i think. everybody told you. that you know the press is the only industry specifically mentioning the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy which. i'm tom are and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going. to go beyond identifying. rational debate real discussion critical issues facing the camera ready to join the movement and welcome. i am sam saxton for tom hartman in washington d.c. here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. mitch mcconnell is the face of

the republican party in the senate but new polls suggest that he faces a tough reelection battle so could mcconnell actually lose and if he does would that really change anything up on capitol hill to talk about that and more tonight's big picture politics panel. also citizens new film pandora's promise says the nuclear power is the solution to solving global warming but is this really true . and in a world created by the n.s.a. where we're all spying on each other everyone loses the latest story about a tech expert in india who became a target of british spies and how any one of us could be next later in the show. and let's start tonight by talking about senator mitch mcconnell he's the leader of the rip. public in minority in the senate and any time we're talking about

republican filibusters in the senate we're talking about him mitch mcconnell has quietly led all of that now some of the things mitch mcconnell's filibuster has killed climate change legislation a public option in health reform a disclose act to force disclosure of new spending what in our elections the employee free choice act the dream act plus there's the multitude of presidential nominations that have been held up by mcconnell's minority in the senate just imagine where we'd be today had mcconnell not ruthlessly wielded the filibuster during the first two years of the obama administration and beyond he has been the single greatest obstructionist in the senate is the filibuster came as opposed to ted cruz mcconnell has developed this reputation as this rational guy who comes in at the last minute and cuts a deal with harry reid but really what good is that if this deal just kicks the can down the road like every budget deal every debt limit deal has so far perpetuating

government by crisis ted cruz gets most of the attention as being a crazy obstructionist but ted cruz ted cruz hasn't actually done anything he didn't hold up anything in the senate is filibuster was a charade approved by harry reid but mcconnell the guy who is considered the moderate next to cruz has quietly transform the senate under his leadership of the minority he's required nearly every piece of legislation to meet the sixty vote threshold filibusters under his tenure have no modern or ancient precedent and you know what. he actually might pay the price for all of this mcconnell will have to defend his tactics to his constituents in kentucky next year he's up for reelection and a new survey of voters in kentucky shows that he's running neck and neck with kentucky's secretary of state the democrat alison lundergan grimes they're both at thirty seven percent on top of that according to that same poll mcconnell has an unfavorable rating of fifty two percent kentucky and a plurality of voters forty three percent would like to see him replaced instead of

reelected so what this means is next year the leader of the filibustering republicans in the senate will be fighting for his political life he can obstruct this coming election and if he goes down and republicans have to pick a new leader it might be wise to remember what hyper filibustering did to the last guy's political career. and joining me for tonight's big picture politics panel are chris deaton managing editor of red alert politics mark levine progressive commentator and host of the inside scoop radio show and bob parks member of the black leadership network and project twenty one and senior video producer for m r c t.v. thank you all for joining me so you heard my rant off the top here about mitch mcconnell does the fact that he's in this what looks to be going to be a close election and we're not talking about a primary republican primary right now the polling showing a close election with

a democrat does that change the way he operates in the senate over the next year to the election the sort of you chris well i mean i i'm not entirely sure about that because i think you know senate is kind of status quo at this point i think everybody is kind of on lockdown but it's been anything but set of the last five years with the filibusters i mean we saw that charge in the way the filibuster has been used in the previous two hundred years or so of the nation versus where it's been pretty i mean if you go back to you know the days of different dirksen i mean it was kind of you know first brought up back then and obviously this is men an issue in which democrats and republicans have gone back and forth in the senate change the tide i mean obviously the jew dish. lockdown in the senate you know back when you know the republicans were not in control the democrats were in control and that was that was a very big part of it and it obviously is curious what does do things change that with and i mean you don't know i mean i've said i mean i think what is probably going to end up happening with you know mcconnell here is look he's like he said you walk into a very close election you have to remember about you know these particular polls that are coming out right now is bad they are you know produced by firms that tend

