Bill Clinton: “I'm asking you. You asked me to take responsibility, so I ask you why. They plainly went down after we declared our…”

“I'm asking you. You asked me to take responsibility, so I ask you why. They plainly went down after we declared our deficit reduction package. That's why they went down. They have gone up, I think, for two reasons, maybe three. One is we had 7 percent economic growth in the last quarter of last year. That's the most economic growth we have had in 10 years. Second-- we had 458,000 new jobs come into this economy in the month of March alone. That's the most new jobs we've had in any given month in over 6 years. When you have that kind of growth, some people are going to think that inflation is coming back in the economy, and interest rates will go up. Secondly, I think there was an overreaction to what the Federal Reserve did. The Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates in the hope that they would send a signal that they were going to fight inflation and that long-term rates would stabilize. Instead of that, the market overreacted to it. The third thing that happened is most everybody in America thought the stock market was somewhat overvalued. When people pull their money out of the stock market, if they put their money into other securities, that will tend to raise long-term rates. I think those are the reasons they've gone up. The issue is, are we going to continue to have economic growth or not? I think we are. And if you ask me to take responsibility because interest rates went up where we had 7 percent growth in the last 3 months of last year and 458,000 new jobs in March, I'll be glad to take responsibility for that if that's what you want. That's what I call a high class problem. I do think that the markets are overreacting to what the Federal Reserve did. And I hope that they'll settle down. I hope the stock market will settle down; I hope the interest rates will go back down. But we still did the right thing, sir, to keep trying to bring the deficit down. And I still think we've got to pass this budget that will eliminate 115 programs, cut 200 and something others, and give us 3 years of deficit reduction for the first time since Harry Truman. I think we ought to do that. I think it's good economics. Anticrime Efforts [Ms. Hindrew introduced an 11-year-old girl in Charlotte, who asked what could be done to stop the growing crime rate.]”