Bill Clinton: “Thank you for coming today. I wish we'd had room for everybody at the other place, but you are much cooler than we were.…”

“Thank you for coming today. I wish we'd had room for everybody at the other place, but you are much cooler than we were. [Laughter] And I hope you enjoyed the event, even long distance. I was very impressed with the people who spoke, and I think it will be very effective in trying to make the point we're trying to make. And I'm not going to make another speech, but I'm curious--how many students are here? [Applause] One of the things that I'm proudest of that we've accomplished in this Congress is, after the Balanced Budget Act, we've passed this HOPE scholarship which gives a $1,500 tax credit for--and I hope you're all using it. The only other point I want to hammer home that I made today is, it is very important when we debate how much should go to a tax cut--should we save Social Security and Medicare; should we pay off the debt; that we not adopt a budget--as some are up there saying. They're saying, ``Okay, well, we'll do it your way on Social Security and Medicare, but give us a bigger tax cut,'' which would mean we'd actually have to cut Federal support for education, which I think would be a terrible mistake, because if, for no other reason, the financing of higher education--it's absolutely critical. But there are a lot of important things we're doing in our elementary and secondary schools, too, to try to lower class sizes and put more teachers out there and do things like that.…”