Were there any liberal reforms or progressive accomplishments under Bill Clinton?

I have a suspicion the majority of people who use that program are upper income. Working people couldn't afford the time off work, unless it was an absolutely unavoidable emergency.

after inflation

There is also 22 million jobs and 2% of the available to work population that was no longer unemployed or hidden unemployed

Under Bush work force participation was 2% higher than it is now.

They are kind of a pain to fill out. It's basically an elaborate "excuse from work" form.

Why are they using them? I'm just curious. I'm also wondering if they're being used like my son where if he is sick for more than 2-3 days he has to get something from a doctor. Is that FMLA stuff too?

but some say that wasn't all that good.

their request - with Barney Frank demanded that it be done.

leave?

Maybe a nice start, but hardly a boon to somebody who needs both time AND to pay the bills.

Definitely an accomplishment, but I do wish we'd seen more, especially in the first two years before the Republicans took over Congress.

Still, the Clinton years in hindsight look like the Golden Age. But this campaign has made me realize why my mom was disappointed with Clinton's presidency as a whole (I was 16 when he left office, so I didn't follow policy that closely back then.)

But better than you.

*(Kidding about this part)

DUer Perry Logan did a great job of compiling Clinton's impressive record.

Here's a link to his journal page.


http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Perry%20Logan/247

Thanks to the proud members of DWHDU who have clearly taken over.

(make that so-called Democrats)

I suppose the AWB made a lot of the base happy, too, even though it was a stupid bill in so many ways. The Brady Law has broader traction, though, and it was signed by Clinton (though first pushed under GHWB).

DADT was a kind of victory; specifically, the Pyrrhic kind.

Raising the minimum wage in '94, and the '94 stimulus package.

Basically, Clinton managed to push through FMLA, AWB, the mininum wage increase, and the '94 budget and lost Congress for his troubles.

I don't think that's been dismantled yet. That actually helped real people too.

They were more significant.

people have to ask in a forum for answers that used to be on the internets.

What the hell is going on here?

Did you expect that to stop in the 2000's?

was issue an executive order reversing the previous two administration's federal employee health insurance ban on abortion coverage. I had a lot of problems with Bill Clinton, but he was pro-choice and so is his wife.

He lifted the ban on aid to foreign NGO's that performed abortion.

allow childcare.

In principle, it should have been a good thing. In practice, it is not THAT obvious.

"Welfare reform" put people on the streets, increased homelessness.

People don't go on welfare because it is the high life. The reform pushed people OFF the welfare rolls without allowing for compensation for child care, resulting in people working just to pay the childcare bills, losing their medicaid in the meantime. Hundreds of thousands were worse off because of this REPUBLICAN initiative.

It must not be too 'Republican' of a meme for Democratic primary voters to have nominated someone who was championing it.

who then had nothing under 'reform'. The poor don't tend to be lazy, just poor, and 'welfare reform' did not help them.

What was it teaching their children?

the lie that welfare recipients sit on their asses is just that)but mom was home a lot more, the kids had medical care and a roof over their head. Saw a lot of families unable to afford decent housing after the reforms. Also the childcare issue is a double-edged sword, Poor women wind up working (pleasing rich people who don't really work) to simply pay hundreds of dollars a week in child care. There is not much left over after.


Boy, dems around here lap up Reagan/repub talking points like crazy. Do you believe everything they tell you about the economy, the candidates, the war, etc etc, or do you just have a hate on for those who work the crap jobs that make this furshlugginer economy go round?

Personally, I would rather see fleets of welfare mothers in pink cadillacs than pay one more penny to war.

edit to add: A side effect of the housing thing: Relocation to different schools. I knew a couple of women who had to move to cheaper digs whose children, who as a result, had to transfer to neighborhood schools that had lower academic standards along with gang and drug problems. Think of the kids, indeeed.

But then again, Jimmy had a hard time getting his prgressive reforms passed.

And the COPS program. It allowed poor and middle class neighborhood to have cops around to help them.

Putting an additional 100,000 cops on the street reduced street crime. Yep. Hiring 100,000 people into police jobs opened 100,000 OTHER jobs to the unemployed. Most street crime is committed by the unemployed/underemployed. The answer to street crime is not more cops, but more jobs. A WPA program, building national infrastructure, would have had the same result without building up the police/prison industry.

But of course, the republicans would have never allow that to go through.

