Bill Clinton: “And in fact, what I proposed--look what I proposed in the midsession review. I said, ``Okay, let's have a hard Social…”

“And in fact, what I proposed--look what I proposed in the midsession review. I said, ``Okay, let's have a hard Social Security lockbox, take Social Security off budget, get rid of that, do it in a way that pays the debt off in 2015, and takes all the interest savings from the declining debt and puts it into Social Security. Two, here's my Medicare fix, and it will pay for taking Medicare out to 2027, plus almost all the prescription drug benefits, and you need a little bit of a surplus to pay for 2027 prescription drug benefits, plus reform. Here's my defense number. Here's what my tax cut costs. And here's what you have left to pay for education and children, because you don't want the budget to get too far out of balance between the old and the young for education, for children, for medical research, for the environment, and other essential Government services.'' So I've proposed, in effect, and things that the Republicans like, transportation, all that kind of stuff. I've proposed some increased spending over a decade, a substantial tax cut, and a fix for Social Security and Medicare. If they want a larger tax cut within that, and they are still committed, then they're committed to a legitimate Social Security fix, that is not something where you can wind up, raid it again to pay for your tax cut. Then I think that we ought to be able to sit down and say, let's put all these pieces out here and move them. But you can move the pieces around, but the final puzzle has to look more or less the same. In other words, I don't think a lot of them--this is ironic, you know; it's almost like the parties have switched places on this--I'm not sure a lot of them believe it's as important as I do to try to make the country debt-free by 2015. See, I think, to me, that's a bigger tax cut than we could ever give. It's a bigger tax cut; if you're talking about disposable income in the hands of the taxpayers, it would be worth more then even their tax cut. See, if we adopt their tax--let's just say we adopted their tax cut. I am convinced, as a practical matter, you would wind up with substantial deficits, higher interest rates, less savings, and higher out-of-pocket costs for everything from business loans to home mortgages to college loans to consumer loans to car payments. And if that's true--and I think that experience, by the way--I think, you know, I've got some experience on our side, on my side of the argument now. I mean, look how much the average middle class person has saved since 1993. What tax debts do we get? Well, if you're under $30,000 a year and you've got a family, you've got some benefit from the earned-income tax credit. If you have someone in college or you're going to college, you've got a big tax cut there. If you have a child, you've got the $500 tax cut there But 100 percent of the people that have any indebtedness--and keep in mind, we've got two-thirds of the folks now who own homes now, and almost all of them have mortgages---- Mr. Brownstein. The interest----”