going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight the big picture. is enough without even trying to negotiate with the hostage takers on the right as the nation approaches the so-called fiscal cliff i have an urgent message for democrats and that is go off the dang cliff i'll explain why in just a moment and for fifty years wal-mart has managed to suppress any attempts to organize employees at the retail outlets with a massive black friday strike just days away for a chance that organized labor make that big fish and finally george soros and the

un conspiring to outlaw golf courses that's the latest paranoid conspiracy theory coming out of the right wing lunatic fringe but i'll tell you what's really behind this nonsensical fear mongering internets we take. you need to know this an incredible opportunity is coming to america starting in just a few weeks the bush tax cuts will expire pentagon spending will be slashed although will still spend hugely more than just a decade ago and i'm a conservative smile funding for programs that keep poor and unemployed people alive and healthy will be cut this is not for today for several reasons first when the bush tax cuts expire everybody's taxes will go up including taxes on the rich and the very rich which means that of democrats propose cutting taxes on the working class people while ignoring the new red. for the rich republicans can sign

on and vote for the legislation without violating their blood oath the multi-millionaire k. street lobbyists grover norquist all that goes nowhere as fast as it should which would be to roll back the reagan tax cuts it's a start on moving america in a more egalitarian direction second most of the cuts to the pentagon budget are good things pentagon has lost over two trillion dollars and they can account for it's a good guess you'll find a lot of it twenty bedroom mansion zone by defense contractors and lobbyist they're wearing this city washington d.c. and this nation needs a healthy and robust debate on our role as an empire as president obama said during the campaign it's time to do some nation building right here at home and third by breaking out the social spending cuts that require public in particular the house of representatives to go on record on their position on them all the american people will get to see paul ryan's and mitt romney's forty seven percent are moochers philosophy played out writ large americans will see in

a way that's absolutely irrefutable that the republican party is only out for the interest of the top one percent and doesn't give a rat's ass about working people or the poor that could also set the stage for a democratic victory in the house of representatives in two years to make the most of this opportunity democrats need to have legislation in place now this week or next that addresses these three issues should be three separate bills in fact that will break out each of these issues first cuts taxes on middle and lower income people believe in rich people's taxes the same as they were during the clinton years the second ratifies cuts to the pentagon budget but in a way that is rational and reflects the reality of our biggest current and future threats which are not nuclear war but cyber war not so much nation states as non-state actors angry there are drones killed their families the legislation should incidentally put some serious limits on presidential power to be judge jury and executioner via drone strikes particular when the target is an. consider this

if the democrats put this legislation on the table now with the promise of a vote on the on it on the week after the new year it will suit the fears of those who still believe in the uncertainty fairy and if it's decent legislation it will get progressive as a rallying point to pressure their members of congress well i'd much rather see a rollback of the incredibly destructive were reagan tax cuts this at least would be a start to calm the hysteria provide a basis for moving forward and put the lie to the stupid republican theory that what's good for our economy is that when the rich get richer and the poor get poorer combine it with some reasonable trade policies like those advanced by senators sherrod brown to bernie sanders we might even see a return to the eisenhower and clinton prosperities it's time to drive off the so-called fiscal cliff once done americans will realize it was just a speed bump nothing like the film and louise fears being hyped by the so-called deficit hawks.

it's one zero you ready to rumble join me that i belong to overall are francesca chambers editor and publisher of red alert politics and marc harrold libertarian tourney libertarian commentator attorney and author i've got to start talking more slowly thank you both for joining us ok so i say let's take the plunge let's leap off the fiscal cliff francesca talk me off the edge so actually in the spirit of things giving i'm going to start with something we agree on i think that you could actually get a lot of republicans particularly those like rand paul and others to agree with you on the drone part of what you propose so i think we can all agree on that so we'll start with that all right well it's a good start mark absolutely i agree that this could be a real opportunity we do need to have a robust debate i don't agree that we just jump off the cliff i think if we think we're going off the cliff we have to take some commonsense steps i don't believe what i'm saying to the legislation out there now but don't hold on until after the

