Bill Clinton: “Well, as you know, we had supported moving it up for 6 months. But in the conference committee there was a very strong…”

“Well, as you know, we had supported moving it up for 6 months. But in the conference committee there was a very strong demand to do some other things that made it very difficult not to put it back retroactively, apparently. For example, the conference wanted to raise the income threshold to which Social Security recipients were subject to higher income taxes so that now no one on Social Security, and I think it's about the bottom 90 percent, will not be subject to any higher taxes. And the people that we have to get votes from asked for the following: They said, we want the economic incentives in, we want $495 billion of deficit reduction, and we don't want a higher energy tax number. And I think the conferees--I don't think any of them were very happy about that, but I think they thought that since that had been announced in January, or February, since a lot of people were already making adjustments on the basis of that, that that was a fairer way to do it than to run the risk of dropping below $490 billion in deficit reduction and, frankly, not being able to pass the program.”