President of the U.S., 1993-2001; Former Democratic Governor (AR)
American workers are working harder for less
In this decade, American workers have consistently given us rising productivity. They work harder and produce more. What did they get in return? Declining wages, less than one-fourth as many new jobs as in the previous eight years, smaller health care
and pension benefits, rising poverty, and the biggest increase in income inequality since the 1920s. American families by the millions are struggling with soaring health care costs and declining coverage. I will never forget the parents of children with
autism & other serious conditions who told me they couldn’t afford health care and couldn’t qualify their children for Medicaid unless they quit work and starved or got a divorce. Are these the family values the Republicans are so proud of? What about th
military families pushed to the breaking point by multiple deployments? What about the war on unions and unlimited favors for the well-connected? What about Katrina and cronyism? America can do better than that. And Barack Obama will do better than that!
Clinton Global Initiative: partnering donors with problems
Q: Third Clinton Global Initiative, what did you achieve?
A: Well, we had more commitments for more money than ever before, but also we had two new breakthroughs. We had more of our really interesting commitments involve larger and larger numbers of
people working together, which is what I wanted to have. I wanted to bring people together, have them work together. The second thing is we have really democratized this now. It looks like we’re going to have over half million people following this over
the Internet, myCommitment.org, to create a community of small givers.
Q: When you say money raised, our viewers, I think, would be interested in this. The money doesn’t go to you or to a foundation.
A: No, no, I don’t touch any of it.
Q:
You broker people, in effect.
A: Yeah.
Q: You take someone with money, identify a problem and put them together in a partnership.
A: Yeah. Once in a while I go into one, if asked. I’m trying to get other people to help and work with each other.
When I signed the Welfare Reform Act in 1996, requiring able-bodied people who could work to do so, there was legitimate concern that there would not be jobs available for them because they tended to be under-educated and to have less experience, and tha
when the economy slowed down, as it inevitably would, they would be the first laid off. While there have been some problems, welfare reform has been largely successful. The welfare rolls have dropped nearly 60%, more than 7 million people, by the time I
left office, and have continued to drop since. In 2000, the percentage of Americans on welfare reached its lowest point in four decades. During the economic downturn of 2001, many of those who came off the welfare rolls were able to stay in the workforce
in part due to policies designed to help them succeed,
The success of welfare reform was due to more than better policies. There was also a conscious effort to expand the job market [by promoting the hiring of] new employees from the welfare ranks.
Source: Giving, by Bill Clinton, p.173-174
Sep 4, 2007
Biblically-inspired social justice, especially serving poor
Clinton holds to an evangelical theology, affirms the doctrines of the Apostles’ Creed, and “believes the Bible to be an infallible message from God.” Clinton’s commitment then and today is to biblically inspired social justice. “He is especially
committed to living out the 2,000 verses of Scripture which call upon us to respond to the needs of the poor,” says a pastor. “Both in the presidency and since leaving the presidency, the verses concerning serving the poor have guided his life.”
Source: God and Hillary Clinton, by Paul Kengor, p.173
Jul 18, 2007
Reform attacked by Christian left; but genuine middle ground
The historic 1995 welfare reform initiative between Bill Clinton and the new Republican Congress sought to decentralize the way that welfare was delivered. To this day, this remains the most genuine overture by Bill or Hillary toward a truly middle groun
initiative.
Marian Wright Edelman wrote to Bill: “Do you think the Old Testament prophets Isiah, Micah, & Amos--or Jesus Christ--would support such policies?” It was a display of moral arrogance by Edelman. Sure, Jesus wanted Christians to help the
poor, as Christian Republicans and Democrats knew, but nowhere in the Gospel did the Messiah weigh in on whether he preferred centralizing or decentralizing Medicaid.
Bill Clinton signed the bill. In response, Edelman’s husband, Peter, resigned his
post in the Department of Health and Human Services saying this was “the worst thing Bill Clinton had done.” Contrary to Edelman’s predictions, welfare-reform proved an enormous success, maybe the greatest domestic achievement of Clinton’s presidency.
