lora peterson, senior policy analyst, taxpayers for common sense and ethan polec, senior policy analyst, the economic policy institute. our moderator for this morning's panel is jim tankersly, the economics correspondent for "national journal." jim joined us from the tribune washington bureau covering energy, environment and politics for newspapers including the "los angeles times" and the "chicago tribune," previously worked at the "to lead ledo bla" he won the 2007 livingston award for young journeyists of stories revealing the true roots of ohio's economic decline and part of the coingate team at the toledo blade, a finalist for the pulitzer prize. jim? >> thank you so much. thank you all for sticking around. i'm a numbers nerd myself, and i've been delighted with the amount of numbers so far. but i want to start without numbers and start with raw numbers. how numbers and how we should do this, 5 trillion here, 4 trillion there. let's talk about what's going to happen. right? what's -- what does this look like a year from now? both from the lame duck and going forward. how much close