A True Third Way? Domestic Policy and the Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton

PRESIDENCY IN THE UNITED STATES

A TRUE THIRD WAY? DOMESTIC POLICY AND THE PRESIDENCY OF WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON

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PRESIDENCY IN THE UNITED STATES

A TRUE THIRD WAY? DOMESTIC POLICY AND THE PRESIDENCY OF WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON

RICHARD HIMELFARB AND

ROSANNA PEROTTI EDITORS

New York

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A true third way? : domestic policy and the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton / editors, Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti . pages cm. -- (Presidency in the United States) Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: (eBook)

1. Clinton, Bill, 1946---Political and social views. 2. United States--Politics and government-1993-2001. 3. United States--Social policy--1993- I. Himelfarb, Richard, 1963E886.2.T78 2014 973.929092--dc23 [B] 2014009811]

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York

CONTENTS Introduction

vii Richard Himelfarb

I.

The New Democrat Perspective

1

Chapter 1

A New Democratic Party? Bill Clinton As a Public Philosopher and Party Leader Stephen K. Medvic

3

Chapter 2

Complex Man, Complex Legacy Elaine C. Kamarck

19

II.

Domestic Economic Policy

21

Chapter 3

President Clinton‘s Economic Policy and Approach to Decision-Making Robert E. Rubin

23

III.

Trade Policy

31

Chapter 4

Adapting to a Changing Global Economy Mickey Kantor

33

IV.

Antitrust and Business Regulation

39

Chapter 5

Antitrust and Business Regulation: The Clinton Administration‘s ―New Democrat‖Approach to Antitrust Policy Larry Bumgardner

41

V.

Science and Technology Policy

53

Chapter 6

Information Technology and the Clinton Administration: Proactive Leadership in Turbulent Times Laura Lally

55

VI.

Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

63

Chapter 7

―The First Black President‖? Bill Clinton and Civil Rights Peter B. Levy

65

vi

Contents

Chapter 8

President Clinton‘s Outreach to African Americans Ben Johnson

75

VII.

Gun Control

79

Chapter 9

Clinton and Gun Control: Boon or Bane?

Robert J. Spitzer

81

VIII.

Welfare Reform

93

Chapter 10

Welfare Reform: Is the Past Prologue?

Peter Edelman

95

Chapter 11

What Third Way? Clinton, New Democrats and Social Policy Reform Daniel Béland and Alex Waddan

101

Chapter 12

What Clinton Actually Did in Welfare Reform Lawrence M. Mead

113

Chapter 13

Ending Welfare As We Know It Was Clinton‘s Idea Bruce Reed

117

IX.

Health Care Reform

121

Chapter 14

False Promises: Lessons from Three Health Care Reform Catastrophes Richard Himelfarb

123

The Politics of Universal Health Insurance: Understanding the Clinton Administration‘s Troubled Effort at Comprehensive Reform Theodore R. Marmor

141

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

The New Democrats ―Got It Wrong‖ Bruce C. Vladeck

155

Chapter 17

Clinton Made Health Care a Presidential Issue Chris Jennings

159

X.

Education Policy

163

Chapter 18

Clinton‘s Leadership Role in Education Richard W. Riley

165

XI.

The Environment

171

Chapter 19

President William Jefferson Clinton‘s Environmental Executive Orders Graham G. Dodds

173

About the Contributors

185

Index

189

INTRODUCTION Richard Himelfarb Department of Political Science, Hofstra University Hempstead, NY, US

During the 1992 campaign Bill Clinton repeatedly sought to distance himself from the liberal orthodoxy that had come to define and arguably undermine the Democratic Party‘s national image. Defining himself as a ―New Democrat,‖ Clinton supported the death penalty, criticized racially incendiary remarks by black political activist Sister Souljah, and promised to end ―welfare as we know it.‖ These pronouncements enabled Clinton to position himself as a moderate. In 1992, independent voters who had supported Republicans in previous elections returned to support the Democratic presidential candidate.

President Clinton pledged to pursue ―third-way‖ policies that would synthesize the best of liberal and conservative ideas for the benefit of the nation. This volume, assessing the domestic policies of the Clinton administration, addresses two broad though closely related questions: First, was the New Democrat approach these policies purported to embody substantively significant or merely rhetorical? Second, did the policies themselves succeed in furthering the national interest? The collection of essays and commentaries presented here contains a range of perspectives and includes both members of the Clinton administration and academics. Not surprisingly the arguments they make prove as controversial as Clinton himself.

This collection features papers and commentaries initially presented at the 2005 Hofstra University conference, ―William Jefferson Clinton: The ‗New Democrat‘ from Hope,‖ in which dozens of top scholars, journalists and Clinton administration officials evaluated the administration‘s legacy. At the conference, former administration officials engaged with journalists and academics over the course of four days. President Clinton himself delivered an address at the conference, and many administration officials delivered keynote addresses or acted as panel discussants.1 This book, then, captures a unique set of conversations between critics and defenders of the Clinton domestic legacy. The contributors made some changes in their articles and commentaries subsequent to the Hofstra conference, but the text generally remains true to the initial assessments they made in the years immediately following President Clinton‘s tenure in office. Chapters 1 and 2 address the meaning of Clinton‘s New Democrat philosophy and

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its political implications for the Democratic party. Scholar Stephen Medvic examines Clinton‘s Third Way theme and finds it was indeed an ideology. Among scholars and practitioners at the conference, the consensus was that the term signified a distinct, moderate, pragmatic political philosophy and a departure from liberal orthodoxy. But like Elaine Kamarck, one of the founders of the New Democrat movement, Medvic argues that this philosophy did not permeate the Democratic Party and consequently did not transform it.

Economic policy is explored in Chapter 3. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin argues that Clinton‘s decision to pursue deficit reduction (mainly by raising taxes) led to declining interest rates and in the process played a key role in fueling strong economic growth during the 1990s.

The next chapters of the book address trade, antitrust, and technology policy. In chapter 4, Mickey Kantor, the administration‘s trade representative, defends Clinton‘s free-trade policies as practical and pragmatic responses to global competition. In his assessment of antitrust policy in the following chapter, Larry Bumgardner characterizes the administration‘s approach as a moderate one that had mixed results and ―probably satisfied neither extreme‖ in the debate. Finally, in chapter 6, Laura Lally‘s discussion of technology policy praises the Clinton administration for its ―strong, proactive‖ response to the Y2K problem and its accomplishments regarding the development of E-commerce and Internet access.

