Bill Clinton: “That's right, but simple economics dictate that the President of the United States stop telling everybody what they want…”

“That's right, but simple economics dictate that the President of the United States stop telling everybody what they want to hear and start telling the truth. That's what simple economics dictate. I mean, in 1981 we cut taxes and increased spending and nearly bankrupted this country over the next 12 years, and we've been paying for it ever since, so that we had very high long-term interest rates, and credit was expensive, and job generation was weak. That's a problem, by the way, for wealthy countries throughout the world. Even Japan's having trouble creating jobs now. But look what's happened since I announced my plan and it started to pass its way through Congress, just in the last 4 or 5 months. First, we've had 755,000 new jobs in this economy, over 90 percent of them in the private sector, in the first 4 months of this administration. In the previous 4 years, we only had a million jobs. Second, in construction, part of the economy very affected by interest rates, in the first 4 months we had 130,000 new jobs, that's the biggest increase in 9 years. Has that affected every State and every community yet? No, but it shows that we are really moving in the right direction. If we can get everybody in this country to refinance their home loans, their business loans, to take available credit because interest rates are lower, that will put tens of billions of dollars back into this economy to create jobs. Mr. McCarthy. What inflation rate, sir--I don't mean to interrupt you, but we're short on time--what inflation rate would you be happy with one year from now?”