Excerpts from Video: A Conversation with Secretaries Clinton and Panetta

SECRETARY CLINTON:I want to go back through to underscore something that Leon said, because between the two of us, we have many years, probably more than either of us care to admit, of experience in dealing with a lot of these issues. And Leon as the chair of the budget committee, as the director of OMB, as the chief of staff in the White House in the ’90s, was part of a process that got us to a balanced budget. This is not ancient history. We’re not talking about some time so far back we can’t remember it. The tough decisions were made in the ’90s to, yes, cut spending, yes, deal with some entitlement issues, and yes, increase revenues so that –
MR. SESNO: Raise taxes?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes. Absolutely, so that we had the kind of approach that got us on a trajectory, had we stayed on it, where we would not be facing a lot of these issues. And I will end where you started, Frank. I know how difficult this was for our country domestically over the last months. It’s always hard seeing the sausage being made. I happened to be in Hong Kong a few weeks ago, and I said confidently that we were going to resolve this; we were not going to default; we would make some kind of political compromise. entire video belowhttp://still4hill.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/video-cnns-conversation-with-secretaries-clinton-and-panetta/