Bill Clinton: “Spoken like a good Republican. Let me say, I believe first of all that what the Republicans have done, they ran this…”

“Spoken like a good Republican. Let me say, I believe first of all that what the Republicans have done, they ran this Government for 12 years. We went from a $1 trillion to a $4 trillion deficit. Now, the Democratic Congress has voted for that, but you need to know that under both the Reagan and Bush administration Congress actually appropriated a little bit less money than the Presidents asked for. My answer to you, sir, is that not very long ago one of our Nation's newspapers, the Philadelphia Inquirer, went around and interviewed what you might call neutral experts on the defi- cit reduction plan, basically the budget analysts for the big accounting firms and other big finance firms. And they all concluded that my budget was the most honest one presented in a decade, the first Presidential budget to be taken seriously by Congress since the first Reagan budget. And the budget analyst for Price Waterhouse, the big accounting firm, whom I have never met and don't know and obviously doesn't work for me, said that my budget was the best budget in more than a decade, and the only thing I was wrong about is that it would reduce the deficit more than I was saying, not less. So let's just hope he's right. I think he is. Thank you.”