well i'm john hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. it out of state spends more on defense than the next fifteen closest countries combined she would be cutting military funding instead of the social security benefits that many millions of americans rely on and restoring the minimum wage to its historical level would help create more than sixteen billion dollars in new consumer spending and raising the minimum wage is one of the easiest ways to spur economic growth why are so many people opposed to it.

you need to know. the white house says they want to cut social security insurance payments over time using a tricky little technique called the chained c.p.i. instead of actually measuring real inflation this particular consumer price index c.p.i. is chained to consumers' behavior they call it had donek in quality adjustments to make it sound scientific but here's how it works if the price of beef goes up so people start eating cheaper chicken instead and instead of measuring the actual inflation is reflected by the rising cost of meats the change c.p.i. measures the behavior of people moving from beef to cheaper chicken and lowers the cost of living adjustment. if more and more seniors can't afford chicken to move to even cheaper cat food then the chain c.p.i.

adjusts social security and insurance payments and millions of disabled vets payments that are tied to social security so that they can now afford cheaper brands of cat food republicans love this idea as i've pointed out here over and over and over again on this program back in the mid one nine hundred seventy s. republican strategist june escape due to an escape in an article titled taxes and a two santa claus theory correctly pointed out that the american people love social security brought to america by democrats and continually defended by democrats and republicans that always played the role of scrooge saying things like social security are not legitimate functions or government old age poverty should be fixed by churches and retirement income should be handled by wall street well the democrats win in skeet pointed out where essentially the social security santa clause giving americans what they wanted even though americans were also themselves gladly paid for that same social security so the job for republicans was twofold

first how to become santa claus themselves because being the social security santa was already taken they should wouldn't be proposed become the tax cut santa clause tax cuts for everybody especially rich people and the second really big job was to get democrats to shoot their own santa clause as special a social security problem for republicans was the social security was so popular it literally saves lives every day and has since one hundred thirty.

social security let's lay it to rest once and i told you never would i do such a thing but i tell you for now social security has nothing to do with the deficit. social security is totally funded by the payroll tax levied on employer and employee if you reduce the outgroup social security that money would not go into the general from to reduce the deficit it would go into the social security trust fund so security has nothing to do with balancing a budget or. the deficit bears repeating you could cut social security all you want you could even end social security altogether and it wouldn't reduce the budget deficit by a single penny social security is completely self funded it's a self contained program and that sitting on a surplus over two point six trillion dollars last year showed a surplus of over fifty billion dollars and it's the signature program that makes

american people think of the democrats a santa clause so the number one priority the republican strategists is to get a democratic president to take a shot at santa claus since f.d.r. brought a social security not one single democratic president has ever in the history of our republic suggested shooting or even nicking the social security santa clause until obama if obama goes along with the chain c.p.i. he will be the first democratic president in the history of the party to actually cut social security even though it won't do a thing nothing to reduce the budget deficit and as we saw with bill clinton reforming welfare once the republicans can corner a democratic president into shooting a democratic santa clause the republicans can then finish the job through the death of a thousand paper cuts over the next decade and in the states and everybody just remembers that it was a democratic president who started it if president obama is still pushing a chain c.p.i.

on december twenty first and maybe the mayans were right it is the end of the world as we know it or at least the end of the democratic party as we knew it. meanwhile while seniors are being thrown out of the bus by democrats republicans are doing all they can to protect war profiteers as part of speaker of the house john boehner as plan b. the pentagon's budget will be shielded from any cuts in the automatic seaquest ration that kicks in at the end of the year so with just over a week to go until we hit the so-called fiscal cliff the defense budget is safe yet social security benefits for seniors are in danger there's something wrong with this picture joining me now to offer his take on this is neil mccabe senior writer of human events online and editor of the guns and patriots column neil welcome back good to be with some and thank you for the cup conservative clout to say human events yeah so you brought a white cloth that i can shoot at with that arrow is that official clout from marion webster very strong yeah. i know you didn't bring a white cloth so let's get to surrender either first of all. scott walker scott

