When you look at Washington, it's really not that big. And its economy is completely dependent on those two companies. When they're doing well, the whole state does all right, but when they're down, there's nothing to fall back on.

The Washington economy is a job engine, growing in employment and drawing people from the sidelines into the job market.

Two million dollars is only small when you're talking about Washington, D.C.

The Washington state economy right now is a job engine drawing people in from the sidelines and into the job market.

There's still parts of the U.S. economy that need cooling out, particularly the housing sector and various areas, ... (but) the fear is that the disaster in Louisiana will pull down the economy.

In this presumption of guilt culture, which is what has come about in Washington in the last 10 or 15 years, there must be a sense of anger there and an inability to manage the facts, ... It's hard to imagine how bad it is. You sit at your desk and you know what the facts are, but you can't get them out to the public because the lawyers tell you you can't - or if you can, the noise from the presumption of guilt culture overwhelms the facts.