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Exchange With Reporters Prior to a Meeting With Congressional Leaders

March 16, 1993

Q. Mr. President, do you think you can really afford to cut the defense budget with what's happening in Russia? Cut it as much as you want to?

The President. Well, I think we're going to have hearings about it. We're going to have to see. We'll have to cut it some. We can't meet the deficit reduction targets if we don't.

What's happening in Russia may or may not present an additional threat to our security, but what we hope we can do is to keep democracy and economic reform going. And I think there's an almost unanimous feeling in the Congress that we ought to do that. We're bipartisan, and that's one of the issues I want to discuss here today.

Q. Senator Dole said last night that instead of choosing Al Gore to reinvent Government, you should have chosen Ross Perot. What do you think of that?

The Vice President. I can't believe he'd say that. [Laughter]

The President. If I said what I thought, it would be a story. I don't want to do that. [Laughter]

NOTE: The exchange began at 9:47 a.m. in the Cabinet Room at the White House.

William J. Clinton, Exchange With Reporters Prior to a Meeting With Congressional Leaders Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/219231

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