well i'm tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture yeah the amount of outstanding student loan debt in america has now topped one really and dollars more than credit card debt and automobile debt for the first time ever so republicans come to the table to help struggling students there's another hostage situation in the works on capitol hill also for the first time since the depression more mexicans are leaving america than entering it but the numbers show immigration is a problem ok republican still making an issue out of the november election that and more and tonight's alone liberal rumble and this weekend austerity took down the dutch government yesterday that sent the united kingdom into another recession

where is our world had it refused to stop the failed trickle down austerity policies. indeed you know this screwed by an enormous burden of debt students around the nation are rallying today in calling for a student loan debt jubilee the total amount of outstanding student loan debt has now topped one trillion dollars in credit card debt and automobile debt for the first time ever the occupy movement is leading rallies today calling for students across the nation to come together and pledge not to repay their student loans pressuring lawmakers and banks toure's to have to eventually forgive the massive debts to make matters worse for students the interest rate for federal student loans is scheduled to double in july if congress doesn't act president obama

appeared on late night t.v. to urge congress to act quickly to provide relief for students areas slow jam in the news. on july first of this year the interest rates on stafford student loans the same loans that many of you use to help pay for college or sets adult. that means some hardworking students will be paying about a thousand dollars extra just to get their education so what does congress need to do to make sure the student loan debt crisis in america doesn't get worse and were republicans do their part to help struggling students joining me now is congressman peter welch representing the great state of vermont my former home glad to have you with this car to be here thanks for joining us the president's got it not ahead of the republicans the scenes on this issue the house today. passed did the house know the house passed the postal didn't it's the senate rather it i'll say it with this the speaker basically kate he said that they're not going to insist on doubling the

interest rates to six point eight percent but they're playing some games with other provisions in the ryan budget trying to pay for it by taking it away from the health care bill but what has happened is the result of the student pressure as a result of the incredible eruption of concern by parents who are just trying to cobble together the resources along with their kids to pay for college education is that there has been a real backlash against this doubling of interest rates from three point four to six point eight percent that's a thousand dollars a year for ten years for many of the kids that are on the student loans not to mention the interest over the term of the loan if it extends a lot of the how did the how did the three point four rate come about and why is it that it's going to double of nothing it's done what's the what's the spec story here well the back story is that it was funded for a period of time in two thousand and seven when the democrats came into congress one of our pledges the six for zero six was to try to make college more affordable

and one of the things we did is we allowed students to get direct loans and that took away the two percent. of the guaranteed rate rip off that as you called the bank stories enjoyed guaranteed money so they got two percent for doing nothing that lowered the rates for the students and then on top of that we cut that rate in half from six point eight three point four but that's got to be funded and we were prepared to continue doing it incidentally president bush signed that law and then fast forward the republicans were in control they passed the ryan budget in the ryan budget explicitly boosted those rates from three point four to six point eight they had the opportunity to deal with it in a timely way but they did have to pay for those tax cuts you know that's expensive and who better to go to to help pay for those tax cuts than students and that seems to be the logic now the the senate version of the pays for it in a somewhat different way that's right the pay for in the senate makes sense because

what they're doing is there's a bunch of people who are through loophole able to avoid paying into social security all of us who get any kind of wage or salary have to pay our contribution to social security this loophole loves them to get out of it eliminating that loophole would have covered the student at the reduction in interest rates and you know what was it's wonderful about the senate bill is you do something good lower rates by getting rid of something bad a rip off loophole that's a twofer and. later won't have anything to do with you won't have it he won't have anything to do with it you know there's another point here i mean first of all this debt issue is huge i mean seventy percent of kids in vermont graduate and have about thirty thousand dollars in debt in its own financial albatross around their neck and we've got to mitigate that as much as we possibly can but what we're seeing at work here are all the land mines that are in the ryan budget you know when they talk about a generally we've got to get our debt under control we've got to tighten our belt

these things can sound appealing to any of us because we do have to bear bills and we are a lot of us do take no belt. when you get to the specifics where basically they've got a raid they've got to put the burden on students they've got to put the burden on seniors by reducing their medicare benefits all of this is in service of achieving their tax cutting goals so as these week as the any gets on peeled the ryan budget and people see the specifics of it they're wild it's white heat out there about the things as they get exposed right do people generally realise that the reason that the house is trying to stick it to the students for lack of a better phrase is because they passed the ryan budget and now they've bowed down to this god the grover norquist put in front of the bill see i think people are connecting the dots that's what's happening when we're having them global budget debate you don't get into the specifics so it's kind of an abstraction and if you just say pay your bills well of course should pay your bills but if it's when you

get into the specifics of how you do it by sticking it to seniors by sticking it to students really by sticking it to the middle class and then that's not so much in service to lowering the debt because the ryan budget doesn't do that it's in service of these tax cuts for folks that are doing very very well people are connecting those dots and i think starting to see that this ryan budget is just a disaster for the middle class and for our economy it weakens it it doesn't strengthen it well congressman thank you for being with us and i wish you the very best for your efforts to fix this problem thank you thank you for thank you so much of course the easiest way to fix this problem is to do it most of the world's other developed nations do you find higher education is a basic right and send our young people to college for free for more on this issue was turned over to our low liberal rumble. i.

