John Spratt: “Going back to the topic before Ms. Tsongas spoke, here are just some highlights of the economy we also inherited, so…”

“Going back to the topic before Ms. Tsongas spoke, here are just some highlights of the economy we also inherited, so that we have got, in effect, a dual negative double whammy--a budget deficit that is soaring out of sight and an economy which is contributing to that deficit--and it makes the effort to reduce and dispel and wipe out the deficit ever harder. For example, here's the unemployment rate. It stands at a 17-year high. Nearly 600,000 thousand jobs lost last month. Against a head wind like that, it's very, very difficult to bring the budget deficit down. In fact, you need to have countercyclical policies in effect that are actually adding to the demand of the economy in order to get the economy back on track, back on its feet, which is what we are doing right now. Here's another chart which shows what happens in an economy like ours, where unemployment is close to 8 percent. Revenues that were expected last September, when the Congressional Budget Office did its forecast of the budget, the revenues that were forecasted then are not obtained. We are $2.7 trillion short over that period of time, 2009 through 2018, in the revenues that were assumed last September, which changes the basis for all of our policies when you simply don't have the funding that you're anticipating having only a few months before. It also shows you one of the frightening features of this current recession is how fast it's coming on. It lingered for some time.”