Cenk ralph nader got a democrat to admit the most important line ive seen in a long time in politics. What is it . Well tell you tonight on a whole different online show we do on theyoungturks. Com. Well see you there. Stay right here right now because viewpoint is next. John good evening. Im John Fuglesang and tonight on viewpoint, congressman paul ryan has presented a new version of the paul ryan budget but im calling it the agoraphobia budget because it is never leaving the house. Were joined by Louise Slaughter and alan grayson. The papal conclave begins in rome. Weve got a big conclai. Everyone agrees the cardinals should pick a vibrant young man in his early 70s. Were joined by progressive theologian John Shelby Spong. Christmas is coming early for comedians because sarah palin is writing a book about christmas. Birthday of liza minnelli, darryl strawberry, governor mitt romney and adult film star ron jeremy, three of whom are actually quite wholesome people. Black smoke rome, cardinals the big vote. This is vatican idol. John good evening im John Fuglesang and this is viewpoint. Democrats and House Republicans agree, the nation needs a budget. House budget chair paul ryan led his committee to a podium where he unveiled his latest if youll excuse the term path to prosperity. So just how are you going to do it this time, paul . We cut wasteful spending. We repair the safety net so that we can help those in need. We protect and strengthen key priorities like medicare. John you dont say. That sounds like a pretty progressive plan for mitt romneys running mate. Maybe not. You see the reality is congressman ryans budget cuts 4. 6 trillion in spending over ten years repeals new wall street regulations like dodd frank, without specifying what would or should replace them. Replaces medicare with a Health Insurance subsidy a very nice gift to the private Insurance Industry and of course, repeals the Affordable Care act which is always on paul rye ryans greatest hits. Didnt paul ryan and and his pal mitt romney lose over issues like healthcare. Didnt the voice of the people and a republicanled Supreme Court count for something . No according to paul ryan. The election didnt go our way. Believe me, i know what that feels like. That means we surrender our principles . That means we stop believing in what we believe in . Look whether the country intended it or not we have divided government. What we believe in this divided government era, we need to put out our vision. John the landslide will of the American People is not as important as the need for vouchers. As for the Senate Democrats vision, the contrast couldnt be more stark. The senates budget adds 975 billion in increased revenue mostly due to closing the tax loopholes on the rich. Adds 100 billion in stimulus spending. Compensates for the 85 billion loss of a sequester and fights unemployment and cuts 975 billion in spending. For more, lets go to our old friend, Florida Democratic congressman, your friend and ours alan grayson, good evening, congressman. Thankthankthank you for joining us. Thank you. John paul ryan wants to cut while repairing the social safety nets. Wouldnt cuts of that size pretty much slash the safety net . Absolutely. Look, lets start with the Affordable Care act. He wants to eliminate the Affordable Care act, repeal it but he wants to count all of the billion dollars in Affordable Care act down to in order to say that hes paying down the deficit. Lets talk about medicare. In order to save that program hes going to destroy it. Hes going to eliminate every single guaranteed benefit under medicare, replace that with a check that Everybody Knows will not be enough to get the same benefits. John exactly. In one case after another you look at his principles and his vision, theyre a nightmare for america. He wants americans to work until they die. He wants poor people who get sick knob not to be able to get the care they need, not to be able to get better. He wants them to die. He wants an america that consists of nothing but cheap labor for his patrons. John you mentioned the cuts in payments to Medicare Service providers. He factors those into this budget while still eliminating the Affordable Care act despite the fact that he spent all of last fall running tv ads demonizing the president for the cuts hes hinging his budget on. What kind of cuts did he bake in his plan . The tax cuts that, again would benefit his benefactors the people who own the Republican Party lock, stock and barrel. He wants to lower Corporate Income tax rates even though Corporate Income tax revenue is at the lowest point in 50 years. We came close to collecting zero in Corporate Income tax revenue when, in fact, over the course of time, it has averaged 4 or 5 of gnp. That alone would go a long way toward eliminating the deficit paying down the debt. Theyre not interested in that. John ryan doesnt over details on what he would do to Social Security except in his words, require the president and congress to put forward ideas to sustain its solvency. Sir, i didnt know the house could require the president to do anything. What do you think ryan would do with Social Security if he had the chance . Paul ryan believes Social Security is unconstitutional. Just like anyone who follows the writings of ayn rand would believe. If you read the point head if you read the fountain head, these are people who believe government itself, anything that does anything for people, other than defend the borders is fundamentally immoral and unconstitutional. So if you