Chapters 7 and 8 focus on race. Peter Levy‘s article examines the reasons for Clinton‘s popularity among African Americans. He concludes that while symbolic actions by Clinton influenced positive perceptions, a number of non–race based policies, including an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit and a newly created Child Health Insurance Program, also played a key role in making Clinton ―the first black president.‖ Ben Johnson, who directed President Clinton‘s Initiative for One America, points out President Clinton‘s strong record of minority appointments to his own administration. African Americans ―were there and were in on all the decisions‖ made at top levels of the administration, Johnson says.

In chapter 9, Robert J. Spitzer targets the issue of gun control, placing it in the context of Clinton‘s third-way approach. Spitzer argues that the administration‘s efforts in the area of gun control proved unsuccessful both politically and substantively.

Welfare reform, a signature legislative accomplishment of the Clinton administration, is explored in chapters 10 through 13 of this volume. In the first two, scholars express criticism of the administration‘s policies. Béland and Waddan argue that Clinton‘s third-way ideas were exploited by congressional Republicans who ultimately produced conservative legislation. Peter Edelman, who resigned to protest Clinton‘s decision to sign the welfare reform bill, focuses on what he believes are the negative effects of the legislation. By contrast, the remarks of two analysts who served as discussants at the conference, NYU professor Lawrence Mead and Bruce Reed of the Democratic Leadership Council, are more complimentary, praising Clinton for forging a consensus and crediting his role in the passage of landmark legislation.

Chapters 14 through 17 are devoted to health care reform, arguably the most significant domestic policy failure of the Clinton administration. Two scholarly papers examine why the Clinton plan failed to win congressional approval. Richard Himelfarb argues that the failure of the program‘s advocates to provide clear and candid explanations of its contents, particularly regarding costs, strained public credulity and left the plan vulnerable to the distorted appeals of political opponents. By contrast, Theodore Marmor emphasizes the lack of public consensus about health reform and the ―insidious interplay‖ of media, interest

Introduction

ix

groups, and politics that undermined the Clinton plan. The papers are discussed and rebutted

by Clinton administration officials Bruce Vladeck and Chris Jennings. Whatever deficiencies existed in Clinton‘s proposal, each argues that its defeat was harmful to the nation.

In Chapter 18, we reproduce Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley‘s keynote address to the conference. Emphasizing Clinton‘s leadership in education policy, Riley defends the administration‘s moderate approach, emphasizing standards-based reform in a manner broadly supported by the nation‘s education establishment.

The environment is addressed in the final chapter of this volume. Graham Dodds studies the significance of President Clinton‘s use of environmental executive orders. He finds that while many were controversial and substantively significant, they were not unprecedented, as critics charged, and, in fact, followed in the footsteps of presidents going back to Theodore Roosevelt. The many perspectives contained in this volume do not produce any simple conclusion about the domestic policies of the Clinton presidency. While many administration officials and academics acknowledge the novelty and distinctiveness of Clinton‘s New Democrat, third-way approach, they disagree as to its utility and durability. More than a half decade after President Clinton‘s departure from office, no consensus existed about his philosophy or its effect on domestic policy; that assessment remains true today.

ENDNOTE 1

Clinton‘s speech, together with a number of conference papers and commentaries that assess the president‘s impact on the institution of the presidency itself, is reproduced in Rosanna Perotti, ed., The Clinton Presidency and the Constitutional System (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012).

I. THE NEW DEMOCRAT PERSPECTIVE

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 1

A NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY? BILL CLINTON AS A PUBLIC PHILOSOPHER AND PARTY LEADER Stephen K. Medvic Franklin & Marshall College Department of Government Lancaster, PA, US

The last decade of the twentieth century was a time of potentially significant change for the Democratic Party. After the Democratic Party had lost five of the previous six presidential elections, Bill Clinton was elected by running as a different kind of Democrat: a ―New Democrat.‖ Despite what some critics argued, that label was not meant as a rhetorical ploy, but was intended to signify a fundamentally different political philosophy.

The philosophy in question—which came to be known as the Third Way1—was also derided as opportunistic. Nevertheless, Clinton and his centrist supporters in the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) claimed that it was a legitimate ideology to be used as a guide to governing the country as well as modernizing the Democratic Party. This chapter examines Clinton‘s Third Way to determine (a) whether it can be considered an ideology and (b) whether it has, in fact, been adopted by the Democratic Party.

THE THIRD WAY AS IDEOLOGY In examining Bill Clinton‘s construction of the Third Way, I am seeking to determine whether it is, in fact, an ideology. Such a determination depends upon our ability to identify a pattern of political concepts in the speeches and writings of President Clinton.2 Assuming the Third Way exhibits the properties of an ideology, one might then wish to classify it as either a distinct worldview or a variant of an existing major ideology (e.g., liberalism).

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A Methodology for the Analysis of Ideology Ideologies can be studied in a variety of ways. In this chapter, I draw upon the morphological approach to analyzing ideologies developed by Michael Freeden.3 According to Freeden, ideologies are ―combinations of political concepts organized in a particular way.‖4 As a result, the political concepts that constitute a given ideology are the units of analysis in the study of ideology.5 To be sure, ideologies are more than the sum of their parts. Patterns of political concepts are central to a morphological understanding—that is, one concerned with form and structure—of a given ideology. But in order to identify an ideology‘s morphology it is important to recognize the role played by three types of concepts. A core concept is found at the heart of an ideology. More than one concept will always be found to cluster at the ideology‘s center, and that cluster is not to be thought of as fixed and permanent. It is possible for certain concepts to migrate, over time, away from or toward the core.6 As a result, it is important to identify adjacent concepts, which bolster the core and help form the ideology itself.7 Finally, there are ―peripheral concepts that add a vital gloss to [an ideology‘s] core concepts.‖8 There are two types of peripheral concepts—those at the ―margin‖ and those situated in the ―perimeter.‖ In this chapter, I will be concerned only with the latter. Those that lie in the perimeter ―often are specific ideas or policy-proposals rather than full-fledged concepts, lacking the generalization and sophistication associated with a concept.‖9 They serve to connect the theoretical and the concrete and, thus, play an important role.

