arbonne in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. should congress really be playing games the nation's credit worthiness thanking corporations really have religious beliefs all that and more into nights alone liberal rumble and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that drilling for oil in the arctic can have around us of facts on the environment so why is the government still supporting big oil's quest to destroy one of the most pristine places on earth the latest potential will disaster finally make our government say enough is enough.

you need to know this the house of representatives needed overtime late tuesday night they agreed with the senate and passed legislation to avert half of the so-called fiscal cliff or at least kick the fiscal cliff down the road another two months setting up yet another opportunity for republicans to hold the entire economy hostage and despite president obama and some democrats declaring victory after republicans were forced to sign on to a small tax increase for the wealthiest americans this fiscal cliff deal is actually a dream come true for billionaires and banks toure's not only does it keep in place most of the bush tax cuts for ever it also gives massive tax breaks to the wealthiest americans and transnational corporations while giving americans who are in less than one hundred thousand dollars a year a tax increase since the payroll tax cut was not extended most working americans

will see their taxes go up by as much as twenty two hundred dollars a year the corporations like goldman sachs which just got one point six billion dollars for their new headquarters in this bill g.e. and big japanese. in hollywood movie studios will get hundreds of billions of dollars in tax loopholes thanks to the republicans and some of the democrats that they own on top of that taxes paid by millionaires and billionaires like estate taxes capital gains and dividend taxes were all drastically and permanently cut meaning the mitt romneys and koch brothers of the world will pay much lower taxes than they would have without this deal forget the sales pitch this deal is a tax hike on working people and a tax cut for the top one percent it's the last party and screw you to the middle class courtesy of the billionaires who elected the one hundred twelfth congress in two thousand and eight the first election after citizens united so that's my take on this mess and hear from the other side and it's lone liberal rubble.

it's wednesday are you ready to rumble joining me for tonight's along liberal rumble are francesca chambers editor and publisher of regular politics and michael moroney communications director for the franklin center for government and public integrity and thanks to both of you for showing up tonight for every day i have you both back with us let's start out with the the so-called fiscal cliff first of all you know on january first one minute after midnight or one minute after the end of december thirty first the top tax rate people like mitt romney and paris hilton who get all their income from capital gains went from fifteen percent to thirty nine point six percent and then immediately thereafter the republicans voted to drop it back down to a maximum of twenty percent so the billionaires got an incredible deal how is this not a win for the republicans how is this not a win for the republicans i mean republicans ended up having to raise taxes you just said that they went up from fifteen percent to twenty percent right there so

it's not that they're getting a tax cut how are the billionaires millionaires getting a tax cut tom you just said yourself that that taxes went up from fifteen percent to twenty percent of the taxes went from fifteen percent to thirty nine point six percent and then. a day later the republicans and democrats voted together to drop that twenty percent from where it once originally from fifteen percent so it went from fifteen percent to twenty percent at the end of the day which is still a tax increase you can't say that they you know they come over to the town hall it's thirty percent if you make less than four hundred fifty thousand dollars well and taxes still went up on on americans actually making more than fifty thousand dollars i think that's the biggest thing that everyone is ignoring in this whole entire debate about you know great we have what is the fiscal cliff we have way to tax cuts on middle class americans that's not exactly true because. because the other the payroll tax increase so if you make more than fifty thousand dollars which is pretty much anyone who lives on the east coast quite frankly and if you're a couple that makes more than fifty thousand dollars which twenty five and twenty

five that's pretty much anyone you know anyone every forty one thousand you know you and household and anyone pretty much everywhere that's a couple then your taxes still went up so that's why this is an incredibly raw deal because everyone's taxes but just to build on that i mean republicans didn't make out as well as people especially on the left are making it i mean taxes went up considerably even though it's. i mean grover norquist is bragging you know nobody voted to raise taxes he's disagreeing with you and you know in. the big picture here i mean with the political climate that republicans had this wasn't a deal that mean it was i mean i'm back in this was something there's a lot of contention on the right among this republicans didn't make out very well and i think i think you guys are crying crocodile tears because you know that you know a obama gave away massive tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires and transnational

