Kent Conrad: “let me just say that Senator Domenici, the chairman of the Budget Committee, has come to the floor this afternoon and…”

“let me just say that Senator Domenici, the chairman of the Budget Committee, has come to the floor this afternoon and presented two possible budgets. One is the President's budget, but without the trigger mechanism the President provided to assure balance even if the Congressional Budget Office projections are the ones that are used. The President's budget, of course, reaches unified balance by the estimates of the Office of Management and Budget, but it does not reach balance by the estimates of the Congressional Budget Office. And I want to emphasize, ``unified balance.'' All of us need to understand that is not real balance. Nobody should be fooled anywhere about any of these budgets that talk about balancing on a so-called unified basis, because when they use that big word, what they are talking about is putting all of the trust funds into the pot to claim balance. So I think it is important to understand I do not believe any of these budgets that claim unified balance are really balanced budgets at all. But, with that said, I think it is also important to understand when you hear these differences between Office of Management and Budget projections and Congressional Budget Office projections, the fact is both of them over the last 4 years have been overly pessimistic. They have overestimated what the deficit would be. And I think that is also important to keep in mind.…”