walker really riveted of the year for human events that was announced this afternoon so it's a lot about human events thank you. for the attack right is it right is their right to screw millions of americans with regard to social security not even touched of defense funding and for that matter i mean why are we even talking about social security let's get up and do are you going to ask me how long i've been beating my wife i mean this is like one of these crazy questions the the you were talking about oh well it's like how long you've you know it's like when did you stop beating your wife is all about republicans want to cut social security and they want to increase defense spending and you know our defense budget is so bloated that last week the pentagon ordered new uniforms for the military chauffeur well i think we should have a strong defense and i think that i don't disagree with that but i think that. over fifty percent of the cost of the pentagon is personnel and that right now we're actually cutting military personnel and the army the air force. doing

instead of that is we should be increasing the number of personnel that we have in order to lengthen deployments so that in deployment cycles well well if you have an aircraft carrier you know if you have nine aircraft carriers or twelve aircraft carriers you know there's a certain deployment schedule you can you know because they go out for eight months and then they come back if you have more aircraft carriers you can stretch out those to punish starting the draft. a draft no let's get let's what was all europeans are so you're only our hero richard nixon started the all volunteer army and its military and it's worked out very well i think it's worked out very badly i don't think most americans i don't i think that if we if we had a draft we would not have had the wars to recommend against. well that certainly would have been a problem for the people of afghanistan and iraq if you mean the over a million people who are dead now who would be dead i'm not sure if the numbers are correct while the hundreds of thousands who are dead now who wouldn't be dead well there are a half a million iraqis who were displaced two and a half million internally and two million extremely outside the country i think

that the iraq war was a good thing and i thought. and i think that there are many iraqis who have told me personally that they appreciate what we did for them and the ones who got the the contracts that were the ones the six billion dollars about actually took over the ages vanity talking about the kids who agree with me on the streets of basra the day of their national election and their parents who would wave to me. yet in fact i introduced i just interviewed somebody who just came back from iraq and said it's been testing for going well i think it's wonderful that we are going to be helping iraq why don't we help americans well it's always a good thing we should we should allow american say it's not a good thing i want to let's take things off let's stop taxing these people let's start stop over regulating what people people who work at wal-mart they're updating of taxes their company their taxes being paid on arts. essentially buckets for taxes they're running they're running the tax shelters in the caymans there's a corporate taxes thirty five percent have

a nobody they already pays it right we are if you want to run might we see the countries we are the second lowest in the world in the in actually developed countries in at in actual next collections per corporate and you're talking like a republican because what we're going to five percent of the let's lower to a real rate i don't know fifteen percent that and then basically and get rid of all these doctrines and loopholes corporations there in the eisenhower administration were paying a little over thirty pursue. the total cost of government now they're paying about seven and a half percent of the toss government that's nuts we should we should be you know and the guy and our country is working really really well during the eisenhower administration i think we should go back to old fashioned republican values eisenhower supported right to unionize and start a card check a. tax rate of ninety one percent aggressively supported it and you know he supported branding down our military he paid off a national debt that was one hundred twenty seven percent of g.d.p. and how did he do that by building roads hospitals and schools all across this country none of these things are things that you guys would even consider any more what happened to eisenhower and kennedy ran against him as

a tired old man carrying it around against him in effect his i know he ran he ran as an x. i know he ran against nixon but his campaign message was in essence he was running against the eisenhower years as a young man who was going to rebuild our defenses i mean what about the bomber gap was he i was a kid. your hero clinton we talked about the family we can we can debate kennedy if you want but you completely change the subject what happened to liberate eisenhower republicans what happened to values a very good party a liberal republican and and who is an ocular who is a popular liberal republican i don't romney was fairly popular he almost won the presidency he's a liberal she's ok our pentagon budget we're spending more money in the next fifteen countries combined yet arguably we're spending more more money on our military and the entire rest of the world sure depends on how you calculate it is that crazy now well first of all we don't want to feed our military on cat food we want them to do well that's another segment that's on my segment the. most of that

