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Thursday, Jan. 18, 2001; 4:30 p.m. EST

President William Jefferson Clinton's term is coming to an end after eight years in the White House.

President Clinton answered readers' questions on washingtonpost.com in an online interview. Readers submitted questions earlier this week. Editors at washingtonpost.com picked twelve of those questions to submit to the president. The White House chose five questions to answer.
The responses are posted below..

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Findlay, Ohio: First off, Mr. President, I commend you for your efforts on behalf of the environment. My question, however, is this: Why was the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) left out in the creation of national monuments, and what, if any, protections does this area have against oil drilling?

President Clinton: As many of you know, I have steadfastly opposed efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. I vetoed a budget bill in 1995 because it included a rider that would have allowed drilling there, and I continue to believe that drilling there would be a terrible mistake. But I have concluded that a monument designation would provide little or no additional protection.

Let me explain why. The 1980 law that created the refuge also said that drilling could not take place there unless explicitly authorized by Congress. A monument designation, while it might have some symbolic value, would not, as a matter of law, provide any additional protection. Whether it is a refuge or a monument, drilling could take place if you have a Congress and a president willing to authorize it.

We can meet our nation's energy needs without drilling in the refuge, and we must continue to work together to ensure that this environmental Eden is forever protected.

Cambridge, Mass.: President Clinton, You focused much of your time in office on resolving disputes in both the Middle East and Northern Ireland. Ireland has never seemed more stable, while Israel seems on the verge of war. What do you see as the fundamental differences that have produced such disparate results?

President Clinton: Well, first of all, there is an agreement in Northern Ireland. People are beginning to see the benefits of peace. The Irish Republic is now the fastest-growing economy in Europe, and Northern Ireland is the fastest-growing economy within the United Kingdom. So the people are benefiting from peace, and the underlying reality has changed their lives.

The Middle East is not like that. The Palestinian people have yet to enjoy the benefits of peace that have come to the people in Northern Ireland. The violence we've seen does not demonstrate that the quest for peace has gone too far or too fast. It demonstrates what happens when there is no settlement, no resolution. People have yet to realize concrete benefits. However, the parties must continue to move forward because they are destined to live next to each other. They have to find a way to resolve these difficult issues so they can live in peace.

Alexandria, Va.: President Clinton, On the recent news I have seen on Russia and their stockpiling nuclear weapons, like, in an area that is supposed to be under some kind of security or something. Now I have heard it reported that the Russians do not have a handle on that security area at all, and that it would be possible for almost anyone to access this area, and steal or obtain some type of weapons, that in turn could be used against the U.S. or another country. Why wouldn't the Russian president make this some type of priority? I mean the U.S. has always been held accountable for any type of errors or omissions, and to be the country to set high standards, why shouldn't that apply to the Russian government as well?

President Clinton: One of the priorities of my administration has been helping Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union cope with their nuclear legacy. We have helped Russia deactivate nuclear warheads, missile launchers, intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, heavy bombers and missile submarines through joint U.S.-Russian cooperative threat reduction programs. Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakstan are free of nuclear weapons. Today, no Russian nuclear weapons are targeted at an American city.

We also promoted passage by the Russian State Duma of the START II Treaty and its related protocol. Together with the START I Treaty, this will lead to a two-thirds reduction in strategic nuclear weapons from Cold War-era levels and add momentum to our discussions on START III and adapting the ABM Treaty.

I hope the next administration will continue to build on this record and continue to work cooperatively with Russia to reduce these weapons even further.

Knoxville, Tenn.: Mr. President, Conservative critics seem to enjoy promoting the theory that when you came into office, you inherited an economic recovery already in progress, resulting from the work of the Reagan and Bush administrations. The theory then goes on, suggesting that the Congress, Republican during most of your administration, was effective in restraining anything you might have done to ruin the continuing progress.

The effect of this theory will be to say that you inherited the good economy from Mr. Bush the elder, did nothing to help it along.
And now as Mr. Bush the younger comes into office you can finally be credited --
not with the growth -- but with an economic slowdown or even a recession.

How do you respond to this?

President Clinton: Most objective observers believe that while there were several factors responsible for the historic economic expansion, the choices we made on fiscal and economic policy were a critical component of our dramatic economic turnaround. Indeed, experts from Alan Greenspan to Paul Volcker to Goldman Sachs have publicly recognized that our role in promoting fiscal discipline helped lower long-term interest rates and helped spur the investment surge that was critical to this unprecedented economic boom. Consider the facts: when I came to office, the debt had quadrupled in the previous 12 years, the deficit was $290 billion, and my predecessor's last budget had projected a deficit of $475 billion by the year 2000.

We charted a new course based on fiscal discipline. We began with the 1993 deficit reduction act that passed Congress without one Republican vote and continued with the 1997 balanced budget act and tough fiscal choices each and every year. We passed common-sense deregulation in telecommunications and other areas to unleash American entrepreneurship. And we vetoed and resisted politically attractive, but economically unwise, temptations including large exploding tax cuts proposed by the Republican Congress that would have taken us off the path of fiscal discipline and drained resources for Social Security and debt reduction.

Last year, rather than a $475 billion deficit, we had a $237 billion surplus -- that means more than $700 billion more available for private investment. By the end of this year, this strategy of fiscal discipline will have led to the paydown of about $600 billion of the national debt and put America on track to eliminate the debt entirely by the end of the decade. As a result, we have lower interest rates for college loans, home loans, and car loans. And perhaps most importantly, we've been able to add to the life of both Medicare and Social Security, to help ease the burden on future generations, and make the long-term solutions less difficult. The lesson that we all should learn is that an economic strategy based on fiscal discipline, investing in education and the American people, and opening overseas markets is right for America.

Bolivar, W.Va.: You seem to have an uneasy relationship with the media. Do you feel, nonetheless, that a free press is worth the intrusions on privacy?

President Clinton: Freedom of the press is one of the very foundations of our democracy. The free flow of information enables citizens to fully participate in their government and acts as a vital check on potential abuses of power. Establishing freedom of the press has been key to ushering in democracy in nations around the globe. With that freedom, however, comes responsibilities, among them respecting the privacy of public officials and private citizens. Sometimes journalists fall short, but it is up to their colleagues and the public, not government, to hold them accountable. While we must do all we can to guard our privacy, in the end, our democracy can better withstand a loss of privacy than a loss of freedom.

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