i'm sam saxon for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. today the senate began the long journey towards passing meaningful gun control legislation but not everyone is thrilled with the thought of expanded background checks why would anyone want to make it easier for criminals to get access to dangerous firearms and find out in just a moment and saturday mail is safer now but the postal service isn't free from the austerity mongers just yet to talk to congressman mark about a new bill that could keep the u.s.p.s. solvents and affordable for years to come also while all eyes were on the supreme court last month the corrosive influence of money in politics dealt our country another major blow to tell you about it in tonight's daily ted. and we begin tonight in the united states senate where

a very very small first step was taken today to enact the most basic the most modest reforms in how guns are purchased and sold in america a nation home to the most gun deaths in the world a nation that's all twenty of its own kids senselessly gunned down in elementary school last december and a nation that has seen thousands and thousands and thousands of its fellow citizens killed by guns since newtown in fact families of those newtown victims watched closely today as thirty one mostly republican senators tried to block debate on new gun controls thirty one senators said today that not only are gun victims in america not deserving of a vote on gun control but they're not even deserving of a debate on gun control. but those thirty one senators lost today sixty eight senators came together to defeat this mostly republican filibuster so we will have a debate on gun control in the senate after all we will have votes on amendments

including an amendment to ban certain types of a soul weapons an amendment to limit high capacity magazines and an amendment to expand background checks to nearly all gun purchases these votes could take days it could take weeks it all depends on how much obstruction the n.r.a. has bought off senators are willing to muster up and some of these amendments that the senate will consider over the next few weeks are traps for example senator lindsey graham plans to offer an amendment that would completely gut the existing gun reform bill and replace it with a bill approved by the n.r.a. focus not on making sure guns stay out of the hands of criminals and that are a but instead focused on putting even more guns in our schools so while a step forward was taken today the path ahead for any new gun control laws is treacherous victory is still far out of reach even if senator gramm sabotage amendment is defeated in the coming days or weeks a minority of n.r.a. backed senators will still have another chance to filibuster the final bill and

prevent a full vote on it that's a point senator graham made today in a press release assuring the n.r.a. that he will continue to do their bidding graham says quote i welcome a debate on the second amendment in the united states senate i want to proceed to this bill i want to debate it i'm not afraid even shift saying the legislation can still be filibustered after today in the united states senate and even if gun control legislation passes the democratic controlled u.s. senate it is unlikely to pass the republican controlled house of representatives the n.r.a. is seeing to it that there will be no final vote on this senate bill that the bill will be filibustered and that it will die in the senate in a letter to senators on wednesday the n.r.a. noted that it will change its normal legislative strategy and add. grade senators not on if they vote yea or nay on the final bill but whether or not they filibuster of vote on the final bill whether or not they'll vote on no on a procedural cloture vote to end debate and proceed to this final vote on passage

of the bill your n.r.a. letter reads quote we hope the senate will replace the current provisions of s six four nine with language that is properly focused on addressing mental health inadequacies prosecuting violent criminals and keeping our kids safe in their schools should it fail to do so the n.r.a. will make an exception to our standard policy of not scoring procedural votes and strongly oppose a cloture motion to move to final passage of a six four nine so the n.r.a. says victims of gun violence as well as average americans who simply don't want to be gunned down in a school movie theater shopping mall all of us don't deserve a final vote on new gun control so we'll see what happens this process will play out over the next few weeks in the senate and during these few weeks gun shows will open up nearly every day all across america and in most states people will be able to walk into these gun shows they'll be able to buy an assault rifle they'll be able to buy

a one hundred round drum of bullets and they'll be able to do all of this without a single background check without one question about their criminal or mental history and they'll be able to then walk out of these gun shows armed to the teeth and onto our streets and this will continue indefinitely indefinitely until our lawmakers beginning right now with our lawmakers in the senate stand up to the n.r.a. stand up to the fear mongers and blood profiteers like wayne la pierre stand up even if that means putting their political career on the line to stop the senseless killings that happen with far too much cheese every day in america. so a step forward taken today but we need a lot more just like it all right joining me now is neil mccabe the other side of the opinion here is the editor of the guns in patriots newsletter good to see a thank you for that very warm montage monologue as it's always the measure fearmonger is and the pro blood profiteers you refer of course referring to the democratic party and the obama white house that has been standing on the graves of