actually administered sodium pentothal to paul ryan and asked him the question, he would say yes i believe Social Security is unconstitutional. He, like my opponent in the last election wants to raise the retirement age to 70 or 72. Would eliminate the program if he thought he could get away with it. John paul ryan renounced ayn rand before the election although in fairness, i dont think she would be a big fan of these guys either. I want to talk to you about the Democratic Party and the president. President obama met with Senate Democrats today. According to politico, i found this disturbing, he warned them social Insurance Programs including Social Security and medicare would need to be cut in some way in order to keep them going. Now, weve discussed this before. The president also said republicans would have to agree for more revenue before he would agree to changing the programs. What do you think of that particular bargain sir . Do Social Security programs need to be cut . The answer is they dont. Social security has almost 2 trillion in the bank. It is the largest Government Fund in the entire world. Thats what theyve got sitting in the bank and thats what the rest of the government and the American People owe that fund. Under current law, Social Security can pay out out 100 of its benefits for the next 25 years which is probably longer than im going to meed it. After that point 85 to 95 of its benefits, a minor tweak like for instance raising the cap on who has to pay Social Security taxes above the current roughly 100,000 or, for instance, making investment income, either one would make the program solvent forever. The situation is not terribly different with medicare. John does the president mean it when he talks about putting the cuts on the table sir . I take no pleasure in saying this. I voted for the president twice. Hes the leader of my party but on this regard, the president is wrong. John before we go, congressman, what do you think of a Senate Budget that came out today . I think the Senate Budget that came out today is a stab at trying to deal with a lot of different problems. Without focusing necessarily on our core problems. I would like to see all effort devoted toward putting people back to work, improving education standards making sure that everybody who is sick can see a doctor and making sure that people who lose their jobs dont end up living in their cars. Thats the america i see when i look around in Central Florida these days. Thats the problem we should be all concentrating on solving. I think this preoccupation, this terrible preoccupation with austerity, with deficits, with debt is mistaken. The government has never been able to borrow at such low rates for my entire lifetime, in fact, going back 100 years the government has never been able to borrow 2 . That shows you there is no fiscal crisis. What it is we have given into the republican mindset of crisis. John representative alan grayson, thank you. A pleasure to have you on viewpoint yet again. Well see you soon. Thank you. John gun control legislation was also on the agenda on the capitol hill. The Senate Judiciary committee took up bills to expand background checks to private gun sales and help schools improve security. The School Security bill passed 144 with four republicans voting nay. Im going to say that number again. I think its interesting. Four republicans voted no on the School Security bill. While the background check bill passed 108 with all of the republicans on the Committee Voting nay on background checks. Iowa senator Chuck Grassley said he didnt think a bill like this would do much good. Criminals do not comply with existing background check laws. Why . Why would anybody then think that they would comply, the criminal comply with broader background check requirements . John why should robbing banks be illegal when criminals are just going to rob banks anyway. New york senator Chuck Schumer didnt buy grassleys argument. Its sad. Right after newtown, there was a view that maybe the right place that we could all come together on was background checks. We never see the argument that oh, the bad people we shouldnt have laws because the bad people will get around them anyway. Only on this issue do you and it makes no sense in my judgment in all due respect. John for more on the gun debate lets go to new york state democratic representative Louise Slaughter. Thank you for joining us. My pleasure. John congresswoman, you were part of a forum where victims and First Responders talked about the need for gun trafficking legislation. What did you hear there and do you think trafficking legislation could ever pass this current Republican House . Well, it has already passed the committee. The Judiciary Committee in the senate. I think it will pass there. It is a bipartisan bill in the house. Remarkably. We just simply have to get it to the floor. I think if we can get it to the floor, people will vote for it here. It makes such imminently good sense. We had First Responders today talk to us about it. Im sure you know about ten days after newtown in my district in webster, new york, two firemen were killed. They were ambushed by a man who had spent 17 years in prison, was an absolute felon. He had killed his grandmother with a hammer. Served 17 years in prison. Came out and coerced a young woman to go to the gun store with him where she bought an ar15 and a rifle. And for him. Now, unfortunately, because we have no trafficking laws now the only thing we can anything that has a federal attachment to