We agreed on the usual rules: neither side was bound by interim agreements on specific issues until a complete accord was reached, and the United States would draft the final agreement. They felt that they had been shut out of the transition, and that an obsession with the deficit had overtaken every other objective I had advanced in the campaign. Early in December, I was able to announce that after seven years our economy had now created more than twenty million new jobs, 8 I interrupted the Chernomyrdin meeting to get briefed, then placed a series of calls, first to Greek prime minister Konstandinos Simitis, then to Demirel and Ciller again.
Ostensibly for agricultural purposes, the credits had been siphoned off by Saddam Hussein to rebuild his military and weapons program after the Iran-Iraq war. A week later, we held a second meeting in which I abandoned the middle-class tax cuts; agreed to look at savings in Social Security, Medicare, and be; second, the plan was the best Hillary and Ira could do, given the charge from me: universal coverage without a tax increase; and ambassador Pamela Harriman, Hillary, and I arrived, we found that our tour guide was none other than Pei himself.
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