to have a little bit more partisan back and that doesn't mean that they are necessarily categorically bad but he's going to be locked into a title action he or he already is a fairly conservative man and you said that he is a little more to the left than ted cruz was you know been a pretty conservative center in the senate i don't i don't think anybody would say anything i mean to say you know he's a he's a fifty to seventeen or something against this tea party challenger that he's faced i've got so he's that the tea party isn't really playing much of a factor here which is interesting in itself bob isn't it i mean we're hearing about all these tea party challengers they're coming in there's no tea party challenger really a legitimate one to mcconnell at this point does that signal that the tea party has lost some of its influence here well i don't think the tea party lost that much influence at all i think if you have the i.r.s. breathing down your neck as you did in the last election and swinging things just a little bit that could make that could make i could make some that could make a big i carefully out of left field here i mean you bring in the the whole iris

targeting started leftist groups too as well i mean. the senate percentage wise there was about much and i personally wouldn't give. a little less judicious as my colleague here i won't give as much credence to a move on dot org poll that that claims do that this is a tight race i think the senate democrats in general are going to have a hell of a time running especially with the albatross of obamacare around their necks and i want it so i mean that's something and you can laugh and was that's the kneejerk thing with their. you know reciting code words like obstruction i mean that's what politicians disposed to do you know if it is never done that it's level before if if if mcconnell is in this stuff and if he loses can we consider that a referendum on the tactics that have been used by republicans in the center of the loss of life that we have a referendum without him losing i think it's going to be tough to beat him let's be fair i mean alison grimes she's the daughter of the kentucky democratic party leader she's got thirty seven percent people don't like mitch mcconnell but

kentucky is still a pretty red state it's still got some old ties to the south it's going to be hard to beat mitch mcconnell the thing that i think that we realize on a national basis is the filibuster is done by the republican party against president obama are greater than every president every filibuster in all of american history combine they are doing things they've never done before they're saying you know what president you have a right to appoint judges anymore on the d.c. circuit for example they said you know what we think they can if you have it just fine she's moderate but we're not going to let her be there because we want republicans to control it they are saying we are taking away your right to appoint judges will probably have never done that before if they keep it up the filibuster will and mark my what have they been given covered by the lack of media attention to the filibuster were sure to be a fair severances storage levels here and you really aren't hearing this is a major so i mean first of all you have to remember that the filibuster is a fairly insider tactic for washington d.c. and if you actually see the word filibuster back home it's not

a very resonant word i mean a lot of police life we end it no one will care and you don't now that's not necessarily let me let's move on to this next topic here i think we've kind of beaten this we're filibustering the rest of the topics here the voting rights act was delivered to deliver was delivered a blow by the supreme court earlier this year when section four of it which is determines the formula for which states and local governments have to you know get pre-clearance before they make voting watch enters the courts short that down and said it's congress needs to come up with a new formula. last time congress reauthorize the voting rights act. wasn't controversy zero dollars two thousand and six it was a vote of ninety eight to zero in the senate three hundred ninety to thirty three in the house bob can we assume that republicans and democrats are going to come together like they did just a few years ago and fix the voting rights act as the court told them to do. i think it should go back to the states to determine because the states know best what's going on in their states and whether there's really a need for this i don't really think that there would be much of

a call for voting rights for voting rights changes for example if a lot of the people who are being targeted by it were voting for democrats. voting for republicans. you'd hear a lot more. complaining i personally am insulted by all this need for voting rights changes because there is an assumption by the left that one blacks are too stupid or too able to get i.d.'s i had a crew go out and one of the few people who had a crew go out and ask black people in this town how hard it was for them to get an id and they laughed at the question and so for this whole disco thing as yours will be on a race too and we have a chart here and it shows that voter i.d.'s will affect will affect minorities a lot more than it affects you know your average white guy and it also affects people who are poor ineffectual lower income people but to do it so completely

admit you're sure you're a loser but also really think there's a whole crew it's not stupid to get an idea it's people who are working two jobs they can't get by they're trying to make and now you're telling them they need to take a day off your sister then go to the d.m.v. and sit down it's frankly act as a clear poll tax you can't charge someone to vote is against the constitution the united states to charge someone to vote and that's what the states are doing in georgia what they did is they said you know in the white areas it's going to be around the corner it's going to be in your neighborhood what i can provide to be in atlanta where this massive black population lives when you say the state should be in charge that since shutters up my spine that's jim crow oh alabama they'll be fine mississippi that we live we trust the shorts are nice thing is all well and nice but you know something you don't feel jim crow laws in the south well democrats should know about the jim crow laws better than anybody else but i don't know if you want to open that door but i'm just i'm opposed to get out of it i'm for that but i'm worried that if a black person can find enough time to go to the supermarket or gold to get lunch or to go to the bank during the week they can find enough time to go to

