President Clinton on Monday announced he will submit to Congress a balanced budget for fiscal 1999.
Flanked by Vice President Gore and top administration economic advisers at the commencement of a Cabinet room budget meeting, Clinton also said the White House is projecting the budget deficit for fiscal 1998 will be under $22 billion.
However, the president sounded an extremely cautionary note about tax cuts. "We can project a surplus, but we don't have one," Clinton said. He added that new proposals "must not run any risk of returning to the failed policies of the past," saying these included a combination of tax cuts and spending that "put our country in a terrible hole."
Clinton also said he would "propose a plan" that would attempt to curtail youth smoking and "build on the settlement" that was reached last year. Clinton has previously shied away from any specific proposal, issuing only a set of "principles" on which any tobacco legislation must be based.
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