Bill Clinton: “Well, I'm glad you asked that. Now, here's something you all can help on. The House version, first of all, has some…”

“Well, I'm glad you asked that. Now, here's something you all can help on. The House version, first of all, has some disciplined language in there with dealing with the entitlements and also has some language which says that--well, first let me say, we adopt 5-year budgets around here. I think you know--all of you, or the groups that you work for--it's very hard to adopt a 5-year budget with exactitude. I mean, nobody can see the 5 years with absolute precision. So what this House bill does that had never been done before is not only to put all this money in a trust fund so it can't be spent on anything else but to say if we miss the target in any year, in any of these areas--you know, the targets on discretionary spending, entitlements, or revenues--whatever reason, we don't make our deficit reduction target, under this bill, the President must propose a plan to correct it, to meet the target, and the Congress must vote on it. Now, the Congress, obviously, wouldn't have to do exactly what I wanted. They could amend it, you know, but at least there's a process there for addressing the fact that we're missing the deficit reduction target. I feel very strongly that that should be a part of the final package. You need to know what the problem is. Under the rather arcane rules of the Senate, this reconciliation, economic budget plan, is just about the only thing--I think the only thing that does not require--it's not subject to a filibuster. So if you get one more vote than half, you win, and it can't be filibustered, because the country has to have a budget. But if there is any subject in this reconciliation bill that does not directly relate to the budget itself, it can be challenged and then, in effect, you can require 60 votes to put it in there. This mechanism has been challenged by the Republicans in the Senate, even though I believe 100 percent of them are for it. I mean, I believe 100 percent of them honestly want to get the deficit down and believe that this discipline ought to be in there, and they're still fighting it because it's another way to derail what we're trying to do. So the way to get it in there is for at least four or five of them to let that go in the law because it's good Government. It doesn't have anything to do with party. Bosnia”