increased in over two years by 290 pounds the tax credits that go to the poorest families in our country. and that is why we've managed to take difficult decisions, and everyone knows we've had to take difficult decisions, but without an increase in child poverty. now, in better economic times under the last government, actually, child poverty went up. >> johnson -- [inaudible] >> manufacturing wind you are ts is vital for jobs and also a breakthrough on renewables and, hopefully, increasing the u.k. industry in this area. local councils and businesses are doing everything they can to attract siemens to the area, but we face strong competition. will this government do what the last government dead and back this bill -- this bid? the will the prime minister do everything he can to secure siemens commitment to -- >> absolutely agree with the honorable lady for raising this issue. i think it's vital for the

future of our economy, vital for the future of the area she represents. i met with members of parliament to discuss this issue. i, myself, have spoken to the head of siemens about the importance of this investment going ahead. we're carrying on with the extra money going into ports to help the development of this industry, and we back it all the way. >> amer rudd. >> thank you, mr. speaker. this morning with organizations working in the horn of africa, representatives expressed their great -- gratitude for the fact that the british people have been so generous. that is continuing to deteriorate. could i ask the prime minister whether he's going to make sure this government continues to provide international leadership to help the people in east africa? >> i can certainly give the honorable lady that assurance. these are difficult economic times, but they have shown an incredible generosity and led the world in the contributions that they've made. and because this government, again, in difficult economic times has made the decision to fulfill our pledge of reaching

.7% of national income going into aid, we are also leading the world in the amount of money that we're putting into the horn of africa to vaccinate children, to save lives and to recognize this is an ongoing humanitarian crisis. >> [inaudible] >> does the prime minister agree me that his housing minister is an absolute star? in the face of declining planning missions for new built homes, in the face of the lowest number of new homes being built this year in 12 months, across any labour's program for house building, his minister's great idea is to urge councils to build more moorings for houseboats. fantastic. [laughter] >> i thought he was doing so well until he got all political. i think there should be agreement across the house that house building is too low in this country, and it is a shocking statistic that the

average, the typical first-time buyer is now in their mid 30s. so we do need change. we do need more houses built, and i think my housing minister's doing a first class job. >> matthew -- [inaudible] >> thank you, mr. speaker. while much attention is being paid to the military activities occurring in libya over the summer, will the p.m. join with me in congratulating captain norris in the caribbean? not only did they intercept 50 million pounds of cocaine over the summer, but they've also been helping humanitarian efforts following hurricane irene. >> i think my honorable friend makes a good point. while we should focus on the work our services have done in libya and afghanistan, there are the ongoing tasks, the task of protecting the falkland islands, the work we're doing to prevent

piracy off the horn of africa. all of these tasks people are giving a huge amount of time and effort, and we should praise and thank them for what they do. >> order. notice of presentation of bill. before we get there, not before we have -- >> and we'll leave the british house of commons now as they move on to other legislative business. you've been watching prime minister's question time aired live wednesdays at 7 a.m. eastern while parliament is in session. and for more information go to c-span.org and click on c-span theories for prime minister's questions, plus links to international news media and legislatures around the world. you can also watch recent video including programs dealing with other international issues. >> this weekend the ten-year anniversary of 9/11 on the c-span networks with live coverage from each of the memorial sites; new york city, shanksville, pennsylvania, and the pentagon. here's our live schedule. saturday on c-span at 12:30 p.m.

eastern, the flight 93 national memorial dedication ceremony from shanksville, pennsylvania. and sunday morning at 8:30, a memorial ceremony from the world trade center site with president obama and former president bush. on c-span2 at 9, vice president biden from the pentagon. and on c-span3 at 9:30, honoring those who lost their lives on united flight 93. 9/11 remembered, this weekend on the c-span networks. >> every weekend it's american history tv on c-span3 starting saturday mornings. 48 hours of people and events telling the american story. watch personal interviews about historic events on oral histories. our history book shelf features some of the best known history writers. revisit key figures, battles and events during the 150th anniversary of the civil war. visit college classrooms across the country during lectures in history. go behind the scenes at museums

and historic sites on american artifacts, and the presidency looks at the policies and legacies of past american presidents. get our complete schedule at c-span.org/history and sign up to have it e-mailed to you by pressing the c-span alert button. >> that is saw said on -- nasa said on tuesday that the international space station two is preparing a plan to keep the station running should it have to be temporarily abandoned. this briefing is 30 minutes. >> station houston on two, are you ready for the event? >> houston, we are ready for the event. >> please call the station for a voice check. >> station, this is jfc-pao.

how do you hear me? >> jfc, good to hear you. we hear you loud and clear. >> abc news. let me start with ron. the observations you have made from the space station of the hurricanes, the tropical storms, the typhoons, and we're e hoping you'll get video of the fires in texas later today have been truly astonishing video. so tell me there your perspective up there when you're looking at these powerful storms, you know, how you feel about that and your response. we've heard a little bit, i'd like you to go into a little more detail though. >> sure. um, actually, i'm just the junior weather apprentice. [laughter] mike is the, mike has been doing most of that. i've been focusing on taking pictures when mike has been primarily focusing on the video. but i can tell you, you know, it's scary from up here as well.

you know, when you see these massive storms, and you see how powerful they are and you realize the destruction that they can wreak as they pass across land is just really awe-inspiring from up here, and it's terrifying. mike, did you want to add to that? >> yeah. i want to add to it. three years ago right around now you and i and our families were ripping all the carpet and furniture out of ron's house in houston because he had 3.5 feet of water from a hurricane. so they're scary on the ground, and they're scary to see from up here. >> we're aware of the negotiations and the research and the investigation going into the failure of the progress launch and the impact that could have on you. what additional training are you getting for possibly having to deman the space station? tell me about that process. >> we're just as the investigation is kicking off and

it's finishing up its second week now, a lot of work yet to do this that arena. the teams mostly on the tbrowpped, there's a lot of efforts going on to look at all of the different option os that could possibly come into play. first, obviously, we're going to have a shorthandover with the new crew, if any at all. it's possible we will have a station without people on it for a, hopefully, short period of time. and those plans, we haven't started anything specific up here per training to -- pertaining to that except for maybe documenting some of the things we do on video so we can use video products for part of the training for the next crew. we'll be getting into the details of what it takes to turn out the lights in the weeks ahead. >> and, ron, one last question from me for you. you've been talking a lot about the fragile oasis. how does seeing it up there up there -- from up there bring home to you how fragile this planet is? >> well, you know, i don't think

