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I'm not sure what the producers of MSNBC's UP with Steve Kornacki felt that Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform's Mattie Duppler was going to add to the debate on this Sunday's show, but after watching her on there, apparently it was to keep the rest of the guests busy debunking the endless string of lies she told during her time on the panel.

During a discussion ranging from what percentage of GDP is needs to be taxed, to the size and scope of government, to whether Americans even know what the federal government spends money on, or how many people realize that President Obama has lowered their taxes, the conversation got a bit contentious when Duppler trotted out the old "because of Obama, government spending is out of control" canard.

After the Center for American Progress' Neera Tanden made the point that the central thesis of Republicans' economic strategy has been tax cuts, and that it has been proven that tax cuts don't produce economic growth, here's Duppler's response.

DUPPLER: That's not the central thesis of the Republican party. It is one of the tenets of the Republican party. (crosstalk) But you also have explosive government growth. You've got government spending that's out of control and that...

JOHNSTON: It's not out of control. […] The government is rapidly shrinking under Obama.

DUPPLER: After he exploded it. After he increased spending by eighty-four percent. I mean, seriously, this is laughable that you're telling me that are just (crosstalk).

JOHNSTON: This would put us into a depression. You want to put us into a depression. (crosstalk).

NADLER: This is the central lie...

DUPPLER: I'm challenging your assertion that the deficit and the size of government is shrinking after Obama and congressional Democrats took spending and the size of government to all time highs.

NADLER: This is the central lie... this is the central lie of our political debate right now... what you just said.

JOHNSTON: Absolutely.

NADLER: The fact is, what happened to our deficit is, after it was cut... after it went up because of the Bush tax cuts and the wars and everything, since Obama took office, remember, the CBO before Obama took office said the 2009 deficit was going to be $1.4 trillion and it was. Why? And it was hugely increased. Why? Because when you get a recession, you get a depression such as we were in, two things happen.

One, revenues plummet, taxes plummet. People aren't working. They don't pay taxes, number one. And so taxes plummeted. And number two, automatic spending on unemployment insurance and on food stamps goes up because more people don't have money to eat with...

JOHNSTON: And Jerry, if you don't have part two, that you did, that's when you get the great depression.

After Duppler continued to insist that from a "small government perspective" government spending is still too high, David Cay Johnston reminded her of just what that philosophy is going to cost us.

JOHNSTON: We are going to be poorer in the future because we are cutting spending on basic research. The cell phones that we all have have grown from government spending in the past. The jet airplanes we fly come from government spending, the computers we use, the math in them, all come from government spending. [...] We need to be spending money on government research, development and education and Republicans want to cut all that.

After Duppler said she wanted to know how we were supposed to fund these things, Tanden pointed out the obvious... paying taxes. Duppler pretended that cutting taxes was not "the central tenet" of the Republican party, but thanks to her group, that's exactly what it's been.

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Gun Owners of America Director Larry Pratt on Sunday called for lawmakers to end gun-free zones at schools instead of "wasting out time" with the "false security" of universal background checks.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden told host Chris Wallace that the argument that background checks wouldn't help stop mass shootings was "absolutely wrong."

"If we look at the Virginia Tech shooting, that was because we had a faulty background check system that that person wasn't caught," she explained. "He should not have had a gun because he had problems with mental illness... People would be alive today if we had these kinds of things in place."

Pratt, however, said that gun safety advocates were "avoiding the reality that we have been moving in the direction that somehow self defense is not valid, that we can somehow protect ourselves by this background check idea."

"I think it's false security that somehow we're going to stop problems, when there's really no way to spot these problems," he insisted. "Some of the most horrendous mass murders that have happened recently -- including the one in Newtown -- would not have been stopped by a background check."

"We're wasting our time going in that direction when we should be talking about doing away with the gun-free zones, which have been so convenient and such a magnate to those who would come and slaughter lots of people knowing that there's going to be nobody that's legally able to defend themselves in these zones."

Pratt added: "In fact, background checks wouldn't have stopped most of these mass murders that have occurred... We got to face the reality that we've got empower average people, including teachers and other people in schools to be able to defend themselves."

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Thank goodness there is at least one of these talking head shows on Sundays where Republican talking points are pushed back and where it's not just a bunch of millionaire pundits talking about how we need to inflict pain on our senior citizens, and raise the Medicare age in order to appease the GOP during these deficit negotiations. That show is Up With Chris Hayes.

