June 10 - The Republican House's Latest Gift to Wall Street; Another Government Shutdown in the Fall?; Half of Germans, French and Italians Against Defending a NATO Ally if Attacked by Russia

Full Program

Part 1

We be begin with the giveaway to Wall Street that was cynically masked as a pro-farmer bill, “The Commodity End-User Relief Act”, which passed in the House by 246 to 171 designed to help Wall Street banks and the Koch Brothers avoid regulatory scrutiny allowing for riskier trades of the kind that brought about the 2008 crash. Bartlett Naylor, the financial policy advocate at Public Citizen, who served as the chief of investigations for the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, joins us to discuss the Republican strategy of cutting enforcement budgets and imposing cost-benefit analysis as a way to undermine oversight and slow down implementation of the Dodd-Frank Reform Act, and the president’s promise to veto the bill because “it offers no solution to address the persistent inadequacy of the CTFC’s funding”.

Part 2

Then we examine the warning by Senator Patty Murray, who negotiated the last budget deal on sequestration relief with Congressman Paul Ryan, that Republicans are heading for another government shutdown unless they make a similar deal that sequester relief is done equally for defense and non-defense spending.Jim Manley, a 21 year veteran of the U.S. Senate where he served as senior advisor to Majority Leader Reid and the late Senator Ted Kennedy, joins us to discuss whether Republicans are capable of avoiding another government shutdown this fall.

Part 3

Then finally we assess the implications of a new survey by the Pew Research Center that finds at least half of Germans, French and Italians are against using force to defend a NATO ally if attacked by Russia, with only 38% of Germans seeing Russia as a threat to its neighbors and only 29% blaming Russia for the war in Ukraine. Andrew Michta, a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and author of “The Limits of Alliance: NATO and the EU in North and Central Europe”, joins us.