Bill Clinton: “I'll tell you exactly what I said about the tobacco issue and what we said about spending. Now, first of all, there's a…”

“I'll tell you exactly what I said about the tobacco issue and what we said about spending. Now, first of all, there's a big controversy, as you know, about whether the Congress has already spent into the Social Security surplus. I don't think we can fully evaluate all that until we see all these bills and we have a comprehensive resolution. This bill had its own pay-fors. There's no question that this bill does not get into the Social Security surplus. So what I said to them is--I said the following things: Number one, let's try to have a comprehensive solution. Let's look at all these bills together, see where we are and where we need to go. Number two, there were some things that I felt very strongly that we ought to fund that weren't presently in the bills. I wanted to make sure that we continued to work on the 100,000 teachers, that we continued to work on the police, that we paid our commitments to the Middle East peace process, to reducing the nuclear arsenal in Russia, to our part of our efforts to alleviate the debt of the poorest countries--that's a big part of the world's millennium project--to the U.N. dues--I'm trying to work that out--but that if I ask for extra money, over and above what they had appropriated, I would make a commitment that we would pay for it, we would find a way to cover that, so there would be no question that any extra funds we asked for--which, in the context of the overall budget, would be quite modest now; there's not that much difference in the dollars--that that would be paid for and that we ought to get all this together and look. Now, with regard to the tobacco tax, what I said was, I was well aware that they were not going to raise the tobacco tax 55 cents, as I had originally proposed. I still believe that it would be good health policy to have a more modest increase or at least a look-back provision to protect kids from smoking. We're seeing all over the country an absence of those kinds of efforts. Even in the States that have gotten a lot of money, some States are doing it; some States aren't. So I think it would be good policy. So all I said was that I realized they weren't going to accept my proposal but that we were now talking about much more modest money that I thought we could find a way to pay for that they could live with. 2000 Election/Campaign Finance Reform”