first of the year because you voted before the first of the year you run afoul of grover norquist no absolutely i think you do need these ideas should be out there now we just came out of an election we need concrete steps the election was a little broader about what we would do and the ideology behind it now we need the concrete steps you know if we're going to go off this cliff we're all going to go off it together this idea that only some people are going off this cliff this guy like you said everything's going to get a little bit worse we need the debate in this country but absolutely this is an opportunity needs to be seen as one but we can't be sixteen trillion dollars in debt we can't run up a trillion dollars of debt every year there's just not sustainable something is though that we're not actually having the debate that needs to be had which is cutting entitle not spending which i didn't see and we're throwing our way out of it you know it was something that republicans never talk about doing what dwight eisenhower did he inherited one hundred twenty seven percent of g.d.p. debt after world war two and he didn't cut anything to get us out he grew our way out of it and that's so nice and we want to grow our way out of it they want to do it by broad. nobody told me they weren't and we already are way out of it no they want to use a sturdy and there's no country in the history of the world that has ever cut its

way to prosperity that's not true republicans do want to grow our way out of it but it's a little bit difficult to grow our way out of it by growing things no not just necessarily by cutting things but republicans want to grow businesses and if businesses were larger there were more people in the workforce there were more people putting money into the government and sanitations money out of the system no government doesn't tell people what business is what to do what regulations tell businesses what to do right now businesses are in a lot of uncertainty because of obamacare and other regulations that are being placed on them by the obama administration so it's not the republicans don't want to grow their way out of this or so yes this is your same francesca that you think that if john boehner succeeds in defunding obamacare that the uncertainty fareed is going to be happy and blah so small way more complicated than just defunding obamacare and again i don't think that john boehner or anybody else thinks that i think they want to arrive late they want to replace obamacare but more on that and he knows that they can't do that so today what he was saying was that he's going to

defund i mean you know he's going to use their oversight powers that has the power of the purse is not well that's what they're going to try to do also the regulations have been written you have to remember public comment period so there's a lot of i should have seen today they've come out they have seen public comment i mean people don't realize it's not if you don't just flip a switch to the next something this large but i completely agree i you know i think the country completely overregulated business is strangled by regulations but this in certain uncertainty and to me this is the part of both parties one of the reasons we have such uncertainty is you have to pass a budget this is you know do we need a balanced budget amendment no but maybe we need a budget amend you know as you would usually budget a budget would be a good idea and i'm just going to just keep going to the gym supposed edges this is uncertainty comes not just from regulation obamacare comes from the general reason their parties have kicked the can down the road i don't need or deserve that you actually do have to spend that there is no depletion then i think you have to pass the budget that's something that clearly legislators maybe we need to make us do you know speaking of the fiscal cliff more than two million americans are going to lose long term on a. when we go off the fiscal cliff so there's there's you know there's some real this is one of the gifts that republicans say you know we're giving people you know

they they voted to get us long term on a lot of the mitt romney so you're right there's some republicans pushing back and others going yes indeed the atlantic recently reported that the united states actually provides less generous unemployment benefits than most of the rest of the developed world the looking at the o.e.c.d. numbers the organization for economic cooperation development united states is behind japan italy spain canada denmark germany norway france switzerland the netherlands of israel when it comes to providing the unemployed with benefits on top of that moody's which is no left wing think tank moody's says that for every dollar that you put out as unemployment benefits from the government the government will get back a dollar sixty four cents eventually in taxes because of increased economic activity because the real job creators consumers are buying things so shouldn't francesca's shouldn't we be working really hard to extend unemployment benefits

well i think when you look at that chart you actually have to get a little bit further into the details and that and i didn't look at every single country and break down i didn't have all day to look at that but i will say though that other countries that were represented there don't have the same unemployment laws as we do for instance many of the european countries make it that the business has to pay one hundred percent of unemployment benefits not the government so it's not the government on the hook you know whatever someone is either fired or laid off but if you make citizens had to pay you'd be saying oh my god the government regulating business look at this burden on them and by the way one hundred percent of those other countries they give you free health care and that's possible but what i'm specifically talking about is looking at our unemployment benefits compared with other countries i'm just simply explaining why other countries can have higher benefits is that it's not the government it's not the taxpayers you're paying for that if the big issues that are obvious paying for those i believe israel was one of the ones there were several european countries i got it was there was a lot of information. on that chart and i didn't spend all day looking at it but that is the way it is in many european countries which completely changes the dynamics