corporations goldman sachs got their one point six billion dollars had anything away cannot this process the whole it every step of the way he was on willing to work and then to not only as soon as. he keeps saying that republicans are the ones unwilling to compromise he was consistently the. one willing to compromise on the tax cut above you know people making two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year i mean it's the whole entire thing is really ridiculous and it's the same republicans for the estate tax at midnight december thirty first the state tax went to fifty five percent it's it was not a death tax it's actually an inheritance tax it's not a tax on the person who died it's a tax on the transaction of the person who receives the money so it's really the personal tax comes on the day that the paris personal tax went one up to fifty five percent. the republicans democrats got together ward at the forty percent dividends as i said went up to thirty nine percent twenty percent capital gains fixed at twenty percent and not just for a short period of time like with the with the bush tax cuts you know this wasn't passed by sequence duration so after ten years ago the way was forever well at

least until some congress gives the whatever to why don't you want american farmers who want to pass on their businesses to their family to pay so much money in taxes that's essentially who in his state tell you a certain farmer that has a farm it's worth more than ten million dollars are worth more than five million dollars has figured out a way to put it in corporate shells so they are not going to be bottoms aside why why are we taxing people for money that they've already paid taxes on because you're not taxing the person who paid the taxes on if you inherit money from your parents you didn't pay taxes on it you'd be paying taxes on it the money turned out to kind of already be transactions you go into a store with money that has already been taxed because you paid payroll tax do you disagree when you buy a candy bar i totally disagree when you say i'm going to pay sales tax on that that money has already been taxed i get i totally disagree with the sales tax as well i think it would be better to just have a stable tax free instead of taxing people twice on things and discouraging them

from spending money because they're going to get double tax on a sale also disagree with the scale so when my family's been consistent here well let me let me extend that logic that they've if you then are taking a paycheck and it's been ten. and you take that money and go over to macy's and you buy something and then macy's decides to pay that clerk with that money that money's already been taxed how can they how can they how can i put. an income to that's different because then there would be no taxes ever i'm specifically talking about individual individuals money being taxed on if i if i die and i want to give my money to to my family instead of charity or my family if i don't have any will. evil you do you actually have a will and you can leave the money to whoever you want just before you die but i don't think for instance we tax transfer in the sense in one scenario i could die and i could choose to give them money my money to a charity of my choosing or another scenario you know i could have the government take it well let's let's let's stipulate that we disagree on this i mean it's

fairly obvious but here's a question that i think with regard to the estate tax or the personal tax of the death tax it goes beyond that which is why is the democrats who are a couple of publicans agreed that on a tax that is only paid by millionaires you have to have a five million dollars to even qualify to pay the inheritance tax. that on taxes only paid by millionaires it is going to be indexed to inflation forever as inflation goes up the amount the the amount that you have to have the estate goes up so eventually it's only going to be a tax on people with the states over seven million or nine million or forty million but they did not index the minimum wage i mean why is it that poor people get screwed and billionaires get indexed they should index the minimum wage i mean it's the classic distinction between what there is in cash value in the fiscal value of money and the actual value of the minimum wage should exist and be indexed i don't necessarily think it should be. i don't think it should exist

but i do think that we need to start indexing things to increase with inflation ok . this is this is president obama talking about the debt limit. will negotiate over many. things i will not have another debate with this congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they've already racked up through the laws that they passed. and we repeat. we can't not pay bills that we've already incurred. now this is what the debt ceiling does is it authorizes congress to pay bills that have already been run up by congress congress authorizes spending and then the executive branch has to write the check the treasury department i think this is actually a very hypocritical statement from the president i mean he signed all these bills into law so it's just as much his responsibility as congress and the constitution says all taxing and spending authority rest of the house of representatives all

