Bill Clinton: “No. I mean, in your lives, if you take home a check every month, is it the same whether you spend it on making a house…”

“No. I mean, in your lives, if you take home a check every month, is it the same whether you spend it on making a house payment, making a car payment, saving money for your child's education, or just paying for an extra helping at dinner? Of course not. There are distinctions in the relative impact of how you spend your pay, how your business invests its money, and how your Government invests your money. And so when people tell you there's no difference, tell them that's wrong. And then there is a crowd that say, ``Well, these programs don't really make any difference. Head Start doesn't work, and there's no proof Head Start works.'' Now, this is an interesting argument. Most of those who think there's no proof Head Start works still believe trickle- down economics did. Until I proposed phasing in the full funding of this program, many of those who themselves objected had previously voted to expand it. To be fair, President Bush praised Head Start at every turn. A few years ago, Senator Dole introduced his own legislation to expand it. Sure, there are serious criticisms rooted in the fact that this is now not a new program. There are people who say it's not evenly good across the country. That is true. There are people who say it could be managed better. That's true. There are people who say that cognitive improvements don't always last more than 2 years after children stop attending, depending on where they are. That's true. One big deal is how strong the parents' involvement really is. There are those who say there ought to be more school-based programs or more home-based programs, and we've worked hard on that at home. All that's true. That is not an excuse not to fully fund Head Start. Our program will serve more children, but it will also strengthen the quality of Head Start and put some flexibility back into the program so that it can meet the needs of the different communities that are served. But those who choose to ignore the overwhelming evidence of the program's success have an obligation to tell us why more children with high self-esteem and better grades and better thinking skills and better predictable long-term performance is such a bad idea. I think it's a great idea. But we must, in fairness to the criticisms, become our own most severe critics. That's where you come in, because all of you live out there where these programs work. You could give a better criticism of what's wrong with most of these public programs than those who don't want to fund them. Most of you could. So tell them you know it is up to us to be our own most severe critics. I just asked the Vice President to review every program in the Government, come back to me in 6 months with all kinds of other things that we can stop doing or that we can modify or that we can push back to people at the grassroots level. If we who believe in Government don't have the courage to change it, we cannot expect those who don't to help us in our efforts. And this is just the beginning. Just 2 days ago I asked Secretary Shalala to draft a new child welfare initiative to combine family support and family preservation services, to do more to build on the work of Senator Rockefeller and Congressman Matsui and Congresswoman Schroeder and to do more for families at risk, especially those at risk of foster care placement, even as we try to strengthen our efforts to enforce child support enforcement for those who have been abandoned by one parent. Now, there is a third argument against this effort. There are those who say, ``Yes, Head Start's a good deal; WIC is a good deal; the immunization's a good deal. And yes, we ought to invest as opposed to consume. There is a distinction to be drawn in the way this money is spent, and investment is better, investment in our children, our future. But we still ought not to do it because we need even more deficit reduction.'' And let me say, that is an argument you must treat with respect. We have gone from a $1 trillion deficit to a $4 trillion deficit in 12 years. We have imposed a crushing burden on the present and a bigger one on the future. And if you think about it, it's really an income transfer. Now that we're spending 15 cents of every dollar you pay the Government--most of you are middle class people, and we spend 15 cents of every dollar you pay the Government paying interest on the debt. Those bonds are largely held by upper income people. So there are now a lot of liberals in the Congress who are rethinking their old positions on things like the mechanisms by which we move to balance the budget on the theory that we're spending all this money having an income transfer from middle class taxpayers, lower income taxpayers to people who hold the bonds because we didn't have the discipline to run our budgets better. And if we don't do something about the deficit, we just keep on spending like we are, by the end of the decade your annual debt will be $653 billion a year. The interest service will be about 22 cents of your tax dollar. Twenty cents on the dollar of every dollar in America, public and private, will go to health care. So we have to change. But my answer to those who say, ``Well, let's just don't invest because this deficit is such a big problem,'' is: Number one, we got into this mess over 12 years, and we have more than 4 years to get out of it. Number two, we are reaping the benefits of the clear and disciplined and determined effort that the congressional leadership has now agreed to make with me to bring the deficit down. We have interest rates at very, very low rates. We have the stock market back up. People say, ``Hey, this thing is going to work.'' All of you can now look at whether you should refinance your home or your car. Businesses should refinance their debt. If we get all this debt refinanced in the next year, that will add $80 to $100 billion back in our economy. We are reaping the benefits of a disciplined program to reduce the deficit today. But if we do not also at the same time recognize that for 12 years we have ignored our obligations to invest in our jobs, in our people, in our education, if we don't do that, we will pay for that neglect tomorrow, just like we're paying for yesterday's neglect today. We can do both things. There's another argument you need to make--and I'm speaking for my wife now, as well as for me--which is that if you just cut out all these programs that we believe in, if you just cut them plumb out, you'll still have an increase in the deficit again, starting in about 5 years, because of the explosion in health care costs. The real, ultimate answer to the deficit problem is to bring health care cost in line with inflation and provide a decent system of health care for all Americans. And we can do that. So, with discipline, with a willingness to both cut and tax, with a willingness to reduce consumption expenditures and increase investment in our future, we can do the things that we have to do. But we can't walk away from any of our challenges and expect the results America needs. If we walk away from the health care challenge, it doesn't matter what they do on all these other cuts. You'll be swallowed up in debt in 5 or 6 years again if we walk away from the health care challenge. If we walk away from the challenge to raise some more revenues and cut the spending we must, we'll lose control of our economic destiny even if we spend more money on the programs you want. You'll be raising and educating healthier, more well-educated kids to a weaker economy. But if we reduce the deficit and we forget about the fact that in the world we live in the only thing that really counts is people--every factory can be moved overseas. Three trillion dollars in money crosses national lines every day. Everything else is mobile except us. We're here. We don't want to move. [Laughter] All we've got's each other now in America. That's what we've got. And if we ignore that, we don't think those little kids that live in the Mississippi Delta, in my home State, many of whom never see a dentist the whole time of their childhood, need a better shot in life because of us as well as them; if we don't believe that those kids that are sitting out there in the barrios in Los Angeles, in the black community, in the Hispanic community, in the Asian-American community, waiting for the resolution of the Rodney King trial only because it stands for everything else that ever happened to them, not because of the trial but because of what it stands for; if we don't think that we need to prove that a county like Los Angeles County with people from 150 different racial and ethnic groups can live together and learn together and grow together and if they play by the rules can have the right to earn a decent living, and we don't think that affects the rest of us, we haven't learned very much in the last 12 years. And so I ask you to do this: I ask you to go to the Congress and ask them to support this program. And go with respect, because I promise you most of these people are trying to come to grips with the dilemmas of this time. And they have gotten one big message: that is that we made a horrible mistake to let the deficit get out of hand like we did in the last 12 years. And they deserve respect for getting that message. And they now have a President who will take the lead and fade some of the heat for the unpopularity of the decisions which have to be made. Go with respect for that. Say, ``You had to do that, and we respect that.'' But remind them that out in the country where you live, bringing down the deficit is important if it gives people jobs and raises people's incomes and if there are people out there who can seize the opportunities of the future. And what you represent is the future. You represent the needs of the people who will not be able to perform even with a sensible economic policy unless we do better in health care, in education, and in dealing with the needs of our poorest children. That is what you represent. None of this other stuff will amount to a hill of beans unless we put the American people first in all of these decisions. That is the message I plead with you to bring to the Congress. Thank you, and God bless you all.”