Q. Mr. President, what do you say to Congressman Leach, who suggests that the partisanship, the bickering over Speaker Gingrich's book deal is poisoning the atmosphere and not allowing this Mexican package to go through?
The President. Well, of course, he has been in Washington many more years than I have, but in the 2 years that I have been here, I have seen an unusual amount of partisan bickering. But it didn't stop us from passing GATT, from dealing with NAFTA, from dealing with the urgent problems in Russia that we confronted when I came here early on, and from pursuing a course in the Middle East that is having a very positive result, from doing any number of other things that were critical to the national interest. And it can't stop us now.
We have to do what we always do in these cases. We have to act, act quickly, act with dispatch, and put the national interest first. That's what we all have to do.
NOTE: The exchange began at 11:44 a.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, following the taping of the President's radio address.
William J. Clinton, Exchange With Reporters on Loan Guarantees for Mexico Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/221023
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