i end with quoting senator whitehouse actually. i'm not sure that he read this unless he read to page 142 already. [laughter] because he went to the senate floor after the bp disaster and it isn't really the right word. bp, the gulf still is much like the massey energy killing of the 29 coal miners in west virginia. and many other things we call maximus and disasters. the consequences of and the unchecked corporate power, on balance between people and corporations, the biggest in the world, and a cutting of the connection between our government and the people and in west virginia several of investigation reports about what happened in the big branch, upper big branch explosion explicitly linked it to the political contributions and activity in west virginia. the 65,000 violations of the law under the mining safety act nothing has been changed. they ran the two sets of books. kennedy calls the mccann the enterprise but they were like a out of control corporation that killed people as a result and on a larger national scale that is w

eyed and with quoting senator whitehouse actually. i'm not even sure he knows this lse page cached unless you read to page 142 already. [laughter] because he went to the senate floor after the bp disaster, and the disaster is in the right word. bp, the colts build a bp is much like the energy killing of 29 coal miners in west virginia, and many other things that we call accidents and disasters. they are consequences of unchecked corporate power, unbalanced power between people and corporations, biggest in the world. and they cut the connection from our government and the people. and as massey in west virginia several reports about what happened in the big branch, upper big branch coal mine explosion, explicitly links it to massey's political contributions and activity in west virginia. they had 65,000 violations of law, of the mining safety act. nothing has been change. they ran to set the book. bobby kennedy calls them a criminal enterprise. they were like a rogue, out of control corporation who kills people as result. on a larger na

senator whitehouse is right about that. he inspires people not just to pray or bemoan the citizens united case but to act. thank you for that. [applause] we know what citizens united was about. if you are here tonight and many folks in the room as we work closely together over the last couple years to overturn citizens united i know we're going to with a constitutional amendment or a change in the course driven by the constitutional amendment campaign. it is true outside this room too. if you go around the country and look at the polling and any sort of measurement, americans are not going to put up with corporations messing in our elections or this notion that corporations have the same rights as people. it is a visceral reaction. whether you are a conservative or progressive or anything in between to that proposition. it is the opportunity. in some ways citizens united is the opportunity to push back against a doctrine that even before citizens united has not done so much damage to the country. my book if i can say a few

senator whitehouse is recognized. >> and give a straight answer -- >> senator whitehouse is recognized. >> welcome, mr. zients. >> thank you. >> for as long as there has been discussion about medicare, there has been opposition to medicare and there has been resentment that medicare exists. the forces that opposed medicare initially and that have resented it since are still out there. there is enormous value to certain sectors in the private sector of turning medicare over to private control. giving people vouchers and sending them off into the private health insurance industry for instance would be a significant windfall for the private health insurance industry. so i think it's important that we recognize that political fact and recognize that the debt and deficit problems that we have can be used to become a leveraging vehicle for this long-standing opposition to and resentment of medicare and a desire to disable or change that government program. we saw dramatic and i think very unhelpful changes and actually passed by the republican house of representatives just recently and i thi

of rhode island led by senator whitehouse democrats in the senate are pushing for a vote on what president obama has or curb referred to as the buffett rule it's a rule that will require anyone who pay makes more than a million bucks a year to pay a minimum of thirty percent in federal income taxes regardless of where their income comes from keep in mind the top tax rate now for rate right now for people like warren buffett's secretary is thirty five percent so millionaires and billionaires will actually still pay less than she does but with the buffett rule in place people like mitt romney and paris hilton will make their money sit on their butts around the pool waiting for the dividend checks to arrive will finally pay their fair share in taxes and not just the mac current maximum of fifteen percent senator whitehouse is gone the legislation the pain a fair share act so can such a proposal break a republican filibuster in the senate and actually get consideration in a bought off house of representatives here to offer his take on this is conservative commentator david selig from the from

