that for a politician writing the laws and regulations to tax corporate bankers. there is just too much rat is a society. that. i think. everybody told you if you did 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 correct. then i know i'm tom and i'm this show we reveal the nature of what's actually going . to go beyond identifying. rational debate real discussion critical issues facing the camera ready to join the movement and walk of the day. i am sam saxon 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 we'll talk about that and more nights big picture politics panel. also siddons new film pandora's promise says that 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 republican minority in the senate and anytime we're talking about republican filibusters in the senate we're talking about him mitch murch. ronnell 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 his filibuster was a charade approved by harry reid but mcconnell the guy who is considered the moderate next to cruz has quietly transformed 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 precedents 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 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 until 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 status quo the last five years with 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 to the senate change the tide i mean obviously the judicial. 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 i mean you don't know i mean what i've said i mean i think what 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 is facing a government of and so he's that the tea party isn't really playing much of a factor 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 look 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 clip maybe that could make i could make some that could make

a big player out of left field here i mean you bring in the the whole i.r.s. targeting started leftist groups too as well i mean. the senate side percentage wise there wasn't that much and i personally wouldn't give be 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 waiting and so i mean that's something and you can laugh and was that's the kneejerk thing with their. so you there you know reciting cold words like obstruction i mean that's what politicians disposed to do you know if it is evident 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 the care that you have is 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 word has they've been given covered by the lack of media attention to the filibuster were sure to be a fair summary says storage levels here and you really aren't hearing this is a major so i mean first of all you have to remember 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 it was delivered to deliver it 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's 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 dispose thing is yours bill cosby 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 get a little it playfully admit you're sure you're a loser but also leaning 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 and 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 or not can provide to be in atlanta where this massive black population lives when you say the states should be in charge that's in 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 what i what i answer to but i'm saying 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 dean and if you just say build a ninety years old then as people in this area said you find plants there are people who will help you if 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 that well yes i would agree but i want to bring chris in here on this issue because but i do with ultimately what happened here is . the two thousand and six us law was reauthorized moved up what's changed in the last seven years why there should be a problem here in doing this again well i think the supreme court happened and the supreme court but rather to clearly says that are going to congress must ensure that legislation passes right to speak to current conditions he clearly is telling congress they need to re address this issue as he absolutely is and i think as one sort of as you point well what's what's changed with congress or what's changed with the country in general because what's changed in the country in general is that look this formula was based on one nine hundred sixty four loss if you look for instance in the original v.r.a. the entire state of mississippi was covered in the b r a 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're going to hear no commercial break they're still going to pick this up if you're not just as a carrier sorry about a process more of tonight's big picture politics panel right after the break. and. we're not psyched to active camp at guantanamo where patients are more spectacular than the hunter and their strike never turned the world's attention to the place that sometimes the gulag of our times.

i would rather as questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question or. well if you're going to like these policies i think. they should have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure.

and welcome back let's let's talk about the minimum wage now something even republicans 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 it's only eighteen points lower than the national average of seventy six percent 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 hard. 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 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 to 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 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 or 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 out 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 we're some people are inevitably going to lose out you could be billionaires who 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 want to consumers they're going to pass the cost of long to workers in terms of what already people already know they would 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 have to come in and foot the bill i guess is the one of the problems that i have with the whole concept there 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 one 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 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 flight i'm not going to do it deal i think that it will be only worth a low raise a minimum wage and will and will cap the family i think someone will you never hear that you never get as an alarm that you remember i had a lower payroll tax republicans wanted to increase the payroll tax when they increased the tax cuts a little. conversation back to what bob was talking about here because you really makes an excellent point talking about upward mobility we need to talk more about upward mobility in this country we need to stop talking about sitting crisis worse for people earning wages it is not in the un dignified thing to earn a minimum wage because we aren't having a conversation enough about about new tax policies about new job about new job training policies about workforce development policies that are going to allow people to present to me and said in their career let's get back to something that you know 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 idealistic argument 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 going to people who are if you don't have a lender those letters guys like michael bennett and rob portman who have introduced legislation that would have better align workforce development programs with the needs of the economies in which these workers and people leaving education institutions are going mike lee has a very fascinating tax policy and a new education policy a pretty he proposed the heritage foundation a couple of weeks ago never imagine imagine it but you're not you're not addressing that we were talking the minimum wage here i'm trying to drive you to talk about education but only about 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 what they were at right now we're down to the 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 was at 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 their child is not really. the flushed out by the facts nowadays we look at the average age of people working in the music these minimum wage jobs they're 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 have to face right and so if we raise the minimum wage that always happens the costs will be passed on in the summers so those 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 profit 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 it does a market out there and that the consumers are going to pay what they're going to pay and not a penny more and 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 environmental working group moving out of that stop there 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 charles schwab to attack the owner of chick fil a these guys have a collective that worth three hundred sixteen billion dollars and they 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 fog. 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 i think that bill also it was that that he 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 you know as 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 not really want to research it out a year when you 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 every ten years. you know it's if 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. happy that you said that there's 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 the republicans they all need to go but unfortunately because there is so much money our money that are going that exchanging hands in this town you have a lot of people who lobby whether we're i would love to see all the subsidies go away for all businesses for all industries not casey but they were good and five or subsidies. yes 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 and it's going 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 with congress with respect to farm subsidies that

they were phasing out direct payments there and now it's coming back to add something back here with a problem with 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 a million dollars millionaire farmer what we does on the farms that's what taxpayers we need to steer the conversation back to me on the right 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 listen to see what happens we're going to smell them coming up and right away look at obamacare we're out of time here but i'll be shocked if billionaires see some pain from this austerity regime here kristie to work with the ballparks 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.

with. technology innovation all the developments from around russia. the future of coverage. live. live.

live . live. talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. this is my ego like when i run a few hulloa one here look at all this i still can't believe it i still pinch was. my first and says. try to be good for. good fortune and able to help of those even maybe i'm very proud of so that means towards a lifetime. getting people ready for. i feel like i left a mark. i think.

everybody. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy schreck i'll fix. them again i'm tom and i'm this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on we go beyond identifying and trying to fix rational debate and real discussion critical issues facing our families ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. welcome back to the big picture i'm sam sachs in for tom hartman coming up in this half hour residents of the towns and villages affected by the fukushima nuclear disaster in japan were once told they would be.