Quote

President Clinton was able to achieve budget surpluses despite a divided government.

In addition to myself and a number of others, President Clinton talked about the deficit and the debt issue. And he pointed out, really, what I pointed out, which is that when he left office, we actually had projected surpluses for a long period of time, because when he put together his economic plan, he did it in a balanced way.

No one in the modern history of this country, no president, has done more to move toward a balanced budget than has President Bill Clinton.

Clinton passed his first budget without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. Before it led to the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, it led to a Democratic defeat in the 1994 midterms.

Clinton was a president who used his office, in creative ways, to try to reinvigorate the federal government to benefit the majority.

At the same time, Clinton was doing a lot things right, like the economy.

When Mr. Obama entered office, he said all the right things about getting Washington spending under control. He even promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. Obviously, that didn't happen.

The biggest source of getting the country to a balanced budget is not by raising taxes or by cutting spending. It's by encouraging the growth of the economy.

I opposed Clinton's budget deal in 1997 because he brought in $115 billion cut in Medicare that created greater pressure for providers not to participate.

Bill Clinton has done more to help the middle class than any leader in decades.