to decide what our priorities are. most immediately short-term, we need to extend a payroll tax cut set to expire at the end of this month. [ applause ] if we don't do that, the 160 million americans including most of the people here will see their taxes go up by an average of $1,000 starting in january and badly weaken our recovery. that's the short-term. in the long-term, we have to rethink our tax system more fundamentally. we have to ask, do we want to make the investments we need in things like education and research and high tech manufacturing and all those things that make us an economic super power or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks because we can't afford to do