Bill Clinton: “I think it depends upon, obviously, what happens in the next couple of days. I think if we carry the House, I think…”

“I think it depends upon, obviously, what happens in the next couple of days. I think if we carry the House, I think we'll carry in the Senate. I don't think the Senate will let this plan go down. I don't think they will do that to the country. There are two groups of Senators that basically are either declared against or leaning against, some who have said forthrightly to me, ``This is the right thing for the country, but there's been so much misinformation about it, people will never know the real truth, and I will never recover politically if I vote for it, even though it's good,'' and others who say that ``This is a very good first step, but it doesn't do everything that needs to be done. Therefore, I won't vote for it.'' And my argument to the second group is going to be that this bill cannot possibly be expected to carry the burden of solving all the problems of the last 12 years; that we do have to control entitlement spending; we do have to control health care spending. I will be for such controls in the context of reforming the health care system, and I still think we've got a shot to get a lot of those. Also, the spending reductions, for those who say there ought to be more spending cuts, I remind them that the House of Representatives has already adopted over $10 billion in spending cuts in excess of those in a reconciliation bill which the Senate will have a chance to adopt. The Vice President's report on reinventing Government is coming up, and the health care debate is coming up. There will be further spending reductions by this Congress and this administration. So I'm going to keep making that argument to them, and I think we'll prevail.”