Of course, in any given political system, the range of political concepts to be adopted is somewhat limited. Thus, ―ideologies may be distinguished by the relative ordering in which they deploy similar concepts, on which depend both the precise decontesting of the concepts and the overall interpretation of any ideology‘s messages.‖10 Freeden likens the morphology of an ideology to furniture in a room.11 One can determine what room one is in by looking at the furniture. Just as stoves are found in kitchens, desks are found in studies. But desks may also be found in bedrooms. The difference between a desk in a study and one in a bedroom will be the positioning of the desk. In a study, it will occupy a prominent position; in a bedroom it will not. Similarly, some concepts may show up in multiple ideologies, but it is the arrangement of the concepts that determine the specific ideologies.

Freeden‘s approach to the study of ideology is not an objective methodology.

Morphological analysis rests upon the analyst‘s interpretation of the meaning of the concepts employed and of the connections between those concepts. Ultimately, it may even be ―practically impossible and methodologically erroneous to pin [an ideology‘s profile] down accurately.‖12 Nevertheless, the next section attempts to provide a morphological portrait of the Third Way as articulated by Bill Clinton.

The Morphology of Clinton’s Third Way13 Until midway through his second term, President Clinton rarely used the term ―Third Way.‖ He nevertheless consistently communicated a public philosophy from the time he began campaigning for the presidency. In a keynote speech to the Democratic Leadership

A New Democratic Party? Bill Clinton As a Public Philosopher and Party Leader

5

Council‘s 1991 convention, Clinton referred to a set of concepts that would become the core of the New Democrat ideology. ―[The Democrats‘] burden,‖ he said, is to give the people a new choice, rooted in old values, a new choice that is simple, that offers opportunity, demands responsibility, gives citizens more say, provides them responsive government—all because we recognize that we are a community, we are all in this together . . .

Later in the same speech, he listed the concepts the Democrats could ―ride to victory on: opportunity, responsibility, choice, a government that works, a belief in community.‖ This vision, according to Clinton, ―rejects the old categories and false alternatives,‖ is both liberal and conservative and, yet, is distinct from those ideologies.14 When he announced his candidacy, Clinton began to speak of a ―new covenant‖ between the government and the people that would ―provide more opportunity, insist on more responsibility, and create a greater sense of community.‖15 These three concepts— opportunity, responsibility, and community—would become the trinity of Clinton‘s Third Way.16 Eventually, their rhetorical combination would take the following form: ―opportunity for all Americans, responsibility from all Americans in a community of all Americans.‖17 That combination of core concepts appeared, in one form or another, in nearly all of the State of the Union Addresses Clinton delivered.18 Also at the core of the Third Way was a prescription for the role of government in society and the economy. Beyond the core, other values, like ―family,‖ ―hard work,‖ ―faith,‖ ―fairness,‖ ―citizenship‖ and ―security,‖ would play roles as adjacent concepts.19 And issues that embodied the core concepts, such as welfare reform, national service, and community policing, would serve as perimeter concepts.

Clinton called equal opportunity ―our central value,‖ and his conception of it was largely economic.20 For Clinton, one has opportunity to the extent that he/she is able to work for a living. That ability both resides within the individual and is to be provided by the political and economic system. In other words, a person must have the requisite skills and physical capacity to work, but there must also be jobs available. Thus, on the one hand Clinton could claim, ―In the twenty-first century, [opportunity] will mean access to a Pell grant, to a community college, to a trade school, to a university.‖21 On the other, he maintained, ―Opportunity for all means first and foremost a commitment to economic growth.‖22 At other times, Clinton referred to opportunity in terms that sound character-based. For instance, in talking about welfare reform in his 1992 acceptance speech, he says to those on welfare, ―You will have, and you deserve, the opportunity, through training and education, through childcare and medical coverage, to liberate yourself.‖23 But it is not entirely clear from what they are to be liberated, other than reliance on welfare. What they might use their liberation to do, other than work, is not addressed. Yet, Clinton does appear to believe that people ought to be provided ―a chance to develop their God-given capacities‖24 and given ―the tools . . . to make the most of their own lives.‖25 At still other times, he speaks of such development as a responsibility. In his 1995 State of the Union Address, Clinton maintains that Americans have ―a solemn responsibility to rise as far as their God-given talents and determination can take them.‖26 Usually, responsibility— like opportunity—is economic in nature. If opportunity is the ability to work, responsibility is

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Stephen K. Medvic

the willingness to work. As he said in his keynote address to the DLC in 1991 and in many other places, ―We should demand that everybody who can go to work do it.‖27 In a general sense, responsibility meant that people were to do what was expected of them to build a stronger country. ―[Y]ou must do your part,‖ as Clinton once put it, ―you must be responsible.‖28 Indeed, if we want a better future for the United States, ―every one of us has a personal, moral responsibility to make it so.‖29 That is, each American had a duty to help strengthen the nation and ―to shoulder the common load.‖30 Sharing a burden in common is not only the mutual obligation of each individual, but is required to build community. In the Third Way, community is conceived of as a group of people whose fortunes are bound to one another and, according to Clinton, it may be the most important of the three core concepts.31 The ―spirit of community,‖ as he said, is ―a sense that we are all in this together.‖32 As a result, he often decried division between Americans and called for greater unity. ―[T]he New Covenant is about more than opportunities and responsibilities . . .‖ Clinton claimed in his 1992 acceptance speech, It‘s also about our common community. . . . [W]e are too divided. It is time to heal America. And so we must say to every American: Look beyond the stereotypes that blind us. We need each other—all of us—we need each other. We don‘t have a person to waste, and yet for too long politicians have told the most of us that are doing all right that what‘s really wrong with America is the rest of us—them. Them, the minorities, Them, the liberals. Them, the poor. Them, the homeless. Them, the people with disabilities.

Them, the gays. We‘ve gotten to where we‘ve nearly them‘ed ourselves to death. Them, and them, and them. But this is America. There is no them. There is only us. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. That is our Pledge of Allegiance, and that‘s what the New Covenant is all about.33

As this statement makes clear, Clinton thought of community in national terms. He would often refer to the ―American community‖ or ―a national community of all Americans.‖34 Of course, he did discuss policies that affected local communities; but when he used the singular form, ―community,‖ it indicated the nation in its entirety.

