Bill Clinton: “Well, I'm very happy--what I'm proudest of is that it turned out to be a very productive year. If you look at--I'll just…”

“Well, I'm very happy--what I'm proudest of is that it turned out to be a very productive year. If you look at--I'll just mention them again. I did before, but we wound up--after a year in which almost nothing was accomplished in the Congress, we wound up with a recommitment to the 100,000 teachers, to the 50,000 police. We passed the financial modernization bill. We passed an historic 60,000 housing vouchers to new people from welfare to work. We passed the bill to give disabled people the right to take health care into the workplace. We doubled after- school funding. We passed this fund that I've been pushing hard for, for a long time, to help the States turn around or shut down failing schools. We had quite a lot of accomplishments. On the foreign front, we had the China-WTO agreement; progress with the Middle East peace; the Northern Ireland peace agreement; Kosovo, which I am very, very proud of. I still believe our country did the right thing there. And we've got talks starting on Cyprus now. We've got a Caspian pipeline agreement, which I believe 30 years from now you'll all look back on that as one of the most important things that happened this year. We had the Conventional Forces in Europe agreement with Russia, which will result in the removal of their forces from Georgia and Muldova. We had the debt relief for the poorest countries in the world, something I'm immensely proud of and deeply committed to. We made a big dent in our U.N. arrears issue. And we have worked with North Korea to end their missile program. So I'm very proud of what happened this year. What I'm most disappointed in is what still got left on the table. I'm terribly disappointed that we still haven't passed a Patients' Bill of Rights, that we still haven't raised the minimum wage, that we still haven't passed hate crimes legislation, that we still didn't pass that commonsense gun legislation, which was crying out for action after what happened at Columbine--and we had another school incident this week. I am disappointed that we didn't pass the school construction bill. I'm hoping we will pass the new markets initiative next year. If we don't do something now to bring economic opportunity to the areas of this country which have been left behind, we will never forgive ourselves. And I'm profoundly disappointed that we still haven't done anything to take the life of Social Security out beyond the baby boom generation and extend the life of Medicare and add a prescription drug benefit. So my only disappointments are what we didn't get done. But I'm gratified by what was accomplished.”