robert kuttner is a founder and co-editor of the american prospect magazine. he's the author of a new book, "debtors' prison: the politics of austerity versus possibility." and kevin hassett, an economist who has written papers on this subject. he's served in republican administrations and is now a senior fellow at the american enterprise institute. welcome to you both. robert kuttner to you first, let's start with the united states, what are some examples of policy right now in this country that you believe are hurting economic growth? >> well, we had the new year's deal that president obama made with the republicans that was supposed to head off the so called fiscal cliff. that took about $200 billion out of economy. we raised social security taxes two points. we raised taxes on the top 1% and to compound the damage we have the sequester which was executed in march. those two things together according to the congressional budget office, which say bipartisan outfit, cut the growth rate in half this year from a projected 3% to a projected 1.5%. if you are in a

robert kuttner to you first, let's start with the united states, what are some examples of policy right now i this untrthat y believe are hurting economic growth? >> well, we had the new year's deal that president obama made with the republicans that was supposed to head off the so called fiscal cliff. that took about $200 billion out of economy. we raised social security taxes two points. we raised taxes on the top 1% and to compound the damage we have the sequester which was executed in march. those two things together according to the congressional budget office, which say bipartisan outfit, cut the growth rate in half this year from a projected 3% to a projected 1.5%. if you are in a depressed economy and you reduce purchasing power further you are only going to make the economy more depressed and far from getting closer to an improvement to debt ratio you are going to reduce the g.d.p. relative to what it would have been so the debt ratio is getting worse. we've had a realtime experiment both in the united states d in europe in the failure of aws tearity -- austerity poll at thisci