Bill Clinton: “Well, let me say that I still hope that I can work with Congress in a way that that choice won't be necessary. It is…”

“Well, let me say that I still hope that I can work with Congress in a way that that choice won't be necessary. It is true that they front-loaded more defense spending than we did, which made it very attractive to all the people who wanted it in these years. But what we tried to do was to have a balanced commitment. I think the worst thing that can happen to the military is to be jerked around with these up and down budgets and unpredictability. What we tried to do is to get our folks together here and to say, ``Okay, what do we need over the next 5 years? What do we need over the next 7 years?'' The only thing I can say to you, and I would say with some sense of assurance, is that our political system has shown a willingness now to respond if there's a problem created for our forces in uniform and for our national defense. I mean, I think--one of the things you see that in the last 3 years is we've had a remarkable bipartisan ability to maintain a strong defense as a part of our continuing engagement in the post-cold-war world. And I think that everyone knows that the military went through a significant downsizing with a remarkable maintenance of excellence and morale and that now we have to sustain the system that we have created. And so I would say to our forces in uniform, I'm going to get the very best budget agreement I can. I hope we can get an agreement. But if there is an alarming tailoff in years 6 and 7, I think it can be corrected in the future. And I believe if we balance the budget, get interest rates down, the economy will grow more quickly. And one of the big differences between me and the Republicans in Congress is that they have now given me an economic plan which says if we do everything they want, at the end of 6 or 7 years interest rates and unemployment will be higher than they are now. I find that very hard to believe. I think that we're going to be better off, not worse off, if we do this, and we'll have more money, therefore, to invest in defense. So I would not worry too much about the out-years. Whatever happens in this budget agreement, at least as long as I am here--and I can't conceive of anyone else coming into this job or anyone coming into control of the Congress that would not try to sustain a long-term plan for the military, because that's what we've learned--that if the military has a plan they can do nearly anything, but we can't jack around the plan. And we don't want to play games with people's lives or with the national security. Bosnia and Politics”