One final concept at the core of the Third Way is the ―role of government.‖ In fact, the ―third way‖ applies not only to the general philosophy by that name, but specifically to the conception within that philosophy of government‘s place in society and the economy. The Third Way, according to Clinton, moves ―past the sterile debate between those who say government is the enemy and those who say government is the answer.‖35 It requires an ―activist government,‖ but one that is ―highly disciplined.‖36 By ―highly disciplined,‖ Clinton means efficient: that is, ―more effective, less expensive.‖37 Efficiency is to be achieved by reducing bureaucracies and streamlining government.38 Ultimately, government is to be ―a catalyst for new ideas . . . [and] a partner with the private sector and community groups.‖39 In addition to core concepts, ideologies have adjacent and peripheral concepts as well.

Those that seem most supportive of the core are the adjacent concepts of work, family, faith, empowerment, and security. Work is vital to responsibility, just as empowerment is to opportunity and family and faith are to community. Security, though it is not emphasized enough to place it in the core, is essential to all three of these core concepts. ―If you want to challenge people to seize opportunities and to assume more responsibility . . .‖ Clinton argued, ―there has to be some sense that the basic fabric of society is being maintained, that there is some order, some security, some discipline which we need to observe.‖40

A New Democratic Party? Bill Clinton As a Public Philosopher and Party Leader

7

Finally, there are perimeter concepts that make concrete some of the more abstract core concepts. Welfare reform, for example, was a signature policy proposal of the Clinton administration and clearly incorporates responsibility and, to a smaller degree, opportunity.

Community policing, as the name implies, draws upon the notion of community (as well as security), while attempts to increase access to health care were concerned with opportunity.

Finally, national service was initiated on all three grounds; it was intended to build community, encourage responsibility, and expand opportunity (in that it was tied to college loans).

The Third Way, then, should be considered an ideology. Whether it is an ideology distinct from liberalism or conservatism cannot be fully addressed here, but Clinton and other New Democrats certainly portrayed it as such. ―The choice we offer,‖ Clinton said at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, ―is not conservative or liberal. In many ways, it is not even Republican or Democratic. It is different. It is new.‖41 Yet many scholars, including the contributors to Peter Berkowitz‘s book, Varieties of Progressivism in America, would place New Democrats somewhere on the center-left.42 The more pressing question, to which I turn attention in the next section, is whether the Third Way changed the Democratic Party.

A NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY? Clinton himself recognized the significance in creating a philosophy that could last beyond his era. ―The real test of our ideas,‖ he told the DLC in 1998, ―is whether they outlive this presidency; whether they are bigger than any candidate, any speech, any campaign, any debate.‖43 And he seemed to think they would be. Speaking to the Democratic Governors‘ Association in February of 1998 he said, ―We have modernized our party‖ with ― . . . a third way that broke the logjam of the eighties.‖44 Many Democrats agree with him. For example, Rep. Richard Gephardt—who epitomizes the Old Democrats (despite having served as chair of the DLC)—concluded, ―We‘re all New Democrats now.‖45 But is there empirical evidence of a change in the party? The question can be asked from at least three perspectives—that of the party organization, that of the elected officials within the party (i.e., elites), and that of the public at large (both self-identified Democrats and the general population). From the organizational perspective, the best source of evidence is the party‘s platforms. According to data collected by the Manifesto Research Group, the Democratic Party clearly moved to the right in the 1990s (see Figure 1).46 At the time of this writing, data were not available beyond 1998. More recent data, however, suggest that the Party‘s platforms have remained near the center, or leaned a bit to the right, of the ideological spectrum.47 An admittedly more subjective reading of the Democratic Party platforms for 1984 to 2004 indicates a slight transformation with a lasting impact. When read with an eye toward the core concepts the platforms embraced, some elements of the New Democratic philosophy are present beginning at least as early as 1984. This supports the interpretation of the Third Way as a variety of progressivism.48 In 1984, the Democratic Party emphasized a ―spirit of community,‖ ―justice for all,‖ and ―social opportunity.‖49 Two of those key concepts, of course, are part of the Third Way trinity. Opportunity, in particular, is heavily emphasized in 1984, but the connection to work is somewhat ambiguous.50 The 1988 platform also

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emphasizes opportunity, though not as much as the previous platform. There is, however, a bit more talk about responsibility. Community and ―justice for all‖—or inclusiveness—was also an important element in the 1988 document. Of course, the 1992 and 1996 platforms are explicit in their embrace of opportunity, responsibility, and community.51 In fact, each platform is organized into four sections consisting of one for each of those core concepts and an additional section on national security. In addition to security, it is responsibility that stands out as a new- found core concept. It is, for example, first in a list of values Democrats were promising to restore in 1992: ―personal responsibility, individual liberty, tolerance, faith, family, and hard work.‖

Source: Author‘s graphical display of data provided by Budge et al. (2001).

NB: Numbers on the Y axis indicate the cumulative ideological position of the party based on coding of numerous aspects of the platforms by the Manifesto Research Group. Negative numbers represent the left side of the spectrum.

Figure 1. Democratic Platform Ideology, 1948 – 1996.

The 2000 and 2004 platforms were obviously influenced by the Third Way. Though there is less emphasis on the core concepts than there had been in 1992 and 1996, those concepts are clearly present. Prosperity and progress are dominant themes in the 2000 platform, and there is a ―recommitment to our basic American values of hard work, community, embracing diversity, faith, family, and personal responsibility.‖ In 2004, the document promised ―an America that offers opportunity, rewards responsibility, and rejoices in diversity.‖ It restated the New Democrat mantra of ―reinforcing our values—faith and family, duty and service, individual freedom, and a common purpose to build one nation under God.‖ To the extent that the DLC was a guardian of the Third Way, it is important to note DLC officials‘ support for the 2000 and 2004 platforms.52 The second place to look for the influence of the Third Way is among Democratic elected officials. Determining where, exactly, the party‘s office-holders stand is complicated. Part of the reason for this is that the ―four-party politics‖ that James MacGregor Burns wrote about in the 1960s appears to have returned.53 That is, rather than one Republican and one Democratic Party, there is a presidential and a congressional party for each. Furthermore, at the

A New Democratic Party? Bill Clinton As a Public Philosopher and Party Leader

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congressional level (and lower), texts like speeches and platforms that allow for morphological analysis are not as easily found.