legislation has to region but it is true that it is a hypocritical state for him this is coming from the you know the president who passed the largest task tax increase on americans and american history and he was going to. share middle class tax code common care obama care is attack thing trees i'm sorry but the supreme court ruled that it is in fact in fact a tax you can't really argue or not anymore hundred sixty dollars a year you pay if you don't tax and it is the largest tax increase there for at least since world war two on americans and so if he wants to sit here and talk about you know the way that congress is spending money and he really needs to take a look at the lot of the legislation that he's argued for congress here's here's my . my concern about this fourteenth amendment explicitly says that no government agency shall question the full faith and credit of the united states go it was put into place originally as a way of stating to the world that the union or that the new combined united states

would pay its war debts and civil war but it explicitly says that the full faith and credit in this is shall not be question of there was nobody can say that the united states congress the executive branch the supreme court cannot say that the united states will not pay its bills and that's what the debt ceiling does that's what the republicans don't want to share with you and a lot of people don't understand i think what the debt ceiling actually does and i do agree that we should have to pay our bills that brings us back to the real problem that we have in america which is a spending problem our spending is out of control and you know and then we have the opposite in consequence of both too much spending and not enough. i mean you've got to give corporations are paying nine percent they're paying nine percent of the cost of government operations right now they're paying thirty five percent during the i know that's true that's a totally different that's a totally no better you're going to use to come from we didn't have this problem before knowing what the problem that we have right now is a spending problem we can't afford to pay all the money that we're paying and entitlements and welfare and food stamps we have is nearest to the deficit a penny and ronald reagan would be the first tell you that i wasn't specifically

talking about social security i'm talking about again food stamps i'm talking about medicare i'm talking about medicaid i'm talking about all these entitlements that are racking up money and we can't afford any more i will lead you to that final word more of tonight's long liberal run right after the break. let me let me let me ask you a question. here on this network and this is what we have in the debate we have our night. because if you use this money to spend staying there together you're in this race would be an ideal way to talk about the surveillance. 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 harkin welcome to the big picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call i don't know. i'm sorry i missed the guy who cares an awful lot like you sir are a fool you know what that is my theory sells but no one to give us a feature is a monkey on the liberal and the christian point you. can see you're totally devoted to. you know the super committee of distract us from what you and i should care about because their profit driven industry that sells of sensationalistic garbage because that breaking news i'm happy martin and we're going to break that.

blog about the long liberal rumble joining me tonight or francesca chambers and michael moroney let's get back to it just to wrap up this fiscal cliff stuff. governor chris christie went nuts today he just went totally nuts here's a clip. we worked with president obama and his administration and satisfy them of the urgent need of the sixty billion dollars package this was good enough for sixty two united states senators of both parties to vote for this package this was good enough for a majority of the house of representatives it overcame all the factual challenges

it just could not overcome the toxic internal politics of the house majority and that was his being you know he really cranked it up after that speaker boehner stepped in it by not holding a vote on the hurricane sandy relief package. isn't doesn't this really demonstrate if you don't have six figures in your bag in your checking account the republicans aren't interested in talking to you michael i don't think it was that at all i think it was the fact i mean it's a huge political miscalculation on the part of being there and i don't see why he didn't hold the very last and i think you know the koch brothers and shelley adelson just didn't care about you know hurricanes and there's a lot of there is a lot of those so they get in there and then you are that's a dream but they call her they call return for them to become partners the theory that i have nothing to do with why they didn't hold the vote quite i doing all that was it was the late at night and very first of all it was late at night and i think that he actually thought hey if we don't all this tonight it won't be a big deal everyone's tired and we'll just total vote on it later and then we see

the c.-span of us i mean the speaker or the president of the chamber or whatever they call it was you know. these are moved to adjourn you know yea or nay and a bunch of people yelled no and very loudly and he said the ayes have it and gavel the thing down people are yelling at times we have a minute we don't want to democrats voting at the d.n.c. about whether to put god back in the platform but any year out well he did exactly going to have no i really do think it had to do with it was late and he made a gross political. calculation about how you know we can just do this in a couple days and i think it really comes back down to the pork that was in the bill that a lot of people disagreed with there was funding in the bill there are a lot of people in the hurricane sandy bill that didn't have anything to do with the actual sure kane there was something in there for you know at the kennedy space center and a lot of other things so a lot of conservative republicans and even some democrats had a problem with the specific bill because of all the things they didn't actually have to do with the hurricane that were in it so i think it would have been

