Bill Clinton: “Well, what you have to do basically to provide tax relief under our system, the rules that we operate up here, is to…”

“Well, what you have to do basically to provide tax relief under our system, the rules that we operate up here, is to figure out what it costs over 10 years and then to slow the rate of growth of other programs. Now, what I did was to present a budget to the Congress which would allocate, as I recall, about $250 billion to tax relief over a decade. And we slowed the rate of growth of everything else to accommodate that, including defense, where we still were going to have real increases. Congress passed a $792 billion tax program, and I vetoed that because I said we couldn't pay for it. And then they proceeded to spend more money than I recommended in this year's budget, in different ways but more money. So the truth is, you don't have to have any big cuts to pay for, let's say, marriage penalty relief or something like that, that is clearly affordable. All you have to do is to make a decision now that you will manage the rate of growth of all the other expenditures to accommodate the tax relief. And I still think we ought to have modest tax relief package. I will try again next to pass one, and I will be flexible in working with the Congress on what the contents of the package are. But we just have to make sure that it's something we can afford and still pay down the debt, save Social Security and Medicare, and continue to invest in education and the environment and in research and technology. Young People and Politics”