it's just simple fairness. >> senator sheldon whitehouse, let me say this. this class warfare charge is really bogus. it's not about the rich against the poor. the only class warfare is those with class and those with no class that don't think that the rich ought to be paying their share. senator sheldon whitehouse, thank you for your time tonight. >> thanks, reverend. >> ahead, new gop union bastion. the republican flavor of the month mitch daniels is trying to cripple unions in indiana. but the people are taking to the streets to protest. and chris christie speaks out again on his controversial comments about the civil rights movement. this one might surprise you. we'll be right back. [ sniffs ] i have a cold. [ sniffs ] i took dayquil but my nose is still runny. [ male announcer ] truth is, dayquil doesn't treat that. really? [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus fights your worst cold symptoms, plus it relieves your runny nose. [ deep breath ] awesome. [ male announcer ] yes, it is. that's the cold truth! premier of the packed bag. you know organization i

the author senator whitehouse will join us. the planned parenthood and komen foundation looking for an excuse to pull support from the group. speaking of snakes the burmese the newest voice in cable news is on the new news network. >>it is an independent progressive voice and i love that. >>jennifer granholm joins current tv. she's a political trail-blazer. >>people like somebody who's got a spine. >>determined to find solutions... >>we need government to ensure that people have freedom. >>driven to find the truth... >>what's really going on? >>fearless, independent and above all, politically direct. billionaire warren buffet doesn't think it is fair that he pays less taxes than his secretary. new legislation has been introduced in the senate based on president obama's proposed buffet rule. it would require the wealthiest americans to pay their fair share at a tax rate of at least 30%. >> we need to change our tax code so that people like me and an awful lot of members of the congress pay our fair share of taxes. you can call t

senator whitehouse? >> thank you, chairman. if you don't mind, i would also like to make a brief comment, first of all thanking you for holding a hearing on this important topic. the costs that come with chronic pain are enormous, and they're not just health care costs measured in dollars. they're also human costs measured in quality of life. as rhode island's attorney general, i brought together a group of health care stakeholders to look into problems we were facing. in making pain management a routine part of patient care. our work centered on simple things like making pain a fifth vital sign, recorded by the medical establishment, if my memory serves it was memorial hospital the take that first stop, and other hospitals have since followed on. promoting an awareness and education about pain management particularly for patients nearing the end of life, both across providers and patients has to be a fundamental part of any strategy to improving pain care. we worked with joan tino of brown university who had done a study showi

the author senator whitehouse will join us. the planned parenthood and komen foundation looking for an excuse to pull support from the group. speaking of snakes the burmese the newest voice in cable news is on the new news network. >>it is an independent progressive voice and i love that. >>jennifer granholm joins current tv. she's a political trail-blazer. >>people like somebody who's got a spine. >>determined to find solutions... >>we need government to ensure that people have freedom. >>driven to find the truth... >>what's really going on? >>fearless, independent and above all, politically direct. cu insightful perspective. >>a reasonable republican might run in the opposite direction. good luck finding one. (vo)at current tv, we celebrate journalistic integrity. >>vanguard is going out there and aggressively pursuing stories that we believe are important. (vo)at current tv, we expect accountability. >>there's the school sign. here's the cigarette stand. no one has any problem with this? (vo)and current tv creates the commen

psychology of the country seeing something big and bipartisan, and by the way, i think senator whitehouse has made a lot of great points with the buffett rule. senator coates and i have a top rate, which is lower than the rate -- excuse me is higher than the rate that senator whitehouse has been talking about. so there's plenty of opportunities here for some common ground, and i look forward to continuing the discussion. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i want to take this moment to recognize once again the remarkable amount of serious work that senator wyden has produced without the benefit of the chairmanship. on healthcare reform, and i just want to thank him for it. your honor, i think it's an enormous contribution. senator sessions? >> can -- while she's preparing, i would join in that. it is a tremendous amount of effort that it takes and senator wyden i appreciate your leadership and all of us in the senate watching your work and we appreciate it. >> senator ayotte is recognized. >> i understand that you testified before the house committee yesterday that we can get to 2013 without rais

