On the recordFebruary 14, 2011
It is a treat to be able to join my colleagues here this evening and to consider this great discussion and debate that is taking place over the past months, but particularly during this week as we approach the question about what are we going to do with funding the remainder of this year. There, of course, was no budget decided on last year, and so they do a thing called a continuing resolution. So there's a lot of discussion as to how much can we be affording to spend of the taxpayers' dollar. And I thought that it might be appropriate this evening to take a look at that, not so much in a lot of minuscule detail, but at the magnitude of the overall question that's before us and how the math just doesn't work. I will also try, as we have a chance to get into a discussion this evening, to connect it to the problem of unemployment, because all of these things are connected, and still I think it's helpful to look from an overall perspective.