a debate that would have taken some time and it was already late at night and that's why he didn't hold the vote that said i completely agree with chris christie and others that you know the hurricane's been over for some time congress should have absolutely done something about this that they want to freak out about a fiscal cliff that they knew was coming and they should have done so at the so so far in our blue here i have been pointing out for a year year and a half or so on this program since i noticed it that whenever you see a picture of john boehner with eric cantor standing right behind him you can never see what's in eric cantor's right hand it's because it's a stiletto and the right brainers kidney is this going to be the end of the boehner speakership absolutely not i think there's been some rumors circulating but i i think that whole hold strong i've heard it's possible the burner will just say no i'm not going to run that to save face that is what i think that some people i would call that wishful thinking imagine early on that's not going to happen boehner is going to get reelected the speaker very easily tomorrow even if you don't want him to be speaker i think to ignore the reality of that situation while

he gets makes you just makes you look out of touch and he got he got peter king on board by scheduling a vote for sandy relief so i mean and i know that they haven't always agreed to him in cantor and i do think that the situation you know it got better and it clearly got worse after today because even chris christie said that cantor personally told them that he disagreed with banner about not voting for it the other night you know cantor also didn't vote for the fiscal cliff legislation so i think going in the hundred thirteenth congress that's a really interesting relationship to keep watching but but i don't think it i'm not out of this so love to see the house run but your cantor and kevin mccarthy. i mean like it was the labor party very recently and they are all given to behave like he wasn't invited cantor and mccarthy i'd be back on your show and you'd be complaining to bring boehner back though i never thought corporate personhood corporations are out. one corporation particular hobby lobby which is owned by a fundamentalist or very super whatever arrived through the religious family the so that they don't believe that they should and they don't want to they they

believe that it's ok for their health insurance plans to give men pay for men's contraception. condoms things like that but not to pay for women's contraception because their church says that's wrong and. you know the law of the land is sorry if men get contraception in your health insurance plan women have to equal you know parity between men and women and their faces one point three million dollars a fine they appealed to the seventh circuit court seven circuit court oh well the supreme court said that corporations are people of that they have first amendment freedom of speech rights first amendment also offers freedom of religion so corporations post our freedom of religion so we're going to hold in abeyance the fines and these guys cannot give the contraceptives to women but continue giving them to men because that's their religion this corporation so seriously can either of you defend corporations having religion i don't want to go too far down this path but i did not realize that condoms were men's contraception and that women had nothing to

do with that time and i think that's a little bit ridiculous of an argument that well they that they're funding men's contraception but they're not funding them and he isn't sure his plans will literally some of them will pay for condoms and will not pay for diaphragms ok so there's a i still i still i still technically disagree with you on the point that this isn't a quality issue but but that is they'll pay for vasectomies they you know they won't pay for information i don't know necessarily about that but this raises what they're fighting you know i certainly understand the legal argument in this case because they're saying i mean you can have a lot of different real. and they're saying you can impose those religious views on your employees i mean just take a step further if someone was a christian scientist could they say we don't agree with any type of medical care no i don't buy only for you exactly so but the biggest issue here is the fact that that obamacare really mandate all this stuff for everyone it shouldn't be in the way it should be in a different employers can offer different things to their employees ok so at the

end of the day neither of you are saying that you agree with the seventh circuit that corporations can have religions no i agree that if you were both agreeing on the number if you have a business and you don't want to provide health care to your employees that only have the more you do the right you know you have the right to not to know why give them health care and if you don't like it tom you can go work somewhere else for all i care that's what i'm going to sound or you can pick and choose which pieces of health care you're going to serve i think you should be able to either define it as a liberty issue i think though it is likely it's a religious it's a religious liberty issue but it's also yes a right to contract issue ok let's talk about guns tomorrow the new hundred thirteenth congress can be sworn in shortly after the gun debate is going to start we all know this is common after after you know what happened in connecticut senator dianne feinstein is promising to introduce a new assault weapons ban which will forbid the future sale transfer importation and possession of certain kinds of assault weapons and high capacity clips although it will grandfather brazilians that are out there right now you know five percent