it's possible to look at the earth from up here without being moved in some way. you know, looking down at the earth, um, you know, we've been saying this for 50 years. we've been coming to space for 50 years, and, you know, everybody that sees this, you know, has a very similar thing to say in that they're just struck by the fragility of our planet, you know, the thin atmosphere and everything else, and, um, you know, we always say that you can't see borders from space as well, but apparently you can. i've got some pictures that show some border scenes at night that i'm going to get out very soon. but the point is not, you know, whether or not we can see a border from space. the point is whether we can look down at the earth and empathize with the struggles and the challenges that everybody faces on the planet. and that's something that's, i think, really apparent up here. when you look down, you're struck by this beauty which really is indescribable. and hd cameras and everything we

have, all the technology we have really doesn't do it justice, you know? we get as close as we possibly can, but you're struck by this beauty on the one hand, but you also, you know, are faced with the unfortunate realities of life on our planet for a lot of its inhabitants. and i think, you know, that's the main thing that, you know, over the last five and a half months that i've been up here that i've taken from this is, you know, that we're all in the this together, that we've got big, big challenges to solve on our planet. but one of the ways we can do that is through the international cooperation that we've proven on the international space station and this amazing research facility that we have built. so a really good question, and, um, you know, i'm looking forward to trying to explain as best i can when i get back to earth what we've experienced up here. >> this is jill tolk representing the times tribune newspaper in scranton, pennsylvania. a two-part question for ron. how would you describe the

importance of hometown support for stationed astronauts especially now that shuttle has retired, and could you give an example of how your wife's relatives have supported her in cranston over the past -- scranton over the past six months? >> well, hi, jill and, hi, everybody in the scranton. it's a wonderful, wonderful place very near and tear to my heart. -- dear to my heart. i had the happiest day of my life there when i got married there a very long time ago. yeah, the hometown support is critical. i really think it is. just support on the ground period is really important up here, you know, we are isolated, we are off the planet. we have a lot of technology to keep us connected, you know, we have the internet, and we have phone and video conferencing and everything else, but, you know, we're not seeing flocks of birds fly by, we're not smelling the flowers, we are not living on earth, we are not experiencing life on earth, and it's

something that we really, really miss. and one of the ways that we can overcome that and still feel connected is through the support that we get from hometown and from our family and our friends. and i have regular contact with family members in scranton. every time we fly over pennsylvania, i'm there, you know, plastered to the window with my cameras trying to get good shots of scranton and the surrounding areas because it's a very -- as i know that you know -- a very, very beautiful part of the country. so thanks for that question. >> thanks for the good words. as you know, chris ferguson is a native of philadelphia. what would you like to especially share with readers in scranton regarding your experience, your shared experience on 135 when they visited and also shuttle's retirement, especially from your unique perspective on orbit? >> yeah. chris and myself and mike and the whole crew of sts-135, the whole crew of the space station, we were here during a very

bittersweet time. we got to experience, you know, crossing crossing this line in the sand, if you will, when we went from construction of the space station to full utilization of the space station. one chapter of our nation's history, that being the space shuttle chapter, to the next chapter which, hopefully, very soon will see humans exploring the rest of the solar system. so it was very bittersweet, you know, to see the end of the shuttle program on one hand, but to see all the opportunities that lie ahead and to see this amazing research facility that we've constructed, we being the 15 nations of our international partnership, have constructed up here. and, you know, chris and i and everybody onboard, we kind of, you know, reminisced, and we kind of discussed, you know, and postulated, you know, what was going to happen next, you know, what was going to happen down the line. and, you know, we are very, very on theist mic -- optimistic, and we're very excited about the discoveries that are going to be made right here on this orbital

facility because we're conducting research here that simply can't be conducted anywhere on earth. and i think we're going to see very shortly, you know, some of these breakthroughs that are going to be made possible through this research. and, you know, that's one of the big things that we all felt really proud to be associated with. >> hi, robert perlman with collect space.com. one of the points of pride with this space station has been its continuous human presence, a record of now more than 4,000 days. considering the small chance that the presence would need to be interrupted as a result of the loss of the progress, is that continuous human presence symbolic only, or do you see a substantial value in having crew constantly on orbit? >> yeah, robert, good to talk to you. you know, i think that it's a source of pride, the fact that we've kept crews up here continuously for, you know, over ten and a half years, maybe it's

close to 11 years now. is it 11 years? >> close. >> i think. we're getting there. it's a source of pride. i think it's important in many ways too. the space station does require some care and feeding, and so it's, you know, it's important for us to be here if we possibly can. if, you know, as events unfold if that's not possible and we have to shut it down for a little while, we're going to do our best to leave it in the best possible condition the make it true that down time -- through that down time and have it prepared for the next crew to open the doors, turn on the lights and come on aboard. >> and sort of working off that question, um, with the talk of demanning the space station, the end of the shuttle, high-profile robotic missions to the moon, mars and jupiter, robotics including dexter and even a recent observation by a popular science fiction block that the fall 2001 tv season is the first time there'll be no tv show

featuring people on spaceships, do you feel there's a risk of dissociating humans with space exploration, and what do you think can and should be done to reverse that trend? >> boy, i'll give that a try. is there a risk, perhaps? you know, there's really nothing that beats, i mean, the power and majesty of a space shuttle launch to get your attention. i mean, off of, you know, american soil. and that's really an attention-getter, it's huge, t dramatic. and it's over for now. so it's a little different when we're taking off on a different rocket, you know, in this a foreign land. and so i understand that. but, you know, we're not here for publicity or, you know, those kind of things. we're here to get a job done. our nation asked us to do this, and we're here to do that job, to take care of the space station and to produce the results from all of the different experiments and investigations that are ongoing

to the best of our ability. i think that, you know, we need to continue to do a good job of telling the story, explaining why we're here and what we're doing as well as sharing some of the adventure of space, looking out the windows to marvel at the planet below us, at the stars and the heavens above. >> and i was speaking with apollo 15 command module pilot al warden who spoke about the value of putting humans into orbit to do observations of the surface below. of course, the space station has a similar purpose, but so do satellites. so what do you see as the advantage of having a human behind the camera -- in other words, yourself -- that satellites do not provide? is. >> robert, that's a really good question. and it kind of goes, you know, it's very similar to the question that mike just answered. you know, we've always had robotic exploration, and we've

