Kent Conrad: “This is a budget with many missing pieces. Not only do we have missing pages, we have missing numbers. The defense…”

“This is a budget with many missing pieces. Not only do we have missing pages, we have missing numbers. The defense buildup that the administration will ask for next week, after we finish with the budget, will ask for a massive defense buildup. So they have created a special reserve fund with a black hole in this budget that says whatever they decide later--whatever the President recommends--they can stick into this budget. They will not have a vote on it. We will sort of have a vote, we will vote now, before we know what the number is.”