overhaul of the entire tax system. here's the catch, though. other sources are shooting down the idea that this is even happening as fast and hard as they can. listen to boehner himself earlier today on rush limbaugh's radio show. >> rush, there is no deal. no deal publicly, no deal privately. there is absolutely no deal. >> no deal, no deal, no deal. now, here's the white house spokesman jay carney. >> there is no deal. we are not close to a deal. we are -- obviously, the president is in discussions with all the leaders of congress as well as other members, and exploring the possibility of getting the best deal possible, which is something he's held for a long time now. >> we'll go live to washington in just a moment where nerves are frayed, anxiety is high, and confusion clearly reigns. first, here's some of the other stories we'll be ripping into tonight. the hacking scandal just keeps spreading. with charges of eavesdropping, bribery, and something called bl bl blaging. the murdochs aren't the only ones in the cross fire. the fiasco on fleet street. and he was little darth vader in the super bowl ad. he's also on his third pacemaker and his eighth operation. a kid with a bum ticker who's all heart. then millions are starving, but the tragedy goes beyond africa as food becomes as precious as oil, one man warns hunger could spark the next world war. >> this is the kind of night you get into the news business for. i'm telling you so, so much is going on, and are you ready for some football? after several months of an nfl lockout, there may be a new deal just in time to save the season. we've just heard about it this evening. we will have all the details on that later on in the broadcast. first let's get back to our top story. washington's all-consuming debt ceiling debate. kate bolduan is following the reports. we've been going through this for days and days. we hear there is a deal, and then we find out there is not. is there anything vaguely definite at this point? >> reporter: we definitely know, tom, the president called democratic leaders to the white house late this afternoon. it was a two-hour meeting that broke up just a short time ago. we haven't been provided a readout quite yet, or we'll have to find out if we will even at all. i will tell you after that there definitely doesn't seem to be anything definite at this point. a lot of conversation, tom. it appears that president obama and house speaker john boehner are making a fresh drive, if you will, to try to reach a big deal. try to avoid having to maybe go to that fallback plan we keep talking about so much. you laid out really well what the conversation is about those ideas. $3 trillion possibly in debt reduction over ten years. then the details get a little squishy. spending cuts, entitlement cuts, and then a question of revenue. even if i just lay those out there, it seems there's a little bit in here that everyone can not like, if you will. so we're starting to learn more details about not very much, i tell you. it does seem squishy. you laid out very well. john boehner came out to say no deal very quickly, but it shows how sensitive this whole thing is right now. even the talk of elements of what's on the table coming out has people really getting excited. when this came out, tom, just very briefly, democrats were heading into a caucus meeting, a policy lunch, if you will, and the budget director, he was going in there to brief democratic senators. i was told by a source who is very familiar with this caucus. this person put it as jack lou took blow after blow by democratic senators in there who were saying that this deal, even talk of this element of framework would be very bad for their constituents. people very upset about what they're hearing, but we don't really know if it's a deal yet, of course. >> very briefly here, kate. is there any sense from people there saying, you know, if this could be kept under wraps for the time being, maybe it ought to be. it seems like every deal that comes out is coming out prematurely, and that's what's creating more of a firestorm. is there any sense of that in either party of people saying, if they can get a deal and they have to do it quietly in the back and roll it out, let's do t it's the only way we're going to get there. >> reporter: a few things on that. i would say there probably is an element of that. people, if they hear of elements of even what's on the table coming to the press and then coming to these members of congress, that's upsetting them. they don't want to hear it from the press. they want to hear it from their leaders before the press. so there is an element, if the conversation is going to happen and you're having that conversation and back room deal, come talk to us before you talk to the press. so there is that. but any element that we're hearing of what's possibly even being talked about, you're hearing very quickly, very strongly from the left and the right, there are people who are not going to cave and not going to compromise on their positions. it seems as this point they're trying to find a way to thread the needle, if you will, to find some kind of compromise that includes some of these elements that can thread the needle now to just make it through the house and through the senate at this point. >> kate, i know you might have a long evening there. i have images of you being trampled by herds of congressmen to react to something. thanks for joining us with the latest on all of that. we're going to stick on that. but in the heat of the debt ceiling debate, we may be overlooking a simple and troubling fact. no matter what is done, it very likely could cost the nation jobs, which is what so many of us are worried about in this country. we asked fareed zacharia, an astute observer of the economy, to talk it over a while ago. fareed, we've been hearing so much about what will go wrong if the debt ceiling is broken. and yet i feel this rising current of people saying, make no mistake about it. even if we solve this, there are going to be hard times for this country as a result of the solution. >> well, the debt ceiling itself is almost a sideshow. the fact that it has become center stage is just because one group, the tea party, within the republican party, decided to make it that. the debt ceiling simply reflects the fact that we are spending more than we take in. >> and we have an economy in shambles right now all over the country. >> and we don't have growth. the only way