    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [March 2, 1995]
    [Pages 289-290]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Senate Action on the Balanced Budget Amendment
    March 2, 1995

        Good afternoon. I have a statement I'd like to make about the vote
    on the balanced budget amendment and what happens now. And I look
    forward to taking your questions tomorrow. We're going to have a press
    conference then, and so I'll just read the statement now.
        The balanced budget amendment has been defeated because Republicans
    could not provide enough Democratic Senators with the simple guarantee
    that Social Security would be protected in any balanced budget amendment
    procedures.
        Let me begin by simply congratulating the people on both sides of
    this issue who argued with great depth of conviction and sincerity and
    people on both sides who want to bring down the deficit and eliminate
    unnecessary spending but who differed on the consequences and the
    necessity of using an amendment to the Constitution to do it.
        The question we must all face now is, what happens tomorrow? We all
    know that there is no real requirement of a constitutional amendment to
    reduce unnecessary Government spending and to reduce the deficit. For 12
    years before I took office, Washington allowed the deficit to explode.
    Organized interests did well, but the public interest and the future
    suffered. Washington, during this entire period, spent too much time on
    rhetoric and gimmicks and too little time making hard, smart, specific
    budgetary decisions.
        Then, just 2 years ago, Democrats acting alone had the courage to
    pass the largest deficit reduction package in the history of the United
    States, now over $600 billion. Our annual deficit at that time was about
    5 percent of our income. It has now dropped to just over half that and
    is scheduled to go down much lower.
        A month ago, we added to that historic deficit reduction ith a
    budget that cuts spending, cuts the deficit even more, and provides for
    modest tax cuts to the middle class for education and childrearing. I am
    as ready as ever to work with the Congress to make further reductions in
    the deficit. As I have said repeatedly, it must come in the context of
    responsible health care reform because it is only the health care costs
    of the country that are going up in our budget. All other costs are flat
    or declining.
        Now the process of reducing the deficit while investing in our
    future must go forward. There is a legal process for doing just that. In
    1993, though I had never before been a part of Government in Washington,
    we presented our budget plan only 27 days into our administration. It
    has now been 57 days since the Republicans took control of the Congress.
    And even though their leadership has been here many, many more years,
    they have still not presented their budget. We passed the budget
    resolution for our plan before the legal deadline of April 15th. Now
    they must follow that process as well, telling the American people how
    they are going to keep the promises of their contract on balancing the
    budget and paying for their tax cuts by the legal deadline of April
    15th.
        When the Republicans do present their budget plan, we will carefully
    consider it. We owe them that, and we must. I have shown my commitment
    to reducing the deficit and to investing in our future. And I will
    continue to do that.

    [[Page 290]]

    I believe we can reduce the deficit without compromising our commitment
    to education and to our children and without undermining our commitment
    to our seniors in Social Security and basic Medicare needs. I believe we
    can do that. I believe we can do it while continuing our commitment to
    provide 100,000 police officers for this country, a program that is
    already fully paid for by spending cuts. We do not need to allow any of
    those things to be used as a bank to cut taxes for upper income
    Americans.
        There are other things we can do right now, things that I agree with
    the Republican leadership on, and let me just close with this one. Let
    us now immediately take up in the Senate the line-item veto, and let's
    pass it. We can cut millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of
    dollars in spending with the line-item veto. So I urge the Senate to
    proceed immediately to take that up. And I will work as hard as I can to
    persuade members of both parties to support it and to continue the
    important work of reducing the deficit.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:17 p.m. in the Briefing Room at the White
    House.