Bill Clinton: “I don't know the answer to the last question, but what I've done is to try to take the strengths of both House and…”

“I don't know the answer to the last question, but what I've done is to try to take the strengths of both House and Senate versions of the bill and try to put them together. The strength of the Senate version was it had fewer overall taxes and was even more progressive. The strength of the House version was it had much more economic incentives, more economic growth incentives, for research and development, for investment in new firms, for small business, the things of that kind. So the argument that I'm going to be making to all these Senators is that this plan now clearly has $500 billion in deficit reduction; it will now have more spending cuts than tax increases in it; it will have over 75 percent of the new tax burden now borne by people with incomes above $200,000; that the middle class tax burden is now down to $33 a year; and that the economic growth incentives qualifying, for example, 90 percent plus of the small businesses in the country for a reduction in taxes if they invest more in their companies; and enabling the working poor through the earned-income tax credit to lift themselves above poverty by working full time, these are very, very important things. And the time has come to act. Now, let me say just as a generic thing, since this may help to shape some of the other questions: The people who are leaning against this program or have announced against it--not the Republicans, that's almost entirely a political deal; the Republicans have even opposed the conservative amendments to our budget to control entitlements and impose discipline. But the Democrats basically fall into two categories: There are those who think it's the right thing for the country, but they're afraid there's been so much misinformation out there about it that they'll get beat if they vote for it. And then there are those who think that it's a good first step, but it doesn't go far enough. The only thing I would say to the latter group is that we do have to do something on entitlements, but we can't get there until we do something to reform health care spending overall, and that this is a major step that will stabilize the financial markets, keep interest rates down, and enable us to move on to health care reform, to getting a world trade agreement, to welfare reform, to the crime bill, to all these things that are out there crying for attention that we can't even address if we don't go ahead and get this budget out of the way. And also, there will be further budget cuts. The Vice President's report on reinventing Government is due next month. It will have many more suggested budget cuts. And the House of Representatives has already cut another $10 billion off the budget that we can't fully count yet because the Senate hasn't acted. But when they do, we'll have even more cuts.”