Bill Clinton: “Well, it's not a high priority maybe for the Labor Secretary. What is a high priority is continuing to control the…”

“Well, it's not a high priority maybe for the Labor Secretary. What is a high priority is continuing to control the deficit and moving it down, driving it, driving it. What he meant, I think, was that no one believes you can do it overnight or in the next year or two and that if we adopt a balanced budget amendment before the people vote on it, they're entitled to know, does this mean their taxes are going up? Does this mean they're going to cut Medicare and Social Security across the board? What is the price of it? Will you get the same economic benefit if you take the deficit down to 2 percent of our annual income or one percent? What are we trying to do? The Kerrey commission itself said that the long-term goal of the country should be to at least have the annual deficit down at about 2 percent of our income because we're investing that much every year and we'd be more or less like a State government or a private business running their books and balancing them. Education and Retraining Mr. Brokaw. Mr. President, in the course of your administration, it is indisputable that more than 5 million new jobs have now been created. But unfortunately, once you get just below the senior management level, purchasing power has stayed flat at best. It has not declined.”