The Affordable Care Act is going to have a total government takeover of the health care system to disastrous results, is that not true?

I wonder if you can talk a little bit--if you feel expert enough to talk about how this impacts--this uncertainty, the prospect of a shutdown, the prospect of a default, the continuing weight of the sequester--impacts the middle class.

In my view, our country faces twin challenges, stabilizing our debt and deficit without shortchanging our future.

We cannot have all stimulus or all austerity. We need to have a balanced approach.

Our budget is about choices, and it is about values.

We have an obligation to come together to find a balanced solution to avoid sequester and get back to the regular order of annual budgeting.

We are cutting away at things like education and scientific research and innovation, which have previously provided a strong foundation for our economic growth.

These arbitrary and indiscriminate across-the-board cuts will reduce, according to many economists, expected GDP growth by as much as half.

This year alone, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that sequestration will cost our economy about three-quarters of a million jobs.

These are just some of the choices that we are facing that demand our action.

It weakens an economic recovery that has already been weak and is not delivering for the people you are asking about.

I remarked over and over again during that time in the State of Wisconsin about just how hard the people in my State are working to recover from the devastating recession.

And we all want a strong social safety net. We are a very compassionate society.

There are no tax increases that are going to help our economy grow.

But the balanced approach, if you increase taxes, it is going to harm economic growth.

I just want to ask any member of the panel, is there any tax increase that you know of that helps our economy grow or keeps us competitively globally?

I think it is fair to say, too, that it reduced the unemployment rate during that period?

Speaker Boehner... offered them little more than the same stimulus policies that have failed to fix our economy.