Documents / Official release

[01/29/1998 - 10/19/1999]: 24194021-20060474F-001-023-2023

· 88 pages · text from the file's own layer

This release contains White House Exchange Mail records dated January 1998 to October 1999. Most of it is a transcript of a January 29, 1998 press briefing by Press Secretary Mike McCurry covering Iraq, Iran, the budget and the Lewinsky inquiry, plus a 1998 presidential speech. An October 19, 1999 email among Transnational Threats staff forwards a Florida Today article on how scientists expect alien contact would spark a media frenzy rather than a cover-up, describing the 1989 SETI detection protocol.

  • p. 47 …with a bipartisan plan that might be harder for any person to do alone And I…
34FE6299.FIN Page 6 of 14
first of many efforts by this administration to push out that message.
MR. SPERLING: Well, the President asked us to think through how he
http://classified/email/data_source/exchange/record/cd008/febl998/34fe6299.html 1/5/2010
think with the President's simple declaration that none of the surplus she
be
used until we have fixed Social Security, I feel that the debate has very i
for either tax cuts or spending programs. You have both Democrats and
Republicans looking at the surplus as a way of solving highway needs, i
Q How much support do you have from the Republicans, in addition to
Gingrich?
Q Gene, the President was saying today whaf s wrong with Social Secur
talking about the problems. When will he offer his ideas about what a
solution
to this problem is? A lot of people think he's got a lot of political capital
now, maybe he should spend some of that by standing up and offering a
And I do think one should not underestimate that prior to the State of th
Union
we were seeing almost the beginning of a feeding frenzy on how the sur
would
be used for various different priorities, and that because of the President
declaration we now have close to a consensus that our surplus should be
saved
until we fix Social Security.
But the question is will it lead to Social Security reform, or what best w
increase the prospect of Social Security reform? It is our opinion — and
maybe
shifted and, in fact, most of the debate now has been more on what wou
happen
with a hypothetical tobacco legislation.
actually pass Social Security reform. I think that — certainly, I think our
economic team would be capable of coming up with a decent plan that I
could
support.
MR. SPERLING: Well, I think, as the Post article and others have show
think
that the President's announcement at the State of the Union on saving Sc
Security first has fundamentally changed the political debate. I think if j
look just in the prior weeks, you had a prominent Republican calling foi
using
$200 billion of the surplus for tax cuts. You have, 1 think several people
the Democratic Party as well looking at options, I think, for using the su

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Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 88 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.