those children and exploiting that's absolutely ridiculous i'm going to stop you there so we can actually you know talk about some substance rather than what i want to go that way so xena often do use you know how often she live she lives and she lives in milwaukee she was threatened by her husband she has been told her she was going to kill or got restraining orders he was prevented from buying a gun so he decides he's just going to go on the internet find someone on the internet is selling a gun he purchases this gun on the internet and he pretty much goes to where xena worked. station and began shooting everyone he killed his wife and two women and he injured four of the women and then he killed himself. this can go on all across america people who cannot buy guns you know had a regular store can go on the internet they can go and gun shows and they can keep buying guns until the senate acts and does something about this are you ok with that well first of all i think murder is already against the law right second of

all it's unfortunate that an armed citizen wasn't at her place of work to take down that crazed gunman so that's why you so so rather than trying to stop these crazed people from getting guns by police making if you want to sell a gun on the internet or you don't have a gun a lot of the churches who knows how to stop a crazed gunman from getting a gun who wants one we could have made it a lot more difficult for this guy radcliffe how to get a gun here if we made sure that people who are selling guns on the internet had to do background checks which would have made this guy you know legible to buy a good one and simple on the internet so you're out here telling me with metaphysical certitude he would have been turned down from an internet purchase and he was said oh well i'll just i'm something else i'm not saying that this sort of law is going to stop every single gun but it's going to make it harder it's going to make it more difficult and it will save lives in the long run i don't know why you're going to this show business or me who are mean by saying that all gun sellers at gun shows and on the internet have to go through the simple process that takes less than a day. for less than a day sometimes it takes

a few minutes sometimes it's sometimes it really is longer than three days and you know what happens when it takes longer than three days the person who needs a gun for their self defense has to wait in fear. they have to interfere you know exactly if it takes longer than three days they get their gun and they get to go home with it and then later a week later becomes back and they weren't supposed to get back on to about nothing really will have a problem with that i would if someone is if someone needs a firearm for their self-defense and they feel they need it right away i want them to be able to get it right away so we i don't think people should live in fear because of you and your fear mongers and your blood profiteers why are so many people living in fear what is a final world out there sam in america really i mean this is where they have all this gun violence and we could take a walk two miles outside of the studio and we would be in fear i'm not disagreeing with that but i mean we have far more gun deaths than any other country in the world as more guns than any it's a big country it's not there's a lot bigger countries than ours here but then we're not talking just

a small measure amount of gun deaths compared to other countries we're talking exponentially higher gun deaths in this country and all we're doing is trying to make sure that some of these gun deaths which are a lot of these guns carried out by people who are i know if you don't have a gun in the first place but forty percent of gun purchases take place without any background checks this is so completely reason why do i have ten people support i do i know where when we're actually dense people like why i think i need sleep or so why do i need permission from some bureaucrat or from some government agency to exercise a right guaranteed by the constitution look when there's one there's the first amendment right right so you're against pornography laws. i have a personal problem with panache but i understand it's constitutionally allowed so what about laws against death threats you know well that's assault that's illegal it's just speech though i mean who are all of us all somewhere but that's a restriction on speech i mean if i'm sure something that's a restriction on it's against a lot or not is always a restriction on speech and yet here we are saying we're just going to we're not

going to stop anyone who is legally able to buy a gun we're just going to take the do measure to make sure that they aren't a violent criminal that they haven't been adjudicated mentally ill and that's all and you're saying that this is this is ripping apart the second marriage i don't see it ripping apart the second amendment any more than pornography laws or death threat laws are ripping apart the purpose also other concerns with the background check because it creates the de facto gun registry because you create a did this is an illusion i mean this is an illusion really in the legislation that it doesn't do anything like that really yes really. i think you're telling me that the government will back off of these records it's only that i don't have any . patriot act one are going to come in and confiscate in force everybody to live in the cities to i mean what's going on here i know but he actually posing a national gun registry i wish i still had a registry that shows people who are violent criminals and have been adjudicated mentally ill and they want to make sure those people don't get guns whether or not they're buying them from a gun sale from a gun seller a licensed gun dealer