of the conversation ok mark did you want to get in on the side of the follow up question and i go ahead with your follow ok. you were speaking to europe i used to live in germany and back in the eighty's and it was against the law for retail stores to open on sundays and it was really cool because the only store the only literally the only place that was open was the gas station and they you know you get a quart of milk there sort of like you know seven levels but that was it and so on sundays people want they took walks you see all these people you know people you know the trails through the countryside things and it was like nice there are three states that have blue laws right now that make it illegal for stores to be open retail stores to be open on thanksgiving should we take that nationwide but i actually don't mind that stores are open on thanksgiving for myself personally i know my family when i go home you know to visit or whatever else and something we like doing is going shopping on those days it's really one of the few days here that i can actually go shopping because most of the days of the year you know you're busy with work you're busy with school and kids and whatever else so i don't

personally have a problem for business wants to be open on that day and employees are willing to work at a business that are open on that day then what's the problem with it well you know i'm just telling you it was kind of cool but i think it is a kind of massachusetts like it i mean this is you know mitt romney's statement you know i can't think i have to admit i can't think anything worse than shopping on thanksgiving but i like when some places are open you know this is one of those things and that there's are not this is one of those things that the government should be involved in you know certain chick fil a is a good example of a store that unilaterally decides not to be open on certain holidays not to be open on sundays never i lived in mississippi for years a lot of blue laws but i can say that there were there were stores that did not open on sunday and if they would have people though the market would have kind of taken place care of that they would have found upon being open on sundays for certain types of businesses in mississippi and it's a generalization but i don't think the government should force it but i do think it's nice for a company to make that decision if they think it's you know good for its business or good for i think it's nobody's i think i think the whole idea of a sabbath that has endured. and for three thousand years or far longer because it's psychologically healthy culturally healthy i think that there's there's something

to be so i think you know even if it's just the one you know that's all i'm saying no i don't want to take it and that's fine a chick players and i understand the libertarian argument on the right to actually i don't want to be nice no no no all right after the break. here's mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that many americans call a donor. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot like you sir are a fool you know what that is my theory self but i don't want the usa to defeat terrorism the only liberal the christian. can secure the borders. you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because their profit driven industry that sells of sensationalistic garbage because

that breaking news i mean martin and we're going to break this that. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm trying hard welcome to the big picture.

well the mag alone liberal rumble joy is that i'd francesca chambers and marc harrold thank you both for joining me let's get back to it cook county illinois is one of the first counties in the nation to jump with both feet that they got a waiver to do it to jump into obamacare taking medicaid money and providing a quarter million low income people with access to health care that they didn't have before they're the lucky ones the people who live in cook county illinois because they're actually you know their county is going to have the state provided the waiver and the other and you get republican states you know these red states that are likely to rick scott is a classic example down in florida here's one hundred million dollars no thanks it's

going to leave ten million more people unemployed uninsured excuse me and add fifty three billion dollars in uncompensated costs to hospital balance sheets this is this is like you know wrecking the system states can expand medicaid at no cost to them for the first three years and at ten percent a cost for forever after that the federal government except ninety percent why would a republican play politics with this. for just i think you're misunderstanding the situation you know a lot of states are actually thinking about cutting medicaid before this election before obamacare and republicans even want to cut medicaid ever since the sixty's it was not a.b. not just republicans governors in general because of how much it was costing the state it was costing the states way too much i mean we all know that states are being cash strapped in this recession and then obamacare comes along it wants them not only to not cut it wants them to expand medicaid which is a huge burden on a lot of states. zero percent of them for the first three years and it is that one percent has that's the problem it's zero percent of them for the first three years

which is a very short term thinking and over the long term and then it's ten percent of the additional cost at a time when states are so cash strapped and they're sitting there trying to consider you know whether they should cut education which i don't know the pain or i don't know i'm on a fifty fifty right now currently i think the way that it's set up is that if you if you don't have a certain number of people on your rolls then they take away the federal government's compensation part of it and there were a lot of states before obamacare that was passed that had said no we might just literally cut the rolls and then say the heck with the government funding portion of it because we can't afford to keep so many people on medicaid so they would just throw all the poor people off and say sorry no health care just wait until the tumor wraps through the skin and show up at the that's not exactly how it is but all that you mark well first of all the zero percent of the ten percent first three years is kind of bait and switch and you get everybody any help so you sell it because just like you said a costly thing of the phone carriers are now absolutely great big sweeteners great i phone four of many but you know the one of the things about this is they're you

