Remarks at a Reception for Hillary Clinton in Indianapolis, Indiana

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 30, 2000

People ask me all the time, "What's your new idea?" "Arithmetic." Washington didn't practice arithmetic. They quadrupled the debt of America in the 12 years before I took office, because they pretended that you could take 2 and 2, make it add up to 6. And it never has, and it never will.

Now, in some ways, this may be the most significant difference to all of you in this race. It's a difference in the race for the Senate in New York. It is certainly a difference in the race for the Presidency and the Vice Presidency. If you look at the leadership of Frank O'Bannon here and Evan Bayh before him, one of the reasons I think the Democratic Party came back in Indiana is that they proved that you could be fiscally responsible, live within your means, run a good government, grow the economy, and also invest in education and in helping people. That's basically what we do; that's what we Democrats do.

And when I became President, the deficit was $295 billion. Do you know what it was supposed to be this year--$455 billion. Instead we've got a $230 billion surplus. When I leave office, we will have paid down over $300 billion of the national debt. When I became President, we were spending over 13 cents of every dollar you pay in taxes just paying interest on the debt. When I leave, we'll be down at or below 12 cents. We were going to be at 15 cents. And if you vote for Vice President Gore, we pay the debt off; you get rid of the third biggest item in the Federal budget.

And that's why we can pay for more health care, more education, a more modest tax cut, and still get rid of that debt. Arithmetic.

Now, the biggest difference here--and it affects every one of you, from the wealthiest person here to the people who have served this wonderful meal this morning--the biggest difference is their tax plan is 3 times bigger than ours. Actually, people who make under $100,000 a year almost all do better under ours. But theirs is 3 times bigger. So what difference does that make? If you spend--if you have--these numbers boggle the imagination, but if you think you're going to have about $2 trillion to spend, if you spend $1.5 trillion on a tax cut and then you promise people you're going to give young people some of their Social Security payroll tax back to put in the stock market, but you're going to protect old people who are already drawing their Social Security and they won't lose anything, that costs another trillion dollars. And then you promise people several hundred billion dollars worth of spending, you' know if you just take out all the zeroes you can add it up. If you've got two to spend and you spend three--that's the Republican proposal--you're back in deficit. And that means higher interest rates and lower growth.

The Democratic plan will keep interest rates about a percent lower over a decade, every year. And let me just tell you what that means. You hear people talking about tax cuts these last 2 weeks--one percent lower interest rates every year for a decade saves the American people $390 billion in home mortgage payments, $30 billion in car payments, $15 billion in college loan payments. That doesn't even count how much lower your credit cards will be or the fact that you will have lower cost business loans, which will mean more expansion, a stronger economy, and a better stock market.