it's wednesday i mean this time there are joining me for tonight's along my craig briggs associate editor and columnist of reason magazine a reason dot com and laughlin mark a investigative reporter with the heritage foundation thank you both for joining me tonight. let's start out with immigration immigration is front and center is the supreme court heard the debates the arguments on it today and i heard from one of the people who was in the court the sounds like they're going to basically up whole senate bill ten seventy arizona arizona law but you know who knows but right at the moment for the first time literally since the one nine hundred thirty s. there are more mexicans leaving america than coming into the united states a new study by the pew hispanic center has found that the influx of undocumented immigrants is slowed and so how big a problem is illegal immigration the united states and how will the republican party continue to try to use this is a cudgel electoral like i can't answer for the republican party because i don't

work for associated with it but i don't think immigration illegal or legal document or undocumented i don't actually think it's a big problem i think as between seventy is a pretty atrocious law i think it encourages racial profiling and i'd take the route very radical position of thinking that human capital should be able to go where it's needed and if that means that there are incentives for people to come into the united states to find work i think they should be allowed to do that i think the issue of mobility is a big one that i think the pew study really you know really spotlighted in a very powerful way because you saw i think it was one point four million immigrants returning to mexico over the last year so you know a lot of that probably has to do with the state of the economy more than it has to do with you know we forced measures in the united states but i think it goes to the heart of the issue you know very often we hear that it's. you know that it's either inhumane or run feasible to to attempt to either encourage row or coerce illegal immigrants in returning to their country i think that statistic shows that there's

a lot more mobility there than we realize and that the roots perhaps aren't as deep as a lot of people well it's a complex situation i mean from from the nineteen teens when they first started keeping track of who was coming across the border through the one nine hundred eighty s. and there was a lot of activity nine hundred sixty s. of the percent of our program and nine hundred fifty s. and sixty's where they were actually issuing cards for people to come across. basically from the one thousand nine hundred and till the one nine hundred eighty s. what we found was that about a half a million to a million people a year would come north during the picking season and then almost an identical number of people go south again and then reagan did as amnesty and basically stopped in foreseen prosecution of employers employers used to be aggressively prosecuted if they hired people who are u.s. citizens when reagan stopped in forcing those prosecutions of employers then the meat packing industry stopped being a place where you can get a good union job it started becoming the place where the illegal immigrants were working the construction industry stop being a place where you could get a good you know literally have

a life time job good wage and. you know just like everything changed the whole dynamic change isn't real that we have not any illegal immigration problem but an illegal employer problem and we should undo the damage that reagan did when he stopped and forcing that law i don't you know a great study came out from the federal reserve bank in kansas city i believe last week saying that the the difference between working at a company that has illegal immigrants versus not the wage difference was something like fifty cents an hour maybe you have to go out years a reagan are i could i can understand the reagan with him in office he had twenty five percent you know unionization this country now yeah eight percent right so i can understand your qualm is then that wages are depressed across the spectrum yes . i don't i don't think it's a bad thing that people can come from poor countries to a wealthier country and get money to feed their family. back home i just don't think it's a bad thing more the more the merrier so you don't you don't i'm curious laughlin do you agree that there should not be national borders i certainly don't have a libertarian position basically that there should not be in the national borders

so i've already said national borders i mean you can call it a border but you know so what no i don't think that's the case i think the rule of law is particularly important you know from the perspective of american identity and the you know the values that we hold dear as economies have a libertarian world like would you would you maintain america as america oh i don't i mean america is the melting pot right i mean the taco is more popular than apple pie according to the most issue of money magazine. and it offers free health care so should all americans be able to go to canada get free health care you know what i think of that is like that is part of your calculus for determining where you want to live and the canadian if the canadians will have you all as that are not going to be right out of the lot of americans over thirty and for drive to get into canada are there any and everything that they keep there you go. more rubble coming up right after the break.

