Bill Clinton: “I think you can--first of all, I'm not for any version of the balanced budget amendment that I have seen because I think…”

“I think you can--first of all, I'm not for any version of the balanced budget amendment that I have seen because I think it is basically a gimmick and a way of putting the decision off that would give us 5 years to deal with it. Secondly, if we balanced the budget tomorrow, we'd drive unemployment up because it would require such terrible sacrifices. I hate to say this again, but if you look at what the Japanese did, they had a huge deficit in the 1970's, about as big, even a little bigger than ours is now. And they brought it down over about a 10-year period until, in 1990, they were the only major industrial country with a balanced budget; one reason, they had low unemployment and high growth. Let me just tell you what I'm going to do, and I wouldn't rule out other measures later. I'm going to try to get the Congress to pass the modified line-item veto bill that the House passed the last time and the Senate didn't. I strongly support it. I'm going to try to pass a strong campaign finance reform law and a lobby reform law to free the Congress of undue influence of special interests. I'm going to ask them to cut spending, and dramatically, across a broad range of areas, and to raise some more money to try to bring this deficit down in a dramatic way that will send a signal that we're in control of our own house again. And we're going to lower interest rates as a result of it and get this economy going again. I think that's what we want. The important thing is not to balance the budget overnight but to put it on a steady and decided downward tack. If we don't do it--let me just say, there's no virtue in any of this unless it helps you. Let me just answer this. A lot of people say to me, ``Why do you want to balance the budget?'' It's no fun cutting spending or raising more money to balance the budget or reduce the deficit. If you reduce the deficit, the United States doesn't borrow so much money. We have more of your tax money to spend on the education of your children or on developing new jobs or on health care. We keep interest rates down, and it's easier for you to borrow money in the private sector. So you create more jobs. If the deficit gets bigger and bigger and bigger every year, it weakens the economy. So we have to do two things at once that no Government in your country's history has ever done. We've got to increase investment in jobs and reduce the deficit, and we're going to do it. And I think we can start next week. Look at my plan. See how you like it and see if the Congress responds. I predict to you that they will respond in a bipartisan fashion and reduce the debt for the first time in a long time. Mr. Bonds. Mr. President, we've kicked it off with that first question. Thank you, Susan. We're going to keep this moving right along. Let me throw it now and link up with Ann Bishop from station WPLG in Miami. Ann Bishop. Thank you very much, Bill. And with me is Kelly Kaprin, an attorney, and she has a question for the President. Kelly. Family Leave and Homosexuals in the Military”