you're going to get this economy back on track, tom, is if you have growth. as we look historically, the times that the budget deficit has gone from being a number one concern to moving down when we solved the problem, it's all been we grew faster than we thought we were. if you can get growth back, if we can get people back employed, paying taxes, you can't cut your way to a happy future because the more you cut, the more you get yourself into a downward spiral in greece. what does it mean to cut government spending? it means to lay off people who don't have jobs. they can't pay taxes, can't go to the diner, can't buy stuff. so it may work in theory, but in practice, the more you cut, the more you're depressing the economy. >> one of the predictions i've read is that the solution to the debt ceiling problem could cost us 1 million jobs over the next few years. we could lose what we've created in a very short period of time. do you think that's too dire? do you think that's possible? >> it depends on how much we cut and how fast we do. i think what president obama has been trying to do, again, i think, quite wisely, is push some of these cuts off into the future. when you signal to the markets we're getting our budget deficit under control but don't do it in an economy that is fragile right now. if we were to precipitously start laying off wholesale school teachers, firemen, policemen, then, yeah, because all of a sudden, you have fewer people paying taxes, fewer people buying goods, fewer people buying products. we really need to look at what's happening in europe. the governments that cut too fast too far actually depressed their gdp growth and increased their budget deficits as a result. >> talk to me about the key building blocks that have to be restored. i have had many conversations over months where people have said, if we do not restore the value of housing in this country and the construction market, nothing else we do will solve this. is that a fair building block to begin with? >> i think it's absolutely fair. the problem is it is the most difficult building block to restore because housing went through probably the biggest bubble since the 1920s. it burst. if you look at the nasdaq bubble, the nasdaq bubble burst at its peak at 5,000. what is the nasdaq now? it's 3,000. in other words, 15 years later, you're not even -- sorry. 21 years later, you're not even halfway. you're barely halfway back to the prices. i wouldn't suggest that would happen in housinging. >> it might, though. i have experts in housing saying it could be 15 years before markets recover in some places. >> then the question becomes what can you do? the answer is you need a lot of government support. maybe, but part of the problem was too much government support and too much government encouragement to people to take on large debts. >> let's say we can't tackle housing right now or up front. give me a couple other building blocks that you think are critical to address right now so we get beyond not just the debt ceiling fight, but our overall inability to create jobs. not one of them seems to have a clue how to do it. >> there is one possible way to do it. we have an infrastructure in this country that is in shambles, point one. point two, we have 20% unemployment in the construction industry. so there are millions of people out of work in that industry. 30-year money, 30-year bond rates are 2%. so you could borrow money at 2% for 30 years, rebuild american infrastructure, put people to work. you know, we shouldn't think of this -- all expenditure is not the same. when you build a bridge or expand a highway that is going to increase economic activity for the next 100 years, that's called an investment. that's not an expenditure. >> i think that was the theory behind the shuttle ready projects. hey, we're going to have these projects. and even the president found out not all shovel ready is ready. >> not all shovel ready is ready, but remember before it gets a bad name. out of the $800 million plan, only $100 million was infrastructure. most of that turned out to be on budget, but it's a $14 trillion economy. why did china manage an infrastructure that worked? here's the answer. they spent ten times as much as we did as a percentage of gdp. you can't expect to get a big bang by putting $100 billion into a $14 trillion economy. >> let me ask you one last question. does it trouble you we keep looking at all of this so much in terms of the politics, which party comes out wining in this whole thing? i'm just convinced that both parties ultimately lose terribly because we all lose with problems like this. >> i think it's the worst part of washington right now, which is it seems as though, you take something like infrastructure, republicans have supported something i've been pushing, a national infrastructure bank to finance this kind of infrastructure, so it doesn't cost the public much. the private sector would do it. kay bailey hutchinson sponsored a bill, richard lugar, chuck hagel backed it, and can't get any traction? why? because obama proposed it. it seems to be a uniting factor in the republican party that whatever obama proposes, they can't support. we have to worry about getting the business of the country done and not worry about who gets credit for it because, if we get into this game, we have a national energy policy to solve, immigration, health care. we've got to get the jobs done. and oh, by the way, we've got to deal with the debt ceiling. we can't worry about who gets credit. we need to get these things done too fast. >> fareed zakaria, thanks for coming. >> my pleasure, tom. >> another word out of washington of a deal on the possible debt ceiling. if anything comes up in this hour, we'll get it right to you. just ahead, the flames of scandal seem to be engulfing ever more papers on london's fleet street, and that is raising the temperature of an iconic new york newspaper man who says stop the presses. it's time to throw the con men out. miles per gallon on the highway. how does it do that? well, to get there, a lot of complicated engineering goes into every one. like variable valve timing and turbocharging, active front grille shutters that close at high speeds, and friction reducing -- oh, man, that is complicated. how about this -- cruze eco offers 42 miles per gallon. cool? ♪ but when she got asthma, all i could do was worry ! 