know a lot of people think obamacare is now part of a mandate with president obama and obviously he won the election but you have to look to a lot of the gubernatorial races thirty out of fifty governors in this country are now republican and i think a lot of those governments governors one of the main things they ran on was resistance to obamacare why would they play politics with it i think there are some strong ideological divides in some of these states these red states on federalism grounds on somewhat libertarian grounds and just not wanting this type of encroachment but all of that you know nine fifty three million people health care that's the that's the president well there's going to there are some of the moderates have to try well some of the states have alternatives but once you hand this over i think part of the theory of well if they have an alternative that's costing them more than ten percent of the cost and one hundred percent of it one thing is some states would incur costs to it can keep control i mean once you give this up you know you give the zero percent you sell it once it's gone it's gone i don't think you can ever i mean i think you can repeal it now maybe if they had won the white house but. once this thing's got once this is in it's in and i think a lot of people are worried about that from

a federalism point of view well we'll see although i think all they can do is defund it and i think boehner and cantor are going to try that we'll see how that plays out let's talk about entitlements the c.e.o. of goldman sachs lloyd blankfein recently gave an interview to sixty minutes so i'm into retirement ages and he said with regard to social security and medicare the retirement age has to be changed maybe some of the benefits have to be affected maybe some of the inflation adjustments at your advise but in general the title have to be slowed down in contain this is easy for a guy with forty fifty million to say the fact of the matter is he he made the point blankfein in that interview that when so security was created one hundred thirty five life expectancies were shorter than they are now the reality is for anybody making under two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year life expectancy right now if you've made it past your fifteenth birthday is one year longer than it was in one hundred thirty but it's a total nonsense argument it's that was in for mortality it was driving down overall life expectancy rates and that has nothing to do with social security so so

mark you know what what the we say to lloyd blankfein when the simple solution is for him who is making fourteen and a half million dollars a year to simply pay the same four percent of his income on social security taxes as everybody else pays rather than just on the first hundred thousand the maverick we focus on the fact that he pays the same he pays the same percentage of that percentage leads to more money collected by the government to his his percentage well he's paying his all security is not four percent is probably point zero zero zero four percent i mean based on his overall yeah you only pay so security taxes on the first daughters are ten thousand dollars in a car and after that you pay nothing he has zero well oh no but let me just say real quick it is a disparity because white collar workers of the expectancy has gone up much more than blue collar workers but the bottom line here is you've got too many you can't have a system where you know i think we have set up there were forty people work and everybody receiving money because the demographics to have people aged you can't get this keep the system going with. so many people work so many people work. vs the number of people work in excess of no reagan work at reagan's i know you know what reagan

fixed the demographic problem in eighty two when he doubled social security tax he did it because he said ok one generation just one generation the boomers is going to get double taxed and i'm going to pay for their parents' retirement like all the previous generations did but they're also going to pay for their own retirement so we're going to double tax them put that money in a savings account that's why there's two point seven trillion in the so scary trust fund right now and which is sort of supposed to be zero it's supposed to be of the pay to go program and then by twenty thirty twenty forty when the boomers are all dead well you know bill drop attack spec'd out so that that's a non-problem no interest problem here is that you claim that it will be you know they'll be solvent over the next thirty years and that's not necessarily true you always go for the next twenty years it'll be eighty percent of benefits forever the way it is right now where the way at one hundred ten thousand and eight is right now they'll be in the right if they don't use what's in the social security the savings account and it's going to you really call it if it's supposed to be you it's supposed to be years but it keeps getting use for other things which is partially why would those social security lockbox around it is it does get used for

other things like throw them bridges and the money is borrowed also at stake i fareed contorted logic that that money is invested in treasuries treasuries are government debt so you could argue that social security has you know loaned money to the federal government in the photo government takes that borrowed money and uses it to fight a war in iraq for example yeah that's technically true but the fact the matter is so scary sitting on two point seven trillion dollars worth the treasuries is the reason why when george bush said he was going to in his first state of the union address he said he was going to pay off all of the national debt that could be paid off with the clinton surplus he said all of the debt that can that is eligible to be paid off because you couldn't pay off the so security debt because you know it's there what is there ok so you say it's going to be selling for the next twenty years yes what is your solution after that when it's not solvent anymore is your solution specifically making the people who make more money pay more into it. yes ok so simple ok so why not use his name why not just make those people an eligible