Bill promised to "end welfare as we know it" and to make the program pro-work and pro-family.
At the time Bill took office America's welfare program, AFDC, received more than half of its funds from the federal government but was administered by the
states, which contributed between 17% and 50% of the payments. Federal law required coverage of poor mothers and children, but the states set the monthly benefits. As a result, there were 50 different systems. The Republican plan provided minimal support
to help people make the transition to work.
The Republicans passed a bill with strict limits on welfare, no supports for the transition to work, no benefits for legal immigrants, an end to federal oversight and accountability in how states spent
federal welfare money. In short, the states would be free to determine what to offer in monthly payments, child care, food stamps & medical care or whether to offer them at all. After a vigorous debate in the White House, the President vetoed the bill.
Two of his campaign proposals, both distinctively New Democrat ideas, were sacrosanct. He insisted upon the establishment of AmeriCorps. And, more importantly, he insisted on a massive expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit--another applause line from
the campaign: "No one should have to work forty hours a week and raise a family in poverty."
The decision to grant a significant increase in the EITC was a crucial, if little noticed, moment in the presidency. There was NO political benefit to expandin
the Earned Income Tax Credit. No one would notice if the prospective recipients--the legions of waitresses, hospital orderlies, and janitors--still toiled for wages that left them below the poverty line; the EITC subsidy was too cumbersome a concept for
most journalists to even bother to understand, much less attempt to describe.
Clinton expanded the EITC from $15.9 to $21.2 billion in the first year, which, in effect, cut taxes for 15 million families.
Toward the end of Clinton's time in office, the President made a tour of impoverished areas, hoping to encourage businesses to create "New Markets" in poor communities. In the Mississippi Delta, I watched a blithely multiracial crowd await the
President's speech.
Clinton did not create this new atmosphere. Indeed, his formal efforts to "do" something about race--his second-term "commission" to study the problem, for example--and more than that, his appreciation of
African-Americans--created the subtext for a new American tolerance, especially among young people, who really did seem to understand, as the twentieth century ended, that the nation's racial diversity was not
only a significant advantage in the global marketplace but also a source of social and cultural creativity at home.
A study published in 2001 by a Clinton critic who had predicted social disaster and then quit the Clinton administration in 1995--showed a remarkable effect of welfare reform: The number of children living with single parents dropped by
8% in the five years after the bill was passed. "The percentage of all black children raised by married parents jumped from 34.8% to 38.9% during the period studied, a 10% increase in just five years."
It seemed that Clinton had not only made work pay,
but he'd also removed the disincentive to marriage that had been an unintended consequence of the old welfare system, which only visited benefits upon single mothers. So there was an answer to the "culture of poverty" arguments long posed by
conservatives--but it was an answer that combined conservative values ("responsibility") with liberal spending ("opportunity"). This was, perhaps, the purest demonstration of the substance and possibilities of the Third Way.
The Administration’s budget proposes $255 million for the first year of a new “Fathers Work/Families Win” initiative to promote responsible fatherhood and support working families, critical next steps in reforming welfare and reducing child poverty.
These new competitive grants will be awarded to business-led local and state workforce investment boards who work in partnership with community and faith-based organizations, and agencies administering child support,
TANF, food stamps, and Medicaid, thereby connecting low-income fathers and working families to the life-long learning and employment services created under the Workforce Investment Act and delivered through one-stop career
centers.
$125 million for new “Fathers Work” grants will help approximately 40,000 low-income non-custodial parents (mainly fathers) work, pay child support, and reconnect with their children.
Source: WhiteHouse.gov web site
Sep 6, 2000
End welfare as we know it
On August 22, 1996, President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, fulfilling his longtime commitment to ‘end welfare as we know it.’ As the President said upon signing, “... this legislation provides an
historic opportunity to end welfare as we know it and transform our broken welfare system by promoting the fundamental values of work, responsibility, and family.”
The law contains strong work requirements, performance bonuses to reward states for
moving welfare recipients into jobs and reducing illegitimacy, state maintenance of effort requirements, comprehensive child support enforcement, and supports for families moving from welfare to work -- including increased funding for child care.