a gun show or someone or some guy off the internet this is their property first of all i wish i still had that naive belief that the government is good and can be trusted this has nothing to do with the government will they do with these background checks it creates the defacto congress do you think we should have no background checks you think in ninety four when the law was created to prevent background checks i would have is against the next you're going to say that i know you're still in your high that of the one point eight million people who've been turned down trying to buy guns as a through background checks i would say to those billboards humility or something to those are false positives very small percentage i would say seventy five percent . well the numbers there and you can have your numbers i can remember my numbers here but do you agree that there are mentally ill people in violent criminals out there who are trying to do you think they should have guns do you think they have already been adjudicated as being mentally incompetent then i understand that if you have years you could you were radcliffe's often and you've threatened your wife and told you're going to kill or should you be able to go and buy a gun i think unfortunately what you're dealing with a son should you be able to either go into

a serious seriously sam we're struggling with the same thing and that in a free society unfortunately we have to have freedom we can't preponderate people we have it but we put restrictions on this freedom because if you are violate going to law you are punished that's freedom but there's an obviously there are a lot here there's obviously holes in the law where forty percent of guns the law doesn't cover at all but we got to go we got to go do we have we got to go it happens it's good debating with you it's not me so you all right after the break saturday mail is back by. but to say the postal service isn't over just yet i'll talk to congressman mark poke him in the nation's john nichols about a new bill that could go a long way towards keeping one of the most successful government programs in american history safe from the austerity hounds in just a moment. that's

a meteorite only. ten thousand tons told through space towards russia. with the power. of a nuclear. weapon sky full on an icy. potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit

stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more connery down to the bottom line there is still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. piece and it is been a pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout what's been like bilbies long three driving lessons of emergency vehicles there are exceptions. to. the.

poll. and in the best of the rest of the news yesterday the board of governors of the u.s. postal service canceled their plan to eliminate saturday delivery of mail back in early february the postal service announced a plan to cut saturday mail service which would have save the post office nearly two billion annually or so they said and helped its budget woes of course as we've

told you in the past those budget woes are all thanks to the bush administration and republicans and some democrats in congress back in two thousand and six they passed the postal accountability and then hanson act now under this act the postal service is forced to prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next seventy five years in just a ten year time span i mean that it has to put aside billions of dollars to pay for the health benefits of employees that has even hired yet or even been born yet something that no other government or private corporation is required to do. reacting to the news that the u.s.p.s. has scrapped ending six day delivery wisconsin congressman mark polk a and said quote today's announcement that the u.s.p.s. has canceled its plans to end saturday mail delivery is a victory for middle class families or rural communities in our small business owners who rely on this critical service so just how big of a victory is this for postal workers and really for all americans and what does this decision say about the power of the people in the face of devastating

republican backed austerity cuts well joining me now for more on this is congressman mark procaine representing the second district of wisconsin and john nichols washington correspondent with the nation magazine welcome to you both thanks for coming on here so it's good to have you both on because you both you know in your statement and in your since since these cuts were on air since the ending of saturday delivery service was announced last month you've been rallying in front of local post offices in wisconsin and jonah you just wrote an article in the nation and you're connecting how the the health of the post office is connected to health of the middle class so congressman how is that connection there i mean why does the middle class kind of depend on a healthy post office and even six day delivery service you know i'm a small business owner i've been for twenty five years and in my district i have a small community very small community called brooklyn in brooklyn wisconsin they need the post office and sixty delivery more than brooklyn new york in many ways some cases you have alternatives if you're in brooklyn new york but in the rural communities throughout wisconsin across the country people really rely on that