had human exploration. i think what we're seeing now and what we're proving now is that the most effective form of exploration as a collaborative form with both robotics and humans together. and i think we're really seeing that. now, earth observation satellites are, you know, serve a wonderful role, and they're very important. but, you know, there is something to be said for, you know, looking out the window and spotting a fire, and, you know, grabbing a camera and taking a picture just because we happen to be here, and we happen to be looking out the window. there's also, you know, a feeling that you can get when you're up here, and we try as best as we can with our video and our cameras to capture that feeling, to capture not just the views, not just, you know, the ones and zeros on the digital media that we have here, but to actually capture this moment, capture this experience as best we can to try and show you what

we're seeing. and you really can't do that from a satellite being controlled from the earth because it's just a different view. that person who's controlling that or that algorithm, that computer program that's controlling that is not experiencing it like we are. >> hi, mark corrrow for aviation week and space technology. and i'm just wondering if you have already taken or you will soon take any measures to sort of enhance either general operations or science research on the station for a period of time if you do have to unstaff the space station? are you doing some things to sort of keep it operating as best it can, keep the scientists active as best they can be if there is no one on the station for a short period of time? thank you. >> hey, mark. it's great to hear your voice today.

so far we have not begun any of those actions on the space station. the teams in houston are in the preliminary stages of deciding everything from what eventlation we're going to -- ventilation we're going to leave running, what lights we're going to leave on, what condition each particular experiment will be on, every tank, every valve, every hatch. there's a lot to do. and they're just beginning that work right now. and it's too early for us to get too worried about that, frankly. it'll take us, you know, a few weeks to finish that up, but we have another nine or so weeks here, my crew of three. so we've got plenty of time for those kind of things if we get to it. right now we're working to get sasha and andre out of the door next week and continue operations up here, and we're concentrating on the closest thing or the first thing which would be how to complete a full handover, you know, in a less than two weeks when dan burbank

and his crew come aboard because that'll be a shorter handover than we've had, you know n recent days. and there's a lot. the space station of the u.s./os part of the station has grown a lot since we had those quick handovers, so we want, you know, to be as effective at as possible. the next step is how to hand over to him when we don't do it face to face up here. >> and, mark, if i could just add, um, you know, the science operations onboard are going full speed ahead. we are breaking records every week with the number of hours of, basically, crew-based hours of scientific research which is over and above that research that's autonomous that doesn't require a crew. so in the unlikely event we do have to unman a station, there still will be science conducted onboard, it just won't be crew-based. so we are in the full utilization mode right now, and we are running at a sprint pace

conducting the scientific research. >> thanks very much, and i might just ask a follow-up with mike fossum on the prospect of having three crew on the station for longer maybe than you anticipated a couple weeks ago. what kinds of demands with a larger station are you going to face with that prospect? >> mark, i don't have any concerns about that at all. we've, i mean, ron and his crew and the crews that have come before us have left it in good shape, so there are no big things happening out there that -- hanging out there that i consider to be an issue. the three of us that will remain here when these guy cans head home, i have talked about it all, and, you know, we're going to be busy. we came here to be busy, and we're used to it. we're completely, you know, climatized to living here and

working here. we've learned almost everything from ron, and i have his cell phone number, so i know how to get ahold of him after he gets home to say, wow, i never found out, where he's this? those kind of things. so we're ready to take over. i have no concerns at all. the care and feeding of the station's going to take a higher percentage of our time than it does right now with spreading that work amongst two people instead of three for the part of the station for which we're responsible, but we're working at a really good pace and no worries. >> station, this is houston acr. that concludes questions from jsc. please stand by for a voice check from kennedy pao. >> kennedy pao. >> station, this is ksc-pao. how do you hear me? >> we hear you loud and clear. welcome aboard the international

space station. >> hello. this is marsha denton of the associated press. um, a couple of questions. number one, um, for mike, i guess, are you still going home in november? is that your latest plan? when is the most tentative launch date that you've heard of the new crew coming up, what's the latest you've got? and what do you both see is the weak links on the space station if it did have to be temporarily abandoned? >> hey, marsha. a bunch of great questions. right now the current plans are for us to go home on time, middle of november. it could be slipped a couple of days easily later than that, starts to get hard because of lighting, and much later than that gets hard, also, because of the landing conditions in kaszikstan which can be very severe in the winter time. and the whole crew rotation schedule is actually set up to avoid that. and so, but again, the plans are for us to head home in mid november, and if things hold,

the tentative plans -- and they're very tentative at this point -- are for the next crew to launch on about november 2nd or around november 2nd to come up. but the investigation is still ongoing for what happened with the soyuz booster and the whole path from here to launching humans. there's a number of steps along the way; finding the problem, fixing the problem, having one or two test launches of unmanned progress vehicle, possibly a satellite using the same booster before we put people on it. there's a lot of things that have to stack up to make that happen. >> oh, and i'm sorry, marsha, i missed -- what kind of things do we think we would need to do to prepare the station to be unmanned for a period of time. again, we're not tied into those meetings and stuff. we have our work to do right now

as the experts on the ground really hash that out. but it will involve things like every module has a hatch on each side of that interface, there's also valves to allow coolant water and air flow and things like that. so i think we'll be doing things like closing the hatches and preparing -- maybe sealing the air flow because they don't need to be moving air around the station, and that way if we had a small leak somewhere, it wouldn't depressurize the whole stack. it'll be things along those lines. >> thank you for that. actually, my second part of that question was what you both see as the weak links, what, you know, the couple of things that would really worry you that might have more of a tendency to break down with nobody there, that sort of thing. >> that's hard to say. i think the folks in the program office would be better, better

suited to answer that, but it's things like the pump module that failed a year ago and required an extensive, well, three evas to go out and swap the pump module. the failure of that one component takes out half of the cooling on the space station which limits, you know, puts you in kind of a precarious situation where you don't have the kind of fault tolerance or redeny dancy. there's a lot of things if crew is here to take the action to do the recovery, it's no big deal to be down something like a pump module for a week or so as you get your plans together and take care of the problem. it can become a bigger deal over a period of time as more things have the opportunity to stack up against you. so a short gap, you know, not a big deal. but i've seen some of the same reports that you and your comrades have written. as that short gap turns into, you know, many months, then your

probabilities start to stack up against you, and it leads toward a greater possibility that we would have a problem up here that became, you know, very significant with nobody to take action. >> good morning, it's peter king with cbs radio news. and for either or both of you, we're told that the station, of course, is well supplied especially after the 135 flight, but i'm just wondering if you all have begun cutting back on anything or making plans to cut back on anything in anticipation of stretching out those supplies for any period of time? >> no, peter. from a supply point of view, we really are in good shape. we've got a lot of water onboard, we've got a lot of food onboard, a lot of what we call consumables onboard, so we're in the really good shape. the normal consumption rate that we've been using all along we're

still using. we haven't gotten to the point yet with -- yet where we really need to start conserving and trying to, you know, what if possibilities out there. because we've really already done that. that was one of the whole reasons we wanted to fly sts-135 so much is because we wanted to be in a position if something happened that we'd have everything onboard that we needed. and we did fly that mission, and we've got all those supplies onboard, and we really are in good shape. ..

