Bill Clinton: “Let me say, as I'm sure you know, all the Members of Congress who are present here supported the efforts we made last…”

“Let me say, as I'm sure you know, all the Members of Congress who are present here supported the efforts we made last year to raise the minimum wage. And that, plus doubling the earned-income tax credit, the refundable earned-income tax credit for lower income working people, led in 1995, before the minimum wage even went into--we had the biggest drop in poverty, in the poverty rate among single women with children in 20 years. And so I couldn't agree with you more. We have still 20 percent of our kids living in poverty. And it's not very complicated. I mean, it's the reverse of why we have lowered the poverty rate among our seniors to 11 percent, and it's the lowest it's ever been in history because we met a national, common commitment to investing in retirement and health care for seniors. And one of the things that I earnestly hope we can do is to--in the next 2 years is to do something really significant to deal with the fact there's still 10 million children in our country without health care. And they're not primarily people who are presently on public assistance because they're eligible for Medicaid. But education, health care, and safety are the three big priorities that we have for our children. And I think they're all very important, and we're nowhere near where we ought to be there. [The discussion continued.]”