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dot com. welcome back to the guys alone liberal rumble joining me in my quick associate editor and columnist of the reason magazine and reason dot com and laughlin mark a investigative reporter with the heritage foundation let's get back to it two years ago and four days ago the b.p. oil disaster happened down in the gulf finally finally yesterday somebody was arrested turns out it was a guy who's not even an employee anymore are we actually was arrested for tweeting something that wasn't quite accurate. the fall guy and a lonely engineer yeah. a lonely unemployed engineer and whereas down to brazil when chevron had an oil spill which was a fraction i mean you know less than a fiftieth of the size of the b.p.

oil spill they arrested thirteen executives including an american took their passports they're still stuck down there they're facing serious charges maybe years in jail the company chevron has been forbidden from all. as drilling operations in brazil i mean how come we're the wimps on the block i don't get it isn't part of the problem with going after white collar criminals that you have to you have to go after their enablers as well right i mean that is the wall street guys who none of whom have been arrested they didn't get to be they didn't have the power that they had independently of government but what they were doing was legal because of the deregulation that you guys are so in love with i'm not i'm not sure it's just the regulation there may have also been some incentives provided by the government but b.p. is another good example i mean what was going on with the minerals management service that b.p. was allowed to have the shoddy equipment i mean if you were going to go after the has a so you're in favor of stronger government regulation oh i do think that if you're going to have the minerals management service saying that it's going to do something and it doesn't do something or in some circumstances maybe aiding and abetting sort of our land reckless one of your problems was the bush administration

to cut their funding to the point where they had like one inspector for every hundred wells and wasn't that inspector also like sort of oil execs as well and you know actually the boss was so so so you are not only more regulations but you also i want to you know i don't i don't know that it's and i don't i don't think it's that i think that what we have is like regulatory capture i don't know that the best answer to regulatory capture is provide businesses with more people to sway. you know if we're going to gauge wrongdoing by the damage that's been done you know i think you need to look at if the the board of engineers that the administration appointed to gauge the damage that the spill had been done also ended up weighing in on the moratorium on new drilling rigs in the gulf and decided that that was going to going to be more damaging to the gulf coast economy than even the actual oil spill was so the drilling but what i'm saying is if we're looking for the consequences of what's going on down in the gulf we need to look at the you know

amazing overreaction that has taken place in the political sphere to what happened you don't have had a far larger impact potentially could have a far larger impact than the spill and so eleven men die. well and. you know i'm glad your docs they're glad to see that this man who broke the water believe it's obstruction of justice excuse me obstruction of justice he says are not a tweak to his boss my point is that when there is wrongdoing when and where and when the law has been broken people should be prosecuted but if we're going to to gauge wrongdoing on simply the collateral damage that occurred from negligence or or something along that tony hayward should be extradited from england and be standing trial. that's a seventy question dollars then i think our prisons are pretty full as is if i could trade and if i do or and right fair enough yeah i mean if i would i sacrifice tony hayward to in the drug war yes he wants to. ok congressional elections in an

interview with fox news speaker boehner said this about the republican prospects of winning the house and about. i'd say there's a two in three chance that we were in. control of the house again but there's a one in three chance that we could lose but i'm beyond myself frank. we've got a big challenge and we've got work to do now you know one of the first rules of politics is never say that you're definitely going to win because then people don't show up to vote and they don't give you money don't say that you're going to lose because then people don't show up to vote they don't give you money so i think he politically calculated this just right where the underdogs help us out don't forget to vote but in the real world of things what is the political calculus here yeah i think he's trying you know he might be trying to downplay expectations a little bit but just in case but you know i think that that thirty three percent chance that he mentioned i think if republicans do end up losing the house you know we were talking during the break about how you know the the the tea party wave that was swept in in two thousand and ten hasn't really succeeded in doing much in the

way of shrinking government or shrinking the federal budget so i think if they do end up losing seats you know it will be primarily attributable to to not following through on the very hefty promises that were made in two thousand and ten which raises a question like what why have the republicans done. for the average voter should cause the average voter to say yeah let's keep these guys in office i mean as a speaking as somebody who i want to see government do nothing that's what i'm going to say i mean the or the right is they've done almost nothing very successful drug except the awful things that they were doing that are sort of bipartisan awful things that they like to do wage war conduct warrantless wiretaps that sort of stuff they've been able to continue to pay so if anything i would just say that they have not added more wood to the fire and i mean that that's not a sales pitch and i doubt boehner would use that as a sales pitch or any republican would but speaking as somebody who likes to see both of them mess up often and much i'm saying that's my sales pitch so if your

pitch is you don't want the government. in our lives for example health care retirement security things like that who do you want their. well i mean i want god now i just i mean if you can look around the other i don't have a million dollars and you know there's a there's a real power vacuum i mean like if you if you want me away on my entire policy plan it would be i mean i think there are ways to make health care cheaper without the system that we have in place right now if you get cancer you don't have a million dollars in your checkbook you have a choice you can either have a government which is answerable to you or you can have private health insurance companies with c.e.o.'s like steven j. hemsley who made a billion dollars i don't think the i don't give a rat's ass if i don't think the answer is what we had prior to two thousand and ten and what we have now i don't think those are the only two answers they may be what were politically convenient but i think if you saw if you saw a licensing reform at the state level if you saw the expansion of a medical school program and you want to do for medicine what we did in the