>> you have been around this business longer than i have. you know it is a complicated thing. with it stops functioning in flight, shutdown, it is a big deal. we are not part of that investigation. you know what is going on. that rock that has had hundreds of successful launches without problems. you go in and look at what changed. there's not a fundamental design flaw with the rocket. it has worked great. what has changed? that is the first thing you look for. the hardware change or component change or process change. you hope to find something in those arenas and that is where you usually do find it. if those things don't pop out you start looking at our ridings

and that gets to be a lot harder to sold. in the weeks that we have for months, just a few months we have since it is my time to go home, the possibility is there and there are a lot of details we have to work out before we get there and that is why the teams on the ground are pushing hard to come up with plans. the ones i think we're going to use are the ones that for a short handover. how do you train people to do that stuff we do in a short amount of time. you have to start working ahead to say what if? >> peter king at cbs with one last one. we are in a tough political climate where everyone is counting every dime and every dollar. i am wondering if either of you are worried that leaving the station might have the politicians thinking about permanently calling it quits and say and we really don't need to

be spending this money? >> we can't really answer that. however, what i can say is the money that has been spent on the international space station, i think history will prove this, is the best investment in our future we have ever made. the money that has been invested will be returned many times over in medicine, improved life on earth. not to mention we have a steppingstone to explore the rest of the solar system. this is a very critical link to doing that. i think if we get to the point where we have to unman the space station i hope we already demonstrate at that point how valuable this is, this global asset is and i would hope there will be an uproar about keeping

it manned and making sure we get that return on investment because if we are not here to utilize what we already invested the money in then we wasted that investment. i think is important at this point. mike has some words to add. and stand corrected. >> station, this is houston apr. that concludes the event. >> thank you, johnson and kennedy space center is. international space station will be resuming operational space to ground communications. >> thanks to everybody for the great questions. >> up next, look at the newly created joint congressional deficit commission. after that former new york city mayor rudy guiliani on the

anniversary of the september 11th attacks. the senate is in at:00 eastern and will continue to work on patent law changes. live coverage on c-span2. >> watch more video of the candidate. hear what political reporters are saying and track the latest campaign contributions with c-span's website for campaign 2012. easy to use. it helps you navigate the political landscape with twitter feet and facebook updates from the campaign's, candidate bios and links to c-span media partners in the early primary and caucus days all at c-span.org/campaign2012. >> now discussion on the role of the newly created congressional deficit committee. topics include areas of possible spending cuts and tax changes. the business roundtable posted this one our panel.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, everyone. i am delighted to convene the session and do so right on time. i am the president of this round table and is our privilege to welcome you to this business roundtable forum, the work of the joint committee on deficit reduction. our program appropriately entitled meeting challenges of economic growth and reduction. i think we have a treat for

everyone today. we have outstanding analysts. experts experts are here today to help us focus on budget, taxation, the economy, the role of this 12 member commission and we hope to have time not only to have a productive discussion but also some give and take with the audience. we have c-span today. we appreciate their presence and coverage of this afternoon's forum and also there will be a video produced and be available in the business round table web site. there is no question american business leaders care deeply about the issue of deficit reduction and something that matters not only to the citizens but matters to our companies and job providers as we seek to have the world's most globally competitive nation. our association is actually an association of chief executive officers of leading companies

but those companies i would really matter. $6 trillion in annual revenue. more than thirteen million employees directly employed in those companies. the impact on the economy obviously very substantial. as we think about this day and those companies, the stock market down earlier quite a bit, they comprise nearly a third of the total value of the u.s. stock market and invest more than $113 billion annually in research and development. that is nearly half of all private r&d spending that takes place in this country. the fiscal health of the nation, the headquarters of virtually all these companies is something that is highly significant and their shareholders and their supply chains, retirees as well as people currently employed have very much at stake as does

our nation. we certainly also today are providing a friendly welcome back to congress. the senate convenes today. the house wednesday. tomorrow the president speaking on jobs on thursday. the business round table has a few to work with everyone who wants to help to create jobs and produce the deficit and strengthen our economy and much work to be done. the bipartisan supercommittee will meet for the first time on thursday and they have a tight schedule and we will hear from our panel. not much time at all. but what they lack in time they make up in power. as near as i can tell they have got unbelievable awesome authority and delegate by their colleagues and the ability to put together a package of recommendations before thanksgiving. the opportunity is there. this afternoon what we hope to do as the first panel will focus on the process, how much power

do they have and how great is the opportunity? what can and should the bicameral group be thinking about as they go about their business? the second panel gets into the real meat of it. details of entitlement and discretionary spending and defense budgets and even those probably overstate it. a lot of this have already been tabled in various groups. they have been the ones who put it on the table but what sort of generally agreed to and what are those opportunities? and the third one the president will be interested in because the jobs and economic growth and the role of tax reform and again, without predetermined conclusions about our discussion today i think there's one thing that is pretty clear. without economic growth you can't cut the budget enough and you certainly can't have enough

jobs to really result in a strong healthy fiscal condition for our nation. time is short not just for deficit reduction and the committee's work, but the forum itself. i hope we could get started right away. our first panel, joint committee on deficit reduction. how broad is this opportunity. we have a wonderful moderator well-known to all of us, my at served with the president for the public committee for responsible federal budget, a nonpartisan group, a who's who of directors and they examined and explained budget issues to the public and policymakers for 30 or so years since 2003. they have also been located at the center for a new america. my at herself is one of the most

respected analysts and commentators on budget matters with wall street and a number of other forums she has been part of so we are delighted. she will be provocative and lively as always. maia, come forward and present your first panel and by one come back and introduce our moderator's of the second and third panel and ladies and gentlemen, maia mcginnis. [applause] >> thanks. thank you sell much. it is a lot of pressure to be provocative and lively because it was my son's first day of second grade today so last night i had a midnight visit from him wanting to deliver everything he was going to learn in second grade and whether he would have to dissect the deer and try told him i had to in second grade. i am going to be provocative and lively. thank you so much for the

