Bill Clinton: “Oh, I'll tell you exactly what he said, and actually, I think he's basically right about this. He said, we've got every…”

“Oh, I'll tell you exactly what he said, and actually, I think he's basically right about this. He said, we've got every available resource now, all of our available resources thrown into resolving all the remaining budget issues. As you know, we stand up--Senator Lott and Senator Daschle and Speaker Hastert and Mr. Gephardt and I, we stand up and we give these talks, and we answer your questions. And for every question we answer, there are scores of people that are required to do all this work and hammer out the agreements to turn it into legislative language, to work out the mechanics of how it's going to get on the calendar and all that. So what Senator Lott said was that he strongly supported the legislation, as do I. Senator Daschle strongly supports it. They want to know that we have--put mechanically--that we have a way to resolve all the budget issues and deal with getting it up, getting it voted on at the appropriate time next week. And if we can get this resolved, then they're going to try to get the Africa trade/CBI bill worked out. And I do think this is a completely good-faith offer on their part. There are still some differences between the Senate and the House approach. The House bill doesn't have CBI in it. And there will, inevitably, be some disputes about some provisions of the CBI bill. I think we can work through them all. I do believe there is a majority in both Houses for this legislation. But it just takes--it's not something that can be done without some time and care. And right now, everyone's energies are focused on resolving the budget agreement. So I pledged to him that we would do our best to resolve the budget agreement as quickly as possible--to reach a budget agreement. And he pledged to me that if we got it done in time, if they could physically do it, he would try to hammer out an agreement on Africa/CBI that both Houses can support. And I think it's terribly important, so I hope very much we can do it. Sales to China of Radar Equipment by Israel”