Pete Domenici: “First, let me note the presence of Senator Conrad on the floor. Might I just say, I do not think you heard any of my…”

“First, let me note the presence of Senator Conrad on the floor. Might I just say, I do not think you heard any of my remarks since I returned from a couple of hours at the White House yesterday. And I have not had a chance to speak with the distinguished Senator. But we are busy, as of today, working on trying to reach our differences. There will be a lot of work the next 2 weeks. We are very hopeful 1 week after we return, with that week being spent by some of us getting down to the final stages of negotiations, that we will have something very constructive. It is hard to say where it will all end up, but I can say the President approached it with a degree of not only earnestness, but a sense that we ought to go ahead and move and we ought to resolve some differences and get going. And I have expressed that here today, indicating that as these two budgets are only there in the event we cannot get a budget out of the Budget Committee, then we have to get something to work off of, and this is a rather normal way to do it: Put a budget resolution in. Then the leader can call it up if we were to fail, and we have something to work on.”