Tonight's guests:
- Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, Democrat from Ohio, House Budget Committee
- Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, former economic policy adviser to Vice President Joe Biden
- Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Senate Judiciary Committee
- Carlee Soto, Jillian Soto, Matthew Soto, Newtown Action Alliance, siblings of heroic Sandy Hook teacher, met with members of Congress today
And pucker up for executive producer Bill Wolff with tonight's preview:
Leave a Comment:
Rachel,
I keep hearing all the Republican bad things Democrats and President Obama have brought into the economy, but I might have missed what the Republicans want to replace in the economy to make to make it better. Have the Republicans put forward any proposal in this Congress to help our economy?
Gary Conner
Short answer: No.
One of the reasons I think that only 6% of people realize that the deficit each year under Obama is decreasing: they only see the increasing, much publicized, debt and don't differentiate between the two. I think it would serve your public to briefly explain the difference between deficit and debt when you have a discussion of this sort. And maybe you've done this is the past and I missed it, but it might serve useful to point out that there was only one time in US history that the country was debt free and it lasted one year - when Andrew Jackson accomplished that goal in 1835. And for various reasons, right after that, there was a huge crash and a depression that didn't start getting better for six years. The government had to start borrowing money again and we've never come close to paying off the debt again. Eisenhower was the last Republican to have a balanced budget. Democrats? LBJ had one year that had a balanced budget and Clinton had four years of balanced budgets. The general public needs to know that even the very few times the country had a balanced budget, the debt DID'NT GO AWAY! In general, the debt continued to go up due to the interest rate - just at a slower rate. (In looking at every year back to 1976, the National Debt only went down once - during one of Clinton's balanced budget years.) It's not very long ago that I tried to educate myself on this issue because a lot of what people were saying didn't make sense to me. It would be great if more than 6% of Americans could know about this - even though I have to admit that it's kind of depressing knowing that paying off the national debt is not a feasible proposition for many generations to come, if ever. Although I know it's important to strive toward a balanced budget, I wish we could strive toward creating some jobs!
Need those charts from tonight show
Deficit is going DOWN
YES: PLEASE POST a link to that great graph that Rachel showed us tonight!
:-)
SPEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKK UUUUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP! i am sure you are saying interesting stuff but its just impossible to listen...
You can blame the media and it's intent on NOT challenging anyone they put on air with the facts.
You honestly think Brian Williams is going to say on air that the Republicans are wrong? What are the odds they'll broadcast those charts? Where's the front page story with those charts and points? Anyone see it? I haven't.
Nah.
We're stuck with this watered down and questionable "news" content, because the Press lacks any foritude or declines responsibility to bring objective news and information to the public.