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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (513681)	12/21/2003 8:12:01 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Clinton Claims Credit for Republican Congress' Achievements By U.S. Representative Bob Livingston 1997 In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention a few weeks ago, Candidate Clinton stood before a cheering crowd of liberal delegates and ticked off a laundry list of accomplishments. However, something just didn't add up. Then I remembered the lessons of the Wizard of Oz. The Democratic convention was in Chicago, not Kansas; the man at the podium was no wizard; and despite Clinton's firm protestations to the contrary, we should have paid lots of attention to the man behind the curtain, Dick Morris. It was Morris, the secretive and deceptive consultant, who sold President Clinton on the idea of pretending to be a conservative. Candidate Clinton's deception was clever because the accomplishments he cited were not his, but those of the Republican-led Congress - and President Clinton fought tooth and nail against some of the very achievements he was now claiming as his. For instance, Clinton claimed credit for the Adoption Tax Credit. Sorry Mr. President, but it was the Republican-led Congress that passed that Contract with America item into law, giving a $5,000 tax credit to families who adopt children (more if the children have disabilities) and while also putting an end to racial discrimination in adoption. Candidate Clinton claimed credit for passing a tax cut for small business that President Clinton had opposed. The Congressional Republican leadership had proposed it as another part of our Contract With America and then we followed through on our promise and passed it. And how about the Congressional Accountability Act? Candidate Clinton spoke as if he championed that major reform when in reality it was the very first piece of legislation passed by the newly elected 104th Congress under Republican leadership. This act forces Congress to live under the same laws it imposes on the private sector. He must think we have all forgotten that no such reforms were even proposed during his first two years when the liberal Democrats controlled the Congress. President Clinton said, "We passed...tougher registration laws for lobbyists." Now, I know he has been talking a lot like Republicans since the 1994 election, but this is a bit much. We, the Republican majority, passed the Lobbying Reform and Gift Ban. This was just one of many reforms we Republicans passed to lessen the influence of big money lobbyists. Then there was the Line-Item Veto, which Republicans have been fighting for for years with almost no cooperation from the liberals. The liberal Democrats controlled Congress for forty years and refused to even seriously consider this legislation. We passed it with ease. We also passed the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act which stopped requiring state and local governments to pay for federal programs. Again, Candidate Clinton wrongly listed it as one of his accomplishments. In 1992, Candidate Clinton campaigned on a promise to "end welfare as we know it," and then pushed it to the "back burner" to avoid angering his core liberal constituency while at the same hoping the rest of us would forget about it. In 1996, he brazenly took credit for two Republican bills that actually delivered on a promise he otherwise refused to keep. In fact, he vetoed welfare reform twice. We passed the Personal Responsibility Act, the first major welfare reform bill since welfare's inception, as well as the Welfare to Work Tax Credit that gives business owners a tax credit for every person they hire off welfare. The list of Candidate Clinton's "misrepresentations" goes on to include food and water safety legislation; a tax cut for families saving for long-term care, and environmental legislation to protect the Florida Everglades. Finally, we passed a bill guaranteeing continued health coverage for workers who change jobs - - a bill virtually identical to the bill President Clinton threatened to veto previously. All of these were Republican initiatives passed by a Republican led Congress. For their part, President Clinton and his liberal friends spent the two years they controlled the White House and the Congress doing nothing but arguing over how much they were going to raise your taxes. They both obviously won and passed and signed the largest tax bill in the history of the nation - - Candidate Clinton had promised a tax cut. In 1994, Republicans campaigned on the Contract With America. Throughout the campaign, Bill Clinton and his liberal friends said we would never keep our promises. We won the election and we kept our promises. I'm glad that Bill Clinton is as proud of the many outstanding accomplishments of the Republican led 104th Congress as I am. It has been my great honor to be a part of the leadership of this historic group of dedicated Americans. Now that Candidate Clinton no longer has Dick Morris to tell him what to say, perhaps he will stop taking credit for Republican accomplishments. lincolnheritage.org

To: American Spirit who wrote (513681)	12/21/2003 8:13:54 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 769667

