Bill Clinton: “No, I gave them--first of all, I asked them--there's no point in putting forward--look, I tried it the other way with…”

“No, I gave them--first of all, I asked them--there's no point in putting forward--look, I tried it the other way with health care. I put forward a plan. And everybody said, you put forward--I remember Senator Dole saying, ``You put forward your plan, then I'll put forward my plan. We'll get together. We'll agree, and we'll pass a plan.'' And so, you know, I've had experience with that. That didn't work out too well. So I had all these meetings on Social Security. You remember, I worked very hard on it, and I asked if we could get together and work out something. I still haven't given up on that, by the way. And I know the conventional wisdom is that these things are less likely to be done in election years, but in some ways they may be more likely. And I did give them a plan which, if they had embraced it--which would simply require them not only to save the Social Security surplus but to take the interest savings from paying down the debt, with the Social Security surplus, and if you just put that back into Social Security, you could take Social Security out beyond the life of the baby boom generation. And I offered to do more with them. But in order to pass something like that, we've got to have a bipartisan process. And I will do whatever it takes to get that done. But I worked as hard as I could this year to keep working in a very open and collegial spirit with not only the Democrats--without whom I wouldn't have passed any of those things I just mentioned, and all of you know that; they hung in there at the end; we got those things done-- but also with the Republicans, with whom I began to have, I think, some real progress there along toward the end of the legislative session. And I hope we will continue it. Yes, go ahead. Russia and the Situation in Chechnya”