Bill Clinton: “Well, I think some of them are upset because of the stories which indicate that we got about a 100 percent of what we…”

“Well, I think some of them are upset because of the stories which indicate that we got about a 100 percent of what we were looking for out of this budget. But they got what they wanted. They got a capital gains and the changes in the estate tax and things of that kind. I believe that everybody who works ought to get the minimum wage. And I'm going to hang tough, and unless they can get enough votes to override a veto, then the people that go to work are going to get the minimum wage. I don't think there's a problem with that. Now, to be fair, they say that the Governors are saying that some employers, even community nonprofits, which you might consider liberal employers, are reluctant to hire people off welfare who may be hard to place and may have--take time to train, if they also have to pay all the accompanying costs of employment like the unemployment tax and the Social Security tax and all of these other taxes. And they say they're looking for help on that. Well, I expect we'll have some dialog about that, but I simply don't think that they ought to be able to take the minimum wage away from working people. I just don't. President's Advisory Board on Race Mr. Smiley. You've said, and you've of course undertaken--put together a commission to undertake getting this country to have a conversation about race, the issue that you've called America's constant curse. In the first public meeting of your race commission, a small dispute erupted in that the commission Chairman, Dr. John Hope Franklin, and commissioner Angela Oh, a Korean-American commissioner from Los Angeles, had a dispute about what the focus, what the mission, the work of the commission ought to be. Dr. Franklin believes that the focus and the mission ought to be around the black-white conflict, which he sees as the nucleus for every other race problem this country has endured and continues to endure. Angela Oh, commissioner Oh suggests that the work of the commission really ought to be about multiracialism and multiculturalism. As the leader, the President who put this commission together, what kind of leadership are you going to provide? How are you going to get them on the right track? If the commission can't have a clear-stated mandate, how do we talk about it as a country?”