Bill Clinton: “Good morning. This has been a very good week for America. On Friday I signed a bipartisan budget to keep the Government…”

“Good morning. This has been a very good week for America. On Friday I signed a bipartisan budget to keep the Government operating for the rest of the year. After a year of intense and sometimes heated debate, Republicans and Democrats in Congress came together and worked with us to craft an agreement that is good for the American people. First of all, it keeps the deficit on the downward path we started in 1993. This budget cuts billions of dollars in spending. At the same time, the budget upholds America's most basic values, as I have pledged to do, by honoring our commitment to our elderly, to our children, and to our future by protecting Medicare and Medicaid, preserving our fight against crime, investing in education and in the protection of the environment. Look how far we've come. A year ago, many in Congress insisted we could only move toward a balanced budget by imposing extreme measures and walking away from those commitments. I knew that wasn't true, and I was determined to hold the line. So now we aren't going to break our promise to put 100,000 new police officers on the street. We aren't going to stop enforcing antipollution laws and risk severe damage to our environment. We aren't going to abandon our effort to shrink class size and raise teachers' standards, to keep kids in school safe and make college more affordable.…”