the author senator whitehouse will join us. the planned parenthood and komen foundation looking for an excuse to pull support from the group. speaking of snakes the burmese >>this is outrageous! [[vo]]cenk uygur calls out the mainstream media. >>the rest of the media seems like, "ho-hum, no big deal." we've have no choice, we've lost our democracy here. just refreshing to hear. no other television show does that. we're keeping it real. billionaire warren buffet doesn't think it is fair that he pays less taxes than his secretary. new legislation has been introduced in the senate based on president obama's proposed buffet rule. it would require the wealthiest americans to pay their fair share at a tax rate of at least 30%. >> we need to change our tax code so that people like me and an awful lot of members of the congress pay our fair share of taxes. you can call this class war fair all you want but asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes. most americans would call that common sense. >> this bill wo

the author senator whitehouse will join us. the planned parenthood and komen foundation looking for an excuse to pull support from the group. speaking of snakes, the burmese python population is exploding. and a study shows that republicans have more orgasms. so now we know they lie about sex. sp we've got some vintage ones like this i love stuff like that. insightful perspective. >>a reasonable republican might run in the opposite direction. good luck finding one. (vo)at current tv, we celebrate journalistic integrity. >>vanguard is going out there and aggressively pursuing stories that we believe are important. (vo)at current tv, we expect accountability. >>there's the school sign. here's the cigarette stand. no one has any problem with this? (vo)and current tv creates the commentary that drives the truth. this is the new current tv. billionaire warren buffet doesn't think it is fair that he pays less taxes than his secretary. new legislation has been introduced in the senate based on president obama's proposed buffet rule. i

i co-sponsored it, senator whitehouse. i'm sure the chairman will have a great deal of wisdom on what to do here and the committee. would you have any problems with us putting some specifics on the table? >> well, it always depends on the specifics but we're broadly comfortable with the approach senator whitehouse laid out in his proposal. now, you can do it different ways but no concerns about not going ahead with something in that broad neighborhood. >> good. okay. one final -- well, my time's up. okay. thank you. >> go ahead. >> okay. just one final point. this is a place the administration and i have disagreed and that is on 250,000 versus a million. i know the revenue concerns with 250,000. the problem is in my state, i imagine in certainly senator menendez, senator kerry, senator cantwell's state, there are a lot of people who make above 250 who aren't rich. property much more expensive. taxes higher, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. and so if the administration believes 250 is the right cut-off for capping deduction

whitehouse: are we in a quorum call? officer yes. mr. whitehouse: i ask that the quorum be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: i rise today at that introduce legislation that would address some loopholes in the tax codes that provide for superhigh-income americans, ways to pay lower tax rates than are paid by regular hardworking middle-class families. these middle-class families feel that they are struggling to get by, and then they find out that some people with really extremely high incomes are actually paying a lower tax rate than they are. that's, to them, just not common sense and i think that's just to all of us not common sense. americans deserve a straight deal and right now they are not getting one from our tax systeme unfairness of our current tax system, we don't have to look much farther than the national headlines. according to a forbes magazine report last fall, billionaire warren buffett -- and i quote -- "paid just 11.06% of his adjusted gross income in federal income taxes in 2010." mr. buffet is the first to express his dismay at this

his hope was that mccrystal would be reinstated, sensitive whitehouse if you will. his fear was if mcchrisal is removed whoever was to replace him could be a great leader but that there would be a loss of momentum. >> charlie:moment. >> he didn't know afghanistan like he knew iraq and they were vastity different situations. >> that's right jeff. that was an entry position where he had four and-a-half years of experience in iraq. he's quite revered in iraq. i see a lot of e-mail traffic from rieks. rieks -- iraqis. he had more time on the ground with them and he suffered losses with them. for many reasons i think iraq is a little closer to his heart than afghanistan. he felt strongly about he was committed to the goals in afghanistan as well. he still is as we saw in headlines today the cia will maintain a large presence in afghanistan as we begin to pull our troops out. so what he lacked in local knowledge there, he had in obviously the experience he had in iraq of commanding a large scale coalition force. more coalition force members in afghanistan versus iraq. but

