Bill Clinton: “Well, let me say right now what I want to do is to stick with my program, and that's what I expect to do to the end. I…”

“Well, let me say right now what I want to do is to stick with my program, and that's what I expect to do to the end. I expect to pass this program. I don't think that there will be a Btu tax, although the Btu tax alternative that the Secretary of the Treasury had ready to go would have exempted everything that the people in Louisiana I talked to were concerned about, agriculture, industry. Nonetheless, I think that that is unlikely. I think we'll be much closer to the fuel option that the Senate adopted. But as I said, I think if we put a ceiling of $50 a year on it for the average family of four, that is, somebody with an income of $40,000 to $50,000, and if we hold working families under $30,000 a year harmless, and we don't kick the income taxes in on families with incomes of less than $180,000 or individuals under $140,000, I think that's pretty fair. And I think, again, it's a question of perception over reality. If we can cut through all this heavy rhetoric fog, I think we can get something done. Now, let me just mention one other thing. I want to say again, over the previous budget adopted by President Bush and the Congress, there are $250 billion in spending cuts, 100 cuts of over $100 million apiece, over 200 specific ones. When my bill came up in the Senate Finance Committee, the Republicans in the Senate Finance Committee offered all kinds of arguments about why we should cut taxes, mostly on the wealthy. They had a chance to say, ``Well, we're for spending cuts.'' You know, that's what they've been saying: ``The President wants to raise taxes; we're for spending cuts.'' Do you know how many spending cuts were offered by the Republicans in the Senate Finance Committee? Zero. Not one. Not one. And the spending cuts put in their bill in the Senate included over $60 billion of unspecified we'll-figure-it-out-later cuts. So that we are the ones who are cutting spending. But I do think it is reasonable to ask people who are going to benefit from lower interest rates and more jobs to pay something that amounts to less than $1 a week to help to bring this deficit down. Economic Program”