know exactly that and look at the big fear in the house as i understand it is you look at the you look at those numbers in the senate bill eighty nine. and it's ten i can't remember a vote that was eighty nine to ten such a bipartisan success story in this congress that's like you know have a is apple pie and mother a good thing you know yeah and i think they're real fear in this is what's really strange is that they don't want to put this bill to a full to a vote in the house because they knew that they lose that they would add that that bill to to do the two month you know extension of the payroll tax increase. you know would actually pass the house and we would actually have you know tapper wouldn't have a tax increase for one hundred sixty million americans on new year's day which is going to be the house republicans gift to america. which i just find shocking and

politically. really really reckless so this is this is the really weird thing is the tea partiers in the house are saying no we're not going to vote on this virus and i mean they literally would not hold a vote it's not that they voted against it they day said there won't even be a vote because we're afraid that if we go back to our district and say to our voters we voted to cut taxes on working people we're going to get punished and that says to me that it's not the working people that they're afraid of oh no it's the wealthy donors because if this had been a tax if we'd been talking about you know a two two month extension the bush tax cuts were going to millionaires and billionaires i mean you know they'd be lining up of course and you'd have you'd have fox news and rush limbaugh the entire republican machine beating the drum the millions they always do all the millionaires and billionaires you know protecting them and creating you're talking about trickle down economics so at this point right now the the republican caucus the republicans in the house they always in the

center divided against each other you know and some of the republicans the house of our well actually they kind of pulled together but you know. and president obama's a position you know where he's like you know the cheshire cat licking his lips here then fact he's got this little clock going you know i know i saw that i don't see how he didn't get the countdown clock on the white house website so eleven days and you know so many have so many hours will the democrats once again i blow this thing up because i hope they go you know i mean because because really you know speaker boehner is kind of a cheese that stands alone right now right and he's even gone so far as to appoint you know members to a conference committee that's not going to happen it's almost kind of like he's well and i'm sorry tanned and nancy pelosi is refusing to appoint members raises it because it's not going to happen i mean these guys have one choice and i mean they can either get it together and vote for this two month extension to prevent a tax increase on half this country or they're going to own it and i don't i think

boehner and cancer in are in a real bad corner but i think it just really really shows again and i've said this before on this program with you what this is this is what this party is about it's not about actually relieving any sort of economic pressure on the middle class in this country therefore protecting the tax cuts and the riches of the of the absolute richest people in this country and therefore defeating obama and defeating the democratic congress and that's it yeah and it's not about leadership and it's not about getting the people's business done no it's about it's about doing with the hope and frankly to hear barry even talk about you know cantor talk about as they have been for the last two days you know congress needs to do its job and we can't be doing tax policy on the fly i mean are they kidding have they not seen their own actions over the last year are they not remember the debt ceiling crisis that they put this entire country through for months i mean this is how these guys play ball on its dirty bomb though the one last possibility is that they will let this go to the end of the year it'll say it'll look really really bad and then

right after the first of the year they'll could be in congress they'll pass it or some variation of a very very quickly through both the house and senate and. and say you know we didn't raise your taxes everything's fine where the heroes you think that's possible i mean it it's possible but i think the problem is is that you know the senate's not coming back until the twenty third of january and the house has put in you know this kind of poison pill that we've talked about where they are trying to force the administration to say we're down in the keystone pipeline that they've just added into this which has nothing to do with this because they're just trying to trap the white house and i think there's going to be a lot of finger pointing but there's no you know if it doesn't happen but there's no reason that the democrats should not be able to capitalize on this bill let's just hope they don't there's a come to that let's hope so that that they actually give tax expense tax going to eric thank you very much frank you appreciate i appreciate your insights and sort of house republicans could have voted to extend the payroll tax cut extension extension for one hundred sixty million americans last night but instead they had to deal with more important things what were those important things what did the

