“At the beginning of the year, there's a lot of talk about spending restraint and reducing the deficit. At the end of the year, that's all kind of forgotten.”
“It's just not that big a chunk of the budget. You've got to go where the money is. There's a lot of rhetoric about spending restraint, but there's been no serious effort to actually address the deficit. Part of the problem is there's no consensus on how to do it.”
“Waiting till the end of the day means you don't have time to get people to react outside of the briefing, although so much of this has leaked. So I guess it does give them some advantage.”
“It's difficult enough to really react to all the data typically included in defense budget. To not even have access to the basic top line over view before you have the opportunity to question the secretary seems problematic. It doesn't have the out years beyond 2007; usually, in fact in all previous blue tops, it had those numbers.”