Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all, there is a general consensus that we ought to make this the biggest deficit reduction package the…”

“Well, first of all, there is a general consensus that we ought to make this the biggest deficit reduction package the country's had, and that means hard numbers and good figures. The number that was adopted in 1990, I think, is now generally conceded was not as firm as it might have been. And also there was a big economic slowdown, and the health care cost increases were greater than originally thought. But I think this is going to be a more solid plan. How it's resolved is something that the conference will have to work out. I'm going to be giving them some advice, but it won't be inconsistent with what I've said before. I want a very progressive plan. I want the deficit reduction. I want people who can afford to pay, whose taxes went down in the eighties, to pay their fair share now. I very much want some of the incentives in this plan that were in the House bill. I hope some of them can be put back in the Senate bill. I think that it's important that people who work 40 hours a week and have children in the home be able to be lifted out of poverty rather than taxed into it. I think it is very important that we have incentives to grow the high-technology sector of our economy, that's the R&D and the new venture capital-gains tax that Senator Bumpers has long championed, along with others. There are several things in there. The empowerment zone issue is very important to me. It goes very closely with the community development bank proposal we made today to generate jobs and growth. Keep in mind the ultimate purpose of deficit reduction is to improve the economy by getting interest rates down, freeing up tax funds that we would otherwise have to spend on serving the debt, and improving the climate for new jobs. It's also clear that we have to have some investment incentives. People have to take this money that we're going to save through reducing the deficit, turn around and invest it in the economy. And if you raise tax rates on upper income people and then you provide only a very targeted way to in effect lower their tax burden by having them create jobs, then you win either way, because either way you reduce the deficit and you improve the economy. That's what we're going to try to do.”