Bill Clinton: “[Inaudible]--several others who wanted to support it and felt that there had never been an adequate defense made in…”

“[Inaudible]--several others who wanted to support it and felt that there had never been an adequate defense made in Texas. I thought, given the fact that I had two Texas opponents, I did rather well there in the last election. And I don't, with all respect, I don't think the Senate race in Texas was a referendum on our program, because nobody defended it; nobody said what was in it. There have been four special elections in the Congress: three in the House, one in the Senate. The Democrats won all three in the House. But frankly, only one of those races was a referendum on the program, because it was the only place where the Democrat on his own initiative defended the program--without my even knowing it, put my picture in his brochures, ran television ads explaining to the people what was in the program. And he won the race by nine points in a district in which a lot of upper income people live who would have to pay the higher taxes. So you can't have a referendum on a program if the people don't know what's in it. If anything, if I've made any mistake in this, it is that this is the only issue in my lifetime where the people knew less about it as time went on. That is, on February the 18th when I spoke to the country, I actually went through chapter and verse factually all the things that were in this program and how they fit with what we wanted to do in health care, welfare reform, the crime bill, all the things that are coming afterward. But I said who was going to pay the taxes, what the spending cuts were going to be. After that, because there was no fight over the spending cuts, people were not told there were any, and the rhetoric against the program took over. So I think I owe it to the people of Texas to at least put my case out there. And I certainly owe it to the Members from Texas who supported the program because they think it's the right thing. Taxes”