Bill Clinton: “Well, so far--I don't yet, but there are two reasons why I don't. Number one, so far, workers have gotten, finally, some…”

“Well, so far--I don't yet, but there are two reasons why I don't. Number one, so far, workers have gotten, finally, some real raises, and they should. But you haven't seen a lot of demands for wage increases all out of line with profitability growth in given enterprises. You haven't seen any kind of demands that people would say are outrageous, even in tight labor markets. And I think that workers are very sophisticated now, and they're very sensitive to--they want a fair deal, so if their business is doing very well they'd like to participate in that, but they also understand that they can't kill the goose that laid the golden egg. And I think there's a lot more sophistication among working people, both members of labor unions and people who are not members of labor unions but are working in enterprises where they have to make those judgments. Now, in addition to that, I think productivity increases are continuing to be brisk, and there's now, finally, a lot of scholarship coming out indicating that we may have underestimated productivity in the last several years, especially in the service industries. And I think if that happens, if we can keep the productivity going, and we can keep our markets open--we can keep competing, keep expanding our horizons in competition overseas in trade--that we can have some appropriate wage growth without having inflation. That's the goal, anyway. Budget Negotiations Mr. Hunt. You mentioned earlier the deficit reduction. What do you think of the odds right now that you can reach an agreement with Congress on a balanced budget by the year 2002?”