Bill Clinton: “On illegal immigration--we've increased by about 40 percent the number of border guards we've got, and we're sending…”

“On illegal immigration--we've increased by about 40 percent the number of border guards we've got, and we're sending illegal immigrants back more rapidly than ever before, especially if they come in contact with the criminal justice system. What we need--and maybe we can work together on this--is the capacity to go into more workplaces and find people who are taking jobs away from Americans illegally. And I think that's important. On welfare reform--we don't have time to debate that today. We agree on the ends. We have big disagreements about the means. But I've given 29 of the 50 States permission to get out from under all the Federal rules and to do things like take food stamp and welfare checks and give it to employers as a wage supplement and let employers then hire somebody off welfare and use the welfare check to cut the employers' cost to put the people to work instead. And I think that's good. AmeriCorps [A former VISTA volunteer expressed support for the AmeriCorps program and asked the President and Speaker Gingrich to comment.] Speaker Gingrich. Sure. Let me say this is an area where I think the President has a good idea, but we disagree, I think, about philosophy of Government and about setting priorities. But it's not a bad idea. I don't think AmeriCorps in any way is a bad thing. And in a minute, since I'm going to go first, I am confident that he will tell you vividly how good an idea it is. But I have two concerns that I think are a different direction, philosophically. One is that I believe--and we have people like Congressman Kolbe and Congressman Knollenberg who are developing a bill that would give a every taxpayer a tax credit to give the money directly to charities so that charities could do it directly. I believe we want to have less Washington-based bureaucracy and fewer decisions made in Wash- ington. And we want to strengthen the private charities. So if you said to me tomorrow morning would I rather strengthen AmeriCorps or the Salvation Army, the truth is--and I happen to agree with a book by Marvin Elasky called ``The Tragedy of American Compassion,'' where he argues that the kind of transformation that you can get from 100 Black Men or from Habitat for Humanity, whose pin I'm wearing--the kind of groups that aren't restricted by legitimate Government restrictions but are able to go in in a much more spiritual basis and a much more directed basis and help people change--you get a stronger, healthier society by getting it totally out of Government. That's a difference of philosophy about the size of Government. There's a second difference. If we're going to balance the budget, I think this is a time to be very tough-minded about priorities. Now, the President lists this as one of his highest priorities and is fighting very ably for it and is going to, frankly, keep it. If we can get to a signable rescission bill, it's going to contain--it's going to keep AmeriCorps, and that's the power of the Presidency. I would just suggest that when you sit down and look at what it takes to balance the budget over 7 years or 10 years, it's hard. And if you're setting priorities about which programs to keep and which not, you can have a legitimate, honest debate about how many things you can afford to do in Washington and how many things you need to get back home to New Hampshire or you need to ask the private sector. But it's an area where I--I don't fault his vision and his desire to recruit people at all, and I think it's, frankly, a program that's very defensible. It's just one--it's a question of philosophy and priorities.”