“Why put off what you've go to do? Let’s get the job done - we need to get a plan to manage down the debt and deficit,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) tells The Daily Ticker on the sidelines of the Milken Institute 2013 Global Conference.

The big debate is about how to do that and when. There's also a question about what the House, Senate, and president can realistically agree to when it comes to a fiscal roadmap for the country (or, arguably, anything other than FAA furloughs).

As we gear up for a budget debate with three competing blueprints and another debt ceiling deadline, Congressman Cantor lays out a couple of cost-saving ideas where he thinks Republican lawmakers could find common ground with the White House. In the accompanying interview, he cites ideas to combine Medicare Parts A and B (hospitals and doctor services) and to reform the federal pension system and bring it more in line with the private sector.

The New York Times reports that Cantor is attempting to

One of the most common numbers you hear if you listen to stock forecasts is the "P/E ratio"--the price of the stock or market relative to the company's earnings.

Sometimes, the P/E ratio can be very useful for getting a sense of whether a stock or market is cheap or expensive.

At other times, however, the number can be highly misleading.

One of the most common ways the P/E ratio can be misused, for example, is when investors cite the P/E of a small, rapidly growing company that currently has a low (or no) profit margin. In these cases, the company will often have an astronomically high P/E on its historical earnings, which can lead some investors to conclude that it is "ridiculously priced."

What these investors often don't realize, however, is that stocks trade based on future earnings expectations, not past earnings, and the company's earnings might be expected to grow extremely rapidly in the future. Investors who are looking at the stock's price relative to possible future