sixty service for small businesses that can hire workers in the small communities i mean this is their lifeblood and it's in our constitution that we have the responsibility to have these post offices unfortunately some in congress and other places you know just want to reduce the size of government they want to get rid of privatized everything these are valuable valuable services that we're talking about an institution that's older than the country itself and john this this movement to cripple the post office this is partly about austerity it's also partly about a war on labor right a war on unions us. it is a war of labor and of war and unions it's also crony capitalist effort to take things that have been built up by the people by the taxpayers and to barter them off to the highest bidder the biggest campaign donor and so i think we're honest about the moment we're in we see an austerity assault on the big five if you will and that is so security medicare medicaid public education which was

a big effort to prioritize and the post office we need to understand that a wall of these entities all built up by the people are under assault that their target why the postal fight is so very significant is that the post office been battered all over the place and it looks very very vulnerable the announcement was made that the cut was coming and many other cuts are in play and we should talk about those this is not you know the words but union members and people in the community community activists organizing rally over the last two months across this country they had a big rallies mark was out in the snow. a couple weeks ago and amazingly enough they won the lesson here when we talk about chained c.p.i. when we talk about any of these other fights is we could beat up and so even though we haven't won everything in the postal fight we should understand this is a very big deal to have reversed a plan to get rid of a day of postal service in this country and let's talk about broader austerity in just a moment but on the postal service you've co-sponsored legislation to help to modernize

and to get it through this rather than closing rule stations rather than laying off you know thousands of mail carriers let's find a way to get the post office working again what does this legislation do when you know how can people get behind it as well to support it the postal service protection act one it gets rid of that requirement for seventy five year prefunding of pensions that no other entity private or public has to do so if you get rid of that i mean the post office has been profitable through a couple years ago secondly is that allows them to do some other options to raise revenue so basically. let's keep a really strong important program like the pool service open but let's allow you to find some of the new ways you leave any kind of forbidden from selling kind of known postal products the day the act the barriers to the postal service competing are mind blowing and absurd the fact of the matter is that a post office a center of public activity sometimes the only one not merely in small towns but in urban neighborhoods and yet they're behind from doing all sorts of things like

notarizing documents right should we have set up where anything any government paperwork you need done you know you need to up the notarized you turn in a piece of paper something that you do it post office if we simply allowed that level of flexibility we could we could do a lot you could also just you know the private sector is allowed to ship beer right is that right to ship so now all we're supposed to office is that you know so let's just get some of these barriers out of the way and if we do it the post office it will be able to compete unfairly the fact is the post office has unionized workers who are paid a fair wage get decent benefits decent pensions but if we take down some of these barriers their efficiency and their universality will allow them to hold their own and keep it not profitable at least in the game we want to have these cuts yeah absolutely and we need to keep pointing out fights so about this the budget that was released and the president does have some things in there for the post office

and i think he tries to cut through it all down some of the payments of the post office has to pay for these things. but there are some things that are pretty troubling in this budget in the e.u. you had a you had a statement released yesterday when when the budget was released. given the election that we just had in two thousand and twelve in the two years of campaigning we had in which cuts to entitlements were put on the table and they seemed to be overwhelmingly rejected by the american people in the election in progress and some progress was like yourself progressives in the senate they had they had a pretty good election in two thousand and twelve. are you pretty surprised that this is what's being put on the table the change in reference to the chained c.p.i. you know i'm on the budget committee so when we in the house had the budget the paul ryan budget we saw that before all recycled ideas the public rejected it last fall that's what they gave us but for the president who had otherwise some really strong measures in his budget to help get the economy going and create jobs which is should be our singular focus instead he put that little wrong turn and put the