a deal that if you disable the ninety years old then as people in this area said you find police are people who will help you whether you own isn't a right it's something you have to depend on your neighborhood to do you have a good friend you have colleagues i want to bring i want to be a christian here on this issue because but i do with ultimately what happened here is. two thousand and six this law was reauthorized move what's changed in the last seventy years why there should be a problem here in doing this again well i think the supreme court happened and the supreme court but roberts has really says that are going to get congress must ensure that legislation passes right to speak to current conditions he clearly is telling congress they need to re address this issue s. he absolutely is and i think one sort of as you put what's what's changed with congress and what's changed with the country in general because what's changed the country in general is that look this formula was based on one nine hundred sixty four law and if you look for instance in the original v.r.a. the entire state of mississippi was covered under the b. already and that was largely because you had less than fifty percent overall voter turnout if you look nowadays in a state like mississippi there are only

a handful of counties where that is still the case we've got to go to break there so we'll put this up if you're not just as i care here's. more of tonight's big picture politics panel right after the break. people are interested but he has something to say everybody has a story on the pathetic person want to sit next to an airport. i mean there's always in the was and. that's whether it's a ballet dancer a ballplayer those things that are curious to see just things i think about. that were not a. ok ok ok it was a very very take a little to get here. have you ever had sex with me

there's no. place. to. live. for the for. the people.

and welcome back let's let's talk about the minimum wage now something even republican support increasing according to a new gallup poll released earlier this week fifty eight percent declared republicans say that they want to raise the federal federal minimum wage from seven dollars twenty five cents to nine dollars an hour public and support for raising minimum wage is still less than that of either democrats who are ninety one percent in favor or independents who are seventy six percent in favor but. only eighteen points lower than the national average of seventy six percent of people in favor of raising the minimum wage the poll numbers like these have congressional democrats and the obama administration thinking they can reach even higher right now

a group of liberal lawmakers led by with senator tom harkin and california congressman george miller are gathering support for a bill to raise the minimum wage to ten dollars and ten cents an hour by two thousand and fifteen the president himself has reportedly backed this proposal and for good reason too if the minimum wage had actually kept up with inflation it would be way higher than what it is now just seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour in fact the real value of the minimum wage and wages in general has declined so much in the past half century or so that even if the harken miller bill passes the minimum wage would still be sixty seven cents shy of its nine hundred sixty eight high of ten dollars and seventy seven cents an hour also worth noting raising the minimum wage is a great economic stimulus going to a recent study by the economic policy institute increasing the national minimum wage from seven twenty five to ten ten per hour by july first two thousand and fifteen would result in a net increase in economic activity of approximately thirty two point six billion

dollars and over that period would generate approximately one hundred forty thousand dollars i'm sorry one hundred forty thousand new jobs even raising the minimum wage to just nine dollars would according to recent chicago fed increase the level of real gross domestic product g.d.p. by up to three point three percentage points in the near term so this sounds like a plan right now let's bring back our politics panel christine mark levine bob park so first question to to bob and to chris here are the fifty six percent of republicans who support raising the minimum wage are any of them on this panel right now. no no no i think we're i think we're over two so i want to bring up this other chart here and it shows the increase in the minimum wage by real dollars going up and you'll see it's a steady steady increase here we have the chart there is so you see at the bottom the dark red line that's the statutory dollar of the minimum wage we say the top is

effectively the purchasing power of the minimum wage you see that it peaked out there in the one nine hundred sixty s. and since then it's declined why not just to have the minimum wage have the same purchasing power as it had in the one nine hundred sixty s. when was the golden age of the american middle class only were that easy i mean first of all you're talking about that poll talking about nine dollars an hour miller's and harkins bill actually has a minimum wage that would go in excess of ten if you go back to vincent gray's bill that was in earlier on in the real version that i know you've made of dollars in the one nine hundred sixty s. here if you go back to d.c. where the bill was in excess of twelve dollars an hour and he vetoed it citing concerns that it was going to drive away jobs that you could already that was going to drive away wal-mart that's why it's well if it was a bill that was targeting wal-mart but that doesn't change the principle of the matter when you talk about setting chrysler it's like this econd economics if you create a zero sum game out of that were some people are inevitably going to lose out you can be billionaires as you have here who could employ hundreds or thousands of people but what's going to end up happening though is that you have people