Republican Congress Forces Clinton to Narrow Priorities By Charles Babington and Eric Pianin THE WASHINGTON POST -- WASHINGTON President Clinton vetoed a major spending bill Monday and signed another, as the Republican-led Congress forced him to narrow his budget priorities for the year and acknowledge the delay or possible death of initiatives such as enhancing HMO patients’ rights, tightening gun restrictions and adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Unable to circumvent the Republican majority on these issues, the president is focusing on a significantly smaller wish list in final budget negotiations with Congress, White House officials said. It includes hiring 100,000 new teachers and 50,000 police officers, toughening some environmental regulations and devoting more money to foreign aid. Even as he compromised with Congress by signing the $268 billion Defense Department spending bill, Clinton Monday vetoed the appropriations bill for the Commerce, Justice and State departments, and criticized the GOP leadership for approving a congressional pay raise while proposing across-the-board spending cuts in the budget. Highlighting the difficulties still facing congressional and administration budget negotiators, the president accused House and Senate leaders of promoting “schemes,” “gimmicks” and “corporate welfare.” He threatened to veto more spending bills, raising the possibility that Congress will have to pass yet another stopgap resolution late this week to keep the federal government operating while the various appropriations bills for the new fiscal year are completed. “I will not allow Congress to raise its own pay and fund its own pork barrel projects and still make devastating across-the-board cuts in everything from education to child nutrition to the FBI,” Clinton told reporters Monday afternoon. The House had planned to consider a 1.4 percent across-the-board spending cut as early as Tuesday, when it was to take up the appropriations measure for the departments of Labor, Health and Education. Clinton called the broad-based spending cut a “terrible” idea. But the House postponed consideration of the measure-- which is combined with the District of Columbia appropriations bill -- until it can resolve a dispute with the Senate over whether private companies can run needle-exchange programs in Washington. On Capitol Hill, Republican leaders hailed the defense bill’s signing as a signal of both GOP potency and the ability of the two branches of government to reach accord on spending measures. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said the president “realized that while there may still be some disputes over the budget process, it’s time to put partisan politics aside and work together to further our security interests.” Clinton said his congressional allies probably could have narrowly sustained a veto of the defense bill, “but I didn’t think it was fair, frankly, to put the Democrats in the position of being attacked by the Republicans for being against the defense budget that the Democratic Party has basically pursued.” The giant military spending bill is popular in both parties, in part because it finances a 4.8 percent pay raise for military personnel, the biggest increase in 18 years. Clinton said Monday he vetoed the State, Justice and Commerce bill “because it fails to fund the additional 50,000 community police we need to keep crime going down in our communities. ... And by failing to provide for our obligations, including our U.N. dues and arrears, it imperils not only our vote in the United Nations but the ability to meet our obligations and, therefore, to maintain our national security.” The president said he would veto the Interior Department spending bill unless Congress changes it. Congress has declined to fully fund his “Lands Legacy” initiative, aimed at acquiring environmentally and culturally significant land that is threatened by development. Clinton also opposes several environmental provisions. One involves the amount of public land that can be used by mining companies to dump waste from mines. Another would postpone for at least six months a new formula for calculating the payments oil companies must make for extracting oil and natural gas from public lands. The day’s events underscored how Washington’s divided government -- a Republican-run Congress and Democratic-controlled White House -- enables each party to thwart the other’s major initiatives. Earlier this year Clinton vetoed the GOP’s fiscal centerpiece, a 10-year, $792 billion tax-cut plan. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This story was published on Tuesday, October 26, 1999. Volume 119, Number 53 www-tech.mit.edu

To: American Spirit who wrote (513681)	12/21/2003 8:16:56 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

October 8, 1998 No, Bill Clinton Didn't Balance the Budget by Stephen Moore Stephen Moore is director of fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute. Let us establish one point definitively: Bill Clinton didn't balance the budget. Yes, he was there when it happened. But the record shows that was about the extent of his contribution. Many in the media have flubbed this story. The New York Times on October 1st said, "Clinton balances the budget." Others have praised George Bush. Political analyst Bill Schneider declared on CNN that Bush is one of "the real heroes" for his willingness to raise taxes -- and never mind read my lips. (Once upon a time, lying was something that was considered wrong in Washington, but under the last two presidents our standards have dropped.) In any case, crediting George Bush for the end of the deficit requires some nifty logical somersaults, since the deficit hit its Mount Everest peak of $290 billion in St. George's last year in office. And 1993 -- the year of the giant Clinton tax hike -- was not the turning point in the deficit wars, either. In fact, in 1995, two years after that tax hike, the budget baseline submitted by the president's own Office of Management and Budget and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted $200 billion deficits for as far as the eye could see. The figure shows the Clinton deficit baseline. What changed this bleak outlook? Newt Gingrich and company -- for all their faults -- have received virtually no credit for balancing the budget. Yet today's surplus is, in part, a byproduct of the GOP's single-minded crusade to end 30 years of red ink. Arguably, Gingrich's finest hour as Speaker came in March 1995 when he rallied the entire Republican House caucus behind the idea of eliminating the deficit within seven years. cato.org

To: American Spirit who wrote (513681)	12/21/2003 8:23:35 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Why Voters Like Gridlock by Bruce Bartlett (November 25, 2003) .....In his new book, "In an Uncertain World," former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin extols the Clinton administration's fiscal record. He correctly notes that the federal budget deficit was close to $300 billion when Clinton took office and had a surplus of more that $200 billion when he left. Nowhere in the book, however, does he credit the Republican Congress, which was elected in 1994, for the turnaround. On the contrary, Rubin's book is filled with disdain for Republicans, especially Newt Gingrich, who blocked Clinton administration initiatives at every turn. And of course, Clinton returned the favor by blocking Republican initiatives, with the notable exceptions of welfare reform in 1996 and a tax cut in 1997. Yet it was the combination of the two -- a Democratic White House and a Republican Congress -- that was really responsible for the budgetary turnaround. Each side was checked from enacting new spending programs. The result was that the budget was virtually on automatic pilot for most of the Clinton administration. In other words, we have gridlock to thank for the fiscal turnaround, not Clinton's leadership, which mostly involved sticking his finger in the wind to see which way the polls were blowing. Rubin would also have us believe that the Clinton administration's fiscal policy is what led to the economic boom of the 1990s, primarily by bringing down interest rates. But the record tells us that rates didn't really fall until Republicans took control of Congress. In that month, long-term interest rates actually were higher than they had been when Bill Clinton took office. The Treasury's 30-year bond rate was 7.34 percent in Jan. 1993 and 8.08 percent in Nov. 1994. It was while Democrats and Republicans cohabitated in running the federal government that we really saw rates decline and the economy take off. This is not surprising, given that Wall Street has long favored gridlock. Indeed, a number of economic conservatives suggested in 2000 that the best electoral outcome for growth and the stock market would be Al Gore as president with Republicans continuing to control Congress. As financial columnist Daniel Kadlec wrote: "The Dow has fared best when one party has controlled the White House and the other has controlled Congress, the optimum formula being a Democratic president and a Republican Congress. That combo has produced Dow gains, excluding dividends, of 10.7 percent a year."..... capmag.com