to receive social security since they make it all rests on what is the best of the problem because you're talking about maybe fifteen or twenty thousand people who are actually over one hundred ten thousand you're probably talking about a half a million people and those people who are making over one hundred ten thousand that's not enough people taking them off the rolls to really amount to anything in terms of the costs of so security but when you add in there you've got people you know like a dozen people on wall street last year who each took more than two billion dollars in compensation if each of them was paying four percent of that into so security like everybody else does like working people do then why should they pay this money into it specifically if there ever was society make it you know if they weren't going to take it if we literally said ok no you don't get social security because you made more than a certain amount then why should they pay more into it when they're not going to even qualify and i mean i'm saying you shouldn't exclude them because when you do what you've done is you've turned social security into a welfare program and they all know what happens to welfare programs they get cut

back so any of us let's move along and the battle over the minimum wage is brewing in new jersey this week democrats in the state house new jersey are proposing to raise the minimum wage from seven and a quarter to eight dollars and fifty cents something that happened in oregon when i lived there and back to one above eight fifty as i recall and it worked out really well stimulate the economy very nicely the state senate is a pretty good spec to do approve it republicans are offended we're going to see what chris christie does but you know why are republicans so upset about the real job creators the consumers the people who spend money it creates demand in our economy that produces jobs the job creators getting a decent wage mark or are they upset politically they are sympathetic leave because the people who really support the the republicans they are generally speaking up are people that are business owners they don't want to pay more money out of. minimum wage i mean there are a lot of times large employer production industrial these large but it happens they

don't want to pay it out of me i mean to the question of why republican politicians may be offended by this it's because the people that support them and who get them into office don't want to pay a higher minimum wage for the vast number of people they employ at the five wall air onan amount of wealth equal to the forty one point five percent of all americans at the bottom forty one percent of americans the people who are working at wal-mart when they own more wealth than forty four tenths of a to be fair that's the family that also in theoretically employs the most people this country to right me by adequate and there and they start and they start people at eight dollars an hour and after six years you can get up to nine dollars an hour if the minimum wage was indexed to inflation and the one nine hundred sixty minimum wage right now be twelve dollars and fifty cents an hour why not simply do that what you know every time we've seen an increase the minimum wage since the one nine hundred thirty s. what has followed is an improvement in economic activity because the real job creators the consumers why not raise the minimum wage frictions i mean there's a lot of reasons for not raising the minimum wage because it all goes back to

regulations and forcing businesses to you know to do things that might not be in the best interests but you use wal-mart is that what the interest of a country but i mean what about the interests of our country we grant businesses the right to do business we give them all kinds of privileges people don't you know if you join us for the war on a business you're here ignoring how the free market would work people don't have to work if they're there is a free market that is free market this out of it's out of it's unregulated market is not a free market the government is regular market and there is regulations that are unnecessary but it's still absurd to say that there is not a free market totally now now you sound like now you felt like a free market as a part or economy of free market is by want to wash your car or vice versa that's a free market but you know once you say ok we're going to have some rules about this market we're have courts to enforce those rules we're going to have a currency that's held stable we're going to have a banking system and we're going to make sure that it doesn't you know mess with people that's no longer a free market make it that's. regularly does not actually make it not a free market i would say that or less of

a free market than i'd prefer but i'm going to make it here nationally lightly mark if we're saying if we're going to say that if you incorporate all of a sudden you know your lunch that you buy as long as you're sitting with some of that you do business with and discussing business over lunch suddenly not only can you ducked it but mark and i are going to pay for it with our tax dollars we're going to give you that gift we're going to give you all these benefits to do business in exchange for that all we want is that you do business in a way that helps the country along with that but you're still ignoring the main point which is that any free market says that you don't have to agree that's a free market let's get back to my original point which is in the system that we currently have that if a worker wasn't paid what here she wanted he could go work somewhere else just as much as businesses in oh you give them all these things all workers could just go down so let's only be true addition that's only true in a marketplace where you have zero employment that's not true in the marketplace for you high unemployment in that situation employers have far more power than workers i don't think that's necessarily true that's not a free market ok all right well we'll leave it at that and you'll have the last

word i guess mark thank you both for being here thank you. up next the phone lines are open for your take my take on why call in and get your chance to speak of live here on the big picture.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hartman welcome to the big picture.