senator whitehouse. >> thane chairman and thank you for holding this hearing. i think it's very important and help all. i am going back now i couple of years to when we started working on this in rhode island, but the thing that struck me was the extent to which in various health care settings, they pain that a patient was experiencing was either deprecated or overlooked entirely and that there was a systematic bias against recording it and reporting it so that even if you are were able to convince the doctor at a particular time that you were in great agony, when they banafsheh did somebody else came on and they looked at your paper record, there was nothing to clue them because at that point pain was not treated as a vital sign and not part of the equation and there was even doubt about whether was possible to do that and there there is some subjectivity involved but clearly that is something we are able to get around. so my concern is how do we make sure that the hard records that exist in nursing homes and hospitals and various settings of patient care part

don't know seems to be the attack watch rebranded before that was flag your fellow american flag at whitehouse dot gov here in the united states we believe in free speech someone was raised in canada had really was sort of weird to come the united states and see that because it doesn't exist as it does the united states over there in canada it's a distinctly american ideal so do i think it is great to keep people accountable and truthful yeah yeah i do i don't think that i need to be flagged or reported for saying truthfully that barack obama sucks at his job is effective probably barack obama's great campaigning is a terrible president he's great at campaigning and i think conservatives should definitely look at this simple yet effective approach on line and look at incorporate something like this into their own campaign even so this group of two million volunteers that are going to be you know tasked with advocating and reelecting obama what do you expect them what do you expect them to say and what you expect them to spread. well they're going to have to try and sell it this guy isn't terri

whitehouse cooperated. i've been working with all these folks for years. lots of people in the obama inner circle gave me interviews. they knew exactly what they were getting into. they never misrepresent what i was doing and also i fact checked the book with an assistant before publication. we publish an excerpt in the times on saturday. and then a really, i guess to really interesting things happened. the first thing is that people started discussing the book without having read the book and that is not happen to me before because as a newspaper reporter, people just read your work in the newspaper and the other thing is the white house started pushing back and some interesting ways. they had really challenge the reporting in the book, like i haven't gotten a phonecall from david axelrod saying you have got it all wrong and the quotes that are in the book. something that really surprise me surprised me up and yesterday which is michelle obama went on tv and she said and i'm paraphrasing, she said i am really tired of depictions of myself as an angry blac

senator whitehouse? >> thank you, chairman. and thank you again for holding this hearing. i think it's very important and helpful. i'm going back now a couple of years to when we started working on this in rhode island. but the thing that struck me was the extent to which in various health care settings, the pain that a patient was experiencing was either deprecated or overlooked entirely, and that there was a systematic bias against recording it and reporting it so that even if you were able to convince the doctor on duty at a particular time that you were in great agony, when they went off shift and somebody else came on, and they looked at your paper record, there was nothing to clue them. because at that point pain was not treated as a vital sign, it was not part of the equation, and there was even some doubt about whether it was possible to do that, given there is some subjectivity involved. but clearly that's something that we were able to get around. so my cushion is how do we make sure that the hard records that exist in nursing homes and hospitals, in various sett

senator whitehouse. >> thank you very much, chairman. dr. elmendorf, welcome back. >> thank you. >> first a comment and then a question. the comment is that as we face the issues the problem of our healthcare system remains enormous. you and i have discussed before hand the scoring problems of at cell -- of addressing delivery reform. i hope that as you, as an important voice in this debate go around and talk about this that you don't become the captive of your methodology and avoid discussing the potential benefits to our economy of delivery system reform, simply because it's not quantifiable by the metrics of your organization. i think that we have two separate questions here. one is what you can score and the other is what's the right thing to do? and i hope that you will point out as often as you can that solving the excessive cost in our healthcare system by improving the quality of care is a very good thing to do, even if omb can't score it. cbo can't score it. >> yes, senator. so of course, there's a tremendous distinction between thi

