Pete Domenici: “Then the Senator can do whatever he wants--leave it in and we have a fight or take it out and we accept it. Mr.…”

“Then the Senator can do whatever he wants--leave it in and we have a fight or take it out and we accept it. Mr. President, I am not committing that I will return in the conference with this fully funded. I don't know that I can do that. What I am suggesting is I will do my dead-level best. I don't go there with the intention of throwing the amendment away. I go there intending to try to see if we can fund it. I have every confidence that we will find some money to exceed what is in the bill. Now, whether it can be exactly this amount or not, I have no idea at this point. That will be the dynamics, and a lot of things in the amendment that are very difficult that I am not agreeing to right now. I am agreeing to accept the amendment and we will take it to conference on those terms. The Senator can rely on what I have just said. With that, if he will remove the handwritten part that was added, that is fine. If he does not want to, then clearly I don't have any reluctance to having a full-blown debate on this amendment today. I have plenty of time. I don't want to do that if we can get it done the way we have just talked about, otherwise we will just proceed.”