a lot of democrats like to imagine that if you raise the minimum wage is going to create this out true istic sense among business owners were all the sudden we're just going to cut our profits it's not going to happen they're going to pass the cost of long to consumers they're going to pass the cost of long to workers in terms of what already people already know that we have already already the costs bob are passed along to taxpayers if you look at wal-mart their employees are some of the biggest recipients of federal federal dollars of welfare should we raise the minimum wage and tell walmart that they should take responsibility of their own workers and pay them enough so that they can make ends meet rather than taxpayers happening to come in and foot the bill. the one of the problems that i have with the whole concept is this condescending view that people who are on minimum wage or on minimum wage for life there are certain people who earn what are called raises they work hard they spend a certain amount of time there they are no longer making the minimum wage and i'll tell you there's only one instance where i would be for raising the minimum wage

and that would be is if you raised that whatever the difference is what the minimum wage is now to whatever it is and give that employee that full amount but what happens is when you raise the minimum wage up you also increase their taxes now if you want to before raising taxes on the poor fly i'm not going to do that deal i think i do believe only worth a little raise a minimum wage and well and well kept the family i think someone will never hear that never get original only you remember how they lower payroll tax republicans wanted to increase the payroll tax when they increased the tax cuts and little of the conversation back to about was talking about here because it really makes an excellent point talking about upward mobility we need to talk more about upper mobility in this country we need to stop talking about setting chrysler for people earning wages it is not undignified thing to earn a minimum wage because we aren't having a conversation enough about about new tax policies about new job period asking about new job training policy about workforce development policies that are going to allow people to present a budget and say when their career let's go is there something that i'm right

against that three quarters of people in minimum wage are adults they're not teenagers a majority are the primary wage orders for their family if you think that you can feed a family on the minimum wage i urge you to try even a very scary proposition to know this is a very high ideal is to clergymen if you don't have a home how do you have a problem if you can't afford rent how do you move out of poverty if you can't afford food if you can't afford health care i mean that's one thing that obamacare does actually it puts a lot of people on health care you can't rise above that floor unless you've got a ladder and if you're trying to do people who are if you don't have a ladder those letters guys like michael bennett and rob portman who have introduced legislation that would have better align workforce divel. programs with the needs of the economies in which these workers and people leaving education to asians are going mike lee has a very fascinating tax policy and a new education policy of he proposed the heritage foundation a couple of weeks ago everybody magine imagine it but i'm but you're not you're not addressing them that we're talking to minimum wage here i'm trying to drive you to talk about education but on the ability could you imagine somebody being

a credit for going to the new york philharmonic and getting training there you can't do that under current education policy these are the kinds of things that allow people to rise up beyond i know what they were at right now we're going to have a problem with upward mobility i mean that's the concept of the american dream this idea of hope and mobility but among those nations the united states is is last basically when it comes to the mobility that you know we were good in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight when a wage within its peak income inequality was very low in america since then as it always has declined income inequality is and i want to pick up on another argument this idea that these minimum wage jobs are steppingstone so they're challenged is not really flushed out by the facts nowadays we look at the average age of people working in the music these minimum wage jobs are not teenagers nothing young twenty's their upper twenty's are people trying to support families you have more than three people looking for every one of billable job in the economy this is not the sort of economy where people can just leave a minimum wage or grow from there we have to prevent we have to create some sort of floor that people can survive on that can fuel the economy right bob and not take that fate for right and so if we raise the minimum wage that always happens the

costs will be passed on to the computer so those are the same people who are making the average wal-mart worker makes twenty thousand the poverty line is like twenty two thousand here but i'm still saying that the costs always get shifted it never gets hit that we always hear this argument and yet corporations are sitting on billions of dollars in cash more profits than they have ever in fifty years and they're not spending it i you know this idea that old are going to pass on to consumer you know there's a market out there and that the consumers are going to pay what they're going to pay and not a penny more than you know where those billions are sitting on lots of farm subsidies is this is a new york times analysis of data collected by the environ. until working group we're moving out of the next topic here the federal government paid eleven point three million dollars in taxpayer funded farm subsidies from one thousand nine hundred five to two thousand and twelve to fifty billionaires or businesses in which they have some form of ownership of this list of fifty billionaires who receive subsidies include microsoft co-founder paul allen investment and charles schwab the owner of chick fil a these guys have

