Bill Clinton: “Well, first let me say, Congress, just as it did last year when we had the most productive first year of a Presidency in…”

“Well, first let me say, Congress, just as it did last year when we had the most productive first year of a Presidency in 40 years, I guess, Congress has a lot to do. They've already passed major education reform, school-to-work, Goals 2000, Head Start expansion. They still have to deal with lobby reform, campaign finance reform, most importantly to me, the crime bill, as well as the health care issue. But as you have seen with health care or with welfare reform, introducing a piece of legislation starts a process that does not finish in a week or a month. And I think the outlines of the principles that I have embraced on welfare reform are very well known. Indeed, my own views on this are not markedly different from the bill introduced by Mr. McCurdy and others except for the way that I would propose to pay for it. And so I think that putting out in the late spring--we're a little later than I thought we'd be; I thought we'd have this bill out around the first of May--but putting out the bill so that the Congress can see it and see what I think ought to be done and how I would propose to pay for it and so the Democrats and Republicans alike can evaluate it, is an appropriate thing to do. It might catch fire; the whole thing might catch fire. We might have a bipartisan consensus to move the bill in a hurry and get it this year. I wouldn't write that off. But I don't see that that will undermine health care. It is, however--the flipside is true. Until you find a way to provide health coverage for all workers, you will never have full welfare reform because you're going to have people staying on welfare because that's the only way their kids can get health care. And you're going to have the anomaly of people getting off welfare, taking low-wage jobs, giving up their health coverage so they can earn taxes to pay for the health care of the people who stayed on welfare. So that is the more important issue for the long run. But I don't believe that my introducing my plan will undermine our ability to achieve health care reform this year. Nuclear Nonproliferation”