Bill Clinton: “Good afternoon. I want to report to you this afternoon and to the American people about the progress we've made toward…”

“Good afternoon. I want to report to you this afternoon and to the American people about the progress we've made toward achieving a balanced budget that reflects our values. But first, let me tell you about the action we are taking to help the millions of people along the East Coast who are stranded and afflicted by the Blizzard of 1996. I have asked the Director of FEMA, the Secretary of Transportation, and the Secretary of Defense to work together and to take all appropriate actions. Today I announced that we will provide Federal disaster assistance in situations where response is beyond the capability of State and local governments. In particular, we will provide funds to open up emergency routes in communities once States have applied for this assistance and FEMA verifies the need. This will allow ambulances, fire trucks, and other emergency workers to do their jobs. Today I am announcing that this assistance will be provided to Maryland and the District of Columbia. FEMA has also received a request for assistance from New York, and we are expecting shortly to receive requests for assistance from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Delaware. We will act on these requests quickly. This has been a trying time for everybody affected. It's often the case that in natural disasters you see the best come out in people. As we continue to dig out from the Blizzard of '96, I hope Americans in their communities will continue to look out for their neighbors, to help those in need, and to pull together. We will do what we can here. Now I want to discuss the budget. After many weeks of public debate and private discussion, historic agreement on a balanced budget is within reach if we set aside partisanship and work to seize this moment. I'm optimistic that we will balance the budget, and I know we have come too far to let this opportunity slip away. In the 12 years before I took office, for the first time in America's peacetime history, our Government deficit skyrocketed. Our administration has already cut the deficit nearly in half. But our need to pay off the interest on the debt run up in the last 12 years is giving us a deficit. Indeed, but for the interest payments on the debt run up in the 12 years before I became President, our budget would be in balance today. We have already reduced the size of the Federal Government by more than 200,000, so that it is smaller than it has been at any time since 1965. As a percentage of the civilian work force, the Federal Government is the smallest it's been since 1933. We cut hundreds of programs. We're eliminating 16,000 pages of rules and regulations. But it's time to finish the job. Let me be clear: We can balance the budget. We can do it in a way that invests in our people and reflects our values: opportunity for all, doing our duty for our parents and our children, strengthening our communities, our families, and America. As all of you know, I have submitted a plan to balance the budget in 7 years using the conservative estimates of the Congressional Budget Office. Let me repeat: With this letter, which I am carrying around with me to remind everyone that we have done it, Congress' own economists confirm what we have said all along. We can balance the budget without excessive cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, without cutting education or the environment or raising taxes on our hardest pressed working families. Now, as all of you know also, the Republicans in Congress are insisting on cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment that I believe are well beyond what is necessary to balance the budget, well beyond what is necessary to secure the solvencies of those programs, well beyond what is necessary for the Congressional Budget Office to say we have to do to balance the budget. We all know, too, that there are two strains at work in the Republican effort. There is the genuine desire to balance the budget, which I share. But there are those who want to use the balanced budget and a huge tax cut crammed within the balanced budget to strip our National Government and our country of our ability to do our part here in Washington to help people out in our communities with the challenges they face. We shouldn't let our fundamental agreement on a balanced budget be held hostage to a narrower agenda that seeks to prevent America from giving Medicare to senior citizens or quality nursing home care or educational opportunity for young people or environmental protection to all of us. We could quickly find common ground on balancing the budget and providing appropriate modest tax relief; we could do this in 15 minutes, after the tens of hours we have already spent together. What has held up this agreement is the insistence of the Republicans on cuts that I believe are excessive in Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment, and insistence on a tax hike on the lowest income of our working families. These things are not necessary to balance the budget. Having said that, let me say we have come a long way. We have agreed on well over $600 billion of savings, far more than necessary to balance the budget. This should be a moment for national unity, a time to put aside partisanship, to reject ideology, to find common ground for the common good. A balanced budget that reflects the best of both parties, the best of our values, and will pass on to the next generation a stronger America, that is within our grasp. We should get it done now, and I believe we will get it done in the near future. Terry [Terence Hunt, Associated Press]. The First Lady”