Clinton Quotes

The source of the following quotes are from the House Republican Conference and press reports. Watching Hillary's campaign makes me think that she sure has learned quite a lot from her husband on double-speak. They have turned it into an art form.


"We need to provide a tax credit of up to $800 per child to ease the burden on working families."
-Bill Clinton, March 1992


"We will lower the tax burden on middle-class Americans. Middle-class taxpayers will have a choice between a children's tax credit or a significant reduction in their income tax rate."
-Bill Clinton, "Putting People First"


"We should cut middle-class taxes immediately by 10 percent."
-Bill Clinton, Campaign Document, September, 1992


"We want to give modest middle-class tax relief to restore some fairness, especially to middle-class people with families with incomes of under $60,000 per year."
-Bill Clinton, First Presidential Debate, October, 1992


"I've offered a comprehensive plan to get our economy moving again. It starts with a tax cut for the middle class." -Bill Clinton, First Campaign Ad, January 1992


"I want to make it very clear that this middle-class tax cut, in my view, is central to any attempt we're going to make to have a short term economic strategy."
-Bill Clinton, January 19, 1992


"From New Hampshire forward, for reasons that absolutely mystified me, the press thought the most important issue in the race was the middle-class tax cut. I never did meet any voter who thought that."
-Bill Clinton, Press Conference, January 14, 1993


"I will slash boondoggle projects."
-Bill Clinton, "Putting People First"


"We're slashing subsidies and canceling wasteful projects. Many of these programs were justified in their time and a lot of them were difficult for me personally .... We're going to have no sacred cows."
-Bill Clinton, State of the Union, February 18, 1993


"The Clinton team's search for programs 'that don't work or are no longer needed' found only eleven."
-The Wall Street Journal, March23, 1993


"I will not raise taxes on the middle class."
-Bill Clinton, June 21, 1992


"I'm not going to raise taxes on the middle class."
-Bill Clinton, July 13, 1992


"The middle class has paid through the nose for a decade. We have to be somewhat wary of making a problem of inadequate income even worse by taxing people whose incomes are going down. That's my premise."
-Bill Clinton, Quoted in Time, July 20, 1992


"I had hoped to invest in your future without asking more of you. And I've worked harder than I've ever worked in my life to meet that goal. But I can't."
-Bill Clinton, Oval Office Address, February 15, 1993, Announcing Middle-Class Tax Increase After Being in Office Less Than One Month


"I can tell you this. I'm not going to raise taxes on middle-income Americans to pay for the programs I've recommended. If the money does not come in to pay for these programs, we will cut other government spending or we will slow down the phase-in of these programs."
-Bill Clinton, Last Presidential Debate, October 19, 1992


$178 billion: cost of Clinton's proposed new spending.
$173 billion: revenues raised under Clinton plan from Social Security, income, energy, and gas taxes.
-Bill Clinton's Budget Document, "A Vision of Change for America," February 1993


"It is a disgrace to the American people that the president of the United States would make a claim that is so baseless, that is so without foundation, so shameless in its attempt to get votes under false pretenses."
-Bill Clinton, October 1, 1992, in Response to a Bush-Quayle Ad That People With Incomes of as little as $36,000 would pay more taxes under the Clinton plan.


"There are [tax] increases for every family making more than $20,000 a year."
-New York Times Analysis of Clinton's budget


"When I began the campaign, the projected deficit was $250 billion a year, not $400 billion."
-Bill Clinton, quoted in Business Week, July 6, 1992


"When I started in New Hampshire working with those numbers, we felt the deficit was going to be around $250 billion a year, not $400 billion."
-Bill Clinton, quoted in Time, July 20, 1992


"The deficit of this country is about $50 billion a year bigger than I was told it was going to be before the election."
-Bill Clinton, February 10, 1993, after "discovering" that the deficit was $290 billion, $110 billion less than he had claimed in July


"My plan will cut the deficit in four years and assure that the deficit continues to fall each year after that."
-Bill Clinton, June20, 1992


"My economics package will cut $500 billion from the deficit in five years."
-Bill Clinton, press conference, March 23, 1993


Deficit in 1998 with Clinton budget: $234 billion.
Deficit in 2001 with Clinton budget: $401 billion.
-Bill Clinton's budget document, "A Vision of Change for America," February 1993


"I don't like to use the word sacrifice."
-Bill Clinton, May 1992


"It will not be easy. It will require sacrifice."
-Bill Clinton, January 1993"


My plan is basically 50-50, spending cuts and revenues the first four years."
-Bill Clinton, February 1993


"If the Senate will adopt a budget resolution like the House did, the American people will know we are not going to raise taxes until we cut spending, and we are going to create jobs."
-Bill Clinton, press conference, March 1993