seventy's what nixon did for credit cards let everybody go to the lowest common denominator so everybody moved to north side and i don't think that is i think america would be a better country if we had more doctors and as of right now we can't have more doctors there's a cap there are two giant bodies and i mean that's got nothing to do with a.m.a. though it does have some do a.m.a. does not make laws congress makes laws on the we're we're getting a little bit of weight i mean yes there's a little bit away from the issue but the a.m.a. is not a governing body it is a private body and it congress answers to the a.m.a. and that's a problem and i agree that's a problem yeah and i think there were a lot of there are a lot of people in washington who mean well and want to you know. enact reforms whether it's reducing the size of the federal government or whatever their objectives are and simply because of a entrenched culture here in d.c. that sort of trades on the favors that come along with being in power you know it's very very difficult to do so i think so how do we so if we're all in agreement even though the you know we we would like different sizes of government different kinds of government but we're all in agreement that government is corrupted by money or

we buy by money. ok yeah i know you don't know this but you also yes well i'm not going to you know public funding of elections or something if that's where you think i'm going i'm thinking there are two doctrines that no president has ever suggested no congress has ever suggested in fact presidents have been decrying them since thomas jefferson and that is that money is not property at speech and the corporations are not legal fictions they're people these are these are doctrines that were literally created out of nothing by the supreme court one of them in the late one nine hundred centuries ago than the one nine hundred seventy s. . why don't we just blow these up well i will give you i'll speak to the corporate personhood doctrine first you know by if we say that corporations are not protected by the bill of rights by the protections in the bill of rights i mean what you're essentially doing you're eliminating due process for a corporation you know the government can go in and tap company phones without a warrant can seize company property on

a whim you know these are the types of things that you know the bill of rights does protect corporations against those sorts of intrusions so you know i think we need to be careful advocating for no constitutional protections for corporations which seems to be what a lot of people who are opposed to the citizens united because you are if you are an individual working in a company the government can't tell but we're talking about a company is ready to go on your computer my computer at my desk is fair game for the government to. no not at all there needs to be subject line nation of privacy why ok so if you want to be use the phone that also sells you know. why don't talking about the government being able to go to the a.f.l. c.i.a.o. the a.c.l.u. the sierra club and tap their phones and seize their property all their books. to to any government intrusion on a whim and i was going to have that we will have a we talk about opening their books when the government opens its books i mean let's look at the number of question have been rejected more almost twice as many

requests were rejected in obama's first year in office as were in bush's last year in office i don't want to hear i find it is about transparency radically disingenuous compared to the administration we have right now in the opacity in which is advances been increasing ever since the seventy's and i'm with yeah ok last question quick fire we haven't heard much about the tea party in the last year or so the question is the tea party dead or will billionaires like the koch spring all those buses out of retirement revive the thing in two thousand and twelve this one time for the elections are we going to see you know a couple of dozen of these three hundred thousand dollar busses running around the country and those those buses were there to transport people who were why. to get on them and wanted to get around and so i don't think it mattered what i made for they want to really not a four hour much the buses cost how many you have because i don't think there's going to be anybody to get on that i my my sense is that the party is pretty disillusioned i mean they elected a giant freshman class in the house which with the exception of just over a dozen approved reauthorization of the patriot act some of the people who were

elected as tea party candidates have sort of just they've taken up the banner of big government i mean allen west said the repealing obamacare was an issue for him marco rubio gave a speech to the brookings institution today saying that he thought the united states should be more interventionist than it is right now so i can't imagine that the tea party feels like its efforts are being rewarded well and laughlin to some extent the tea party is discovering that the guys that they sent to washington d.c. are are gung ho on weird social agendas that morning been discussed back in the day and secondly that they want to privatize medicare and social security which is freaking out the tea party people i mean it's not a buyer's remorse if you want to see party influence i think it's probably better to look at the local level local and state levels than at you know you saw what do you do you see in there well i mean you see precinct chairmanships being taken over by people that share that common agenda and i think unlike the occupy wall street movement for instance which sort of rejects the two party system i think you saw

very much the tea party decide that the republican party was going to be a vehicle as a way to pursue its political and smarter and so they're not here they're not branded tea party as much anymore as they are just sort of the conservative wing fiscally conservative wing of the republican party on the other hand you get the ninety nine percent spring which is kind of doing the same thing now with the democratic move on or back to get loans back on on you know yeah absolutely i mean they're it's the same it's the same thing it's let's play inside well and we'll see how it all shakes out mike thank you very much for you know you for sure after the break bad news for european economies with the u.k. and a double dip recession. dutch government disbanding and countless other nations in turmoil where's the world headed if it continues the trickle down austerity experiment.

there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before the source material is what helps keep journalism on us we. we want to present. something else. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are the day.

welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in the south how are they .