Bill Clinton

IV

President of the United States

Throughout most of his presidency, Clinton maintained a strong core of support from those who had elected him, principally African Americans, women, and blue-collar workers in the Northeast and Midwest. Among all American presidents, he was one of the most forceful champions of civil rights for minorities and equality for women. He appointed record numbers of minorities and women as federal court judges, Cabinet members, and other government officials.

During his first year in office, Clinton quickly focused on improving the economy. He believed that the key was reducing government spending and the huge deficits that occurred in the federal budget each year because government spending exceeded its revenues. Because the government borrowed money to offset its deficit spending, it reduced the amount of money available for private investment. Therefore businesses could obtain capital only at high rates of interest, which discouraged investment and expansion.

In 1993 Clinton submitted to Congress a budget that reduced federal spending and increased taxes. With every Republican in Congress voting against it, the budget passed in both houses without one vote to spare. Clinton’s budget victory reversed the trend of rising deficits, and it stimulated the economy. However, Clinton’s major policy initiative of his first term—providing health care insurance for all Americans—collapsed after a bitter fight in 1994. This failure, along with the tax increase and budget battles with Republicans, hurt Clinton and the Democrats in the congressional elections of 1994. In those elections the Republicans won a majority in both houses of Congress. It was one of the most dramatic upheavals in Congress in the 20th century.

After the 1994 election, a conservative Republican majority took control of Congress. The new makeup of Congress dramatically changed Clinton’s strategy. Unable to push his own programs, he turned his attention to preventing the Republicans’ conservative agenda from becoming law by vetoing Republican budgets that cut spending on programs he supported. In 1995 the Republican-controlled Congress twice shut down the federal government for short periods because it had not approved a budget.

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In his first term, Clinton was able to reach a compromise with the Republicans on one major initiative, welfare reform. Angering many in his own party, he signed a bill in 1996 reforming the old system of welfare payments and instituting a welfare-to-work program.

In 1996 Clinton ran for reelection against Republican senator Robert Dole, the majority leader of the Senate, and Ross Perot, who ran as the candidate of the newly formed Reform Party. During the campaign, Clinton stressed his desire to control the federal budget deficit and to work for campaign-finance reform. At the nominating convention, held in Chicago in August, Clinton announced more plans, including additional funding for environmental programs and tax credits for college tuition. Voters were happy with the robust economy, and Clinton claimed credit for decreased numbers of people on welfare rolls. He also pointed to dwindling crime as a result of legislation he helped pass that included gun-control measures.

In November Clinton defeated Dole with 49 percent of the popular vote, compared with Dole’s 41 percent. Perot was not as successful as he had been in 1992; he won only 8 percent of the vote. Clinton soundly defeated Dole in the electoral college, receiving 379 votes to Dole’s 159. But the election did not alter Clinton’s problems with Congress. While Democrats gained seats in the House of Representatives, they lost more seats in the Senate, and Republicans continued their control of both houses of Congress.

After Clinton’s resounding victory, the Congress was at first less confrontational. In 1997 Clinton and Congress worked out compromises on reductions in taxes paid by most Americans and on spending cuts and other reforms aimed at producing a balanced budget.

From his first months in office until his last day, Clinton’s presidency was plagued by charges of wrongdoing. The longest-running investigation began with Whitewater, a small real-estate project in Arkansas in which Clinton and his wife had invested during the late 1970s. The independent counsel investigating Whitewater learned in 1997 that Clinton had had a sexual affair with a young female intern at the White House. In 1998 the House impeached the president. The House charged him with perjury, for not being truthful before a federal grand jury, and obstruction of justice, for trying to influence the testimony of others. In 1999 the Senate tried Clinton but defeated the articles of impeachment and did not remove him from office.

Although the affair and impeachment sullied Clinton’s presidency, he was able to turn the investigation against the Republicans. Many voters thought the Republicans were being unfair and hypocritical in pressing the investigation and impeachment. Republicans made the president’s conduct a central issue in the congressional elections in the fall of 1998, but voters defeated major critics of the president in the Senate and left the Republicans with a razor-thin margin in the House.

Because the Cold War had ended in the late 1980s, Clinton faced no threat to the nation’s security like those of preceding presidents. Still, he had to make difficult decisions about whether to intervene in bloody conflicts in places such as Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. He twice deployed American military forces to halt fighting between ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia and negotiated peace between the warring factions in Bosnia. Clinton also played a critical role in making both peace and war in the Middle East and in fashioning peace in Northern Ireland.