republicans actually get together and bowed out of the house of representatives they voted to hire somebody to create a bust of winston churchill that would be placed in the in the capitol which are not out of respect for churchill but out of disrespect for president obama. this goes back to the bush administration when george w. bush was in office tony blair was his good buddy and after nine eleven as a gesture of goodwill to the united states tony blair alone to george w. bush for his first term in office until two thousand and four loaned him a bust of of winston churchill that had sat in the british embassy here in washington d.c. in two thousand and four when bush was reelected tony blair said well you can keep it until the end of your term your second term and so it's very clear that you know the first week of january when george w. bush left office the bust was going to leave with it in fact the british embassy

announced to the press quote it was lunch for the first term of office of president bush and the president was elected for a second and final term alone was extended until january two thousand and nine so when the british took back their bust obama replaced it with a bust of abraham lincoln you know one of his heroes but glenn beck and a bunch are right wing radio guys went nuts on this they said that obama had first of all sent back the churchill bust as as i just point out not the case not the case at all the bus was gone before obama even walked into the white house but why did this these right where say that he had sent back the oh the churchill bust well because they said obama's step great grandfather was a mambo warrior who'd been tortured by the british empire when they controlled. this made juicy right wing conspiracy theory for g.o.p. t.v. for fox news because it emphasized the fact that obama's father was from kenya and

that he was black this is this is like you know it was like screaming in code but you know obama didn't even know his great grandfather didn't even know about this whole thing the bust was gone before he got there and and now we're in the situation where yesterday in the house of representatives instead of voting for a tax cut for all americans. all of the republicans voted to create a bust of winston churchill to put in in congress why would they do that because they live in an alternative universe they live in this fox in this whole turn of fox universe that's why they voted for the churchill bust instead of voting for a tax cut for one hundred sixty million americans but wonder the tea party dominated house of representatives has led congress to its lowest approval rating ever just eleven percent people get these people are nuts. coming up republicans using a once in a decade process to advance their own goals in next year's election even if it's at

the expense of thousands of voters. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through that sort of to be made who can you trust no one who is you in view with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

you know when the next election comes around which is probably going to be in november although there are a few just before that progressives local ones presence could be totally screwed the reason has to do something the constitution what the constitution says is that every ten years they'll be a census and as a result of that census by determining who's living where and how many people are in each state where they're living in those states the voting districts will be drawn up now these voting districts are also the congressional districts that you know who's going to represent the state and they're supposed to be based on population and demographics so that they don't you know they're not

wildly racially inappropriate or poor or economically appropriate and they do reps so that and so you know the states that members of congress in a particular state represent those roughly the same number of people in every place they change everything from congressional districts to counter supervisors when they change every ten years and basically the conservations every state legislature decides how to do it some have committees some have consultants some have smoke filled rooms. it's and you're stuck with these things for ten years and the parties typically use them to screw each other up republicans are often particularly good at this by the way and often get nailed for screwing up this redistricting for more of those laws back and joins me now she's a reporter at pro publica and a contributor to the new in journalism lois welcome to the program good to be here thanks for joining us what's john boehner up to in ohio. so what's really interesting in the ohio is that a good governance group did

a major freedom of information request and asked to see all the e-mails that were sent regarding the redistricting in ohio and what they found you know in these hundreds of e-mails is that a lot of people were involved in the redistricting that you wouldn't think for instance representatives from team boehner an organization that's involved in advancing the goals of house republicans across the nation are e-mailing back and forth with ohio's redistricting consultants asking for particular favors at the eleventh hour and chatting with each other about you know how to make a map that speaker boehner approves of now obviously this is not really speaker boehner is job to approve of ohio's redistricting map and so that there's been a big uproar especially from democrats in ohio about this but also it's just a great example of the kind of backroom political deals that go on under the cover of a fair and equal redistricting is the sort of stuff eluding. so that's a really interesting question back in one thousand nine hundred six the supreme court ruled that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional but they set such

