Max Baucus: “first I want to correct--I know it is a very minor mistake the Senator made--the markup of the Finance Committee took…”

“first I want to correct--I know it is a very minor mistake the Senator made--the markup of the Finance Committee took over 11\1/2\ hours, not 1\1/2\ hours, as the Senator represented. But, frankly, the main question is, how do we get people back to work? How do we get our economy moving? That is the question. There are lots of ideas. A lot of people have spent a lot of time working, trying to find the best solutions--a lot of economists, a lot of experts. It is true we are in, probably, the deepest recession this country has faced since the Great Depression. That is true. It is also true the economy is much different now than it was back in the 1930s. That is also true. The banking system is different. We now have an international dimension. It is greater today than was the case back in the Great Depression. So, therefore, it is true to some degree we are kind of learning as we are doing. Nobody has all the answers--nobody does. Most of us working on this recognize that. All of us are doing the best we can, on both sides of the aisle. We are trying to figure this out and do the best we can with the resources we have and with the Government we have. Different people, of course, have different estimates. Let me tell you what the basic estimates are from the people I have talked to. They say there is about a $1 trillion gap between the potential American economy and the actual economy--about a $1 trillion gap. The real question is, how do we fill in that gap?”