Excerpts from an exclusive NR interview with House Speaker Denny Hastert:

On President Clinton signing the defense appropriation bill: "Dick Gephardt seemed to stake his leadership on being able to sustain a veto. I don't think the Democrats wanted to test that."

On tax cuts: "We will put another tax cut on the president's desk in the 106th Congress, sometime next year."

On the 1.4 percent across-the-board spending cut: "We don't know what the final figure will be. It might be 1.29 or 0.80. It probably won't be 1.4."

On next year's House candidates: "I think we have a good group of candidates, especially in Montana and Michigan."

On bipartisanship: "I think the Democrats would rather have the health care, campaign finance, and the minimum wage as issues for elections than work with us on legislation. It's politics over policy all the time."

On getting rid of Title IX: "I'd love nothing more than to do that. We're not trying to stop women's athletics, but Title IX takes away opportunities for kids. The Department of Education has an attitude that schools should just cut men's sports programs. That was never in the spirit of Title IX."

Attempting to demonstrate "just how damaging the Republican approach for across-the-board spending cuts will be," White House press secretary Joe Lockhart cited today's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee by General Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to Lockhart, the general "says this will be devastating to military readiness." If that's the case, one wonders how much more "devastating" it would have been had Congress merely accepted President Clinton's defense budget request.

Including the spring supplemental, this year Congress provided $278.7 billion for defense. The President's request was $268.8 billion. Even with a 1.4 percent cut, Congress would still be $6 billion over the President's request -- to which the Pentagon did not object. (Without including the supplemental, Congress provided $267.8 billion for defense this year, while the President requested $263.3 billion. Again, assuming a 1.4 percent cut would still put Congress ahead of Clinton in terms of defense spending.) Was General Shelton simply AWOL when the President made his defense request?

Lockhart's chastisement rings especially hollow considering the administration's track record on defense spending. Over the three years prior to this fiscal year, Congress has added some $21 billion to Clinton's defense-budget requests. And these increases were passed over administration objections that the Pentagon hadn't asked for them.

From a New York Times interview with science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke:

"Q. We heard that the astronaut Buzz Aldrin made a visit to you at [Johns Hopkins Medical Center].

"A. Yes, he dropped in to see me in the hospital and he kept making the point: we've got to get NASA out of the space business. He believes it should be private enterprise. There are a lot of people now who are trying to develop relatively cheap nonbureaucratic access to space. How successful they'll be, I don't know. I think the rocket will end up doing for space travel what the balloon did for air travel: it got us there, but soon was superseded by something better."

Updated By:
Ramesh Ponnuru - Senior Editor
John J. Miller - National Political Reporter
Kate Dwyer - Editorial Associate