    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [June 21, 1993]
    [Pages 900-902]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Interview With Phil Adler of KRLD Radio, Dallas, Texas
    June 21, 1993

        Mr. Adler. Mr. President, are you there?
        The President. I am, Phil.

    Economic Program

        Mr. Adler. Good morning to you. We think that a lot of people
    responded to a theme, or at least I think so, in the Presidential
    campaign of sacrifice to cut the deficit as long as that sacrifice is
    equal. The Btu tax was designed originally on the concept of equal
    sacrifice. But then all of these exceptions were added, and it really
    makes it appear that it's one of the most complicated proposals ever.
    Did you make a mistake allowing all the special exceptions to be
    included in the Btu tax?

    [[Page 901]]

        The President. Well, I didn't allow them all to be included. Some of
    them were included in the House of Representatives bill, and I didn't
    agree with all of them. But let me say what I think was a good criticism
    of the tax and that is that we wanted the tax to restrain energy
    consumption in ways that promoted energy conservation and also supported
    fuel switching to more environmentally beneficial and more available
    natural gas. That bill, as drawn, would be a big boon to the natural gas
    industry in Texas and Oklahoma and throughout the United States. And
    that's one of the things we were trying to do. Now, some of the oil
    companies didn't like it, but the people that were in the gas business
    liked it. We had a big Texas gas company, headed by a person who
    strongly supported President Bush in the last election, endorsed the
    economic program. ARCO and Sun Oil both endorsed the economic program,
    including the Btu tax.
        So Secretary Bentsen, who, as you know, has represented you in the
    Senate for a long time, offered the Senate a modified Btu tax which,
    instead of having all those particular exemptions, would basically have
    alleviated the burden of the Btu tax on industry and agriculture on the
    production sector but still given them an incentive to move toward
    natural gas wherever possible and would also have cut the Btu rate and
    would have replaced that with more spending cuts.
        From my point of view, unfortunately, we couldn't pass that through
    the committee because Senator Boren had said he wouldn't vote for any
    tax based on the heat content of fuel. But I still think it was a good
    concept, and it will be interesting to see what happens if the Senate's
    version of the economic plan passes, to see what happens in the
    conference and what we come up with.
        Mr. Adler. What we have now is a gasoline tax that's been passed by
    the Senate committee, and you've called that regressive in the past. How
    can you sell that, if you have to, to House Members who did risk some
    political capital by supporting you on the Btu tax?
        The President. I think anything that comes out has to be a
    combination of agreement between the House and the Senate. It's hard to
    get 218 House Members and 51 Senators to agree on anything that's tough.
    I mean, everybody can talk about cutting the deficit, but it's one thing
    to talk about it and quite another to do. But I think they'll be able to
    do it. No one was particularly happy with the form of the Btu tax, or
    very few people were, that passed the House, but everybody thought that
    Secretary Bentsen could come up with a plan that would make it good for
    the economy and could achieve what we were trying to do in terms of
    promoting domestic energy, and I think he did. The Senate preferred a
    tax that was a gas tax and a tax on some other fuels. It, at least, is
    small enough so that it is not particularly unfair to people in rural
    areas. It's not as big as what some had wanted, and certainly I did not
    want just a big old gas tax. I thought that was unfair.
        I also think it's important to point out in Texas, in light of the
    rhetoric in the recent political campaign, that it is simply not true
    that there is no spending cuts in this plan. There's $250 billion in
    spending cuts, and they affect everything. They affect agriculture and
    veterans and Medicare and the whole range of discretionary spending of
    the Government. They affect foreign aid; they affect defense. There are
    sweeping, broad-based spending cuts in this program. And the tax
    increases, two-thirds of them, fall on people with incomes above
    $200,000, three-quarters on people with incomes above $100,000. Families
    of four with incomes below $30,000 are held harmless, and people who
    work for a living 40 hours a week and have kids in the house who are now
    in poverty would actually be lifted above poverty by these tax changes
    in ways that promote the movement from welfare to work. So this is a
    fair and balanced plan.
        It was developed, and in a very aggressive way, by Lloyd Bentsen and
    by Leon Panetta, who used to be chairman of the House Budget Committee,
    to be fair, to have equal spending cuts in taxes, and to drive the
    deficit down so we could bring interest rates down. That's good for
    Texas, and that's good for everybody in America. And also, it leaves
    some room for investments that are critical to our future. And as you
    know, I support--you were implying this before I got on--I support the
    space station and the super collider projects because I think they're
    good for America's future. And if you're going to spend money on those
    things, you have to spend money on them. You can't play games; they do
    cost some money.

    [[Page 902]]

    Space Station and Super Collider

        Mr. Adler. Mr. President, how long can you guarantee that support
    for the super collider and the space station? Will they fall if that's
    the only way to meet your overall deficit reduction goal?
        The President. Well, my overall deficit reduction goals can be met
    in my plan with the space station and the super collider. I do want to
    emphasize that we've already shaved $4 billion off the 5-year budget for
    the space station and some money off the 5-year budget for the super
    collider by redesigning the space station, based on a team of
    exceptional national experts who analyzed the project and recommended
    that it be redesigned and also that NASA's management be changed rather
    dramatically. And we just delayed the implementation schedule on the
    super collider some, so that none of the opponents of the space station
    and the super collider could claim that there had been no spending cut
    there.
        So we have done that. But I strongly feel it would be a mistake to
    abandon those. Now, I would be less than candid if I didn't tell you
    that there are a lot of people in other parts of the country who want to
    cut those projects. There was always a lot of opposition to them, and
    because of the last election and all of the rhetoric and all the claims
    in Texas that there were no spending cuts in this budget, that has given
    real energy to the opponents of the space station and the super
    collider. It wasn't true that there were no spending cuts, but there are
    a lot of people up there who have been wanting to kill these projects
    for years who are just gleeful at the way the rhetoric in the last
    election played out in Texas. They think that they have been given a
    license by the people of Texas to kill the space station and the super
    collider. And it's going to be very much harder for me to keep them
    alive. But I'm doing the best I can.
        Mr. Adler. Mr. President, I'm informed that our time has run out, by
    one of your aides, I believe. Good to talk with you this morning.
        The President. Thank you. I enjoyed it.

    Note: The interview began at 12:42 p.m. The President spoke from the
    Roosevelt Room at the White House.