At the presidential level, the campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry were, respectively, a move away from, and ambiguity toward, the Third Way. Initially, the Gore campaign seemed a continuation of the Third Way. Himself a long-time DLC member, Gore chose another DLC member, Joe Lieberman, to be his running mate—a move New Democrats applauded.54 But during the course of the campaign, Gore famously championed the ―people, not the powerful.‖ This populist message was a repudiation of the New Democrat philosophy, and the DLC blamed it for his loss.55 The 2004 Democratic ticket was once again comprised of two DLC members—John Kerry and John Edwards. Indeed, the DLC was effusive in its praise of the Kerry-Edwards ticket. The two are ―New Democrat stalwarts,‖ it bragged, and claimed, ―New Democrats couldn‘t ask for a stronger team than Kerry and Edwards.‖56 In truth, John Kerry is not a centrist. While he has taken some positions through the years that are consonant with New Democrat values (e.g., fiscal discipline and welfare reform), his voting record in the Senate is clearly liberal (though admittedly not as liberal as the Bush campaign portrayed it).57 Nevertheless, his campaign was not marked by a clear ideological stance. Though some detected a desire to restore the principles that informed Clinton‘s approach to governing, in the end Kerry‘s campaign was seen by most as directionless.58 With respect to Democratic members of Congress, as noted above, we have no easy way of determining the morphology of their collective ideology. We can assume, however, that if the elected officials had adopted the Third Way, their voting records would reveal a moderate tendency. In fact, Democratic members of Congress, particularly in the House, became more liberal during the Clinton years (see Figure 2; Clinton‘s administration ran from the 103rd through the 106th Congresses).59 We should be careful not to jump to causal conclusions here; congressional Democrats did not become more liberal because of (or in reaction to) Clinton‘s philosophy. Rather, fewer moderate and conservative Democrats were in the House following the 1994 midterm elections than had been there prior to those elections.

The voters are a third group within which we can search for evidence of party change. As with members of Congress, morphological analysis of public opinion is difficult, if not impossible. But we can attempt to detect shifts in perceptions within the public. First, we might ask if voters, in general, perceive a change in the Democratic Party. Next, we should determine whether or not self-identified Democrats think their party has changed. Finally, we might look for ideological change in those Democrats themselves. Figure 3 illustrates trends for all three indicators from 1972 to 2000. The top line is the percentage of the general public that placed the Democratic Party in one of three ―liberal‖ categories—slightly liberal, liberal, or extremely liberal—in the National Election Studies. As the graph indicates, a decreasing number of people considered the party liberal from the 1970s through the 1980s. Beginning in 1992, the trend reverses and an increasing number of people perceive the Democrats to be liberal.

In fact, by 2000, more people applied the term ―liberal‖ to the party than at any time since the question was first asked in 1972. The trend-line for the perceptions of self-identified Democrats mirrored that of the general public, though fewer Democrats found their party to be liberal than did all voters at every point in time. More Democrats also defined their own ideology as liberal in the 1990s than had done so in the 1970s and 1980s. The explanation for all three trends is the realignment that took place over the course of roughly twenty-five years, from the late 1960s to the early 1990s.60

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Stephen K. Medvic

Source: Data provided by Keith Poole at http://www.voteview.com/dwnl.htm (accessed February 3, 2005).

NB: DW-NOMINATE scores range from 1 (conservative) to -1 (liberal). Median calculations for the 95th – 107th Congress were performed by Poole and can be found at http://www.voteview.com /pmediant.htm (accessed February 3, 2005). Calculations for the 108th Congress are based on Poole‘s data, but are the author‘s.

Figure 2. Median DW-NOMINATE Scores for House and Senate Democrats, 95th - 108th Congress.

Source: Data is from the National Election Studies (NES), available from the Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA) archive, Computer-assisted Survey Methods Program at the University of California, Berkeley, http://sda.berkeley.edu:7502/archive.htm (accessed February 15, 2005).

NB: The total number responding ―liberal‖ includes the three response categories ‗slightly liberal,‘ ‗liberal,‘ and ‗extremely liberal.‘ Figure 3. Perceptions of Democratic Party Ideology, 1972-1992, 1996 and 2000.

In the end, Clinton appears to have failed to transform the Democratic Party into a party of the Third Way.61 Indeed, the only aspect of the party that indicates a change in the direction of the Third Way is the party platforms. Democratic presidential campaigns since Clinton left office have failed to embrace the New Democrat vision; congressional Democrats

A New Democratic Party? Bill Clinton As a Public Philosopher and Party Leader

11

have become more liberal; and the party has been moving left in public perceptions. I now conclude with a brief explanation for Clinton‘s inability to leave a lasting impact on the Democratic Party.

CONCLUSION: WHY CLINTON FAILED TO CHANGE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY There are a number of reasons for Clinton‘s failure to change the Democratic Party.

Obviously, realignment and the increased political polarization that it has produced is a leading factor. When conservative (and even moderate) Democrats, especially in the South, found themselves replaced by (conservative) Republicans, the result was two parties that were ideologically cohesive and distinct. The Democrats who remained in office after the 1994 midterm elections had little reason to move to the center; most were representing districts that were decidedly liberal.

But the fact that Democrats also became the congressional minority in 1994 ―meant that Clinton no longer needed to placate more liberal Democratic congressional leaders and committee chairs and could thus now revert to the centrist themes that had been crucial to his election in 1992.‖62 Facing a Congress in opposition hands, Clinton turned to a strategy of ―triangulation‖ wherein he would offer an alternative to conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats.63 Ironically, this strategy made it less likely that the Democratic Party would adopt the Third Way beyond Clinton. Triangulation might have ensured Clinton‘s reelection in 1996, but it made congressional Democrats vulnerable.64 It thereby caused frustration if not resentment among many Democratic elected officials and ―helped tarnish the [Third Way] movement‘s agenda with the brush of political opportunism.‖65 Of course, given the political context of the 1990s and early 2000s, Clinton may have had no choice but to resort to a type of opportunism. Stephen Skowronek identified Clinton as a ―preemptive‖ president: that is, one who is in opposition to a dominant regime (in this case, Republican) that is resilient (rather than vulnerable).66 Thus, Clinton found himself ―located on a field largely defined by his opponents.‖67 Like other preemptive presidents (e.g., Wilson, Eisenhower, Nixon), he ―bid openly for a hybrid alternative‖ (i.e., the Third Way) to the political divisions of the time.68 But, as triangulation suggests, Clinton‘s Third Way was actually an ―accommodationist ideology.‖69 Ultimately, according to Skowronek, ―no third way has ever outlasted the president who articulated it.‖70 Other factors noted by scholars include the failure of Clinton and the DLC to develop a grassroots constituency for the Third Way;71 scandals—particularly the Lewinsky matter— that forced Clinton to the left in order to gain support from his base and that encouraged future standard bearers to distance themselves from Clinton;72 Clinton‘s initial impression as a liberal based on the priorities of his first two years in office;73 the success of some ThirdWay initiatives (e.g., welfare reform and fiscal discipline), which make the New Democrat message of party modernization less relevant;74 and ―Clinton nostalgia‖ and the cult of personality surrounding him, which make it difficult for the movement to evolve.75 Finally, the post–September 11 political environment may have made Clinton‘s Third Way obsolete. His was largely a domestic presidency and the DLC‘s efforts during that time were not robust with respect to foreign policy.76 Furthermore, the Bush administration‘s (and

