int sayingot just sprat that is not true. the claims are totally specie as. the study is completed faulty. people look at the history of at&t and t-mobile of the last eight or nine years, t-mobile has been creating jobs while at&t has been eliminating jobs. the study proves that the basis for the claim is just wrong, and keep you look at past transactions and what each company has been doing over the last eight or nine years, you will see that at&t has been shedding jobs, while t-mobile has actually been adding them. if the merger work prove, we wouldanticipate that at&t continue its shedding of jobs. >> vonya mccann, in the lawsuit , one of the issues you bring up is back hall. what is that, and why is that a factor? >> most people don't know that the only part of a wireless call that is actually wireless is from your handset to the tower. everything from the tower on to the delivery of the call is carried over wire line facilities. a portion of those facilities are called back halls. those services are provided by the local telephone companies which include

congressman sprat, former chairman of the house budget committee. and charlie cobb, the head of c.e.d. what we thought we would discuss in this panel is sort of bring in the dmpt kinds of special interests that are at play, both in helping to move this issue forward and sometimes standing in the way, sort of protecting different areas which make it harder to have a big budget deal and how we might move that forward. and as well, what the public's response is. so many of these people have been out there talking with people, hearing how they respond to different approaches, different proposals, and so that's what we hope to get out of this sure to be rich discussion. pete, if you want to toss out the first couple of questions. >> let's go big, first of all work our group in terms of the public. given the debate we've seen over the bowles-simpson plan, proposals from the president, proposal on the house side from republicans, the american public ready for this kind of deal, whether it's what the supercommittee is about to come up with, perhaps $1.5 tri