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[ mrs. davis ] i want to find a way to break through. to make science as exciting as a video game. i need to reach peter, who's falling behind. and push janet who's 6 chapters ahead. ♪ [ male announcer ] with interactive learning solutions from dell, mrs. davis can make education a little more personal. so every student feels like her only student. dell. the power to do more. so every year my family throws this great reunion in austin. but this year, i can only afford one trip and i've always wanted to learn how to surf. austin's great -- just not for surfing. so i checked out hotwire. and by booking with them, i saved enough to swing both trips. see, hotwire checks the competition's rates every day so they can guarantee their low prices. that's how i got a 4-star hotel on the beach in san diego for half price. ♪ h-o-t-w-i-r-e ♪ hotwire.com first it was hacking, and now it's something called blagging, word tonight that british police are widening their investigations into possible activity by journalists into several newspapers, not just rupert murdoch's disgraced "news of the world." what is bla fwchlt ging, and how do these newspapers do it? it's recklessly or deceitfully getting personal information without that person knowing. i don't know why we need a special term for it, but apparently we do. they did this by hiring private investigators. the daily news hired one investigator 552 times. dan, let me ask you something. up front, the impression that the murdoch empire would want you to have, yeah, expand the investigation because everybody does this. >> that's what "the wall street journal" editorial said a few days ago, sort of this notion, why are we the only ones being looked at? this has been happening for years on fleet street. boy, if the investigation is now expanding into other papers, news corp. and murdoch have got to be thrilled. they've got to be saying, well, finally, it's not just us. at least they're looking into others of the the minu others. the minute an investigation begins, people tend to find things. whether it's what they were looking for is the question. the last subject that people want in an investigation is that investigation, which is the problem for the murdochs, which is why investigating others is only good for them. >> so the other papers would have to come out pretty squeaky clean to turn it all back to murdoch, and even in the meantime, just the headlines they're investigating others suggests other people did the same thing. >> well, yeah, this isn't to suggest that this is going to somehow absolve murdoch of all his problems. it's not. but it is something i'm sure that he and his team have advocated for, which is to say, why are you just picking on us? you used this term blagging, which i've never heard of before, and i think it's important to distinguish between getting information that people didn't want you to get and engaging in illegal activity. >> totally different things. >> i'm not suggesting it's a good thing or it's a positive thing or it's an okay thing that certain media entities are gathering information that they shouldn't be gathering. but when you cross the line into illegality, it's a totally separate line. >> you mentioned the question of the law, and you raised a really interesting point here. one of the things that, as they try to investigate this, they've got to get people to talk, and you've been looking at the degree to which the murdoch empire seems to be shutting down the talkers. >> i mean, look, it's not now that they're shutting them down, which is, look, there's a law firm they've been working with for a long time since 2007. it's called harbottle and lewis. they were apparently the recipients of a lot of information about this scandal over the years. now, they have said -- the murdochs have said, we give you permission to talk to the authorities, but we don't waive our attorney-client privilege. it allows them to answer basic questions from the authorities, but it doesn't allow them to answer the questions that everyone wants to know, which is what did you know, how much did you know, when did you know it, et cetera. the firm has come out -- this is astounding -- has made a public statement, which has effectively said, we would love to clear up the record. we would love to clear up misconceptions and false statements out there, but we can't. very rare to see a law firm do that. >> what about other people out there? a person always with the resources of rupert murdoch gets in trouble, he can settle with all sorts of the worst cases and say, i'll give you a bunch of money. just shut up. >> there have been settlements. there was a soccer player they had a big settlement with, and one of the terms of the settlement was confidentiality. so if you violate confidentiality, we get our money back. so from his perspective, he's not going to violate that confidentiality. again, there's someone else who's got information that currently they can't share about what's happening. >> does anybody wind up other than the street level people, does anybody else wind up or have a threat of jail out of this? it looks like the privacy protection act, the electronic communications privacy act, the foreign communications act -- there are a lot of potential laws broken here, but the question is how do you tag that to anybody other than the guy in the field who did it maybe? >> under the foreign practices act, there have been people who served time as a result of bribing foreign officials. the problem is, the issue is you've got to be able to demonstrate, i think -- some would argue you don't necessarily to demonstrate this, but i think you have to demonstrate there was some knowledge on the part of people here in the united states that this bribery was going on abroad. remember things like that the act i'm talking about generally aren't used for these kinds of purposes. generally it's used when you're trying to get contracts from a foreign government. people have been put in prison because they bribed the thai officials, for example, on a film festival to get special access. that's generally the way this law is used. prosecutors increasingly have become very aggressive with the use of this law. so it wouldn't surprise me if they used it at least as an investigation tool. this comes back to the beginning of our conversation, which is the last thing you want is an investigation because the more they investigate, the more they find, and when they find things that might have been viewed as rogue in a different co