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Republican congressional leadership‘s) agenda may very well have not only activated the liberal base of the party, but might have unified the party in important ways. Ruy Teixeira argues, for example, that ―Newer Democrats‖ have responded to recent events ―not by picking or switching factional sides but by creating new institutions and developing new approaches . . . to take on the Republican Party of the 2000s.‖77 To the extent that Teixeira is correct, ideological conflict within the Democratic Party will be held in check for the time being.78 If and when such conflict reemerges, it seems unlikely that Bill Clinton‘s Third Way will be a significant part of the argument.

ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Following the approach employed by the special issue of the Journal of Political Ideologies on ―third way ideologies,‖ I will use the upper case ―Third Way‖ to refer to specific third-way doctrines and will use the lower case ―third way‖ when dealing with the philosophy in general.

Steve Bastow, James Martin, and Dick Pels, ―Introduction: Third Ways in Political Ideology,‖ Journal of Political Ideologies 7 (2002): 278, n.1.

Speeches and writings that address the Third Way were selected for this paper from a variety of sources. Clinton speeches during the campaign were found at the ―Key Documents‖ pages of the DLC website (http://www.ndol.org/ndol_sub.cfm?kaid=86& subid=194, accessed February 27, 2002; and http://www.ndol.org/ndol_sub.cfm? kaid=128&subid=174, accessed February 27, 2002). Remarks made as president were found in the Public Papers of the President (http://www.gpo.gov/nara/pubpaps /srchpaps.html, accessed February 8, 2005). http://www.4 president.org has Clinton‘s 1992 announcement and convention acceptance speeches.

Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Michael Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, 75.

Ibid., 48.

Ibid., 84.

Ibid., 78.

Ibid., 78; emphasis is mine.

Ibid., 78.

Ibid., 83.

Ibid., 86.

Ibid., 122.

Freeden‘s own take on the third way as an ideology is a bit unclear. In his primer on ideology, he discusses it in a chapter on micro- (or thin) ideologies, but concludes, ―This unstable mix may be ephemeral, but it is being kept together by elite governmental manipulation and publicity‖ (Freeden, Ideology, 96). A few lines down, he places it in the category of ―artificial ideological compounds‖ (Ibid.). Yet, four years earlier, Freeden had written an article on ―The Ideology of New Labour‖ in which he argued that it was a ―misconception‖ to ―deny that the ‗Third Way‘ is an ideology‖ (Michael Freeden, ―The Ideology of New Labour,‖ The Political Quarterly, 70 (1999): 45). ―Ideologies,‖ he continued, ―are recurrent, action-oriented patterns of political argument, and it can be empirically demonstrated that New Labour is definitely endowed with those‖ (Ibid.).

A New Democratic Party? Bill Clinton As a Public Philosopher and Party Leader 14

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―Keynote Address of Gov. Bill Clinton to the DLC‘s Cleveland Convention,‖ May 6, 1991, http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=86&subid=194&contentid=3166 ―Announcement Speech,‖ October 3, 1991, http://www.4president.org/speeches/bill clinton1992announcement.htm; See also ―Acceptance Speech to the Democratic National Convention,‖ July 16, 1992, http://www.4president.org/speeches/1992 /billclinton1992 acceptance.htm; ―The President‘s Radio Address,‖ May 1, 1993, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton 1993 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1994), 550–51; ―The President‘s Radio Address,‖ March 11, 1995, Public Papers 1995 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1996), 330–32; ―Remarks Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.‖ August 29, 1996, Public Papers 1996 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1997), 1409–17.

See Bill Clinton, Between Hope and History: Meeting America‘s Challenges for the 21 st Century (New York: Random House, 1996). ―Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,‖ February 4, 1997, Public Papers 1997 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1998), 109–17. See also ―Remarks at a Democratic Leadership Council Luncheon,‖ December 11, 1996, Public Papers 1996 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1997), 2184–91; ―Remarks at American University,‖ September 9, 1997, Public Papers 1997 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1998), 1136–43; ―Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,‖ January 27, 2000, Public Papers 2000 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 2001), 129–40.

In addition to those already cited, see ―Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,‖ January 24, 1995, Public Papers 1995 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1996), 75–86; ―Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,‖ January 27, 1998, Public Papers 1998 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1999), 112–21; ―Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,‖ January 19, 1999, Public Papers 1999 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 2000), 62–71.

See, for example, ―Address before a Joint Session of Congress on Administration Goals,‖ February 17, 1993, Public Papers 1993 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1994), 113–22; ―Remarks to the Democratic Leadership Council,‖ December 3, 1993, Public Papers 1993 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1994), 2094–102. ―Remarks at American University.‖ Ibid. ―Keynote Address of Gov. Bill Clinton to the DLC‘s Cleveland Convention.‖ ―Acceptance Speech to the Democratic National Convention.‖ ―The New Covenant: Responsibility and Rebuilding the American Community,‖ October 23, 1991, http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=2783&kaid=128& subid=174; see also ―Remarks to the Democratic Leadership Council.‖ ―Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,‖ February 4, 1997; see also ―Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Dinner in Chicago, Illinois,‖ September 23, 1994, Public Papers 1994 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1995), 1602–06. ―Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,‖ January 24, 1995; ―Announcement Speech,‖ October 3, 1991. ―Keynote Address of Gov. Bill Clinton to the DLC‘s Cleveland Convention.‖ See also ―The New Covenant;‖ ―Acceptance Speech to the Democratic National Convention;‖ ―Message to

