Bill Clinton: “Keep in mind that, before you ask that question, this administration is the only one in 17 years to pass a budget…”

“Keep in mind that, before you ask that question, this administration is the only one in 17 years to pass a budget resolution within the legal time limit. Nearly as I can tell, we have put more major initiatives out there in 100 days than any of my recent predecessors, and we're working on some very major problems. So I think, on balance, the staff has done a good job. We've lost one initiative in the Congress that took way too long, dealing with a relatively small program to put some people to work. What I think we need to do, frankly, is to get the focus back on the things that I have been working on from the beginning, passing the major economic program, making sure the Congress will adopt the spending cuts, reaffirming that I have no interest in raising taxes until spending is cut--no tax increases without the spending cuts--getting the budget program so that we can keep interest rates down. I talked to more people today, just people around here; I asked how many people have refinanced any housing loans or other loans that save money on that. That's going to be the biggest stimulus we can ever provide if we can keep the interest rates down with deficit reduction. And then going on to health care and passing these empowerment initiatives, that's the one we're here talking about today. So will we make any changes in the way our process works, to try and improve it? I hope we can make some. We've got that under review. We've been discussing it for, oh, about 5 weeks now: What we can do to be more effective. After all, I just got here. I've never operated here before, and there are some things that are very different about the way Washington works, some good and some not so good. But I think we're on the right track, and I just want to focus now on the work before us, which is passing this budget. If we don't pass the final budget with the spending cuts and the revenue increases and keep them focused on the people who got all the benefits out of the eighties, having the upper income people pay the vast bulk of the load but not taxing them until the spending cuts were in place, that's what I think we have to do now. And that's what I'm focusing on.”