Notable Quotables - 09/27/1993
Dan's Tough Interview
"When you walked in it was pretty clear you were excited, but also a little nervous. Am I right about that?"
"Next week begins the hard, really hard chore of trying to sell this to Congress and you'll be the lead-off witness. Are you nervous about that?"
"You've been working hard already to introduce this plan to people, sell this plan to people. Are you having any fun with this or is it all just hard work? It looks to be very hard work."
"I hear you talking, and as I have before on this subject, I don't know of anybody, friend or foe, who isn't impressed by your grasp of the details of this plan. I'm not surprised because you have been working on it so long and listened to so many people. Is it possible, and I'm asking for your candid opinion, that when this gets through, whether it passes or not, that we will have reached a point when a First Lady, any First Lady, can be judged on the quality of her work?"
"Are you prepared
to do as Vice President Gore did to sell one of his projects? Are you prepared
to pay the ultimate price and go on David Letterman?"
- Some of Dan Rather's questions to Hillary Clinton, September 22 48
Hours health care special.
Universally Behind Universal Health Care?
"I think people now
universally agree there should be an entitlement, a right to health
care."
- Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin
Group, September 18.
"The Clinton plan
is surprisingly persuasive in supporting the longtime claim of the Clintons,
and their top health care strategist, Ira Magaziner, that reform can be almost
entirely from savings, without broad-based new taxes and with enough left over
to reduce the federal budget deficit."
- Time Washington Bureau Chief Dan Goodgame, September 20.
Reagan's Faked Tests
3 'Star Wars' Tests
Rigged, Aspin Says
- Washington Post, September 10
Aspin denies US faked
SDI test
- Boston Globe, same day
The Liberal's Biggest Insult: It's Like Reaganomics
"The President's
blueprint for national health care reform is an ingenious document that, on
paper at least, creates a rational health system. But from a financial
standpoint, it is the biggest exercise in wishful thinking since President
Reagan promised to cut taxes, increase defense spending and balance the budget
more than a decade ago...Clinton would save an additional $51 billion by a bit
of supply-side sleight of hand. The administration wants to try to `recapture'
some of the savings enjoyed by private enterprise from health care
reform."
- Newsweek economics writer Rich Thomas, September 20.
"One economist even
warns that just as President Ronald Reagan put too much faith in the budgetary
magic of supply-side economics, the `managed competition' Clinton wants to see
in health care could turn out to be today's version of voodoo economics."
- Washington Post reporter Steven Pearlstein, September 19
front-page "news analysis."
"It was a rosy
scenario that he laid out today reminiscent of the Reagan era. `You could pay
for it through waste, fraud and abuse,' he said at one point."
- CBS News analyst and Newsweek Senior Editor Joe Klein on CBS after
Clinton speech, September 22.
Wrong On Rush
"Perot is by no
means the only NAFTA opponent. Organized labor, for the most part, opposes the
agreement, as does a disparate group of other interests, from Ralph Nader and
some environmental organizations to Jesse L. Jackson and conservative
commentators Patrick J. Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh."
- Washington Post reporter Ann Devroy, September 15 news story.
"North American
Free Trade Agreement. It's basically about free trade. There's a lot of
fearmongering going on about this. There's a lot of demagoguery....Suffice to
say, I am for it. And I think some of those who are against it are being
disingenuous, maybe a little bit dishonest."
- Limbaugh on his TV show, the night before.
Those Horrendous Twelve Years
"We have seen in
the past, during Reagan-Bush administration days, when huge slashes went
through, when entire programs were dismantled, and what ends up being left
sometimes in its wake is the sort of vacuum and chaos and even more problems
than were there to begin with."
- CBS This Morning co-host Harry Smith responding to Pat Buchanan's
criticism of the "Reinventing Government" report, September 8.
"When you talk
about leaving a deposit, many people say that the Reagan-Bush administration,
people on the other side of the political spectrum, did leave a negative
deposit, or really, the opposite of a deposit. The federal budget quadrupled
under that administration. They might say that greed and materialism was the
norm then, and that social ills were largely ignored, and therefore only
worsened as a result of that neglect."
- Today co-host Katie Couric to William F. Buckley Jr., September
20.
Needed: Top-Down Control
"The country's
problem is twofold - the gross moral failure of a system that excludes 37
million Americans from even the most rudimentary health care coverage and
leaves millions more under-insured; and the sustained and unsupportable rise
in national health care spending. Health care costs, thanks to the chaotic
growth of a delivery system that had never had top-down control, are eating
the national lunch."
- Newsweek Senior Writer Tom Morganthau, September 20.
Evil Corporations Thrive In Free Market
"Americans often
castigate individual companies but rarely question the competitive,
free-market culture that gives companies huge, sometimes dangerous,
power....But hubris and the abuse of power are numbingly familiar phenomena.
Like so many one-company business books, these beg essential questions: Are
IBM and P&G [Procter & Gamble] really filled with unusually arrogant
or vile men? Or are they typical of a system that relies on the very slow hand
of the market to mete out justice?"
- Newsweek General Editor Jolie Solomon, September 27.
Hurray for Family Leave
"After seven years,
two presidential vetoes, and a whole lot of debate by congressional blowhards,
the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 became a reality in February. The
act's passage, after the arid years of pro-business Republican rule, finally
recognizes the growing importance of women and families in the work
force."
- Washington Post financial reporter Kara Swisher in the
September/October Ms. magazine.
No, We Still Hate You
"The way I figure
it, the far right in Israel hates this peace deal the same way the far right
in the USA hated the fall of communism, because they both need to hate."
- CNN and Mutual Broadcasting System talk show host Larry King in
his USA Today column, September 20.
- L. Brent Bozell III;
Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Andrew Gabron, Mark Honig, Kristin Johnson, Steve Kaminski, Mark Rogers;
Media Analysts
- Kathleen Ruff, Circulation Manager; David Muska; Intern
