governor ed rendell presents his budget in the state of the commonwealth address. the former mayor of philadelphia also pays tribute to the late congressman john murtha. from the state capitol in harrisburg, this is about one hour. . to this day, the defense of our values continues. as we gather today, more than 590 pennsylvania cardmembers are on duty in iraq and afghanistan pennsylvania guard members are on duty in iraq and afghanistan. finally, thei] real truth withdrawal is happening, but we must keep those on the front lines in our prayers every day until all of them come home safely. [applause] it is a great relief that the stryker brigade is back in the united states after serving so brilliantly in iraq. i am honored their colonel is with us today. so, too is lieutenant-colonel scott perry, the state rep, and we also welcome home another one of our own, who completed his second tour of duty in iraq, where he served in a black hawk helicopter for the army national gua
i don t know whether the boats scheduled the second will come off or not. for those who are thinking about tomorrow, we have a hearing scheduled for tomorrow. we will make a decision about that very soon because we have witnesses lined up. one thing we are considering is moving the hearing tomorrow until the next day and light of the threat of additional snow. this afternoon and through the evening and into tomorrow is when it will happen. if we get another 10-12 inches it might be very difficult for witnesses to get here. i am fortunate because i live about 10 blocks away. i can always get here. i want to thank the witnesses. this is an important hearing on the economic outlook for the federal budget and debt. we re joined by an extremely distinguished panel of witnesses, dr. carmen rhinhart. welcome. good to have you here. dr. simon johnson, professor and entrepreneur sh
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for the conservatorship of fannie and freddie, but when you look at the publicly held debt numbers, they haven t come up with the $5 trillion yet. they have taken a stab but they have not gone quite as far as we re suggesting. at the beginning of your question, an imbalance and concern that the troubles might be this to pursue inflation as you re dealing with it. that has been a concern around the world in the past. and it may work very well for the united states. on the spending side, you have an enormous number of spending programs that are indexed, and as inflation goes up, that is an increase in our spending. that is true in medicare and other programs. and we continued to released inflation-indexed debt. the interest rate will rise as the inflation takes off. . his index will rise if inflation takes off. it is short term and it could go down because of surprise inflation but the market will charge a premium interest rate and say you fooled us once but we will charge you
furthest proposals to have a focus on the national debt and have us deal with it. i am concerned this might be short term rather than long term because we re in a recession. we need to create jobs. we need to spend. when you re in a recession, it may not be in america s long- term interest. if we do not deal with issues about tax policies that encourage savings, but i know my friends in the white house raised the issue of health care in this context, so the good news about the bills considered inñr the house and the senate is the two principal goals were to reduce the growth rate of health care costs in america while reducing the budget costs so we wereçó actually reducing health- care costs and the budgetñi. at health care costs solely in light of the federal government s budget and say we have succeeded if we can reduce the entitlement costs of the federal government. we do not look at it as to how much seniors might be asked to pay. we don t look at as to how much busi