a high bar for proof that no one's really successfully challenge that and the supreme court in years since that has tended to back away and say that like yeah maybe that the constitution is the goal of the constitution isn't to advance the the aims of political parties in redistricting but proving what makes up partisan gerrymander is so hard that the supreme court is is backing away from that a lot of this has to do with this basically the rights of the states to to do this the with a one on. one i'm assuming is that and is this just to see is the reason why i notice in the in your article in the some of the information about the e-mails that they were talking about how much money they would save in the campaigns if they could organize these campaigns this way is this to save you know having to advertise because they're creating super safe seats or is there more to it. well what happened in ohio is that one of a political consultant in the state sent

a list of the house district state house districts to their district and consultant and said hey like these are the districts in which. a lot of money was spent because these were really competitive districts that switched back and forth between republicans and democrats and the redistricting consultant said well hey guess what we've tweaked the lines in a lot of these districts this could save us millions of dollars over the next couple of years which obviously is not something you expect to hear from a registered consultant and was sort of very interesting and scandalous to come out of this but if you look at the big picture of redistricting in fact saving money is really the you know maybe it's a bonus for parties in this instance but the real goal here is control not only at the state but control of congress if you draw district lines right you can take a mixed group of voters and slice them and dice them in such a way that even if you don't have to marital control of your voters you can a range of voters who oppose you in such a way that their voices are going to be muffled and that they're not going to be able to have

a representative in the state of ohio what does the timken company have you with all those this stuff that john boehner is involved in. yes so one of the things that this dratted just from or asked for at the eleventh hour right before this redistricting plan was going to be approved was they said like what look the timken company needs to be switched from one district to another and the timken company had given two hundred ten thousand dollars to congressman jim renewed that's according to the cleveland plain dealer which is a big analysis of company executives and their pac given to this congressman over a number of years and at the last minute this tiny piece of land that has no citizens that it is switch from one district to another you know of course people say that campaign donations have nothing to do with redistricting when you see a move like that it's definitely suspicious why would. pigs get fat hogs get slaughtered we have a bottom. yeah so you might think that redistricting is about making the safest

possible districts and that just putting all of your voters in the district so that you can definitely win them but in fact too distracting is really smart partisan math you're trying to take the number of voters that you have and take the number of voters that your opponents have and carve them up in just the right way just enough margin of victory in each of the districts why this is something that both republicans and democrats do right lois thank you very much for being. appreciate it and the best of the rest of the news we know millionaires and billionaires aren't pain their fair share what about churches especially the churches that have made their ministers into multi-millionaires currently churches and religious organizations collect a slew of benefits courtesy of you and me the taxpayer they can opt out of medicare and social security withholding their exempted from pain unemployment taxes and substates they don't even pay sales tax ministers can define part of their salaries as housing allowances and not pay taxes on it and churches are exempt from paying

property taxes and income taxes which even makes mitt romney jealous according to some estimates the government loses out on over a hundred and one hundred billion dollars a year every year from churches not pain just property taxes so during time of huge deficits a massive wealth inequality shouldn't we reconsider the contributions churches are making to our society has offered take on this is too. conservative commentator author of the book the homeowners guide to surviving foreclosure taisha welcome back. hi tom thanks so much for having me thanks thanks for being with us you know i'm personally all in favor of monks or nuns who have taken about poverty being supported by all of us i think you know there's no way for them to pay their property taxes and i respect what they're doing but so many of these churches are making millions i mean literally millions you get the these huge mega churches

seventy million dollars jolles teens church makes every year and in houston texas also in utah and that's just the one percent we're just looking at the televangelists that are on television past the benny hinn jolles dean joyce meyers that's the one percent we need to look at the ninety nine percent the churches that or probably you know use in schools or you know their use in those offices that you know they don't have buildings they're meeting at people's home so the bread so they're very ironic taxes on begin with so so why should we be giving these giant mega churches property tax exemptions and income tax exemptions for that matter they're making money they're selling products or selling tapes they're selling d.v.d.'s of what are we going to do we're going to we're going to get the government even fatter i mean are we going to just keep giving the government money because they don't know how to balance the budget i mean the bible did say we're not supposed to be jealous of our neighbor as this whatever the government gives their bodies or the jewels the insurer here or the boy we need are you are you

