Pete Domenici: “I think everybody knows--my good friend from Texas said--you can't get a balanced budget overnight. You do buy it on the…”

“I think everybody knows--my good friend from Texas said--you can't get a balanced budget overnight. You do buy it on the installment plan. When you buy it on an installment plan that is 3 years, 5 years, or 10 years, you have to make some assumptions. I think, distinguished economist that he is, he would know that. The Senate should know we did not use optimistic economic assumptions. In fact, we used CBO's very modest economic assumptions. There is no way we could provide an assumption, outright, that, if we have a serious recession, that we provided for it. But CBO's economic assumptions versus others, more optimistic, at least build into their model that, indeed, there could be a slowdown and, thus, they take something off the growth edge. So I don't think we have an unduly high one. Senator, I am agreeing with you that unless we seek to look at the new programs we created, in terms of are they performing as we expected, we won't make it.”