Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all, I would veto a bill that I thought--here at the moment of our greatest prosperity, when we've got a…”

“Well, first of all, I would veto a bill that I thought--here at the moment of our greatest prosperity, when we've got a surplus, if they wanted to cut education and gut our efforts to put more teachers in the schools, our efforts to give kids after-school programs, our efforts to do all of the things we're trying to do in education-- hook up their computers to the schools by 2000, the Internet, all the classrooms to the Internet by 2000--all these things we're trying to do, would I veto that? I would. I would have to do that. I would have no choice. It would be unconscionable to think that America, at its moment of greatest prosperity, when we've got our first surplus in 30 years, is out there cutting education and several other areas. So, yes, I would. Secondly, I know for ideological reasons they don't want to raise the tobacco tax, but just yesterday one of their long-time allies, Philip Morris, acknowledged that cigarettes cause cancer. And we know that more needs to be done to get our kids off tobacco. And we know that raising the price of a pack of cigarettes is one of the best ways to do it. So we--you know, they don't have to agree to raise it as much as I proposed, but it would help to sit down and negotiate that. If they don't like my offsets, what are their offsets? Maybe there are some other things we could agree on. We won't know unless we have a serious conversation. I think the best way to do this is to avoid spending the Social Security surplus, even though it's been done every year for at least 16 years and was done before in times of deficits. This is a new thing, you know, not spending it. The only reason they're proposing not to spend it is that we have non-Social Security surplus, though much smaller. There is a good reason not to spend it. And the good reason not to spend it is, number one, it will help us to pay down the debt and get this country out of debt in 15 years, for the first time in 165 years. Number two, it enables us to achieve interest savings, and those interest savings, I believe, for 5 years should be put back in the Trust Fund, and that will run the life of Social Security out to 2050 and take into account the retirement of all the baby boomers. So I hope we can do it. But in order to do it, we're going to have to make some hard decisions. But it looks to me like, though, the decisions that I propose to make are less hard than slashing education at a time of great prosperity when you've got the biggest and most diverse student population in history or raising taxes on poor people, which was another one of their proposals or all these gimmicks. I mean, they proposed--for example, if they do this 13-month thing, you know, where they just, we spend the money this year but play like we're spending it next year, then they're just going to make an even bigger headache. We'll have the same headache next year. And we'll be here a year from now, and you will be asking me these same questions. They say that the ordinary operations of the Pentagon are an emergency. That's one of the things they're considering. The ordinary operations of the Pentagon are an emergency. I think that will come as a surprise to people who have been working there for 10 or 20 years. Susan [Susan Page, USA Today]. 2000 Election Issues”