cost fifty over fifty percent the cost of pentagon is personnel you said we're in florida not i don't know but the point i wanted to get a number to the point i want to make is that we're not paying our sergeants what the chinese are paying their sergeant the right to remain halliburton hundred fifty thousand dollars per person for their people that we hire are paying a quarter million dollars a person for some of the other defense contractor however and hasn't been in the defense bill just business for about five years so if you want to go through what its legacy company should be it will shore. always a pleasure to be mine day if i don't see you know how do you want to be the face of the world and gently. after the break millions of americans in various states will see an increase in minimum wage come two thousand and twelve mean they'll have more money to spend to help support the economy if an increase in the minimum wage could help rebuild this nation's struggling economy why has washington done it again.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else 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. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans

call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about my country you sir are a fool you know what kind of my other terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want to give us a defeat terrorism the only liberal and the christian. really the voters are. going to support you to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break that. in screwed news as ideas are tossed around in the heated fiscal cliff debate

there's one thing that's not being talked about at all on either side of the aisle raising the nation's minimum wage and no matter what happens with the fiscal cliff come january first more than a million working people around the nation are going to see a much needed pay raise workers in several states including florida ohio and colorado will see anywhere between a ten cent and thirty five cent an hour pay raise next year it may sound modest but it translates to as much as five hundred bucks extra in their pockets at the end of the year more money in their pockets working people will spend more and those stimulate the economy this is what needs to happen on the federal level where the current seven twenty five minimum wage is lower than it was in the one nine hundred sixty s. when you in just adjust for inflation for working americans have the same purchasing power they had the one nine hundred sixty s. the federal minimum wage today would have to be at least ten dollars an hour should we stop allowing corporate executives to pay their way workers' poverty wages and realize once and for all that the real job. but working on the factory floor

joining me now for more on this is marc harrold libertarian commentator and author of the book observations of white noise an acid test for the first about mark welcome back thank you so after nine eleven the economy went in the crapper you're right what did george w. bush say to the american people well one of the things that was said early on is that you have to give up this was said later but i think he hinted at it was he had to give up market principle or i'm going with this he didn't go shopping and when he did go shopping of course he said go shopping because that's what stimulates the economy by shaab creators of the people spending money there would stimulate the economy george bush knew that he has people to go shopping so when we look at the math on this every time there's a one dollar wage increase and i used to live in oregon where the minimum wage is and about two bucks higher than the federal minimum wage as it is many states and there was a big debate when i was there about applying this to restaurant workers to waiters they did it everybody said the sky was going to fall now the economy was actually stimulated for every dollar and wage increase you see thirty five hundred dollars in additional spending from that family what's wrong with it well first of all the

mayans might be right i think you just said george bush was right about something so we're off and we could settle on even though i'm not a big george bush fan here's the problem with it and i understand that i have a lot of family in west virginia and pennsylvania if i they hear and they watch this and i say i'm against the minimum wage they just they won't understand what i'm saying the problem with the minimum wage is it disproportionately affects people who are the lowest wage earners because what happens is they start to price themselves out you get to a point where you're trying to protect the lowest income lowest skilled workers who what happens is they price themselves out you have that argument has been made since the one nine hundred twenty sure the minimum wage was first proposed it was made in one thousand nine hundred five when the minimum wage was passed and the supreme court knocked it down it was made nine hundred thirty eight when the minimum wage was brought back in the supreme court supported it supported the need over and over and over again and i have yet to see one example of one state or one industry where it was proven true would you give me one it's hard one example not a state or in it because it's hard to prove a negative we don't know how many more jobs. would be we don't know how many poor people no way to the woods where there'd work in their workers fewer hours they're

