then coming up at 8:30 eastern, we have former vice chair alice rivlin. and aei senior fellow kevin hassette. and in other washington news, the federal housing administration will likely soon take a cash infusion from the treasury. the agency needs help to cover losses from souring loans. >> jcpenney looking to raise as much as $750,000 to $1 billion to build up its cash reserves. the retailer is leaning towards issuing new shares. but other methods of raising capital are erroredly on the table. goldman sachs says it expects the retailers to move more slowly. anyway, another hard hit stock this year, blackberry, we talked bit almost every morning. fairfax financial says it is confident it can find the money to fund its $4.7 billion for the smartphonemaker. but shares did fall yesterday on doubts about that bid. meantime, t-mobile, i don't know, becky, announcing it will stop stocking blackberry in its stores saying it is no longer efficient to keep the devices there, meaning nobody is buying them. in other corporate news, citigroup has agreed to pay $395

we've actually had alice rivlin here to testify, so thank you. also dr. daniel mitchell is a senior fellow at the cato institute where he specializes in tax reform policy. he was previously a senior fellow with the heritage foundation and an economist on the senate finance committee. he also served on the 1988 bush-quayle transition team and was director of tax and budget policy for citizens for a sound economy. you may think it interesting that we have four republican witnesses here when i am chairing the hearing -- [laughter] but i think it goes to show this is a bipartisan issue and something that we have to come together on as a country, and there are differences among our witnesses, as we will soon see. in the summer of 2011, the united states experienced some of the costs of a protracted debt ceiling showdown as congress struggled to raise the debt ceiling. the dow jones industrial average dropped more than 2,000 points, and standard & poor's downgraded the credit rating. consumer confidence also fell sharply. during that debate i heard from nearly