a collective that worth three hundred sixteen billion dollars and they're receiving taxpayer money farm subsidies now i don't want to blame republicans this is a partisan bipartisan issue democrats and republicans seem to be completely ok with the corporate welfare spigot flowing i have a problem though with when conservatives say we need austerity we need to go after these these welfare queens which don't really exist meanwhile these billionaires are actually welfare queens and they're completely silent where's the heritage study on this where's where's the fox news investigation on this so why the silence chris ok let's take a look at the draft of the first farm bill that came out of the house of representatives it cut thirty six percent from foreign policy over the last bill biggest percentage decrease in the history of foreign policy united states of america and that bill was that city falls you know it's cutting foreign policy that you can't conflate snap with that it's completely i mean i'm going with going this is we all agree with that in the i'm going to go to the second bill that was passed

out of the house snap was decoupled from the farm bill that still maintains a thirty six percent cut in foreign policy that we're talking about here and we are also talking about the elimination of direct payments if you if you spend some time around the hill there are farmers who will come to members of congress and they'll say quietly we're actually kind of embarrassed we're getting these direct payments absurd they want them to be cut they understand they have to have skin in the game too that bill cuts direct payment in some sleepers that back in his crop insurance let's just end farm subsidies once and for all for say any farmer that makes over one hundred thousand dollars deal no deal no matter what to research it out it chris is saying that we're going to do something about these billionaires receiving farm subsidies want to do something about the billionaires in the oil industry receiving tons of taxpayer subsidies about forty to forty billion dollars over ten years. you know we're right on we're right off the street there are people who do nothing but come to this town to go and get get on their knees and beg politicians for handouts i mean you were you i'm glad i'm happy that you said

it at the start that this was a bipartisan issue because it is there is clearly both sides i mean whether it's the commerce secretary and her family or republicans they all need to go and fortunately because there is so much money our money that are going that exchanging hands in this town you have people who will lobby whether we're i would love to see all the subsidies go away for all businesses for all industries not they see a good end five or subsidies because i would. i would love to see that all these things go away the reason why the k. street is so influential is because we have a political system that depends on constant fundraising so rosen this comes down to a problem of money in politics chris well i don't necessarily think so i mean i think a lot of this i mean the way that you're talking about right now trying to eliminate these programs you know kind of wholesale right off the bat it comes down to a large problem of reform takes time but you know anything to phase out we had

a phase out there was supposed to take place over five or six years it was supposed to be over by now and guess what it with congress with respect to farm subsidies and they were phasing out direct payments there and now it's coming back and so i mean back here with the crop it was coming back in with crop and you know we don't need farm subsidies for farmers making over i'll give you two hundred thousand dollars at some point how about me and me in dollars and we have millionaire farmer what we does on the farms and what the taxpayers we need to steer the conversation back to when they had me on the one second one of us where we need to steer the conversation back to saying that reform takes time the house farm bill does make some substantial sacrifices it's moving in the direction that i think people on both sides of the aisle understand they want to little see we'll see what happens we're going to spare about him have been right away look at obamacare we're in a time here but i'll be shocked if billionaires see some pain from this austerity regime here kristie to work with the parks thanks so much thanks thanks. coming up the dangers of nuclear power costing tens of thousands of people in japan their homes here in the u.s. there's been another malfunction of

a major nuclear power plant so is nuclear power really the way to go forward. i would rather as questions to people to positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf. yeah and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question. i know c.n.n. the most n.b.c. and fox news have taken some not slightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate.

that was funny but it's close enough for the truth and i think. it's because one fall attention and the mainstream media works side by side with you is actually on here. at our team we have a different approach. because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing damn it i'm not how. you guys talk to the jokes i will handle to make that bet. this is my ego like whenever i'm feeling a little low and want to look at all this i still can't believe that i still put george. my first and says it is for the tri be good for the.

good fortune maybe the hope of those. million maybe i'm very proud of the level and so that means the wars that challenge me and getting people ready or. not to love life the more. i think. everybody the if you. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution which says that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy schreck i'll focus. on. them again i'm charming and i'm a show we reveal the picture of what's actually going how i'm gonna go beyond identifying and trying to fix rational debate and real discussion critical issues facing america bought from them ready to join the movement then walk in the big picture.