Al Gore in My Life, by Bill Clinton
On Energy & Oil:
1993: Hard line on deficit reduction, paid for by BTU tax
Al Gore's suggestion of a broad-based energy tax, called a BTU tax, on the heat content of energy at the wholesale level. Al said that while the BTU tax would be controversial in states that produced coal, oil and natural gas, it would fall
on all sectors of the economy, lessening the burden on ordinary consumers, and would promote energy conservation, something we badly needed more of.
For several house more, we again debated how much deficit reduction we had to try for, beginning five years out and working back to the present. Gore took a hard line, saying if we went for the biggest possible reduction, we'd get credit
for courage and create a new reality, making it possible to do previously unthinkable things, like requiring Social Security beneficiaries above a certain income level to pay income tax on their benefits.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.461-462
Jun 21, 2004
On Foreign Policy:
1990s: Joint commission with Russia worked out many problems
In March 1993, I got an assistance program I could support: $1.6 billion in direct aid to help Russia stabilize its economy, including money to provide housing for decommissioned military officers, positive work programs for now underemployed and
frequently unpaid nuclear scientists, and more assistance in dismantling nuclear weapons under the recently enacted Nunn-Lugar program. The aid package was four times what the previous administration had allocated and three times what
I had originally recommended.When Yeltsin and I got together on April 3, we agreed to institutionalize our cooperation, with a commission headed by Vice President Gore and Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.
The idea worked better than any of us could have imagined, thanks largely to the consistent and concentrated efforts made over the years by Al Gore and his Russian counterparts in working through a host of difficult, contentious problems.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.506-507
Jun 21, 2004
On Technology:
1996: Led effort for telecomm bill's V-chip and E-rate
The Telecommunication Act was what Al Gore had dubbed the "information superhighway." There had been months of sparring over complex economic issues, with the Republicans favoring greater concentration of ownership in media and telecommunications markets
and the White House and the Democrats supporting greater competition, especially in local and long-distance telephone service. With Al Gore taking the lead for the White House and Speaker Gingrich in his positive entrepreneurial mode, we reached what
I thought was a fair compromise, and in the end the bill was passed almost unanimously. It also contained a requirement that new television sets include the V-chip, which I had first endorsed at the Gores' annual family conference, to allow parents to
control their children's access to programs.Even more important, the act mandated discounted Internet access rates for schools, libraries, and hospitals; the so-called E-rate would eventually save public entities about $2 billion a year.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.699-700
Jun 21, 2004
Page last updated: Feb 19, 2019