That was the most important thing a President can do.

good call :thumbsup:

raised the minimum wage (nominally if not in real terms), increased the EITC, created SCHIP.

23 million new jobs, seven million people fewer in poverty (all those folks "thrown off" welfare and all those lost good paying jobs would have had the opposite effect surely?), the 25% increase in median income in REAL terms, and inflation well controlled?

Well other than that I'd have to say EITC expansion, minimum wage increase, FMLA, increasing taxes on well to do and corporations to balance budgets so we could start reducing the crowding out effect of government in the capital market would qualify.

Wait and someone will tell me that somehow all this "laid the foundation for" the loss of jobs and real income that only somehow started after he left office. Strangely enough the actual results were uniformly positive.

That was a biggie, as I recall.

Actually, we were all pretty naive as to the gathering storm, and nothing was possible after January 1998, anyway. Still, I think of the big deal about TV V chips as emblematic of a good presidency that could have been a great one.

Whether or not that's a bad thing depends on your POV. Democratic neoliberals generally take a left wing position on social issues such as abortion, but (quoting from Wiki) "portray(s) government control over the economy as inefficient, corrupt or otherwise undesirable". Neoliberals generally do attempt to push socially progressive issues, but do so in a way that is friendly to business and opposes "socializing" or "nationalizing" services.

Hillary's health plan is actually an excellent example of neoliberal social change. It extends health care to all Americans, but it does so by utilizing the pre-existing corporate insurance infrastructure. While it does reign in a few of their rights, it very carefully avoids the creation of a national health system and keeps the healthcare system in private hands and out of government control. In a nutshell, it advances a liberal cause in a way that is friendly to private businesses.

Some on the left see neoliberalism as a bad thing, and others don't. Your opinion on Clintons presidency (and the potential presidency of Hillary) will be largely dependent on where you stand in that debate. Many on the far left were dissatisfied with Bill's positions on everything from government control of corporate rights to international trade, but that's to be expected...many on the far left push for nationalization of resources and government regulation of trade and the economy, which is the antithesis of modern neoliberal policy. Unfortunatly for them in this election, both Obama and Hillary are classical neoliberals themselves. The only non-neoliberals still in this election are Ron Paul and Nader, neither of whom have a bats chance in hell of winning anything.

and so is Obama's...

So, has the right really won? And did Bill Clinton's 8 years have any lasting effect for economic justice (emphasis on lasting)?

Of course, since economic justice is typically synonymous with anti-capitalism, wealth redistribution, and socialistic governmental control of trade and industry, Clinton's neoliberal policies were unkind and were seen as a slap in the face and a dashing of hopes after 12 years of Republican rule. I need merely remind you of the massive trade protests that took place in the 90's, primarily supported by trade unionists and members of the various economic justice factions, to bring back memories of what that particular movement generally thought of him. He was seen as being better than a Republican, but no friend to those who wanted to move America dramatically to the left.

In this sense, I do believe that the right has won one important battle. The so-called "New Democrats" that arose in the 1980's (better known today as the DLC), publicly embraced the "third way" as a way to escape partisan political battles. Before that you largely had two competing factions...Republicans who wanted to privatize everything and screw the little guy, and Democrats who wanted to nationalize everything and protect the little guy. The New Democrats/Third Wayers/DLC types came out with their proposal, called neoliberalism, which tries to privatize everything while ALSO protecting the little guy. Clinton not only admitted to being a New Democrat, Third Way follower, he MADE IT A PART OF HIS FIRST CAMPAIGN! The DLC has, since Clinton's first victory in 1992, come to control most of the party (Did you know that Bill Clinton was the chairman of the DLC before he ever ran for president?) That's an amazing feat for an organization that has publicly proclaimed its desire to rid the Democratic party of what it calls its "populist platform".

The sad fact today is that pretty much every leading Democrat today has fallen victim to the Third Way rhetoric. There are still some populists in the party, men like Kucinich and Edwards, but they're a minority. Although his voting record is certainly neoliberal and is DLC like in many ways, one of the reasons I chose Obama over Clinton for my support was the fact that she's at the top of the DLC's list and is proud of the fact, while Obama isn't. He's not a populist by any stretch, but he does at least make the appearances of rejecting some of the DLC's anti-worker, anti-populist positions.