business roundtable for posting this timely and important event. all eyes are on fiscal policy and economic growth. we will talk about how all those two will be brought together and one of the issues is are we going to look at those as compartmentalized or are we going to understand that putting in place a big deficit debt reduction plan that is big enough and done well is part of the whole economic growth strategy so the supercommittee which we will be focusing on today has a daunting and critically important task that is made more important because it is not just getting the numbers to add up. this is the question how to pull together a whole fiscal package that is done smart and appropriately. let me quickly make the point that there has been a lot of work done on fiscal policy in the past year starting with the present fiscal commission and

many other ideas on the table and in many ways most of the ideas are already out there so this is about to turn into a political discussion as much as the policy discussion. one of the things people have come to understand is if we put in place a multi-year plan, that is credible so it can actually be spread out over ten years. not just of the political promises to make these large leases later but that in a credible way, it will have to be bipartisan, with statutes and enforce the number of traders. one of the things that does is it buys of fiscal space up front to deal with the fact the we have an economic recovery that is not as strong as we would like to be. i would point out a wise plan that ways out where we are headed adds stability we don't now have so everyone knows we are on an unsustainable path. everyone knows it will change that nobody knows how. in particular i think that is important for business. there is the opportunity to put

more stability into the fiscal environment, businesses can be the engine of growth to lead into the strong economic recovery we need. many of us believe that will not happen until we put in place a real plan. finally i think it has become clear the policy changes we need to tackle are large and if they are done well on the tax side where we look at fundamental tax reform and we will hear more about these in the next panel and on the spending side where we can take this opportunity to rethink our budget and what actually works and what government spending is most effective and eat fish and and how to transfer a lot of resources from consumption oriented investment oriented spending this can be a huge opportunity. it is a lot to do on a short time line. first thing we will do in this panel is take advantage of the best most well-known experts in the field to talk was about what the supercommittee will be working on this issue the next

few months are going to be tackling in the logistics of how that will work and we will turn more details of the policy in the next two panel. of our three panelists to join me, jim fuld is director of the staff finance committee. bill hoagland, former staff director of the senate budget committee and rudy petre, director of the congressional budget office. they will work with us on the questions of what the supercommittee is tasked with doing. many technical issues including base lines. we will be talking more about budget baselines than anybody was prepared to but it is critically important in all of this and the timing of the issues and how this will get done and a little about what we can expect. we will hear from our three panelists and if the moderator is any good we will then have time for questions from the audience before we move to the next two panel. thanks for joining the business roundtable and we will turn it over to jim for his comments.

>> thank you. i can't be as provocative as maya macguineas but i will give it a try. maya macguineas asked me to walk through the mechanics of the supercommittee process. so i will do that and if there's any time left i will make an observation or two but if you will tugged on my shoulder on time that shouldn't take too long. i had ten mechanical points about a supercommittee to walk through. the name is a huge problem because it is officially called the joint select committee on deficit-reduction but the bill, the short name is the joint committee that all the tax people in the room know it will cause confusion. i am hoping there will be a technical correction this fall to call of the joint select committee rather than joint committee.

membership as everybody knows, the committee has 12 members, three drawn from each of the four caucuses in the house and senate, of note is they are only drawn from sitting members of congress. there are no administration appointees unlike various proposals for supercommittees made in the past that have included the administration representatives and no appointees from the private sector as well. also of note, there is no partisan majority on either delegation. delegation of the house or a delegation from the senate which is at odds with some of the proposals that have been made in the past. is purely sit down the middle. point number three, the statutory goal for the committee, the express statutory goal for the committee to write legislation that will reduce the

deficit by $1.5 trillion or more over the next decade. that is the numbers that is typically in the press. as you probably know that is not the operative number. the operative numbers deficit reduction at $1.2 trillion and that is presumably what the main focus will be for avoiding this question that i will talk about. point number four. the general function of the committee. the committee is a different animal from the various commissions and blue-ribbon panels that have been convened over the last 20 years to try to deal with the deficit and the debt ranging from the danforth kerry commission in the 90s to the fiscal commission last year in the sense that those commissions were an attempt to outsource the solution to the deficit problem and the blue ribbon panel would supposedly come up with a plan and congress would pass it but that never

happened. the way i'd think of this is congress is going to reinforce the solution to a group of its own members and its own sitting members and instead of outsourcing it they will create a procedural structure that will attempt to force action in the new committee and facilitate passage of the bill by an up or down vote in the house and senate. those are the key parts of what the supercommittee is all about. the means of forcing action. this is point number five. the automatic spending cuts that would kick in starting in 2013. the cuts would be $1.2 trillion over the next decade if there is no supercommittee bill at all. if there is a supercommittee bill acted and designed by the president that gives some distance to that than the sequester would make up the difference.

the idea is the sequestered, automatic cuts would be a crude and blunt instrument. and the committee members will do whatever they can to avoid the sequester and reach a deal and pass it and then it will go to the house and senate and it will become law. that is the idea. the $64,000 question that will be discussed in this panel and the other panels is how much pressure will actually result from the sequester or from the threat of sequester? we will see this fall how that will play out. the second procedural aspect in point number six is the fast-track procedure for passage of the bill. i would say the fast-track procedure in this bill is one of the two breathtaking aspect of the supercommittee process. essentially if the supercommittee meets the

deadline that are in the legislation, house and senate meet the legislation deadlines they write a bill, action will statutory language, than the bill can go through the house and senate, up or down vote without any filibuster or amendment or points of order. most significantly with passage by a simple majority and if you think about it, recent proposal like the konrad greg proposal last year and earlier years proposed that the bargain would be the rank-and-file members of congress would grant this power to the leadership. leadership would come up with a bill or a group selected by the leadership but it would have to be a very popular bill and would have to pass by supermajority. this version that was enacted as required to pass the house and senate by simple majority and it is a pretty extraordinary grant of power under any measure for a

small group of leadership and its appointees to be able to produce a bill that could go through and past that way with no -- nobody amending it or delaying it. the legislation directs the joint committee bill to be restored -- referred to the standing committees with the jurisdiction over its parts but the committees have no power to hold it up or block it or amended. they will be discharged if they don't make a recommendation one way or another on the bill. number 7, the seventh point on the deadlines, in order for the committee bill to qualify for the procedural protection it has to meet two main deadlines. by november 23rd, seven members of the supercommittee have to approve legislative language making the recommendations of the supercommittee.

