The federal government has incurred budget deficits more than 80% of the time since 1930, a period when the number of governmentalfunctions increased dramatically.
Second, as we said earlier in the conversation, we are working directly with, if you will, the de facto group that is running the governmentalfunctions in the eastern part of the country.
This would be a good thing from the standpoint of federal finances, since runaway entitlement spending is the most important single factor that drives federal spending, deficits and debt, making it harder to fund other governmentalfunctions.