. >> sheldon whitehouse introduced a bill to do that which is codifying the buffet rule.nd david kay johnston has done a very thorough analysis of the top corporations in the country. the top multinational corporations in this country -- they cut 2.5 million jobs here and increased 2.9 million jobs overseas. the reason we're seeing a lot of this income disparity is because of hollowing out of the middle class, and what those top companies are spending in taxes in the united states. maybe you can describe a bit of what you learned for the top companies that you studied. >> well if you are not in the top 14,000 companies, jennifer that is companies you have never heard of you are paying pretty close to the corporate 35% tax rate. those companies or about 5 million of them they pay around 32%. so they are pretty close. but when you get to the top, you get a holy different story. typically they are paying around a 20% actual tax rate. some of them as we know are paying little to nothing. pepco has had a negative tax rate almost every year for the last decade and we now have a

democratic senator sheldon whitehouse introduced the buffet rule, anyone making more than a million dollars a year should pay at least 30% in income tax. it's not about punishing the rich as republicans like to say. it's about fairness. >> but, with all the advantages that do come with enormous income, paying a lower tax rate than regular working families should not be one of those advantages. >> let's turn to independent vermont senator sanders, one of the co-sponsors of the bill. senator, before we get to this, i do want to ask you, your reaction to mitt romney "i'm not concerned about poor people because we have a social safety net for them, if it needs fixing, i'll fix it" what is your response? >> a horrendous, ugly statement especially coming from somebody worth hundreds of millions of dollars. ed, the reality is that poverty today is at an all time high. we did a hearing on this in my sub committee, if you are in the lowest 20% of the american people, you will die six-and-a-half years younger than if you're in the top 20%. poverty in many ways is a death sentence. romney and his frie

. >> senator whitehouse, enjoy the super bowl. >>> a court awarded heather over $9,000 after being misleadher hybrid could get 50 miles to a gallon. the decision was called a unrad cat and unprecedented law. they're vowing to appeal that decision. [ male announcer ] this is your moment. this is zales, the diamond store. take an extra 10 percent off storewide now through sunday. trouble with a car insurance claim. [ dennis ] switch to allstate. their claim service is so good, now it's guaranteed. [ foreman ] so i can trust 'em. dollar for dollar, nobody protects you like allstate. okay... is this where we're at now, we just eat whatever tastes good? like these sweet honey clusters... actually there's a half a day's worth of fiber in every ... why stop at cereal? bring on the pork chops and the hot fudge. fantastic. are you done sweetie? yea [ male announcer ] fiber beyond recognition. fiber one. hey, i love your cereal there-- it's got that sweet honey taste. but no way it's 80 calories, right? no way. lady, i just drive the truck. right, there's no way right, right? have a nice day. [ male

make a differences regardless whether the president is re-elected or we have a new person in the whitehouse that person will have more of a mandate to deal with these problems. we've been in a state of paralysis and we have a new election and add a divided government in some respect. we do need to see what this new election brings. i'm not saying it's the answer but i'm not ready to just bury it. >> charlie: in you in fact accept your thesis what do you were he to about that might make it untrue that america will somehow topple into decline. because it's the history for the most part of great empires in the world. hello london, hello rome. >> well rome lasted 600 years. if you're going to tell me we are going to decline in 400 years, we can talk about that, that's fine. i think the united states does enjoy unique advantages as one of the world's procedures which makes it different. i'll give you the most basic. it's jog featur fee. but -- it's geography. we have no great power threat in our own hemisphere. that is untrue of every other power including britain who ultimately faced the threat