Last year, we began to put our house in order by tackling the budget
deficit that was driving us toward bankruptcy. We cut $255 billion in
spending, including entitlements, in over 340 separate budget items. We
froze domestic spending and used honest budget numbers.
Led by the vice president, we've launched a campaign to reinvent
government. We've cut staff, cut perks, even trimmed the fleet of federal
limousines. After years of leaders whose rhetoric attacked bureaucracy but
whose actions expanded it, we will actually reduce it by 252,000 people
over the next five years. By the time we have finished, the federal
bureaucracy will be at its lowest point in 30 years.
Because the deficit was so large and because they benefited from tax cuts
in the 1980s, we did ask the wealthiest Americans to pay more to reduce the
deficit. So on April the 15th, the American people will discover the truth
about what we did last year on taxes. Only the top one--the top 1.2
percent of Americans, as I said all along, will face higher income tax
rates--let me repeat, only the wealthiest 1.2 percent of Americans will
face higher income tax rates and no one else will, and that is the truth.
Of course, there were, as there always are in politics, naysayers who said
this plan wouldn't work, but they were wrong. When I became president, the
experts predicted that next year's deficit would be $300 billion, but
because we acted, those same people now say the deficit's going to be under
$180 billion, 40 percent lower than was previously predicted.