Bill Clinton: “Well, the first thing we have to do is to gain control over our economic destiny again. The deficit is spinning out of…”

“Well, the first thing we have to do is to gain control over our economic destiny again. The deficit is spinning out of control. It was about $74 billion a year in 1980; it's over $300 billion this year. The debt, as you know, has gone from $1 trillion to $4 trillion. And because of that, the money we ought to be investing hasn't been there. You can see that very clearly in Los Angeles and southern California when you had all these defense cutbacks. We should have been reinvesting all that money in domestic technologies to put the people back to work here at home in high-speed rail, environmental cleanup, all kinds of other things. But the debt was so big that the money went to pay interest on the debt and into exploding health care costs. So our economic plan is terribly important to the people of the United States and the people of southern California because it begins to give us some control back. Already, the fact that the plan is making progress has brought down long-term interest rates. I know one lady who called you said her husband was in construction. Because we are at 20- year mortgage rates lows, there have been 130,000 new jobs come into this economy in construction in the last 4 months. That's the biggest increase in 9 years. Now, it's going to take a while to reach southern California, because that's one of the most distressed areas of our national economy. But it is beginning to turn around. So you've got to bring the deficit down. You've got to do it in a way that is fair to the middle class, by making upper income people pay the lion's share of the burden. There have to be some incentives in this plan to grow new jobs in the private sector through empowerment zones in our cities and poor rural areas, through new incentives to small business. And there also have to be some targeted investments. Over the next 5 years, we still need to spend some money to try to redevelop the businesses, the communities, and retrain the workers that have been hurt so badly by defense cutbacks. So this is a good plan, and it's still the only real plan on the table. A lot of people have criticized it, but it's hard to quarrel with the results of it. Just the progress of the plan is bringing down long- term interest rates. We've got three-quarters of a million new jobs in the economy since January 20th, and I am encouraged. We've got a long, long way to go, and we're dealing with some economic trends that have been in place for 20 years in the world economy. But we can turn it around if we will do so with discipline and if we'll stop the delay, if we'll go forward now and pass the plan. Mr. Jackson. Mr. President, you mentioned critics. Congressman Henry Hyde, speaking for the Republicans, claimed over the weekend that the Senate Democrats are going to agree to a tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend program this summer that will result in another version of the biggest tax hike in history. In a nutshell, by year's end, will the rich be taxed considerably more, heavily taxed? Will the middle class be further hit?”