Bill Clinton: “They shouldn't necessarily feel good about that; they should think it's a price worth paying to get the deficit down and…”

“They shouldn't necessarily feel good about that; they should think it's a price worth paying to get the deficit down and to get these incentives for the economy to grow. If you look at it, gasoline in real dollar terms--that is, adjusted for inflation--is at its lowest price in 30 years. So this is the least burdensome time to put this on. Let me compare it. If you compare the tax burden imposed on the middle class in the 1990 tax bill and this one, that bill imposed a burden 2\1/2\ times greater than this one. So we tried to minimize the burden on the middle class, hold working families with incomes under $30,000, which is a big percentage of Louisiana and Arkansas, harmless from the tax increase and asked the people in the upper 1\1/2\ percent, people with incomes above $200,000, to pay 80 percent of the taxes, because they got a majority of the income gains of the 1980's; literally the top 1 percent got over 60 percent of the income gains and got a tax cut. So I think this is a fair program. The main thing is, we're going to lock all this money up and put it to bringing the debt down. And we all win if that happens.”