by no later than december 23rd the house and senate have to pass that bill. unlike budget reconciliation where the various statutory and procedural deadlines really don't matter by precedent they can be ignored. these deadlines apparently do matter. there's a specific provision in the bill that says if the deadlines are missed the bill longer qualifies for the procedural protection. those deadlines become critically important. if they pass the bill on november 24th apparently the bill will not qualify for procedure protections. also the fear point of the bill must be enacted and signed by the president by january 15th. the president sits on it, and -- i suppose they couldn't restart the process of what would

happen. number 8, the content of the bill. i would label this the second breath taking aspect of the supercommittee procedure because as i read the legislation there is basically no limits on the content of the bill. unlike in reconciliation there is no byrd rule in the senate that limits the bill to budgetary items. it precludes non budgetary items from our reconciliation bill. as many of the no reconciliation bills are subject to a host of points of order. here on the other hand all points of order reconsidered by the statute to be waived. apparently the committee can build in not only deficit reduction measures but any measures that might help get the bill or other measures that might get the bill passed in the house and senate.

extraordinary grant of power again which raises point number nine which is exactly what does the bill have to look at to be eligible for fast-track status? the statute says this -- it says the joint committee shall provide recommendations and a legislative language that will significantly improve the short-term and long-term fiscal imbalance of the federal government. that is the statutory guidance. there are no numbers or details. that is all it says. which raises the question of who decides under that murky standard what bill meets that test will be the joint chairs of the committee, will be the cbo or will the parliamentarian matters conduct a did -- independent review of whether the bill qualifies. i don't know the answers. the statute doesn't say. it remains to be seen whether it

will matter. i don't think it will matter because the statute creates no supermajority point of order against a bill that doesn't qualify. it rather says -- it anticipates there might be objections, parliamentary objections to the bill because it says specifically that any such objections, any appeals from a ruling of the chair with objection to the bill will be decided without debate. what that means essentially is if the parliamentarians were to rule that the bill does not qualify for the fast track protections, that a member of the leadership presumably could move to appeal the ruling of the chair and that would be decided by an immediate majority vote. no debate. presumably if there is a majority of votes for the bill and a majority of members willing to vote to overturned a

ruling of the chair then presumably the committee can do whatever it wants to pass the bill. there's one exception to that. the legislation. the budget control act specifically provides if there are any provisions in the committee bill that would change house or senate rules those provisions would really be regarded as advisory. southern rules changes are close to home. finally point number ten, termination. the statute formally terminate the staff committee headed end of january. there is no wiggle room where the leadership could say this process continues on. without a new blow being passed extending the deadline. >> i am going to bring up two quick points. i had the same problem with the name but slightly different. the group i run is called the

committee for responsible federal budget. i keep hearing we need to rename it to supercommittee. uping the pressure on all of this. if you wouldn't mind taking two minutes that was a great overview of the whole design. tell us what you think of the design. how do you think that is going to call for more of your prediction of where we are going. how is this designed to impact chances of success and what it is likely to lead to? >> you could look both this fall, next year and into the future and thinking about this committee. the supercommittee. first of all for this fall, you can scratch your head about whether the sequester will provide the necessary pressure this fall. people can debate that but normally congress reaches a hard deal, hard deal to reach by any measure when they see what they have to and they won't have to

do this until even early 2013 or the end of next year that is when the automatic cuts will take effect. you can scratch your head but obviously the committee will be under spotlight, a huge spotlight and under tremendous pressure and the financial markets will be following it daily. you can scratch your head about that. in general one could rename this committee as i was kicking around with my colleagues this morning the dirty jobs committee. somebody has got to do the dirty job of half of the reduction. they have delegated this to the committee members, to be on this committee. hy can well imagine just like the base closing procedure, that of procedure, rank-and-file members and committee chairs

will come to like the procedure because arguably it will -- if you out source the dirty work and they can deal with the dirty work and get the budget back on track, then it could free the standing committees to really refocus on responding to the demands of the public and the immediate needs of the public. an example of that we talked about later, the supercommittee could conceivably tackle tax reform as the subject of the third panel. another way to look at it is if the supercommittee actually can deal with the deficit or put the deficit on sustainable track then the odds that the standing committees can do tax reform presumably goes way up because right now for the committees to tackle tax reform where the overhang is this huge deficit hanging over their heads it means that everyone will have an

eye on -- if we want to eliminate tax credit and tax deductions and broaden the base for a lot of people we have a gigantic deficit. how can we talk about cutting rates at the same time? if the deficit can be dealt with and the tax writing committees are operating on a clean slate and not have to worry about deficits the odds can go up. i scratch my head that over time if this were to get institutionalized, if it is successful this bill around one could think it could get institutionalize that would end up being a pretty popular or permanent feature of the budget process. >> thank you, business roundtable, for organizing this timely discussion. i will try to tie the first three items on this panel, list of items. the statutory authority, the

tight deadlines, i will tie the three together. some of this will overlap little bit with jim's comments. on the statutory authority, may be appropriate that a group of 12 have apostolic powers. i was thinking we should rename it the washington apostolic committee. the authorization granted in this particular piece of legislation as already discussed is broad, it is unique and unprecedented. if the joint committee as jim indicated, if they report a bill -- i will call it the select committee. if the select committee reports a bill by november 23rd, it gets the expedited considerations.

in the senate there is no rule 22. that means there is no notion to filibuster the motion to proceed to consider it. there are no points of order. all the points of order are waived. in the senate there are 30 hours of debate even under the old budget resolutions. we have at least 50 hours of debate and under reconciliation we had 20 hours but under both of those as many in this room will recall that is not the end of the. we have the traditional vote that could go on endlessly even after the time had expired. no amendments in order in the house or senate. no motion to postponed the consideration of this legislation. if i read it correctly there is only one motion that is in order and i believe that is a motion to limit, cut back the time of debate to 30 hours but that even requires a supermajority vote in

the senate of three fifth. one last procedural issue that interests me is an old senate staffer. if the senate passes the legislation before the house passes its legislation, and the house sends to the senate its house passed bill, it will have effectively been deemed to have passed in the united states senate without another vote. on the tight deadlines, mr clive born at peace in the paper that touched on it, from today from september 6th and i would say to november 14th, there are 70 days and that is the date by which the estimates for the legislation have to be completed by the congressional budget office. it is not the 2013 -- it is 70 days. and of course if we let the

