Bill Clinton: “I don't know if I can do the math in my head right now for 4 years, but I will tell you, basically, the tax bill goes…”

“I don't know if I can do the math in my head right now for 4 years, but I will tell you, basically, the tax bill goes from about $20 billion to about $75 billion over the next 4 years; the spending cuts go up to more than that in the fourth year. In the early years there are more tax increases than spending cuts; in the later years there are far more spending cuts than tax increases. At the end, they're about the same. The net aggregate reduction in the deficit over 4 years is about $320 billion, over 5 years is at $475 billion less debt than we would otherwise have. In the fourth year of the budget, which is the one that we all target on under the Federal system, the deficit will go down $140 billion a year in that year. Essentially, there will be a net increase in that fourth year in spending of about $26 billion a year. That is, there's about $40 billion more in spending, net new spending, all targeted toward things like the college loan program, Head Start, new technologies, and jobs and about $15 billion in additional tax incentives to businesses to reinvest in new jobs. So that's what the net new spending is. But if you look at it total in the first 4 years, the spending cuts and the revenue increases are about equal. If you string it out for 4 more years, if we really change the spending habits of the country, the spending cuts are far greater than the tax increases. And I've got a little chart. I'll send it to you, and you can see exactly how much year by year in each of the three categories. Let me just make this point on the spending cuts. I have spent a month during which we have worked almost around the clock trying to get a handle on this budget. The Federal budget is put together in a way that I don't think is very good, and it doesn't resemble any business budget or any State or local budget you have ever seen. Let me give you an example. I wrote a letter to the Agency that is supposed to be helping me put together the budget--a memo--and I said, here are about 30 questions I want answered. One question was, how much more money are we collecting a day than we were 5 years ago in tax money, and how much of revenue has grown in each of the last 5 years? You know what the answer was that I got back from the Agency? ``Federal revenues as a percentage of our gross national product are slightly smaller than they were 5 years ago.'' So help me, that was the answer I got back, I promise. In other words, just to your point, we were taking more money in, and tax revenues had grown less fast than the economy, but what difference did that make; we had more money. They didn't even answer the questions. I'll send you the exact chart. But it's basically 50-50 spending cuts, revenue increases for the first 4 years. Spending cuts swamped revenue increases in the second 4 years and will go much more if we adopt a new health care control plan. And the investment increases are significant but modest. They reflect a big change in the spending priorities. One of the things I'm trying to do is change; Government is great at starting things and bad at stopping things. So we're still, believe it or not, you're still paying for a bicentennial commission. That was over in 1976. And there are lots of things. It's a little bit of money, but you can't justify it. It's just terrible. And there's a lot of stuff in there like that. So what I'm trying to do is to flush that out, reduce consumption, and increase investment so that we can put some people to work. That's what I'm trying to do. And I'll send you the chart. When I spoke on Thursday night I tried to give the exact numbers in the last, but I will be glad to--I mean, that chart was in the book that we presented to the Congress. And I was hoping that it would be run in all the newspapers in the country, because there is a chart in the book we released to the press on Thursday morning. Anybody who wants that chart, I'll be glad to give it to you. Let me make one final point about that: I have no interest in raising a penny in taxes if we're not going to do the cuts. I don't want to get a deal where we're going to raise the money and not do the cuts. Not a penny. The second point is, I don't have any pride of authorship in this. I've been working on this like crazy for 4 weeks. There must be people who know more about some of these things than I do. And I have invited all the people in the Congress, Republicans as well as Democrats, and all the people in the country to help us find more. I'm more than open to it. But I have to say, too, there are some tough decisions involved in the cuts. As you know, there is a uranium enrichment facility in this congressional district not far from here. And one of the things we've concluded is that there are only two in the country, and both are running at about half capacity--with the projected need going down--is that we will have to close one of those. So there are tough decisions involved in this. There are a lot of tough decisions that have to be made in this cut area. But if anybody's got any more ideas about how we can cut more, I'd like to have them. Health Care Reform”