Joshua Bolten and Dan Senor

Joshua Bolten, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, is a graduate of Princeton University and has a law degree from Stanford University Law School.

Prior to moving to the office of OMB, Mr. Bolten was Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff. He was policy director for the Bush - Cheney presidential campaign.

Before the campaign, Bolten worked for Goldman Sachs International in London.

In the previous Bush administration, he was General Counsel to the US Trade Representative and Deputy Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. He also worked on the Hill as counsel to the Senate Finance Committee.

Dan Senor is a key adviser to Ambassador Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Mr. Senor was one of the first American officials in Baghdad after the war ended. Previously, he was an aide to Spencer Abraham during Abraham's term in the US Senate.

"Ambassador Bremer [has been] making the case behind closed doors and in public events over the last couple of weeks that if this becomes a loan we will have a Weimar Republic on our hands. We will be loading down the Iraqis with more debt on top of debt reparations they already have and creating a situation that those who want to undermine the reconstruction -- want to undermine the new Iraq -- will be able to capitalize on and blame America and blame the West for saddling their economy with all this debt."

(Bolten) "I don't expect that. I can't imagine a situation in which the right thing to do to meet our needs in Iraq is to undermine the US economy. So I don't expect any shift in position on that."

(Bolten) "We know we have a politically challenging situation when political opponents decide to compare some element of the spending in the Iraq [aid] package to something we would like to do here in the United States. Because politically you will find it is always easier to persuade your constituents that a water project or an electric project in the [home] district would be better than a water project or an electrical project in Iraq.

And I would say that would be a valid comparison to make if what we were talking about here was the comfort of the Iraqi people or normal foreign development aid. That is not the case here.... The purpose of the Iraq supplemental is not principally to make the Iraqi people more comfortable and make their lives better, although that is an important by-product. The purpose of the Iraq supplemental, both the security side and the reconstruction side is a national security purpose. That is to make that country secure and stable enough so that the situation there is not threatening to the United States."

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