But Clinton’s real emphasis in foreign policy was on what could be called economic globalism. He believed that the country’s security and prosperity depended upon removing barriers to trade with other nations and upon stabilizing nations with economic troubles. Despite opposition from members of his own party, Clinton pushed two major trade agreements through Congress in his first term: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in 1993, and, the following year, a global trade agreement that created the World Trade Organization.

In the end, Clinton’s most significant achievement as president was eliminating the federal budget deficit. When he left office, the nation was running a surplus instead of a deficit. Clinton claimed the lower interest rates that came from reducing the deficit and the low inflation produced by free trade amounted to a tax cut of hundreds of billions of dollars for Americans. His economic policies helped produce the longest period of sustained economic growth in the nation’s history.

Clinton changed the nation’s politics by moving the Democratic Party more to the center of the political spectrum. At the same time, his tawdry conduct and his tendency to evade the truth cost him the personal respect of the American people, even when they approved of his leadership. In addition, he never fulfilled his campaign promises to overhaul the country’s health-care system and reform campaign-finance laws. While Clinton was considered one of the nation’s most brilliant political leaders, the inexperience he showed in his early presidency and the scandals, investigations, and impeachment kept him from fulfilling his vision for the country.

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Domestic Affairs

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1

Appointments

In his first term, Clinton appointed more women and minorities to Cabinet positions—the heads of major departments of the federal government—than any previous president. He said he wanted a Cabinet that “looks like America.” The Cabinet appointees included women such as Attorney General Janet Reno, the first woman to hold that office; Secretary of Energy Hazel R. O’Leary; and Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala. Other appointees included African Americans such as Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy and Hispanics such as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros. In addition, in his first two years in office, Clinton appointed two new justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. Stephen Breyer replaced Harry Andrew Blackmun, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the second woman on the Supreme Court when she replaced Byron Raymond White. The appointments strengthened the liberal faction on the Supreme Court.

At the beginning of his second term, Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to appointing women to Cabinet positions by nominating Madeleine Albright the first female secretary of state. In addition, he worked to make his Cabinet bipartisan, appointing Republican senator William Cohen secretary of defense. Other second-term Clinton appointees included Secretary of Commerce William Daley, Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo, Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, and Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson. Herman and Slater were the first African Americans to hold their respective positions.

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2

Economic Policy

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Federal Budgets

During his first term, Clinton focused on the country’s domestic issues, especially the economy. Before taking office in 1993, he received a report that the federal budget deficit would be $290 billion that year and more in succeeding years, much greater than had been forecast. His economic advisers and Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, persuaded him that reducing the deficit should be the highest priority. Clinton prepared a budget that called for reducing the deficit by $500 billion over five years, about $255 billion by cutting spending and $241 billion by raising taxes. The suggested tax raise would mostly affect very wealthy people.

Republican leaders said the tax increase would wreck the economy, and every Republican in both houses of Congress voted against the budget. In the most critical vote of Clinton’s presidency, Vice President Gore broke a tie to pass the bill in the Senate, 51 to 50. Clinton persuaded enough Democrats in the House to vote for the bill that it was approved without a vote to spare, 218 to 216. Although Clinton was criticized for abandoning his middle-class tax cut, the budget package did expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which aided low-income families by reducing the amount of federal income tax they owed and by offsetting some of their social security payroll taxes. The EITC put $21 billion into the pockets of 15 million low-income families over the next five years. The deficit-reduction package reassured investors in the bond markets, and long-term interest rates began to go down. The budget deficit declined sharply in the years afterward.

Clinton worked out another deficit-reduction package in 1997 aimed at achieving a balanced budget by 2002, this time with the help of Republicans in Congress. In the 1998 fiscal year, the treasury experienced a surplus of $70 billion, the first surplus since 1969. The surplus was achieved well ahead of expectations because of strong growth in the U.S. economy. The country began to use surplus revenues to pay down the national debt, which had risen to $5.4 trillion by 1997. The U.S. economy continued to grow, and in February 2000 it broke the record for the longest uninterrupted economic expansion in U.S. history, lasting ten years.

Many people credited Clinton’s fiscal policies with the economic turnaround, while others credited the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve Board and its chairman. An important factor of the economic success during the Clinton years was the great growth of technology, especially in computers and telecommunications. Technology improved the rate of productivity—the average amount of work done by one worker. Rising productivity prevented inflation from occurring as the economy grew. Unlike growth periods in the previous two decades, low- and middle-income workers experienced improved living standards.

