Bill Clinton: “That's not right. What we have done--I'll remind you, we started out, when I became President--when I became President I…”

“That's not right. What we have done--I'll remind you, we started out, when I became President--when I became President I said, we have a commitment to maintain readiness and the quality of life for our troops; we have a commitment to be able to meet our strategic mission, which is principally to be able to conduct two regional conflicts nearly simultaneously. We have reviewed that; we have managed that. In the last 2 years, we have also had significant costs for other things, as you know. And our military has performed very well in Haiti, in the Gulf, in dealing with the migration problems in Cuba, in Haiti, and in many, many other areas. We've also stepped up a lot of our operations in the Adriatic and in the area around Bosnia. So we have had a lot of unanticipated costs. And what we've tried to do is to look at this and then decide what it would take to maintain our readiness in the short term and in the long run. The short-term problems can be readily remedied by the emergency supplemental that I've asked for and by the budgetary changes that I am making. The long-term problems will require the adoption of this five-point plan. We are moving into the future with a very aggressive strategy. It is consistent with the commitments I made when I came here. And we have seen the military, frankly, have to deal with an amazing number and variety of unanticipated challenges. They have done so with great skill, but now they need the support that I think we ought to give them. And in this era when we are definitely going to continue to reduce the size of the budget, we are going to continue to cut Government, we are going to give the American people a leaner Government, I still believe the people of this country expect us to do right by our men and women in uniform and to maintain our readiness and preparedness and to plan for the future. And that's what this budget does. That's my job; that's the Secretary of Defense's job; that's the Joint Chiefs' job, and we're here doing it today. Thank you.”