members have saturday and sunday off but not the staff that is only 50 days, ten weeks. from november 21st when the committee is supposed to vote. we have 77 days or 55 to take out saturday and sunday and holidays and by november 23rd, '79 days we have ten weeks to get all of this. while the tight deadline important? the third issue in terms of the rules of engagement? i think to be successful, to achieve the mathematical deficit reduction target and the political target of 51 votes in the senate and 218 votes in the house, it is axiomatic. everything has to be on the table. bose entitlements and revenues and they both have to be

considered. i will argue that you have already done congress the discretionary spending, but obviously that is still in the mix also. given the base line, i am with you, maya macguineas. i don't want to talk base line and i prayed to god that their first meeting of the select committee doesn't get into baseline. there is a difference of opinion out here about this. but the law is clear that the congressional budget office shall score whenever the committee does against what we call current law. current law meaning existing tax cuts expire at the end of 2012. presumptuous on my part, i met with one of the apostles this morning. he pointed out to me we can score against anything we want

to. i am sure. when you look and the 1.2 or 1.5 is not clear to me what you are scoring that against. be that as it may, i think the law is the congressional budget office will have to go against current law. the revenue measures as i say, i think scoring against current law, and jim, you are the tax expert. i think that means at least on this first round, the targeted tax expenditures are on the table such as credits, deductions and exemptions and so much rates since the rates are assumed to have been taken back by the expiring tax provision. given entitlement reform let's be honest. you can do what you want with the ag program is the the issue

is medicare and medicaid. i don't think there's any possibility that medicare or medicaid can possibly be considered in this committee unless tax expenditures are on the table at the same time. this creates for me the first difficult complication. the interaction between the tax code and entitlement reform, i think, is bound to create some difficult estimating procedures for the congressional budget office and the joint tax committee. let me give you an example. i think one of the issues, want to be careful how i say this but one of the issues will be the elimination of the employer sponsored health exclusion, health insurance exclusion.

against -- that would score against current law. that is the no. one tax expenditure in the federal budget today almost double the housing mortgage deduction. but the interaction between that subsidy in the old days with health care reform having passed creates a real interesting issue about exchanges in terms of those individuals who might -- voted exchange with subsidies that will offset that. this is going to be a complicated procedure as it relates. there they second complication. the savings in this law unlike the old days on the hill when we had a reconciliation is not specific. it is ten years. there is no one year or two year number so i am sure that jobs with the president's address on thursday night will be in this discussion. extension to payroll tax

holiday, infrastructure investment, all those will add to the deficit in the near term and will need to be offset with even greater savings in the entitlement revenue going forward. the third complication i see caused by this short time frame. the short timeframe from my perspective will lead to policymakers making incremental changes. the low hanging fruit. both the entitlements and the tax code. leading no time for what is really needed for the long term which is fundamental changes bowed to our medicare program as well as the tax code. i hope i am wrong. i think there is a possible solution. as old budget groupies' talk about budget process reform and one budget process reform was

collapsing. the house budget committee and senate budget committee and point committee called a joint budget committee. i think this is a model for that type of approach. as a joint budget committee i see the concept of brought apostolic powers of this committee, it could first meet its initial target with its 1.2 or less than that but also go further and literally write a superreconciliation structure for additional savings for additional tax reform at a certain date in the future. the powers are very broad for a second round. it does not eliminate the sequester unless they meet the 1.5 but it does put us on a path to go much further than the 1.5 should congress show will to -- i don't think the joint committee can fail.

i don't think they have any alternative. not only is the american public watching this but the world is watching and failure is clearly not an option in this situation. >> in many ways what you did is you laid the foundation for what i think is going to happen and what i hope is going to happen which is once people scratch the surface of the mission of the supercommittee and look at the possibilities putting together different policies to get their people will come to the conclusion that you have to go big. the focus on $1.5 trillion may actually be more difficult than a larger scale goal which is stabilize the debt and bring in more structural and fundamental ways entitlement and tax reform. if you get to $1.5 trillion the focus will more beyond parts of the budget like discretionary or other -- not a big problem areas of the budget and you don't get

the grand bargain, pull everything in that has to happen to fix the problem. so we looked at different models how you get there and it may turn out to be easier to get a bigger deal. it is critically important to get a bigger deal or we haven't fixed the problem. we only saved $1.5 trillion in debt but it is growing faster than the economy and we have to fix it again. one of the important related points we brought up was the window of different timing and there are different timing issues because in the short term we have to focus on economic recovery. in the medium term there is the goal of savings but the real question is what happens out of the ten year window which is part of the scoring of this exercise. i am curious if there's a way you think you can bring in other fiscal objectives to focus more on the long-term measures that have to happen. entitlement reform has the center to this and is necessary to get fundamental overhaul of the tax system. are there ways to bring in the

long term? >> it does make it clear that there is no one$.5 trillion is the target over ten years but also has language that says the congressional budget office at the request of the committee can request additional estimates the on the ten year window. i get nervous to be quite frank with you about a very long-term projections but nonetheless i do think that the authority is there for the committee to go further and tying back to my closing comments i think if the committee really wants -- it will be difficult. it will be difficult to achieve some of the major fundamental changes to health-care reform. you may not have liked the ryan proposal or the ribland proposal. most -- when talking about fundamental changes, changing the age of eligibility for medicare as an example you are not going to get the savings in the ten year window and i do think the committee has the authority to look beyond ten

years and have the authority to ask for estimates beyond ten years and that authority along with time get to some form of multi-year reconciliation beyond the 1.5 is an opportunity to go big. >> i want to share your optimism. >> thanks. i have been given the task on this panel to discuss the more boring technical issues of the supercommittee have to deal with. that is not bad because i am very good at bar wing. there is a lot of concern about the short time the committee has to negotiate. i don't think that is choosing the policy options here is the biggest problem because so many groups have so many options on the table. you have the house budget, the president's fiscal commission, bipartisan policy center, finance think tanks to put out

policy packages that would resolve the issue. so the issues are very well known. the areas of policy disagreements are well known. there is no doubt that those disagreements are very profound but the negotiators can act quickly if they are forced or they might find there is little hope of agreement and that is my major fear. bill says they can't fail but given my ordinarily pessimistic outlook on the world i think that is a possibility. there is an additional problem here. there are things that don't directly involve policy and i will discuss two of them. one of them is this issue of baselines. if nobody wants to talk about them on this panel. but it is important because if you must cut $1.5 trillion from

the deficit, it is an important question. what are you cutting from? what is the baseline? it used to be if we needed a baseline we looked at the implications of current law. but the current law baseline today is totally useless. bill pointed that out. that was the recommended baseline for cbo to score from. the problem with the current law base line originates in congress's recent propensity to pass all of these temporary laws. they do that so they don't have to show the long run deficit implications of the various laws that they have to pass. most important in all of that is the bush tax cuts which are supposed to end at the end of 2012 and nobody really believes that they all will.

