Bill Clinton: “Well, you making that argument to me, you're preaching to the choir, because I agree with you. But I would like to put…”

“Well, you making that argument to me, you're preaching to the choir, because I agree with you. But I would like to put it--just briefly, I'd like to put this in proper context. Let's just take this as an example of the budget debate we're having in Washington everywhere. You should know, first of all, that the deficit has been cut in half in the last 3 years. What makes the deficit go down in a hurry is if you have a combination of real discipline on the money you spend and a growing economy, because if you have a growing economy, then unemployment's less, the Government has to make fewer payouts. For example, in the last 3 years the welfare rolls are down; the food stamp rolls are down; the poverty rolls are down. We're not paying out as much money because the economy is in better shape, more people are working, and we have pretty tight controls on the spending. We have reduced the size of the Government by 200,000 since I've been in office. Your Federal Government is now the same size it was in 1965. We have cut 16,000 of the 86,000 pages of Federal regulations, including half the Federal regulations in the SBA; 50 percent have been slashed. So we're trying to get rid of all of the inessential things and all of the waste. Now, there's a big debate now of what should the National Government do. And you can make an argument, once you get beyond national defense-- defending the country, you can argue that nothing else should be done, or you can argue that it should be done. How do you decide? I believe we have to ask ourselves: What should be the role of the Federal Government? My view is, when you move beyond national defense, our role ought to be to focus on problems that are national in scope, but if they have to be dealt with at the local level we should focus on helping individuals and families make the most of their own lives or enabling communities to address these challenges. Now, the reason I have favored continued Federal funding of the arts is that once you get out of the really big cities where there is a massive amount of wealth and a huge population base to attract the orchestra, the art gallery, the you-name-it, once you get out of that where they don't have a big population base, isn't it still a good thing nationally for people in small rural towns in north Arkansas or northern New Hampshire to have a traveling artist or to hear musicians directly or to be exposed to these things? I think it is. It's a tiny part of our national budget. So what I have proposed is sort of a split in your position and theirs. I said, we can't increase this right now until we get the deficit under control. So let's just flat-fund it, but let's keep it flat for several years so at least we can tell the local arts council in Merrimack, okay, this is what New Hampshire will get next year, the year after, and the year after, and you can plan accordingly. And that's what I hope we will do, and I think there's a fair chance that's what will happen.”