Bill Clinton: “Well, you know, they're still negotiating. It could change, but the last time I talked to Senator Mitchell it was about…”

“Well, you know, they're still negotiating. It could change, but the last time I talked to Senator Mitchell it was about $254 billion in spending cuts and about $242 billion or $241 in taxes, or something like that. They were at about $496 billion. And like I said, it could change in the next few days, but--I mean in the next day or so. You know, let me close by, if I might--you asked me a question when you started, and I didn't really give you a very good answer about how I could get Senator Johnston's vote. I think, frankly, he's worried about looking like he reversed himself from voting against it the first time, and I can understand that. But let me say, without identifying anybody, if you look at the people who have opposed the program or the people who voted for it with reluctance, their basic objections break down into two categories. One is a political one, pure and simple: ``I think this is the right thing to do for the country, and I hope it passes, but I'm scared I'll get beat if I vote for it.'' And we have tried to help in several ways: first of all, by recreating an aggressive communications strategy, more like what we did in the campaign, to try to combat what we think are false claims against this plan and just to get the information out about it; and secondly, to ask everybody to imagine what it's going to be like, not the day after the vote but after we've had a chance to continue our spending cut program through the Vice President's reinventing Government initiative and through other cuts that will come when we've got a chance to deal with health care and welfare reform and the crime bill and these other issues. Then there's a whole second category of people who say that this is okay, this is a legitimate and honest effort to do better, and it does, but it doesn't do enough. Senator Nunn, for example--we've got the Atlanta Journal on here--Senator Nunn is sort of in that category, you know, said you've got to deal with entitlement costs, too. And my argument to that group of people--and that's the argument that Senator Boren made yesterday--is that you're right, it doesn't do enough. But that's not a good reason to vote against this because what it does is very good, indeed. And unless you do this, you can't get to the second stage. That is, I completely agree we have to control entitlement costs and that that begins overwhelmingly with Medicare and Medicaid costs. I just don't think it's fair or right to do it unless it's part of an overall health care reform plan which brings down the cost of health care to all Americans and stops cost-shifting and doesn't impose unfair burdens on elderly people on Medicare. And my argument is, we're just beginning this process; we're not ending it. But if we don't pass this budget now, we'll fool around here for 60 or 90 more days debating the same old thing. We'll wind up with a program that may be marginally different than the one we've got, but it will in all probability have much less deficit reduction if we have to go into some sort of situation where we're paralyzed on this. So the real issue here--I think the reason that we've had so many Republican as well as Democratic business leaders supporting this is that they want a decision, they want certainty, they want real deficit reduction, and they think this meets all those criteria and also has some real incentives to grow the economy, and it will free us to move on to these other things. That's what I keep emphasizing to Members of Congress who say this is not perfect. I say, look, we've got a 4-year contract here to deal with all these problems, and you can't expect this one bill to solve all the problems of the country. It won't carry that much water. But this is very, very important, but only a first step. Health Care Reform”