Pete Domenici: “The first thing you have to understand is that if this point of order is not waived the budget resolution that we…”

“The first thing you have to understand is that if this point of order is not waived the budget resolution that we propose for the next 5 years falls. It is gone. For those who would like it to disappear and we would have no budget resolution, we can start over, then vote for Senator Gramm. Actually, the problem we are confronted with is not one of overspending. It is one of technical estimating, nothing more. Two-thirds of this overage is because we underestimated the outlays--CBO did--the outlays of the expenditures on the Defense Department. Actually, there is no question that we have been operating under a very tight lid, and I do not believe we should be held responsible for a technical error made in the estimating of the costs of the Defense Department. I believe we should waive this. As one who has been working on budgets, I put it this way. I do not waive the budget easily but the better thing to do is to get this 5-year budget rather than to kill it over a point of order that, to me, makes little or no sense in the context of the next 5 years.”