not hiring as many people so you might this is the old thing i see it all the time you got to keep the minimum wage so you make more than welfare and that's a great idea the problem is the minimum wage will be higher but they'll be more people on welfare it's a zero sum game i mean the us tomorrow it is the market it really don't want to tells me the marketplace that is there as well yeah there is no yes so here's the problem most people don't work at minimum wage so there's other factors the market must artificially raise because every company out there for every job only has to pay minimum wage why don't they do it because in other things in the market drive the car your desired here telling me that you cannot point to one single example of one industry one company one state one nation where raising the minimum wage price people and what i would say to you is and challenge you to take a look at this the numbers are there you can you can look right at them go look from one hundred thirty five or one hundred thirty seven or eight or whatever the year was until today every year that the minimum wage was increased and compare that to g.d.p. in the next column and what you will see is that every single time the minimum wage

in this nation has been raised g.d.p. over the next three years continuously went up to g.d.p. but that's not taking care of the absolute is total economic activity and i think there is the unemployment problem again you have what you might have your low skilled workers as the minimum wage goes up but had more of a correlation between minimum wage and unemployment there is a correlation because there is you know some people are not writing themselves out and you know in your theory but not in actual practice no because you're using numbers that basically go back to the fact that you have something to hand over here so we don't know what would happen if they didn't have the minimum wage because you're only using your post and all we don't have is you have more people in poverty who could spend less money and therefore the economy will necessarily have zero in poverty you would have a standing but you're defining poverty by the minimum wage you're coming up with an arbitrary number let me ask you this let's turn it on its head let me ask you this if we want everybody to be middle class we want everybody to be upper middle class it's an artificial number in sort of the market let's just make minimum wage that everybody has to make one hundred thousand dollars a year would that do the same thing i mean. ten dollars if we all the sudden there's a wise it's just an artificial number is

a point of rationality you know there is diminishing returns as you know yourself i mean it is it is the point at which we say as a society this is the minimum we're going to allow in our society if you want to do business in this country fine good on you we're going to give you all kind of privileges you can deduct your three martini launch you can deduct your first class haircare travel you can do you can all kinds of cool stuff you can do in exchange for that pay people decently if you can't do that you have no right to do business in this country so then we have to decide what is paid people decent right and that's the problem you've got this arbitrary number that you're putting in there i mean in other words where do you go i mean what we know is that i think over the last twenty five cents an hour is not enough ok so we don't have a minimum wage so what you're saying no i'm saying that aren't always right now sucks that when the minimum wage was ten dollars an hour as it was in the one nine hundred sixty s. what inflation adjusted that the economy was doing better unemployment was lower people at the bottom of the pay scale were making more people at the very top of the pay scale were making slightly less. than the minimum wage has not increased since since two thousand and nine and that was a fairly modest increase we've got on the screen here to go to seven yeah so you

know i'm not arguing that it's kept up with inflation i'm not half of the show's not dollars those numbers it should be ten dollars so what are going there but what i'm suggesting is that what you're saying if we were to do away with the minimum wage if we were to drop it by two dollars an hour you would see instead of saying that that additional dollar an hour rate causes three thousand dollars worth of additional spending from their family if you drop a dollar you could see three thousand dollars less spending from their family so george bush is dictum of go shopping doesn't work every family that's by earning minimum wage is going to dial back their spending by three thousand dollars they're the job creators they're the ones still made those in congress are going to be able to hire more people disperse it now you're going to have more consumers you would have more people with money in their home a kid lawyers mark employers only hire people because they need work to be done that's exactly right and if they only need work to be done that's exactly right and if they and they only need wind things because they're bacon so little there's no demand in the economy so there's no employers saying gee people want more. i was able to expand their business outward again there did every company in this country