of world's population twenty five twenty five percent i've heard as much as fifty percent of the world's guns i find that hard to believe but in the case so. what's what's going to happen with this you know we've got the n.r.a. asserting all this power and yet in the last election virtually all of the candidates of the n.r.a. seriously backed with big money last this is not about the enery tom i want to quickly briefly talk to you about three polls first of all one c.b.s. since then has done a poll in which fifty percent of americans said that they did not pay. did not necessarily want more gun control so this isn't necessary a necessarily about you know they enter a building all this power this is about the three to four million americans who backed the n.r.a. and a similar poll rasmussen found that fifty four percent of americans still support the n.r.a. even since the shooting a poll from rasmussen today another fifty four percent of americans said that they would back schools having armed guards in them so research shows it governance by

polls no one and no what i'm saying is just looking at the public opinion this is not as much about what the n.r.a. thinks or does this is about what americans think and what they want organizations like the n.r.a. and congress there's a whole issue today that suggest the fifty five percent of americans want to see assault. and so there's forty five you know that's still a split though what i'm trying to say is that's nearly a fifty fifty split between americans who do and don't support that michael thirds or addiction for what will happen here is dying feinstein will deliver the bill to harry reid he will nod and say thank you and then let it die because it's not going anywhere especially when the senate you don't think it'll pass this i don't think it will have i mean we're going to sort out i don't you're going to mention coming out but as soon as he came out and said that he was might might support stronger gun controls he backtracked very very quickly with a washington post op ed i mean this is we're not going to see anything possibly come to this that are you sure but what i think realistically happens is the i mean it goes away it doesn't work goes francesca michael thank you for joining me

tonight. just. it's the good the bad of the very very back row to sleep the good congressman allen adam smith of washington state smith was on fox and friends this morning and schooled the troop talking heads on the specifics of the fiscal cliff deal and president obama's role in debate take a look. i mean you can say well he's. sure leadership but now what you're saying is he showed leadership but nobody else was willing to right so it's really hard to blame the present sure i'm just anxious a.z.n. the deal as it was before you put it but i think it is that what we're talking about the president really also make the point to speaker boehner the republicans what have they put on the table in terms of specifics when i absolutely don't look at. what the week when the closer to us you know the budget is not an

appropriations bill right and the budget said across the board we will cut ten percent we're not going to tell you what we're not going to tell you where we're just going to imagine that it's going to happen in terms of specific spending cuts the president but actually put more on the table during this last thing go she ation then the so-called fiscal conservatives leaving the house it's always refreshing to see some semblance of accurate information coming out of a guest on g.o.p. t.v. good on you congressman smith the bat the american family association conservative christian organization e-mailed its members today with a warning that by the year twenty sixty christians will be treated the same way african-americans were during the jim crow era e-mail also warned that states would take charge of children beginning of birth in the due to the separation of church and state towns with religious sounding names would be forced to change their names basically the f.a.a. believes that there's a massive conspiracy underway to wage war on christianity and to attack the freedom

of religion and it sounds just as fringing crazy is the if a's war on homosexuality goes. and the very very ugly it's constant state senator glenn grothman rothman is waging war i'm. at a press release one argues that kwanzaa is a fake holiday that was invented for the purpose of dividing and destroying america in the press release growth and rights that the founders of kwanzaa doric america and seek to destroy it by pretending that it's values as expressed in the declaration of independence and our constitution don't apply to everyone. in reality kwanzaa was established nine hundred sixty six to celebrate ideals like unity collective responsibility and self-determination and to celebrate african-american heritage and culture with this guy to be attempts to discredit kwanzaa is the latest development the war on religious freedom that is taking place in the earth and it's very very. after the break while big oil continues to destroy our environment residents of the midwest are feeling the disastrous effects of

climate change why is america's heartland looking more and more like a scene from the one nine hundred thirty s. what can be done to save our agriculture industry from complete disaster. stories. are like. a list. of. what's.

i think. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for langley 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.