This may be preaching to the choir, but there seem to be some on DU who suggest that my memory is faulty, that President Clinton did lots of things to help the poor and working classes. So I did some spelunking in the archives of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Most of their archives are devoted to debunking various talking points coming from the Republican Congress. They did mention Clinton a few times (and yes Clinton should get some credit for his vetoes and veto threats).
(However, Clinton came in with a Democratic Congress, that got lost partly because the RNC campaigned against his wife.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu... "In their postmortems on the elections, many pollsters and analysts tagged the First Lady's health-care plan as a major factor in turning voters against the President and his party. Stanley Greenberg, the White House pollster, found that health care, more than anything else, drove independent voters away.")
Anyway, here are some of the things the CBPP mentions
http://www.cbpp.org/8-5-99bud.htm "The (Clinton) Administration's proposal is essentially a centrist to moderately conservative one that should not be described as a "big government" plan with large amounts of new spending."
"Centrist to moderately conservative". Not progressive. Not liberal. Even in a booming economy and without the need to worry about re-election. "Centrist to moderately conservative".
http://www.cbpp.org/7-12-99bud.htm The Clinton administration over-stated the "surplus" which set the stage for Bush/Republican tax cuts.
"The new CBO projections show that under current law, the federal government will begin running surpluses in the non-Social Security budget in fiscal year 2000 and run cumulative non-Social Security surpluses of $996 billion over the next 10 years. But these projections, like those OMB issued several days earlier, assume that total expenditures for appropriated programs — which include the vast bulk of defense expenditures — will remain within the austere and politically unrealistic "caps" the 1997 budget law set on appropriated programs."
The OMB, isn't that Clinton's OMB? Remember the 2000 campaign? The surplus was so big that Bush was gonna use $1 as a tax cut, $1 for prescription drugs, $1 to shore up social security and $1 to pay down the debt. A surplus that was over-stated by the Clinton administration.
http://www.cbpp.org/clinttax.htm "Analyses by the Treasury Department indicate that when fully in effect, the Clinton plan would give the 20 percent of Americans with the highest incomes about the same amount in tax cuts as the bottom 60 percent combined. This is an unusual characteristic for a tax plan proposed by a Democratic President. "
"The Clinton plan would provide the child credit to at least 10 million fewer children than would receive it under the House Democratic tax bill, offered by Rep. Charles Rangel. "
"The Clinton plan would provide the child credit to several million fewer children in near-poor working families than would be the case under the Senate Democratic tax plan that Senator Tom Daschle offered last week."
"Since the Treasury tables do not reflect the effects of the estate tax cuts the Administration is proposing — and the estate tax cuts affect only the heirs of the wealthiest two percent of people who die — the tables significantly understate the degree to which high-income households benefit from the plans."
The Clinton administration proposed estate tax cuts? Something that would benefit the wealthiest 2%. How very progressive of him.
Although she offended me by running for the Senate in my mom's home state, a state she had never lived in, my primary reason for opposing Hillary's nomination is Bill Clinton. The era of Big Dawg triangulating needs to be over.