and the states going to go only have to pay seven dollars twenty five cents an hour why do they pay more they pay more based on what those employees bring to their business no they play they paid they pay more based on what it costs to live and some sense of reason reason and rationality and decency they are crazy and how is it across the board i mean if it was not across the board here we are in washington d.c. one of the most expensive cities in the world there are people in this city a lot of people in the city working for seven dollars within let me say this is why we definitely need a federal minimum wage i mean it's against the contract clause the federal constitution my opinion the state minimum wage i'm against as well but it's a much stronger hold on on a state's right to do that within their state but the fact that it's not uniform across the country a federal minimum wage makes no sense and yet we look at individual states that have raised their minimum wage in some cases as much as two dollars two dollars and a half higher than the federal minimum wage in those states with a higher minimum wage are doing better than the states that just have the federal minimum wage you know compare oregon to mississippi i've lived i've never lived in oregon i've lived in mississippi for almost ten years but that's apples and oranges too but you have totally different kinds of economies there you have to leave have

different kind of economy there and that really is apples and oranges we're going to are going to which is right next door right so the economy is better to oregon than it is in idaho out of oregon has a higher minimum wage than i do but that's not the reason the tire they can afford the higher minimum wage because the state takes in so many baiting causation here when i guess it was late because of that but remember too i've been a theological difference with this i mean it's not just a pragmatic practical concern right you think it's a violation of the right to contract that was the right parts argument ok and most of what the supreme court did in one hundred thirty eight i know you agree with i disagree with much of what they did because the new deal to stay in place they had to lay off the commerce clause and they had to lay off the contract because they had to you know and this is what i see roosevelt was going to go on going back to george exactly go back to george bush i mean he said something in two thousand that where i thought you were going to first which is sometimes you have to abandon free market principles for the free market to work i think that's counterintuitive i don't think this is such thing as free market principles like you know markets are created by where they were when they were further apart than we were when i got here. i have a great holiday absolutely you are carol. it's

thursday let's get geeky i'm getting sustainable imagine walking into your local burger joint a decade or two from now you're in the mood for a nice juicy burger you look at the menu to see what you want and there's only one choice there i've got all my or murder but. as disgusting as that sounds it might become the wave of the future researchers in the netherlands say that meal worms may one day dominate grocery store shelves and restaurant fridges as a more sustainable alternative to traditional proteins like pork chicken and beef right now livestock takes up about. and the demand for animal proteins like chicken and beef is continuing to rise globally and may grow by up to eighty percent over the next forty years increased demand for animal protein means that more land needs to be cleared to make way for livestock which is

a process that damages the environment that human beings and other forms of life depend on it also contributes drastically to increases in global warming. the researchers in the netherlands suggest that insects like mill worms may provide just as much protein as chicken and beef but in a far more environmentally friendly way to see of insects might be a little more a little more sustainable food source than traditional livestock the researchers at that in the university in the netherlands analyze what types of global warming gases insects might generate as a result of respiration the production of their feed their distribution of various stores that would sell them and the emissions from the heating of climate controlled facilities the researchers found that growing meal worms released far fewer greenhouse gases that producing chicken pork beef or even cows milk they found the growing mill worms takes up only ten percent of the land needed for production of equal amounts of beef thirty percent of the land in a production of equal amounts of pork and forty percent of. the land needed for the

production of equal amounts of chicken it's also possible that the production of other insects as protein sources could be just as sustainable if not more so in the production of the meal worms so we know that meal worms may be an equally healthy and more sustainable protein option than beef chicken and pork but how do you convince people to overcome their initial squeamishness and eat bugs bryan fischer and entomologist at the california academy of sciences says that we need to promote a campaign along the lines of if it's ok to eat sushi it's ok to eat insects if you eat lobster eating insects is pretty much the same thing but you're also notes that people wouldn't necessarily have to eat the meal worms or other insects directly they could easily be ground up into powders and used as protein rich supplements for food freeze dried worms are already produced in the netherlands and bugs have been a part of many diets all around the world for thousands of years so if you want to do your part to help save and protect our environment back away from the beef push

away the poultry and try some nice juicy nutty flavored meal worms. they're really tasty. coming up in the wake of the connecticut school shooting tragedy debates over gun control and access to mental health services are heating up in washington and while those are important issues to address what's the one major characteristic of mass murders in this country that lawmakers should be really paying attention to.

something.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly 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 harvey welcome to the big picture.