chained c.p.i. which really is a cut to social security you know people like my eighty four year old mother who gets eleven hundred one dollars a month that's a big big cut to people like that who are eighty four and they don't have the savings anymore after that many years it's gone a third of the people as a security live on social security so let's not balance the budget on the backs of our seniors in the disabled in orphans which essentially is what happens through the chained c.p.i. and what you know we were here because we were victorious in the post office you know as far is confronting this stuff how much of this has to do with people not knowing the facts i mean coming out and saying the post office is unsustainable in the world of e-mail or coming out and saying that the government should balance its books just like families balance their books all this stuff sounds at first glance like oh yeah i guess that's reasonable and i guess it appeals to large people these talking points but as a congressman to talk to your constituents how hard is it to say no actually the post office this goes back to two thousand and six it was this law to prefund

retiree you have to go through all this and we're trying to explain why a government budget is different than a family budget that's kind of hard to do so how is it how do you communicate this stuff to people understanding the best example for me being bred new sequester you know no one ever before said you know to your child on the sequester your toy it's not a term we use but government could only you know come up with the question of work like that chained c.p.i. it's a cut to social security but you called chained c.p.i. it's a little more confusing so our job is to go out there just talk the truth and to say look you know this is a cut to social security because they're afraid to do some of the other measures that we really should be doing and some of the. people who should be paying a little more that's our jobs to get those words out but you know there's a reason why washington does that i mean you know those are confusing words i try to go back to explain the sequester people don't quite understand it i guess there's some members who don't quite understand it you know that's the challenge but i think it's done intentionally. just so that one other thought here a couple days ago mark and bernie sanders and mark to kano and rick nolan were out

in front of the white house delivering two point three million petitions they gather them so quickly they could barely keep track of how many so there's clear public opposition to this even with the confusion and here's the interesting thing what do poke can to kano and no one have in common all three just elected all three just through democratic primaries and general elections in some cases not so much mark but the other two they really had to compete with a sitting congressman in a top district and what our media fails to do is to talk to these members who are people who are freshly from the field they're not you know thirty year washington insiders they're people that just won with the voters and what did they win on protect social security protect medicare protect medicaid fight austerity these that's the message they want to and yet our media tends to go back again and again to the career insiders the people who've been there forever and let him talk their false language we should be talking to people like this a lot more i agree and that's what we're doing right now if you are about to do you write me

a challenge it is it is not just congress it's also the media that tends to buy into this so i mean why is the media like this and other forces beyond the media i mean congressman you when you went on tom's radio show a few years back and you went to these alec conclaves and talked about what's going on they're looking at these kind of shadow think tanks and what is really driving this agenda it's obviously not the american people they spoke on the election and they elected people like you to come here and yet this is the kind of budget we're getting and we're seeing the kind of laws we're getting is it is it this kind of shadow government this is the money too much. and there is it lingering effects of that truism and reaganism after thirty years that are still causing people to make these decisions i mean we have just a minute left so you know what is the there's is way too much money in everything from campaigns to the people trying to influence as a lobbyist it's not you know my mother does not have a lot of this but every chemical company and every oil company does that's part of our problem when it comes to these austerity policies

a lot of companies that want to see things privatized so they can make a lot of money and it didn't sound to change the way we elect people to me well look we should amend our constitution to get big money out of politics we should also pass we should amend the constitution have a national right to vote have a guarantee that your vote is counted and that you can actually go to the polls there's a lot of big reforms we should do in this country and the one thing we should remember is in history we've done before nine hundred ten to say quickly i know we're at the end here in one thousand when you look at this country women couldn't vote we couldn't elect our senate and we couldn't tax the rich by nine hundred twenty we could let's make this next decade not just a decade where we fight austerity but where we restore democracy to the u.s. you know these cycles are coming back around again we have to step up and win a game congressman if they're to have you know john thanks for. coming up robin hood pretend to be people of england by stealing from the rich to feed the poor after the break we'll explain how he simple tax will go a long way towards making our government less like the sheriff of nottingham and

more like the heroic prince of the. us. let me let me respond i wouldn't. let me ask you a question from. here on this network is what we're having the bank we have our knives out if. it is true is the scientists back staying there again you're in a situation where being idle operation talk about your name and me. onto the coal.

emission free accreditation free transfer charge is free coming from and free risk free. to tide free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects for free medio donda r t dot com you. know for. the first. cause.