Bill Clinton: “Well, I didn't allow them all to be included. Some of them were included in the House of Representatives bill, and I…”

“Well, I didn't allow them all to be included. Some of them were included in the House of Representatives bill, and I didn't agree with all of them. But let me say what I think was a good criticism of the tax and that is that we wanted the tax to restrain energy consumption in ways that promoted energy conservation and also supported fuel switching to more environmentally beneficial and more available natural gas. That bill, as drawn, would be a big boon to the natural gas industry in Texas and Oklahoma and throughout the United States. And that's one of the things we were trying to do. Now, some of the oil companies didn't like it, but the people that were in the gas business liked it. We had a big Texas gas company, headed by a person who strongly supported President Bush in the last election, endorsed the economic program. ARCO and Sun Oil both endorsed the economic program, including the Btu tax. So Secretary Bentsen, who, as you know, has represented you in the Senate for a long time, offered the Senate a modified Btu tax which, instead of having all those particular exemptions, would basically have alleviated the burden of the Btu tax on industry and agriculture on the production sector but still given them an incentive to move toward natural gas wherever possible and would also have cut the Btu rate and would have replaced that with more spending cuts. From my point of view, unfortunately, we couldn't pass that through the committee because Senator Boren had said he wouldn't vote for any tax based on the heat content of fuel. But I still think it was a good concept, and it will be interesting to see what happens if the Senate's version of the economic plan passes, to see what happens in the conference and what we come up with. Mr. Adler. What we have now is a gasoline tax that's been passed by the Senate committee, and you've called that regressive in the past. How can you sell that, if you have to, to House Members who did risk some political capital by supporting you on the Btu tax?”