14

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32

33 34

35

36

37

38 39

40 41 42

43

44

Stephen K. Medvic the Congress Transmitting Proposed Welfare Reform Legislation,‖ June 21, 1994, Public Papers 1994 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1995), 1112; ―Remarks on Signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and an Exchange with Reporters,‖ August 22, 1996, Public Papers 1996 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1997), 1325–28. There is an element of self-improvement and character-building in responsibility as well. ―When people assume responsibility and shoulder that load,‖ argued Clinton, ―they acquire a dignity they never had before‖ (―The New Covenant‖). ―Acceptance Speech to the Democratic National Convention.‖ ―Keynote Address of Gov. Bill Clinton to the DLC‘s Cleveland Convention.‖ ―The New Covenant.‖ See ―Remarks at the Democratic Governors Association Jefferson-Jackson Day Luncheon in Indianapolis,‖ May 15, 1994, Public Papers 1994 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1995), 915–21. ―Announcement Speech;‖ see also ―Keynote Address of Gov. Bill Clinton to the DLC‘s Cleveland Convention.‖ ―Acceptance Speech to the Democratic National Convention.‖ See ―The New Covenant;‖ ―Remarks Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago;‖ ―Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,‖ January 24, 1995; ―Remarks at a Democratic Leadership Council Luncheon.‖ ―Address before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,‖ January 27, 1998; ―Remarks at the Democratic Governors‘ Association Dinner,‖ February 23, 1998, Public Papers 1998 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1999), 272–75. In truth, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been more articulate in describing the Third-Way view of the role of government than has Clinton and has written directly on the subject. See Tony Blair, The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century, Fabian Pamphlet 588 (London: The Fabian Society, 1998); and Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder, ―Europe: The Third Way/Die Neue Mitte,‖ 1998, www.fes.org.za /english/pubs/wp-02.pdf (accessed February 23, 2005). ―Remarks at ‗Strengthening Democracy in the Global Economy: An Opening Dialogue‘ in New York City,‖ September 21, 1998, Public Papers 1998 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1999), 1633–40. ―Remarks to the Democratic Leadership Council National Conversation,‖ June 4, 1998, Public Papers 1998 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1999), 884–90. ―Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,‖ January 24, 1995. ―Remarks at a United States Conference of Mayors Breakfast,‖ January 30, 1998, Public Papers 1998 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1999), 142–48. ―Remarks to the Democratic Leadership Council.‖ ―Acceptance Speech to the Democratic National Convention.‖ Peter Berkowitz, ed., Varieties of Progressivism in America (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2004). Few serious analysts would place the Third Way or its advocates on the right, though see Robert Borosage, ―The DLC Flunks Politics 101,‖ The American Prospect, January 13, 2003, www.prospect.org/print/V13/24/borosage-r.html (accessed June 30, 2004). Borosage argues the DLC was ―launched as the voice of conservative, largely southern Democrats.‖ ―Remarks at a Democratic Leadership Council Dinner,‖ December 2, 1998, Public Papers 1998 (Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1999), 2115–18. ―Remarks at the Democratic Governors‘ Association Dinner.‖

A New Democratic Party? Bill Clinton As a Public Philosopher and Party Leader 45

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48 49

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55

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Dan Balz, ―Gephardt: Party Has Learned Its Lessons; Democrats Would Return a Chastened Majority, Leader Says,‖ Washington Post, September 16, 1996, A1. See also Gephardt‘s interview with Jim Lehrer from May 1997 (http://www.pbs.org/newshour /bb/congress/may97/ gephardt_5–29.html, accessed March 15, 2005).

The Manifesto Research Group has coded programs for parties in twenty-five countries since World War II. See Ian Budge, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Andrea Volkens, Judith Bara, and Eric Tanenbaum, Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electors, and Governments, 1945–1998 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

For recent data, see the Manifesto Project website, https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu/parties/560 (accessed March 5, 2014). It should be noted that some have argued that the 1990s represented continuity, rather than change, in Democratic ideology. John Gerring, for example, maintains that the Clinton years were part of a ―universalist epoch‖ in the party that began in 1950s in which the party emphasized inclusion rather than the populism of the earlier era. John Gerring, Party Ideologies in America, 1828–1996 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Berkowitz, Varieties of Progressivism in America.

Democratic Party platforms are available through the American Presidency Project at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/platforms.php (accessed February 18, 2005).

The connection between opportunity and work is made in the 1984 platform. The party promises, for example, to ―offer every American the opportunity for secure and productive employment‖ and it states, ―Our goal is to allow the greatest number of people the greatest opportunity for self-sufficiency.‖ Usually, however, ―opportunity‖ is used in a rather vague sense of having choices in one‘s life.

On the 1992 platform writing process, see Sandy L. Maisel, ―The Platform-Writing Process: Candidate-Centered Platforms in 1992,‖ Political Science Quarterly 108 (1993–94): 671–98; and Stephen A. Borrelli, ―Finding the Third Way: Bill Clinton, The DLC, and the Democratic Platform of 1992.‖ The Journal of Policy History 13 (2001): 429–62.

See ―Statement from DLC President Al From on the Democratic Party Platform,‖ Democratic Leadership Council, July 7, 2000, http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm? contentid =1360&kaid=85 &subid=108 (accessed March 5, 2005) and ―A Solid Platform,‖ Democratic Leadership Council, July 19, 2004, http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ ci.cfm? contentid=252765&kaid=131&subid =192 (accessed March 5, 2005).

James Macgregor Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy: Four-Party Politics in America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963); John Kenneth White, The Values Divide: American Politics and Culture in Transition (New York: Chatham House Publishers, Seven Bridges Press, 2003), ch. 6. ―Dooley Enthusiastically Applauds Lieberman Choice,‖ Democratic Leadership Council, August 7, 2000, http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=1954&kaid=106&subid=122 (accessed March 21, 2005).

See Democratic Leadership Council, ―Why Gore Lost, and How Democrats Can Come Back,‖ Special Issue of Blueprint Magazine, January 24, 2001. ―Idea of the Week: A New Democrat Ticket,‖ Democratic Leadership Council, July 9, 2004, http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=252756&kaid=131&subid=207 (accessed July 23, 2004).

See ―How Liberal is John Kerry?,‖ FactCheck.org, October 19, 2004, http://www.fact check. org/article284.html (accessed March 23, 2005).

John F. Harris, ―A Nostalgia for the Consensus of the 1990s,‖ The Washington Post, July 29, 2004; Ryan Lizza, ―Bad Message,‖ The New Republic, November 22, 2004, Marc Humbert, ―Clinton Adviser: Kerry Ran Inconsistent Campaign,‖ The Boston Globe, March 17, 2005.