In May 1999, the Department of Health and Human Services released guidance on how states and local governments can use welfare block grant funds to help families move from welfare to work.
Source: WhiteHouse.gov web site
Sep 6, 2000
Address Homelessness via federal, state, & county govt
President Clinton and Vice President Gore have been committed to helping homeless Americans become more self-sufficient. HUD alone has invested nearly $5 billion in programs to help homeless people since 1993 -- more than three times the investment of
the previous Administration. The Continuum of Care approach has helped more than 300,000 homeless people get housing and jobs to become self-sufficient. The Continuum of Care made clear that homelessness was more than simply a housing problem, and
focused attention on long-term solutions which included housing as well as job training, drug treatment, mental health services, and domestic violence counseling. The Administration is also proposing to expand access to mainstream health, social
services, and employment programs for which the homeless may be eligible through a new $10 million program administered by the Department of Health and Human Services, States, and large counties.
Source: HUD Statement before House Veteran’s Affairs Subcommittee
Jun 24, 1999
Welfare-to-work, instead of welfare as a way of life
For 15 years, going back to my service as governor of Arkansas, I have worked to reform welfare, to make it a second chance and not a way of life. As a result, Arkansas became a national leader in reforming a wide range of family and welfare programs. I
helped write the 1988 federal welfare reform bill.
[As president], we cut welfare red-tape and approved welfare-to-work programs for 40 states. And it has worked. There are 1.3 million fewer people on welfare today than there were when I took office.
Food stamp rolls are down by more than 2 million.
In 1991, I said we needed to end welfare as we know it. Now, with the passage of new welfare reform legislation, we have an opportunity to establish a new system based on the following principles:
It should be about moving people from welfare to work.
It should impose time limits of welfare benefits.
It should give people the child care and health care assistance they need to move from welfare to work without hurting their children.
Welfare reform includes states, communities, & businesses
[My proposed welfare reform law] gives states and communities the chance to move people from dependence to independence and greater dignity. But the real work is still to be done. States and communities have to make sure that jobs and child care are
there. They can use money that used to go to welfare checks to pay for community service jobs or to give employers wage supplements for several months to encourage them to hire welfare recipients. They should also provide education and training when
appropriate and must take care of those who, through no fault of their own, cannot find or do work. These are important new responsibilities not just for welfare recipients, but for states, communities, and businesses. But is welfare reform is to work,
all must shoulder their responsibilities.
This reform is just a beginning. We must implement this legislation in a way that truly moves people from welfare to work, and that is good for children. We will be refining this reform for some time to come.
Finish welfare reform by moving able recipients into jobs.
Clinton adopted the manifesto, "A New Agenda for the New Decade":
Help Working Families Lift Themselves from Poverty In the 1990s, Americans resolved to end welfare dependency and forge a new social compact on the basis of work and reciprocal responsibility. The results so far are encouraging: The welfare rolls have been cut by more than half since 1992 without the social calamities predicted by defenders of the old welfare entitlement. People are more likely than ever to leave welfare for work, and even those still on welfare are four times more likely to be working. But the job of welfare reform will not be done until we help all who can
work to find and keep jobs -- including absent fathers who must be held responsible for supporting their children.
In the next decade, progressives should embrace an even more ambitious social goal -- helping every working family lift itself from poverty. Our new social compact must reinforce work, responsibility, and family.
By expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, increasing the supply of affordable child care, reforming tax policies that hurt working families, making sure absent parents live up to their financial obligations, promoting access to home ownership and other wealth-building assets, and refocusing other social policies on the new goal of rewarding work, we can create a new progressive guarantee: No American family with a full-time worker will live in poverty.
Goals for 2010 Finish the job of welfare reform by moving all recipients who can work into jobs.
Cut the poverty rate in half.
Double child support collections and require every father who owes child support to go to work to pay it off.
Source: The Hyde Park Declaration 00-DLC3 on Aug 1, 2000
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