FY 1996 Science and Technology Budget - Press Briefing, Page 2

FY 1996 Science and Technology Budget - Press Briefing

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When this Administration came into office 24 months ago, the outlook for the budget was bleak, at best. We faced the prospect of annual deficits in this decade of $300 - $400 billion. The economy was weak and investments for the future were disappearing.

The necessary medicine has been real budget discipline and a re-focus on investment: discipline to avoid digging into a deeper hole of enslaving debt, and investment to climb out. It is tough medicine -- but it is working.

For example, economic growth during the Clinton Administration has created nearly six million jobs. 1994 was the best year for job growth in a decade, and the combined rates of unemployment and inflation are at a 25-year low. Ninety-three percent of this job growth has been in the private sector, the highest percentage of any administration in half a century.

We also have dramatically reduced the federal budget deficit. This year's budget adds another $81 billion in cuts to the largest deficit reduction package in history; which will bring the President's deficit reduction total to nearly $600 billion -- cutting the deficit in half as a share of the economy (GDP), the best economic measure of the deficit.

We have also dramatically down-sized the federal bureaucracy while reforming the regulatory system and cutting red tape. Federal jobs have already fallen by more than 100,000. We are on track to cut a quarter million positions, making the federal bureaucracy the smallest since the Kennedy Administration.

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