Pete Domenici: “Senator Landrieu wants to speak 10 or 15 minutes. We will welcome that. If we add that up, we have plenty of time. I…”

“Senator Landrieu wants to speak 10 or 15 minutes. We will welcome that. If we add that up, we have plenty of time. I want the Senators to know we have a schedule. It is not me; Members have to follow each other. I take a minute and say to Senator Bingaman, I am not going to answer now the detailed allegations today. I think two or three are significant, but I am just going to say to the Senate I have the most respect for my colleague. I think everyone knows we work together, shoulder to shoulder. It is good to work with him. I think he must feel the same. We got something great done. However, I believe there is one flaw in the argument that is imperative. That is, plain and simple, do you want to hang tight with an ideology of the past and get no bill and no new development or do you want to adjust to change and get something significant? Now, he might not agree, my friend might not agree that I am correct in saying what we are getting, but I truly believe the final product of the path we were going to follow--which was to not share the revenue; and we had not made any arrangement with Florida--was doomed to yield nothing, and we would be back where we were. Secondly, if we want to wait around for MMS to do their plans and assume that they end up with what they started with, then just look at history. They hardly ever come out anywhere close to what they started with, and they probably would have done it again on this one.…”