Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all, let's go through each one of those issues. If you take the Whitewater issue, you don't have to take…”

“Well, first of all, let's go through each one of those issues. If you take the Whitewater issue, you don't have to take my word for anything. Look at my tax returns. When's the last President that went back 17 years before he became President and gave his tax returns up? Just look at them; don't take my word for it. A former Commissioner of the IRS said that all the Republican attacks on me saying that I owed more taxes and that I made money instead of lost money on Whitewater were flat wrong. I have been the subject, sir, of false charges. People saying things about me that are not true don't make my credibility an issue. They make their credibility an issue, not mine. Secondly, we have a different position on Bosnia, a different position on Haiti, and a different position on China. We have not solved the Bosnian process, but I would remind you that because of the leadership of this administration, we have got an agreement now with the Europeans that we worked with. There is a safe zone around Sarajevo; there's an agreement between the Bosnian Muslims and the Croatians; we are making progress in Bosnia. We have a significantly different policy in China that a lot of people disagree with, but it's clearly different from the policy of the previous administration. On Haiti, our policy in Haiti is different. Our policy on return of the Haitians is the same because I became convinced, after I became President, that hundreds and hundreds of Haitians were going to die trying to come to the shores of this country unless we set up a system that would allow them to apply for refugee status in Haiti before they came here. And we have set up a system that did not exist when I became President to allow the Haitians to apply for refugee status in Haiti before they came here. So I just disagree with that. On the middle class tax cut, let me just point out to you, sir, that after the election, the deficit by the previous administration was revised upward by more than $50 billion in the next year. I didn't do that; I didn't have control of those figures. So here's what I had to do. Do I go through with a whole middle class tax cut and let the deficit balloon and have interest rates higher and weaken this economy? Or do I tell the American people the truth, which is what I did: The deficit is bigger than I thought it was going to be, so I can't go the whole way. I'm going to give 17 percent of the working people in this country an income tax cut, which you never heard about last year. On April 15th, 1.2 percent get an income tax increase, 17 percent almost--16.6 percent--get an income tax cut. And I still believe there ought to be a family tax credit for the rest of middle class America. But I have a 4-year term, sir, not a one-year term. I haven't abandoned it; I can't get everything done in one year. I'm doing the very best I can and, by the way, the independent analysis last year said that we got more done in the first year of our Presidency than anybody in the last 30 years. So I haven't given up on that commitment; I just can't get it done. I think I have done a remarkable job of doing what I said I would do, and I think you ought to trust me. Mr. Donovan. Mr. President, we're back to home base for our next question.”