Max Baucus: “Madam President, I agree with him the Nation should turn to serious budget negotiations. Our high budget deficits are…”

“Madam President, I agree with him the Nation should turn to serious budget negotiations. Our high budget deficits are unconscionable and must be addressed. We should balance the budget over the life of the business cycle. We should balance the budget as quickly as we possibly can. But we should not balance the budget while in the grips of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Doing that would only put more people out of work. I might say, Madam President, that at a hearing held yesterday by the Finance Committee, the well-known economist Mark Zandi, who was an adviser to Presidential candidate John McCain, volunteered that this is not the time to draw that line in terms of deficit reduction.”