Net new taxes: $267 billion- Net new spending cuts: $55 billion- 83 percent taxes, 17 percent spending cuts
-Congressional Budget Office analysis of Clinton budget, March 1993


"He [Bush] hasn't fought a real war on crime and drugs. I will."
-Bill Clinton, Democratic National Convention, July 16, 1992


121 positions at the Office of National Drug Control Policy eliminated. Policy of random drug testing for White House staff revoked.
-White House announcement, February 9, 1993


"I think President Bush played racial politics with the Haitian refugees. I wouldn't be shipping those poor poeple back."-Bill Clinton, March 27, 1992


"The practice of returning those who fled by boat will continue, for the time being, after I become president. Those who do leave Haiti by boat will be stopped and directly returned by the United States Coast Guard."
-Bill Clinton, January 14, 1993"My Haiti policy is not the same as the Bush policy."-Bill Clinton, January 14, 1993


"Administration to Defend Bush Haitian Policy in Court."
-The Washington Post, March 1, 1993


"If [Mr. Hussein] wants a different relationship with the Untied States, all he has to do is change his behavior."
-Bill Clinton, Quoted in The New York Times, January 13, 1993


"Everybody who heard those conversations was astonished that such a conclusion could be drawn. Nobody asked me about normalization."
-Bill Clinton, January 14, 1993, Denying that he made conciliatory remarks regarding Saddam Hussein


"The president inadvertently forgot that he was asked and he regrets denying that it was asked."
-George Stephanopoulis, January 15, 1993, After New York Times transcripts revealed that Clinton had been specifically asked about "normal relations" and "normalization," not once, but five times.


"We call for an immediate repeal of the ban on gays and lesbians serving in United States Armed Forces."
-Bill Clinton, campaign document, October 1992


"I was frankly appalled that we spent so much time in the first week on geys in the military."
-Bill Clinton, Februaury 10, 1993


"Senators in the other party wanted it dealt with now. I actually spent very little time on the issue myself."
-Bill Clinton, February 10, 1993, a few minutes later


"I am going to ask them [Congress] to cut spending in a broad range of areas."
-Bill Clinton, February 10, 1993, referring to budget that cuts spending primarily in one area: the military


"As long as I am president, I will do everything I cna do to make sure that the men and women who serve under the American flag will remain the best trained, the best prepared, the best equipped fighting force in the world."
-Bill Clinton, Joint Session of Congress, Februaury 17, 1993


"I will save the country $700 billion by the turn of the century under my proposals to cap health care costs."
-Bill Clinton, September 24, 1992"This plan is not play or pay. It wil require no new taxes."-Bill Clinton, September 24, 1992, in a speech on his health-care plan to employees of Merck Pharmaceuticals in Rahway, New Jersey


"Clinton Health Plan to Cost $100 Billion a Year."
-Washington Times, April 23, 1993


"The health-care task force has just met."
-Bill Clinton, announcig the formation of the task force of 526 members under Hillary Clinton, January 25, 1992


"The health-care task force has never met."
-argument made by White House lawyers before federal judge Royce Lamberth on the legality of the closed task force meetings, March 1993


"I did not mean to float a trial balloon about a national sales tax. It's not under consideration at this time. Ten to 15 years away."
-Bill Clinton, February 19, 1993


"We have to reject tax-and-spend economics."
-Bill Clinton, National League of Cities conference, March 8, 1993


"Certainly, we're looking at a VAT tax."
-Donna Shalala, Secratary of Health and Human Services, April 15, 1993


"The problem with the structural deficit is rooted in the early 1980s when we cut income taxes and increased defense spending."
-Bill Clinton, "Putting People first"


Individual income taxes 1980: $244 billion
Individual income taxes 1992: $476 billion
National defense budget 1980: 5.1 percent of GDP
National defense budget 1992: 5.0 percent of GDP
-U. S. Budget Office, January 1993


"I'm sure-after almost five weeks in office-that there are more [budget] cuts coming."
-Bill Clinton, U. S. Chamber of Commerce, February 1993


"The president had no specific cuts in mind and no schedule for masking them."
-George Stephanopoulos, the next day


"We don't need to tamper with Social Security."
-Bill Clinton, September 1992


"The budget plan does ask older Americans with higher incomes who do not rely solely on Social Security to get by or contribute more."
-Bill Clinton, State of the Union, January 1993


"I have confirmed that I intend to present to the leadership in Congress a plan of action for the first hundred days of the next presidency."
-Bill Clinton, June 6, 1992


"If I'm elected, I'll have the bills ready the day after I'm inaugurated. I'll send them to Congress and we'll have a hundred-day period."
-Bill Clinton, "Good Morning America" June23, 1992


"My first one hundred days will be the most productive in modern history."
-Bill Clinton, June 1992


"People of the press are expecting to have some 100-day program. We never had one."
-Dee Dee Myers, January 12, 1993