in addition to that the congress periodically adjusts the alternative minimum tax to burden the middle class but only for two years the last time they fixed it. there are a plethora of temporary tax cut like research and experimentation tax credit that are extended routinely but usually only one year at a time. current law assumes unrealistically low medicare reimbursements. congress always fixes that but again only temporarily. current law base line starts with a deficit projection that as far too low to be realistic. there are some things that go the other way like assuming the wars continue forever. if they started with that baseline presumably they have to pay for things like extending the bush tax cuts and in addition -- save $1 trillion

which is impossible kind of thing to expect them to do. what do you assume instead? that will be very contentious. you might take a whole list of more realistic policy assumptions that cbo puts in most of their reports on the deficit outlook. but that assumes all the bush tax cuts are continued including those for the rich. that might appear to favor democrats because ending the tax cuts for the rich would then become more appealing because it would count toward meeting the $1.5 trillion target. in any case arguments over such issues could consume many days unfortunately. another different possible contentious point involves how policy changes are scored. will macro economic affect the policy changes be considered or not?

if tax reform proposals are considered for example, that would broaden the base and lower marginal rates. many conservatives think that would be really good for economic growth and therefore would reduce the deficits. if you count that, then you would lower the amount of pain necessitated by having to choose deeper deficit cuts on the basis of policy. as the cbo analysis of the so-called dynamic effects was adopted by think conservatives would be very disappointed. cbos certainly believe such reforms would be extremely good for the economy, there are estimates of the amount of good that would be done would fall far short of what conservatives expect and they may be so disappointed that they demand a more conservative group do the estimating.

that would open an incredibly contentious debate with the democrats. as for any revenue cuts, if the committee for some reason proposed a revenue reducing tax reform, i do disagree little bit with jim on the dynamics of how tax reforms fit into this but leaving that aside for the moment, if they were to propose such a thing, cbo would estimate that would do more harm than good. the tax rate effects would be good for economic growth but the resulting deficit increase would crowd out, presumed to crowd out investment in the long run or increase borrowing from abroad and either an effect would be that -- bad from the point of view of future income growth. so cbo's analysis i have little

doubt that the bad effect would outweigh the good effect and most of the models cbo now uses to estimate dynamic effects. i just scratched the surface on technical things that the supercommittee might argue about. i am afraid that such side arguments could be very time consuming and make it extremely difficult to meet the deadline for cutting $1.5 trillion. >> thank you. one thing that hasn't been mentioned is the design of the sequester. do you want to comment on what you think of design? >> very tricky to design a sequester. if you make it too gentle it doesn't do much for you. if you make it too harsh there is the temptation for the congress to walk away from it if it becomes too painful. that is what they did ultimately

with the dan rudman sequester created in 1985. i think they are close to a happy medium with the kind of sequester designed by the bill and we could argue ferociously about that but it seems to me that the discretionary cuts. no across-the-board cuts is wise by any standard. it might well be tolerable especially if the committee gets a part of the way to the $1.5 trillion and the residual is supposed to come from the automatic cuts. the thing i am dubious about is the automatic cuts yet again include cuts in medicare reimbursement. most people don't think the cuts and reimbursements on the books are the result of health reform law are at all practical.

we run the risk of driving a lot of doctors out of the medicare program in which they can assume that will be reversed almost instantaneously. i think that is the part of the whole thing that is most dubious. >> at this point i would love to take questions from the audience if there are questions from people that are here. you don't have to use the word budget baseline in your question but obviously it is a new happy topic. yes? there is a mike right here. >> the question -- >> could you identify yourself? >> joe from the esop foundation. the question is directed mostly to jim gould but picks up on the last comment made by rudy petre --penn --penner. if the package is less than the one$.2 trillion the unqualified

for the fast-track procedures and the rest of the process works as it is in the statute and the difference is made up at the back end through a sequester? >> that is my reading. there is nothing in the statute saying that is in the budget control act to say that that bill would not qualify. basically it anticipates that possibility because the sequesters the dust on a bill that doesn't meet -- it is partly their. that is to be fully protected. yes. >> while we are waiting for another question could i address something rudy said at the end? the estimates we worked on that you are familiar with is if we do not succeed, if they get nothing, if they fail you are looking at a 10% across-the-board cuts in defense in one year for each year

thereafter and you are looking at 8% to 9% across-the-board cuts in discretionary programs or non defense programs and a number of programs are exempt from that. the means for low income programs. there's also a limitation of 2% in medicare and all i can say is there are those, i am sure in this town who are looking and saying the 2% is better than what i would guess if we flip the committee go to work and reform health care. in which case it is a problem. i don't think the 2% is a real major factor here at this point. except for those people who are trying to defend medicare. >> could i make -- while we are commenting on rudy's comments on the livelihood of success and timing. you scratch your head. clearly this fall the committee will be under really bright spot

light. no question about that. think about the possibility that doing something broad on medicare reform or medicaid reform or perhaps taxes for broad tax package, the idea that that can be written, drafted with transition rules, effective dates, special rules for special industries, things you need to do to draft the actual language out of this committee. if the bill does not get change out of it committee, and imaginable. they would be very confident in what they're doing. to do that in the next three month i can demand and you add that to the possibility -- to what is faced by congress at the end of next year where you send the medicare cuts go into effect and reimbursements. the alternative minimum tax fix ends. the bush tax cut end.

if they didn't do anything what gets added to that is the sequester. one would think that there would be a grand bargain and they are really going to do the big deal you talk about. that is more timing that might actually work. give them time that requires of course that they persuade the financial markets and the public that they are successful and working for the end of the year and persuading their colleagues to extend the effective dates. whether any of that can happen i don't know but you look at the end of next year it seems like a logical time for completion of a big deal. >> one thing that isn't clear to me and let's suppose everybody is right and they have to reverse some of the medicare cuts in the house law, is there any restraint on them doing that immediately after this? can they reverse through regular legislation some of the things thato