THAT'S NOT ******* APOLOGIZING
....Speaking at a campaign fund raiser in Houston, Mr. Clinton said: "Probably there are people in this room still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much, too."
The President, who took office promising both a tax cut for the middle class and higher taxes for the wealthiest Americans, deferred the tax cut in favor of further reducing the Federal budget deficit. In the speech on Tuesday,
he seemed to blame both Democrats and Republicans for forcing his hand, although he defended his decision as "the right thing to do." After the remarks caused a small furor on Capitol Hill this morning,
the White House complained that they were being taken out of context.
But
members of both parties in Congress, debating Republican plans for tax cuts that Mr. Clinton bitterly opposes as too deep, saw no such subtleties.
....Asked why he thought the President had made the remarks, Mr. Moynihan said:
"He's running for re-election, he's raising money in Houston. What he should have said was, 'Is there a man in this room who's not richer than he was two years ago?' "
Mr. Clinton's remarks were made late Tuesday night and drew little notice, but Republicans seized on them this morning after he was quoted in a news service account of the speech.
The President seldom gets in more trouble than when he tries to explain himself too much to an audience he wants to win over, and the speech on Tuesday night seemed a classic example. Clearly tired from a three-day campaign swing, he gave a rambling talk, once referring to Huey Long as "the famous populist Governor and Senator of Kentucky," before correcting himself to say Louisiana.
....his remarks Tuesday night closely echoed comments he made to the Business Council, a group of top corporate executives, in Williamsburg, Va., last Friday,
when he said that because no Republicans would support his 1993 budget, "I had to raise your taxes more and cut spending less than I wanted to, which made a lot of you furious."
In fact, in his frantic search for enough Democratic votes to win passage, Mr. Clinton dropped proposed tax increases he favored, like one on energy, and in the end, Vice President Al Gore had to break a tie in the Senate.
APOLOGIZE? LMAOROG
