Bill Clinton in Clinton-Bush-Perot Presidential Debates

On Budget & Economy: Cut defense & ask wealthy Americans to pay their share

Q: You are promising to create jobs, reduce the deficit, reform health care, rebuild infrastructure, guarantee college education, all with financial pain only for the rich. Is it possible?

CLINTON: I believe we can increase investment and reduce the deficit, if we not only ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their share; we also provide $100 billion in tax relief and $140 billion of spending cuts. Take money from defense cuts and reinvest it in transportation, communications and environmental clean-up systems.

BUSH: I don't like trickle down government. Clinton says grow government. Government doesn't create jobs. If they do, they're make-work jobs. It's the private sector that creates jobs.

PEROT: We still have a significant deficit under each of their plans. There's only one way out of this, and that is to have a growing job base. My plan balances the budget within 6 years. We didn't do it faster than that because we didn't want to disrupt the economy.

Source: The Third Clinton-Bush-Perot Presidential Debate Oct 19, 1992

On Environment: Increase fuel efficiency from 27 mpg to 40 mpg

BUSH: [to Clinton]: One mistake [Clinton] has made is fuel efficiency standards at 40 to 45 miles a gallon will throw auto workers out of work. There's a pattern here of appealing to the auto workers and then trying to appeal to the spotted owl crowds or the extremes in the environmental movement.

CLINTON: Let's talk about fuel efficiency standards. They are now 27.5 miles per gallon per automobile fleet. We ought to have a goal of raising the fuel efficiency standards to 40 miles a gallon. We ought to have incentives to do it. It is good for America to improve fuel efficiency. We also ought to convert more vehicles to compressed natural gas. That's another way to improve the environment.

Source: The Third Clinton-Bush-Perot Presidential Debate Oct 19, 1992

On Foreign Policy: Should not have tried to reason with Saddam the tyrant

In 1988 when the war between Iraq and Iran ended, we knew Saddam Hussein was a tyrant. We know he's dropping mustard gas on his own people, we know he's threatened to incinerate half of Israel. In '89 the president signed a secret policy saying we were going to continue to try to improve relations with him, and we sent him some sort of communication on the eve of his invasion of Kuwait that we still wanted better relations. The responsibility was in coddling Saddam Hussein. Source: The Third Clinton-Bush-Perot Presidential Debate Oct 19, 1992

On Free Trade: For NAFTA with enforcement and job training

PEROT: [to Clinton]: You implement NAFTA, the Mexican trade agreement, where they pay a dollar an hour, have no health care, no retirement, no pollution controls, etc., and you're going to hear a giant sucking sound of jobs being pulled out of this country. We don't have good trade agreements across the world.

BUSH: I am for the North American Free Trade Agreement. I think free trade is going to expand our job opportunity. I think it is exports that have saved us when we're in a recession. We need more free trade agreements.

CLINTON: I say it does more good than harm if we can get protection for the environment so that the Mexicans have to follow their own environmental standards, their own labor law standards, and if we have a genuine commitment to reeducate and retrain American workers who lose their jobs.

Source: The Third Clinton-Bush-Perot Presidential Debate Oct 19, 1992

The above quotations are from The Clinton-Bush-Perot Presidential Debates, Oct. 1992. Click here for other excerpts from The Clinton-Bush-Perot Presidential Debates, Oct. 1992. Click here for other excerpts by Bill Clinton. Click here for a profile of Bill Clinton.
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