February 5 – Exploding The Lies About The CBO Report on the ACA; What’s Wrong With the $1 Trillion Farm Bill; The UN Rebukes the Catholic Church

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the latest brazen barrage of lies about the Affordable Care Act leveled by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor whose false claims about a CBO report confirming Republican assertions that Obamacare will cost millions of Americans their jobs have been thoroughly debunked by FactCheck.org. Elise Gould, the director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute joins us to discus her article “No, the CBO Did Not Find That the ACA Kills Jobs” and whether the relentless misinformation about the Affordable Care Act will eventually be trumped by facts on the ground.

Part 2

Then we get an analysis of what is wrong with the trillion dollar Farm Bill the president is about to sign as a shining example of bi-partisan cooperation. Craig Cox, the Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources at the Environmental Working Group joins us to examine what he calls a bait and switch in removing one boondoggle and replacing it with another that is even more likely to explode the budget savings which are half of what the president asked for and come at the expense almost a million poor families who will get their food stamps cut while agribusiness will be able to write their own ticket on how much subsidies they get.

Part 3

Then finally, we look into the unprecedented rebuke to the Catholic Church from the United Nations whose Committee on the Rights of the Child have called upon the Vatican to “immediately remove” child abusers. The former religion editor at The New York Times, Kenneth Briggs, who writes for the National Catholic Reporter, joins us to discuss the UN Committee’s call for the popular new Pope Francis to open up the Vatican’s files on members of the clergy who had “concealed their crimes” so that the abusers could be held accountable by the authorities.