I know some people view that as the fist step of a police state (and maybe they have a point) but I think it had, along with the economy, a whole lot to do with the precipitous drop in crime in the 1990's

I haven't done much checking up on empirical measures on the effectiveness of the 100,000 new cops; I just new it as one of the things he managed to get done before 1994 when his game plan became "pass Gingrich's legislation while he isn't looking and take credit for it".

I think Cops on the Streets was a good program, especially since it helped a lot of cities get cops into schools. I think a well trained cop can spot trouble and create a safe environment better than metal detectors and the kinds of things that turn a school into a prison environment. What did the Freakonomics book say?

I mean what would make you happy? What proposal for which there is/was sufficent support both in Congress and among the people to get it enacted and not be political suicide and party homicide was sitting there in Clinton's day, or now for that matter? Realpolitik is what matters - it's silly expecting what cannot be done.

If anything it's nothing more than a mild curiosity about what makes the surprisingly large anti-Clinton contingent on here lately happy. I mean sure it would have been nice to get 8 million people out of poverty instead of 7 million, and sure it would have been nice to have been able to reverse twelve figure deficits into twelve figure surpluses in 5 years instead of six while 25 million new people got jobs instead of 23 million, but I guess I'm a glass half full guy and can see that if "progressive" can be assumed to have anything at all to do with "improving the lot of the non-wealthy" then those numbers would be pretty darned good for any president.

So again - no anger at all trust me - what exactly is it that should have been done and whey were THE RESULTS bad? Not why did you disagree with this philosophy or that priority but what actually happened. So many Clinton detractors get all wroth about what they think this or that bill should have done that they seem unable to acknowledge what actually happened - which was that the standard of living went up for the vast majority and the country was far better off when he left office than when he assumed it.

Dunno about you personally but obviously a lot of this is anti-Hillary revisionism rather than anything to do with Bill but for me it's the reverse - if I thought she would be half the president he was I'd have been knocking on doors and sending her money all along instead of finally going with Obama. Come to think of it if I thought Obama would be half the president Bill was I'd have been in his corner longer and with more tangible support than I have too.

The MSM was out to get him. For most of his administration, he was stuck with a Republican congress who made it their business to stymie him, stick him with the neverending Whitewater investigation that never turned up anything they could use against him, and impeach him for lying about a fucking blow job. Despite that Clinton left office with relatively high approval ratings from the American public and respect from a large part of the rest of the world.

When it comes to the Clintons' accomplishments, it's quite obvious that your fingers are stuck firmly in your ears and you're going LALALALALALALALA. Yet you have the nerve to ask why the anger? It's because you repeatedly demonstrate you aren't the slightest bit interested in being part of a constructive discussion. Your entire reason for posting the question was to tear Bill (and by extension, Hillary) Clinton down.

I can't tell you how very much this doesn't anger, it SICKENS me. After 8 years of George Bush's ruinous reign, we Democrats have two reaonsable candidates in Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama. And then we have people like you who support one over the other with the fervor of a fundie who believes anyone else who hasn't accepted the right person as their personal savior deserves to burn in hell. As far as I'm concerned you might as well be a fucking Republican.

If not, shouldn't that tell you something about Clinton politics? And if so many governorships and congress seats were lost under him, what does that say about the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party?

I voted for Bill Clinton twice and I always paid my taxes, don't I have a right in the 1st amendment to critique my government?

My question was part rhetorical but I also thought maybe I was missing something.

It's true many good things happened during Bill's time, but I think it would important to draw attention to truly liberal and progressive causes.

Getting angry and attacking me doesn't help.

It's funny you call me a Republican for two reasons. One, it's against DU rules. Two, I am far left of the Clintons and Obama.

Nonetheless, Obama is no savior and he's far from perfect, but for the times he's the far better candidate.

You are busily throwing as much sand as you can in people's eyes. I'm sick of it and I'm sick of divisive posters like you ruining DU.

Oh, yeah!

Hillary certainly showed her great experience in how NOT to do it.

I guess Bread has not read St. Obama's book...

Clinton-Gore Administration Accomplishments: 1993 - 2000

For the past seven and a half years, President Clinton and Vice President Gore have been guided by three core values: building a community of all Americans; creating opportunity for all Americans; and demanding responsibility from all Americans. Pursuing policies based on these values has resulted in tremendous progress for our nation, and a strong America at the dawn of the 21st Century. The President and Vice President are committed to a "New Opportunity Agenda" to build on our progress and expand our prosperity until it reaches every corner of the nation.



http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/Accomplishments/additional.html