Pete Domenici: “The economy is much in the air now. It is not as much as perhaps the Iraq situation. But the Democratic Party and their…”

“The economy is much in the air now. It is not as much as perhaps the Iraq situation. But the Democratic Party and their leaders want to make it the important issue and put the war in the backseat. I don't think that is going to happen because the people of this country know the war is an imminent problem. And, if we have a war, the amount of money we plan to spend in the budget will probably get changed in a mammoth way to accommodate the needs of the war. When we had the war in the gulf the last time, our allies paid most of the bill. I recall looking at the formula that was drawn by the OMB. Actually, our allies just took the formula and said we are bound by the formula, and wrote the checks. Some of those paid as much as $13 billion for that war. Here is our share. Japan didn't enter that war. They wrote a big check. We didn't pay much for that war. We don't have such an agreement now. Maybe somebody will start thinking about it. Let me talk about the economy.”