telling me that the bible is our constitution. at what we're getting jealous we're being very materialistic we're not being spiritual i'm saying oh where are you guys who are but now we are they are a bankrupt these are just hacks of god we can do that i mean that you are sure dies for use i'm going to pollute us they're using our fire department they're using our roads they're using our educated workforce they're using all these things that we pay for with our tax dollars they're running businesses they own radio and t.v. stations and networks some of the most profitable of the country that he's taught her books they sell products and all of this is subsidized by you and me how is that fair to let the people there to cherish the people of the government as well as that the people want to have the government separate from the church that's how it's going to be so for that for us to say that look the church is benefiting from the police but the people are the ones who pay the taxes for the party and then they decide to go to church to pray to god we need spiritual it isn't here we need

to not look at the fact that today we're rich tomorrow we're poor we need to think about love peace and joy who you think is taking care of the homeless who do you think is taking care of the poor you know while your government is in a large part of it actually is our government and according to james madison third president united states his first veto was a veto in you know the george washington illustration gave money for poor houses here in washington d.c. for medical services food and shelter for poor people. the john adams administration pick that up did the same thing sort of the thomas jefferson administration for president came along james madison and congress said hey let's give this money to the churches and let the churches administer the poor house instead of madison yet vetoed that saying that it would establish a precedent of government money going to churches that could corrupt churches and this is because madison was a religious guy. he didn't want his church corrupt of them and has no power over the church did the government money is going to corrupt if they take the tax money

they start taxing the church then they're going to start on taxes our church was a subsidize who had to go to church and all of a sudden now we're going to be paying to go to church we're going to have to start giving money to go to church we do that now it's called trying. to do what now it's not going to be you know contribution is going to be mandatory because now the churches have to pay fees there are and that's going to be a problem because who has one hundred dollars per week to pay caesar top of his taxes world into isn't this isn't this is just it just just a straight up question here isn't it a clear violation of the separation of church and state for us to subsidize churches but we aren't we are not the church first of all the people the people make the government the people also make the church and there are two separate entity government cannot tax god that's just it's that's just so i'm not sharing with one i mean are the catholic church aspires fire service. but but do you know

the charge provides more benefit to the people than the government does the government is broken anyway we need to get a better government who could balance the budget we need to stop looking at what other people have and wanted as well that is just not the way to live we are just that. has this really big charge therefore we should be getting tax money this is the work that way we need to just probably figure out what is going on wrong with our government how can we get government that knows how to balance the budget how could we live within our means the church is doing what it's supposed to do it's taking care of the family there's love there's joy there is peace we can't just go ahead and tax them because. they republican us president one thousand nine hundred one so the divorce between church and state ought to be absolute it ought to be so absolute that no church property anywhere in any state or in the nation should be exempt from equal taxation for a few exempt the property of any church organization to that extent you impose

a tax upon the whole community that was a republican president nine hundred eighty one saying the churches should pay the same taxes that everybody else pays because if you exempt them then we're all subsidizing them and that's not our job. but you know what tom i would be surprised if a united states politician think they're going to even bring this up they're not going to be getting reelected i mean you can tax the church they're doing their part the government is the one as point can we tell such a church so. the government. does not know how to balance the budget so we can't just look to see if we need more money no we need to find probably more competent people to serve in politics and leave the church to do what it's supposed to do which is feed the poor you know they're supposed to be telling us about love these . televangelists making millions i mean fifty one million bars and hundred percent . just one percent so you want to just tax the one person who is wanted on

television. but you know tom god is everywhere he's with the rich he's with the poor they're just a representation of the world so we can just see all these churches had these you know maybe yachts and you know airplanes it's not it's just one percent and that's just what god is he's everywhere so we have different diverse pastors. thank you very much for being with us thank you so much tom happy holiday thank you and the same to you. somebody is getting a free ride in america and it's not the welfare of others it looks a lot more like private jet flying televangelists and billion dollar religious employers. coming out for once millions of dollars in lobbying didn't get the big corporations what they wanted and we come back find out who won the big this week inside the beltway. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to

break through it's already been made who can you trust no one who is you know view with the global machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.