greece, i think we'll hear about greece andity. greece is 47%. italy is 49%. and france is 53%. that's a metric we need to manage and reduce the size of the government. with that, mr. chairman, i pr appreciate the indulgence and turn it over to witnesses. >> there's lots of things you said i agree with and some that i don't. i think my sharpest area of disagreement would be the new health care law because cbo told us that will reduce deficits and dealt by a trillion dollars many the second ten years and i believe that's the case. i know you don't share that view. that's what makes our democracy vibrant, having disagreements. but tlus much i agree with and what a most strongly agree with is that rear on an unsustainable course. and i think that's undeniable that we're on an unsustainable course. we've had the head of the congeeshl budget office testify before the committee that we're on an unsustainable course. we've had the head of office and management and budget so testify. the chairman of the federal reserve testify we're on an unsustainable course. we've had the secretary of

wouldn't you say what we've seen in terms of getting that firewall between greece andity will i that ositive in the past two months, what's happened in italy, for the whole contagion fear? >> absolutely. i would go further and say greece has been sacrificed in order to build that firewall. i think everybody recognizes what you said which is in greece we are sustaining the unsustainable and it comes at a cost and the cost is a society that has to put up with tremendous austerity without seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. that's why this package will fail like the previous package. >> the gangrenous arm is gone but the body lives. >> we have to deal with portugal next. >> do you write goportugal off do they have an italy rebound. >> it's more like italy than spain. i think you can draw the line above greece and portugal and i think the europeans will draw the line when they feel confident that the fire wall is there. there's something else going on that we must not forget, there's also an effort led by germany to refound to use president sarkozy's term to refound the core. they wa