Remarks at a Luncheon Honoring Representative James H. Maloney in Danbury, Connecticut - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 18, 2000

So we can't make the expansive tax cut promises they can, and that may obscure the act to the voters that we actually have, as Jim said, quite a good tax cut package that we strongly believe we can still pass in this Congress, if they want to do it. But I think they'd rather have the issue, because they want it to look like we're sort of the, you know, the curmudgeons that won't give the average Joe a break, and the country's rolling in dough, and it's their money, and the other side is going to give it all back to them.

Let me just remind you, that rhetoric quadrupled the debt of the United States of America in the 12 years before I took office with Al Gore. And we have worked very hard--we've worked very hard to turn that around. A lot of Members of Congress gave up their seats after 1993, because they voted to turn it around. And we'd better think a long time before we play games with our fiscal discipline and our ability to pay down that debt.

Let me just give you one example. They talk all the time about tax cuts. If you did everything they're talking about, you passed all the tax cuts they've advocated and all the one's they're rolling out and all the one's their nominee for President rolled out and then you pass their Social Security privatization plan, which costs another trillion dollars, nearly--and that's before they pay for Star Wars or any of their other spending--no, seriously, be ore they pay for any of that--and you compare that to the Gore-Lieberman-Maloney positions--now, listen, hear me here--you can--interest rates under our approach would be one percent lower a year for a decade. Why? Because we're going to keep paying down the debt until we get America out of debt for the first time since 1835, and they'll have to stop doing that, because they're going to spend so much money on the tax cuts and the privatization program. They're going to spend all this projected surplus, and then some.

And when you do that, interest rates will go up, and the market will react accordingly, and the economy will be weaker. Everybody will have their tax cut. I don't know how much good it will be if the economy gets weak. But let me say this--I had a study done--you know how much a one percent reduction in interest rates for a decade is worth? Three hundred and ninety billion dollars in home mortgages, about $900 a year on a $100,000 mortgage--I don't want to mess this up--$30 billion in car payments, and $15 billion in student loan payments. So that's a $435 billion tax cut the American people get for paying for a strong economy and getting rid of the debt and saving some money to invest in caring for the needs of all Americans.

You know, we believe, our party does, that all these people in these pretty uniforms that served our lunch here, we believe that they ought to have the same chance to send their kids to college that I have to send my child to college. We believe they ought to be able to make a living. And if they need child care, they ought to have it. And when the time comes to raise the minimum wage, we ought to raise it. And that's what we believe.