also with us is susan urahn, managing director of the pew center on the states. >> dirk ravitch what jumps out is the situation is much worse than thought, much worse than states are willing to admit and worse than anybody seems to have a grasp on what to do. am i overstating these problems? >> no, you're not. and it's a function arising from things. one, there are basic expenditures like medicaid and retirement expenditures which are growing at a faster rate in state and local revenues. number two, states for a long long time had been using gimmicky to balance their budget and weren't call to account by that. wall street's been willing to aid and abet that process and out of perfectly valid and wonderful motives, people have made a lot of commitments but we've been unwilling to provide the revenues to match the commitments that we've made as a society. >> well susan urahn, you pick up on the revenue side because one of the things in the report is that they're not matching. but they're also lower than they've been. there are a lot of things hitting the states. >> that's true. i think