Bill Clinton: “Okay. I'll give you one big one with two component parts. We've got our economic house in order today, and we're facing…”

“Okay. I'll give you one big one with two component parts. We've got our economic house in order today, and we're facing our social problems. That is, welfare is down; child support collections are up. We've already stipulated the only bad social indicator is teen drug use. The other things are moving in the right direction. But we don't have a country where every person can take advantage of this new global economy. So my first priority is education, is making community college as universal in 4 years as high school is today, with a $1,500 refundable tax credit for the first 2 years of education after high school, and making college available to everybody by a $10,000 tax deduction, hooking up all the classrooms to the information superhighway, and passing our other educational initiatives. My second priority--for the same purpose, to hook everybody into it--is devising ways to move people from welfare to work, so that this doesn't turn out to be just a cruel budget cut--welfare reform--but we actually create jobs for people to move from welfare to work and other unemployed people, and creating incentives to focus on the inner cities and the isolated rural areas which have been left behind. Those are two big priorities we have to focus on, and we can make a real difference if we do. Russia Ms. Dougherty. Mr. President, we wanted to try to get an international question in here and, quickly, one concerning Russia. And the essence of the question is, who is in charge in Russia right now? And there's a quick incident last week, where you had General Lebed, the security adviser, getting orders, some very important orders on Chechnya, and he said he didn't think that those orders had come from the President at all, that perhaps they came from somebody else. Now, do you have any explanation for that, and who has their finger on the button in Russia?”