bell, senior director of economic policy, policy center, laura peterson, senior policy analyst, taxpayera pollack, senior policy analyst, the economic policy institute. our moderator for this morning's panel is jim tankersley, the economics correspondent for national journal. jim joined us from the tribune washington bureau where he covered energy, the environment and politics for newspapers, including the "los angeles times" and the "chicago tribune." he previously worked at "the toledo blade" and "the rocky mountain news" and "the oregonian." mr. tankersley and a colleague at the blade won the 2007 livingston award for their business as usual series of stories revealing the true roots of ohio's economic decline. he was part of the coingate people that was a finalist for the pulitzer prize. jim? >> thank you so much. thank you all for sticking around. i'm a numbers nerd myself, and have been delighted with the amount of numbers so far this morning. but i want to start without numbers and start with some raw politics. we just heard a lot of theoretical discussion back and forth about how numbers