Bill Clinton: “I really--I don't know. But one of the reasons I scheduled this and I put this health care thing together here was…”

“I really--I don't know. But one of the reasons I scheduled this and I put this health care thing together here was because we had already planned for me to be out all week long doing this. And I had not been to North Carolina to do an event like this. So we decided that it would add no extra, except whatever it cost to prepare me to go in and out of that arena. And that's mostly because of the security. But I would say to you what you have to decide is whether you think the President should either give up the Secret Service or should, for example, never throw out the first ball on opening day of baseball season. Because one of the things that's happened, particularly since President Reagan was shot back in 1981, is that the security surrounding the President--and especially since the violence has gone up in our country--has increased greatly. And it does, it costs too much money, and it's too disruptive to take the President around. I mean, to me it's really a troubling thing coming as I do from kind of ordinary surroundings in a little State where my lifestyle was very informal. But I think what the American people have to decide is whether they want the President to stay home in the White House all the time. If you want the President to go out and be either a normal citizen contacting other citizens or do things the President normally does, like throwing out the first ball in baseball season, then you have to be willing to say that that's an ordinary part of the cost of being President. Now, when I do go out for political events, for example, if I go speak to a fundraiser for somebody, they have to pay the cost of my going there. So if I do something political, that's--or any President, the same was true for President Bush and President Reagan--then you don't bear that cost; that is covered. But if we do something that is not political, you do bear the cost, even if it's what you might call-- what you said, frivolous. I mean, if I go on vacation, the Secret Service goes with me; so that I pay for the cost of my personal expense on vacation, but you pay the cost of all the Presidential apparatus being there. That's something that has always been true and is now more costly, especially since the attempt on President Reagan's life. Mr. Donovan. Thank you, Mr. President. We----”