it, she lied when she bought the guns that they were for her. We have got to stop this trafficking. What we found from cheech of police from los angeles, also one from a town in pennsylvania, chief ramsey, used to be chief of police here in washington, how awl it is that how awful it is that it goes hand in hand. If we can do the same thing with guns that we do with drugs, we would be able to stop a lot of this handing out drugs. But there is even a correlation with that. And one of the chief of police told us that there sometimes are young men who have serious drug habits when they need some money. They go buy some guns and sell them at inflated prices to people who have no right to them. They know what theyre doing. They need to be punished. John a lot of congressmen are trying hard to stop drug prolivelation but not stopping gun proliferation. Because of the lobbying. The nra fronts the gun industry. The gun manufacturers weve got no second amendment. What are we supposed to do when we go to the theatre or the store or send our grandchildren in my case, off to school . What do they do for protection . Theyve got nobody to protect them. The only protection, apparently in the constitution is for people who want all of the guns they can have. I was encouraged this week to see that fewer homes have guns in them. But that people who have guns are buying even more. And the idea of fighting the federal government with an ar15 and i know that that is an idea that a lot of people have. If they ever looked, as i have, at what the federal Defense Budget is, i think they would dismiss that notion. John i watched your volume. You might find Chuck Grassley trying to unarm children on school buses. I want to ask about the bock ground checks. Our senate friends voted unanimously against private background checks for gun sales today. You heard senator schumer lamenting that. Do you think that bill could pass the house . For some reason, that is one of the stickiest wickets with the nra. As you know, that even when they do background checks, they cant keep them very long. They have to destroy them. Of course, it is important we know that the idea somebody will come and confiscate their guns is utterly ridiculous. How awful it is that 30,000 people lose their lives here and im so appalled at what happened to that 6monthold baby in chicago today where a gunshot wound and death are just commonplace. For a 6monthold baby to be shot five times america knows it has to do something. And it has to do something now. John it is appalling and sadly preventable. You heard schumer say there was a moment after the newtown massacre where he thought congress could come together, at least over background checks. We were going to. But it took too long. We were all worry about the that. I will say that we never let it be forgotten we keep it up all the time. I wear a bracelet myself for the students in newtown. I think all of us were so stunned by that as we were at what happened in aurora, at columbine, all of them. But the notion now that americans arent safe anywhere. Few years back when dr. Teller from kansas was killed while he was in church, i had the Congressional Research service do a survey for me because i grew up thinking that a place of worship was sanctuary. If you could make it to the church they did thats not the case anymore. No place is safe. John and sadly the rest of us in america have all of our eyes on d. C. Where you are maam. Do you think the moment where major gun control legislation posts newtown postnewtown has passed us by . No, i dont. Because it has to be done and we were saying today if you could have heard First Responders today, i tell you the firemen we lost in rochester one was 19 years old. What he wanted to do more than anything was pick up other people. The other one had little girls 4 and 5. Looking at them holding on to their older brothers hand at the funeral nobody will ever forget that. The bravery they had. The firemen tharp here today had been shot three times. Hes still recuperating. I thought he looked pale. He has to get back to rochester tonight. He and his wife came down today. A lot of tears. A lot of hugs. But the fact of the matter is it is our responsibility. Those of us who have been elected to come here and serve. Because we are the only people in the federal legislature that can really do something for the 50 states. John representative Louise Slaughter, democrat of new york. I thank you for your service. It is great to have you on viewpoint. Thank you so much. John the s. E. C. Certainly needs a change but does it need this particular change . You dont want to miss it coming up next. People with sore throats have something new to say. Ahh mmm ahh finally, theres cepacol sensations. Serious sore throat medicine seriously great taste. Plus the medicine lasts long after the lozenge is gone. Ahh mmm cepacol sensations. Rich, chewy caramel rolled up in smooth milk chocolate. Dont forget about that payroll meeting. Rolo. Get your smooth on. Also in minis. vo later tonight current tv is the place for compelling true stories. Jack, how old are you . Nine. This is what 27 tons of marijuana looks like. vo with Award Winning documentaries that take you inside the headlines, way inside. vo from the underworld, to the world of privilege. Everyone in Michael Jacksons life was out to use him. vo no one brings you more documentaries that are real, gripping, current. John tonight our political gymnastics of the day. The lovely and nimble phil gingrey from georgia attempted a rare double