For most of his eight years, Clinton battled Republicans over tax cuts. After winning control of both houses of Congress in 1994, Republicans, led by the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, proposed tax cuts in every session of Congress. Clinton opposed the Republican tax reductions, saying they favored the very rich and would return the country to rising budget deficits.

In August 1997, however, Clinton struck a compromise with Republicans on a tax-relief act that reduced taxes on capital gains and estates and gave taxpayers a credit of $500 per child and tax credits for college tuition and expenses. The law also created a new type of individual retirement account (IRA) called the Roth IRA, which allowed people to invest taxed income for retirement without having to pay taxes on this money upon withdrawal. In addition, the law raised taxes on cigarettes. The next year, Congress approved Clinton’s proposal to make college more affordable by expanding the financial-aid program known as Pell grants and lowering interest rates on student loans.

Clinton also fought Congress every year on the federal budget, most often on how much money would be spent on education, government health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, the environment, and AmeriCorps, the national service program that Clinton had pushed through Congress while Democrats were still in control. In late 1995 the fight over the budget reached a bitter stalemate over cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. When Clinton vetoed spending bills, Congress twice refused to pass temporary spending authorizations and forced the federal government to partially shut down because agencies had no authority to spend money. The Republicans wanted to emphasize their dispute with the president on spending, but the strategy backfired. The shutdowns proved unpopular with voters, who blamed the Republicans.

In April 1996 Clinton and Congress finally agreed on a budget that provided money for government agencies until the end of the fiscal year in October. The budget included spending cuts that the Republicans wanted, decreasing the cost of cultural, labor, and housing programs, but it also preserved many programs that Clinton wanted, particularly educational and environmental ones.

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Trade Legislation

Another one of Clinton’s goals was to pass trade legislation that lowered the barriers to trade with other nations. He broke with many of his supporters, including labor unions, over free-trade legislation. Many feared that cutting tariffs (taxes on exports or imports) and relaxing rules on what could be imported would cost American jobs because people would buy cheaper products from other countries. But Clinton argued that the country would be helped, not harmed, by free trade because the country could boost its exports and grow the economy. Clinton also thought that foreign nations could be moved to economic and political reform through free trade.

Clinton’s first trade effort was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which would gradually reduce tariffs and create a free-trading bloc of the North American countries—the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Opponents of NAFTA, led by Ross Perot, said it would drive American companies to Mexico, where they could produce goods with cheaper labor and ship them back to the United States. Clinton argued that NAFTA would expand U.S. exports and create new jobs. He persuaded many Democrats to join most Republicans in voting for the measure. In 1993 the Congress voted on the treaty and passed it.

Clinton also met with leaders of the Pacific Rim nations to discuss lowering trade barriers. In November 1993 he hosted a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Seattle, Washington, attended by the leaders of 12 Pacific Rim nations. In 1994 he orchestrated an agreement in Indonesia with Pacific Rim nations to gradually remove trade barriers and open their markets.

Members of Clinton’s administration also participated in the final round of trade negotiations sponsored by members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), an international trade organization. This round of negotiations had been going on since 1986. In a rare lame-duck session, after the 1994 elections but before the new Congress began, Clinton summoned Congress to ratify the trade agreement, which it did. As part of the GATT agreement, a new international trade body, the World Trade Organization (WTO), replaced GATT in 1995. The WTO had stronger authority to enforce trade agreements, and it covered a wider range of trade than GATT did.

During his second term, Clinton had a notable defeat regarding trade legislation. In November 1997 Congress postponed voting on a bill to restore a presidential trade authority that had lapsed in 1994. The bill would have given the president the authority to negotiate trade agreements that Congress would not have been able to change but only approve or reject. This presidential authority is known as fast-track negotiating because it streamlines the treaty process. Clinton was unable to generate sufficient support for the legislation, even among members of the Democratic Party.

Clinton also faced a trade setback in December 1999, when the WTO met in Seattle, Washington, to initiate a new round of trade negotiations. Clinton hoped new agreements on issues such as agriculture and intellectual property could be introduced at the meeting, but the talks failed. Anti-WTO protesters in the streets of Seattle disrupted the meetings, and the international delegates inside the meetings could not reach a consensus. Among other contentious issues, delegates from smaller, poorer countries resisted Clinton’s efforts to discuss labor and environmental standards.

That same year, Clinton signed a landmark trade agreement with China, after more than a decade of negotiations. The agreement would lower many trade barriers between the countries, making it easier to export U.S. products such as automobiles, banking services, and motion pictures. However, the agreement could not take effect until China was accepted into the WTO and was granted permanent “normal trade relations” status by the U.S. Congress. Under the pact, the United States would support China’s membership in the WTO. However, many Democrats as well as Republicans resisted granting permanent status to China because they were concerned about human rights in the country and the impact of Chinese imports on U.S. industries and jobs. But in 2000 Congress voted to grant permanent normal trade relations with China.

