Bill Clinton: “Excuse me. My microphone fell. Well, first of all, I want to say again, changes don't happen overnight. This country has…”

“Excuse me. My microphone fell. Well, first of all, I want to say again, changes don't happen overnight. This country has been losing its economic position for 20 years. We've been with trickle-down economics for 12 years. It's been a great deal. The idea was: Give special interests and the wealthiest Americans whatever they want. Don't do too much to the middle class. Tell everybody what they want to hear, and hope nobody notices that we're running up a deficit that is keeping interest rates high, weakening the country, and not generating jobs. Now, that's been going on for a long time. So when you try to make tough decisions, it's not going to be easy to change. I knew it would not be easy to change. No one can turn a country around overnight. I'm, frankly, reasonably pleased with the pace of change, but the one thing that has surprised me and deeply disappointed me is that the people in the other party have been so bitterly partisan about this. Many of them have come to me privately and said, ``You're doing a good job. We agree with a lot of these things, but you know, our party just is going to oppose you.'' And so I'm hoping that we'll have more bipartisan support when we try to provide affordable health care to all American families and open the doors of college education than we have on this budget. And on welfare reform I think we'll get some Republican support. Now, you asked me specifically what needs to be done. Congress needs to pass three bills that have only passed one House. One, campaign finance reform: Lower the costs of campaigns for Congress, reduce the influence of special interests through political action committees, open the airwaves to honest debate. Two, restrict the influence of lobbyists--do for people who lobby Congress what I've already done in my administration: Say that anybody who spends any money on a Member of Congress has to report what they spend and what it's for, eliminate the tax deduction for lobbying, and open the process more so that people know what is being done. The third thing that ought to be done is that the Senate should pass the modified line-item veto that the House has already passed, which gives the President the power to cut extra unnecessary spending. Those three things would go a long way to- ward reforming the political process. I have already restricted by Executive order the ability of people in my administration to become lobbyists, especially those in high positions, to ever lobby for foreign governments. So if you deal with lobbyists, campaign finance, and the line-item veto, those things I think would help the system to move along faster. But keep in mind, any time you have to make tough decisions after people have been fed sugar for a long time, it's not going to be easy. Energy Tax”