Bill Clinton: “Well, because up until now I was working with both the Democrats and the Republicans in the Congress to develop their…”

“Well, because up until now I was working with both the Democrats and the Republicans in the Congress to develop their plans and to negotiate with them. But we now have two plans that, in one important respect--the amount of money allocated to help middle class families pay for higher education is clearly inconsistent with the budget agreement. If you go back and read the budget agreement, the budget agreement says that certain things will be done, and it says other things will be worked on, that there will be best efforts. There was no ambiguity here. We said we would allocate roughly $35 billion of this to help families pay for higher education. The plans aren't close to that. Now, can we afford to do all the things that the Republicans want to do and the things that are also mentioned in the budget agreement that are important to me and important to many Democrats? The answer is, we can if we have prudence and discipline. The principal difference in the capital gains provisions is that I would have a 30 percent exclusion; they would have a 50 percent exclusion. It's still a very large tax cut for people who can invest money. And I think you will see that it is not necessary in terms of the stock market. It's doing quite well as it is. What I'd like to see us do is to offer more incentive for people to start new businesses and to hold on to those investments for a longer period of time to build companies.”