But Mr Rendell, a jocular fella, gamely played along on the need to "think big" on infrastructure during a time of unfathomably mammoth deficits.
WITH little fanfare, a dangerous notion has taken hold in progressive policy circles: that the amount of money borrowed by the federal government from Americans to finance its mammoth deficits doesn't matter.
He even goes so far as to fill her in and try to get her help to prove that Sander knows about all his company's wheelings, dealings, shell companies and mammoth deficits.
Implementing that vision has involved a drawn-out enervation at the local government level, one that has reached its apex in the present era of austerity as Parliament dumps most of the responsibility for Conservatives' mammoth deficit-reduction program onto local councils.
Instead, they have borrowed from the social security trust fund to mask mammoth deficits.
Because tax revenues are also low, Northern Ireland runs a mammoth budget deficit estimated at 33% of GVA.
Until that happens, the American consumer and a mammoth trade deficit of some $40 billion a month will again be one side of the world's imbalances.
Then there was the one-term governorship of Jim Florio, who in 1990 pushed through a $2.8 billion tax increase when faced with a mammoth budget deficit.
Investment and employment are both accelerating, and Europe has a big trade surplus while the United States has a mammoth trade deficit.