While discussing the Republicans' absolute refusal to raise taxes, their dire warnings about the economy collapsing when Bill Clinton raised taxes, guest host Steve Kornacki asked former Romney advisor Avik Roy how he reconciled that with the similar rhetoric we're hearing from Republicans today. Roy argued that things are different now because of the “Obama levels of spending” and that the rich today are somehow shouldering way too much of the tax burden, therefore we're going to have to raise everyone's taxes in order to balance the budget.

Here's some of the response he got from the rest of the panel.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: The average income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans has fallen back to the level of 1966 when Johnson was president, and the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent have gone in today's dollars from 4 million to 22 million. In 2010, the first year of the recovery, 37 percent of all of the increased income in the entire country went to 15,600 households.

We have created a privatized system to redistribute upwards and the reason people at the top are sharing a larger share of the income taxes because their incomes are growing at this enormous rate, but their burden is falling. And to suggest we don't need to raise more revenue by applying it to people who are a success depends on this government, on living in this society, with its rules that make it possible to make that money is just outrageous. It is arguing that we should burden the poor and help the rich.

[...]

LAURA FLANDERS: No, you're right. we have 50, 5-0 million Americans living in poverty at this point with food stamp help for many of them. We've got 9 million Americans over the age of 50 who are food insecure. One in three of us have no savings whatsoever.

I mean, you talk the Johnson years, in that period, '65 to '73 the war on poverty reduced poverty by 43 percent. We know how to do it. It works. That's what we should be talking about. We are in a crisis where we're going to see stimulus. We're going to see stimulus of poverty and hunger in this country and it's shameful. And again, going back to '63, you had more than 60 percent of Americans, I think even in1983, 60 percent of Americans had private pension plans. Now, it's under 20 percent.

So these elders that you're talking about, young people with greater unemployment than ever before. I mean, this is the stuff that we want to be talking about after the last election, children and poverty are exploding.

JOAN WALSH: And also... we need higher tax rates for the tippy top earners because everybody likes to talk about building the middle class or rebuilding the middle class. Well, the top tax rate that the middle class we in the '40s,' 50s and '60s. The top marginal rate was in the 90's. I'm not saying you should go back to that, but you can't say at 37 percent.

They followed up with more discussion on tax loopholes and deductions, who they favor, what should be done to make sure they're not upside down with whether they benefit the working class. Laura Flanders brought up the issue of a Wall Street transaction tax, which gets mentioned far too rarely. She also discussed that while everyone is pushing for cuts to Medicare and raising the age to receive benefits, none of them want to talk about defense cuts.

If you missed the show, the whole thing was worth watching. It's generally a nice break from the typical Sunday show fare and this week was no exception. Go check it out here.

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After Anderson Cooper took his audience through some of Mitt Romney's revolving positions on the issue of abortion and access to contraception and the fact that there are some recent polls again showing that Mitt Romney is having trouble with women voters in swing states, Romney surrogate Bay Buchanan tied herself in knots trying to explain and defend Willard's flip flopping on the issue.

As much as I really detest Buchanan for her demeanor and just being really mean, nasty and aggressive with anyone unfortunate enough to appear on the air at the same time she does, I have to say, I don't envy her or any of the rest of the right wing pundits out there who have the unenviable task of trying to explain to the voters why Romney has had every position imaginable on the abortion issue and how women are not supposed to worry about who he might appoint to the Supreme Court.

Neera Tanden did pretty well holding her own with her, even though Buchanan did her best to bully her way through the interview and filibuster as much as Cooper would let her get away with it. The fact of the matter is that Mitt Romney has said he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which means rolling back the contraceptive coverage along with a lot of other benefits that everyone is now receiving. He has said he wants to appoint judges who would reverse Roe v. Wade. And Romney has proven during this primary process that he's beholden to the right wing of his party and he's not going to buck their will with what he's willing to either sign or veto if we're unfortunate enough to have him elected as president.

It's also a shame no one called Buchanan out when she tried to claim that making insurance companies pay for birth control is not having the "government" pay for contraception. That's a lie they're allowed to get away with way too often with no rebuttal. As Tanden did manage to point out on the issue, you don't really have access to something if you can't afford either the doctors' appointments or the prescriptions, and that's exactly what would happen under the policies Romney now claims he supports.

And Buchanan's lame defense that birth control has "been out there since the 1950s" is utterly ridiculous and meaningless. If it's only "out there" for the wealthy and upper middle class and not the poor, that doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot for a good part of the population that would also like to have some control over their own reproductive health.

Transcript below the fold.

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