In all, the Clinton administration negotiated about 300 trade agreements with other countries. Clinton’s last treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers, said the lowered tariffs, which reduced prices to consumers and kept inflation low, amounted to “the largest tax cut in the history of the world.”

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3

Social Policy

With the Democratic Party’s sizable majority in both houses of Congress when Clinton took office in 1993, he promised in his inaugural speech “an end to the era of deadlock and drift.” In little more than two weeks, he signed his first major piece of legislation, the Family and Medical Leave Act. This act required companies with more than 50 workers to allow workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year to cope with family concerns such as childbirth and illness. Also during his first year, Congress passed Clinton’s national service program known as AmeriCorps. Under the program, participants perform community service in return for money to finance college or to pay back student loans. Congress also passed the so-called Brady bill, which imposed a waiting period on prospective gun owners buying handguns. In 1994 Clinton also supported a successful anticrime bill that banned the sale of assault weapons and gave states money to hire police officers and fund crime-prevention programs.

Clinton was the first president to advocate equal rights for homosexuals. During his first campaign, he promised to lift the ban against homosexuals serving in the armed forces. He moved ahead on his plan as he took office, but the proposal ignited protests from military leaders and members of Congress. It also made conservatives more suspicious and resentful of the president. Clinton and military leaders reached a compromise: Homosexuals would be allowed to serve if they did not reveal their sexual orientation and refrained from homosexual conduct. It was known as the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. It remained controversial, and late in his second term Clinton expressed dissatisfaction with the policy because it had not prevented harassment of gays in the military.

Clinton also openly championed the right of women to have abortions. One of his first acts as president was to sign orders overturning restrictions on abortions that had been put in place under the two previous Republican presidents. He vetoed bills passed by Congress that placed restrictions on abortions.

One of Clinton’s most popular promises during his first campaign was to guarantee lifelong health insurance for every American. At that time, 44 million Americans were not covered by private health insurance or government health programs. Clinton promised that the health-care system would be reformed in his first year in office. He appointed his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to head a task force to write a bill that would guarantee health insurance and hold down the rapidly rising cost of health care. The task force proposed a plan under which employers would be required to provide health insurance for their workers. Under the plan, people would join a regional health-care alliance that would contract with insurance organizations and others to offer health insurance to its members.

Many businesses, health insurance companies, and Republicans in Congress opposed the plan. They criticized it for being too complicated and for giving the federal government too large a role in medical care. The administration was unable to reach a compromise with Republicans, and a universal health care bill never made it through Congress.

In August 1996, however, Clinton and the Republican majority in Congress compromised on several health-care issues. Congress passed and Clinton signed a bill making it easier for workers to transfer their health insurance between employers without being denied coverage for preexisting conditions. In 1997, as part of a budget deal, Congress approved another health-care initiative. It created the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which extended the medical coverage of Medicaid to children of low-income families who did not otherwise qualify for Medicaid.

Clinton also signed his most important domestic legislation in August 1996. He approved a bill overhauling the federal welfare system, in part to fulfill a 1992 campaign promise to “end the welfare system as we know it.” Clinton had vetoed two previous welfare bills, saying that the cutbacks were too severe. The welfare-to-work bill that he signed limited lifetime benefits to five years, denied some welfare programs and food stamps to illegal immigrants, and required that adult recipients work after two years. The federal government gave states annual block grants to pay for programs and allowed them to set some of their own guidelines for deciding which potential recipients were eligible to receive benefits. Clinton signed the bill despite objections from many members of his party and administration. They thought eliminating benefits would be cruel to many poor women and children. But criticism waned in succeeding years as welfare rolls declined dramatically and women found work in the booming economy.

Clinton built a significant environmental record as president. During his tenure he designated a total of 18 new national monuments, encompassing 8 million acres. He also added more than 2.2 million acres of land to national parks and ordered nearly one-third of the nation’s existing national forests, or 58 million acres, protected from logging and development. Clinton’s other environmental achievements included preventing mining in Yellowstone National Park and helping restore the Florida Everglades. In addition, he strengthened the Clean Water Act in 1996 by signing the Safe Drinking Water Act amendments, which protected the quality of drinking water. Clinton was also involved with the negotiations of an international treaty to reduce the threat of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, Congress refused to ratify the treaty.

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