16 59

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62

63

64 65

66

67 68 69

70

71

72

73

74 75 76

Stephen K. Medvic This conclusion is based on DW-NOMINATE scores, which are estimates of legislators‘ voting records. See Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

John R. Petrocik, ―Realignment: New Party Coalitions and the Nationalization of the South,‖ The Journal of Politics 49 (1987): 347–75; Alan I. Abramowitz and Kyle L. Saunders, ―Ideological Realignment in the US Electorate,‖ The Journal of Politics 60 (1998): 634–52.

See Byron E. Shafer, ―The Partisan Legacy: Are There Any New Democrats? (And By the Way, Was There a Republican Revolution?)‖ In The Clinton Legacy, eds. Colin Campbell and Bert A. Rockman (New York:Chatham House Publishers, 2000), 28–32; Alex Wadden, Clinton’s Legacy? A New Democrat in Government (New York: Palgrave, 2002). While not contradicting this conclusion directly, John Coleman is a bit more sanguine about Clinton‘s legacy with respect to the party system generally. See John J. Coleman, ―Clinton and the Party System in Historical Perspective,‖ In Steven E. Schier, ed., The Postmodern Presidency: Bill Clinton’s Legacy in US Politics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000).

Nicol C. Rae, ―Clinton and the Democrats: The President as Party Leader.‖ In Schier, ed., The Postmodern Presidency, 193.

See Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties (New York: Random House, 1997) 80–85; Rae, ―Clinton and the Democrats,‖ 192–95.

Rae, ―Clinton and the Democrats,‖ 199.

William A. Galston, ―Incomplete Victory: The Rise of the New Democrats.‖ In Berkowitz, ed., Varieties of Progressivism in America, 81.

Skowronek, Stephen, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1997).

Ibid., 449.

Ibid.

Philip Klinkner, ―Democratic Party Ideology in the 1990s: New Democrats or Modern Republicans?‖ In John Kenneth White and John C. Green, eds., The Politics of Ideas: Intellectual Challenges Facing the American Political Parties (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 128; see also John J. Pitney Jr., ―Clinton and the Republican Party,‖ in The Postmodern Presidency: Bill Clinton’s Legacy in US Politics.

Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 451. Writing in 1997, Skowronek did acknowledge the possibility that Clinton would be the first preemptive president for whom a third way would persist beyond his time in office (Ibid., 463). Interestingly, he also noted the possible recurrence of ―the historic connection between preemptive leadership and constitutional crises that strip the president of all authority‖ (Ibid., 464).

Galston, ―Incomplete Victory: The Rise of the New Democrats,‖ 84; Franklin Foer, ―Center Forward? The Fate of the New Democrats,‖ in Berkowitz, ed., Varieties of Progressivism in America, 10; Klinkner, ―Democratic Party Ideology in the 1990s,‖ 115, 127; Rae, ―Clinton and the Democrats,‖ 199.

Sidney M. Milkis, ―The Presidency and Political Parties.‖ In Michael Nelson, ed., The Presidency and the Political System, 4th edition, (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2003), 381; Galston, ―Incomplete Victory: The Rise of the New Democrats,‖ 82.

Shafer, ―The Partisan Legacy,‖ 16–17; Rae, ―Clinton and the Democrats,‖ 191–92; Galston, ―Incomplete Victory: The Rise of the New Democrats,‖ 80.

Foer, ―Center Forward?‖ 90.

Ibid., 101.

Ibid., 103.

A New Democratic Party? Bill Clinton As a Public Philosopher and Party Leader 77

78

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Ruy Teixeira, ―Old Democrats and the Shock of the New.‖ In Berkowitz, ed., Varieties of Progressivism in America, 25.

Indeed, the 2005 race for chair of the Democratic National Committee suggested that ideology was not the most important variable in deciding the outcome. Instead, ―Reform Democrats‖ were willing to embrace any candidate (including not only Howard Dean, but New Democrat Network President Simon Rosenberg) who would modernize the party infrastructure.

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 2

COMPLEX MAN, COMPLEX LEGACY Elaine C. Kamarck Harvard University Cambridge, MA, US

What is Bill Clinton‘s legacy to the Democratic Party? I think there‘s no question that he was a modernizer. I think there‘s no question that on a series of economic and domestic policy issues, there‘s been a very positive legacy. In 2004, John Kerry did his best to sound like Bill Clinton. In fact, one of the things we saw in 2004 was that people who cared about economic issues voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate. And so I think that on one set of issues, it‘s a positive legacy. There has been real change in the Democratic Party.

Even people perceived as liberals talk these days about balanced budgets and the importance of fiscal integrity. I worked on two of these conservative platforms that Professor Medvic cited and, believe me, this was not a rough go; we didn‘t have to impose this on the Democratic Party activists who composed the platform committees. This was something that really had gotten to the grassroots.

That being said, however, there are other issues that people vote on, and there I don‘t think there is a positive legacy for the Democrats going forward. On foreign policy, the legacy of the Democratic Party is that it is a party weak on defense and wishy-washy in the world, a party you can‘t trust to protect you. Clinton really did not have a chance to do much about that. For all the laundry list of things the president recited this afternoon, the ‘90s was not a decade of foreign policy crises. Foreign policy was not prevalent. I watched this president in the first term very closely. He was not particularly engaged in foreign policy at all. He conceived of the job when he first got into office as being sort of the ―super governor‖ of the country. That‘s how he acted in that job until, as we political scientists know, the normal traction of international affairs took over and he did become more engaged in international affairs. Had he personally been more engaged, I don‘t think the decade of the nineties would have offered many opportunities to change the dominant view of the Democratic Party when it came to foreign policy.

There is a third and very important bag of issues: cultural and moral issues. Here, the Clinton legacy is very mixed. There‘s no doubt that there was a set of issues—mostly racedbased issues: affirmative action, crime and welfare—that really plagued the Democratic Party

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Elaine C. Kamarck

throughout the ‘80s. When my colleague Bill Galston and I wrote our first paper, ―The Politics of Evasion,‖ for the DLC back in 1989, these were the issues that really hurt Democratic presidential candidates and other candidates. Bill Clinton quite successfully dealt with those issues. Part of it was his extraordinary rapport with the African American community. He could go to the base of the party and talk about welfare reform. He could go to the base of the party and talk about crime. He took a set of issues that, for those of us old enough to remember, were quite intense in the ‘80s; he really took them off the table. That is a very positive legacy.

He did, by his own personal behavior, however, give us a second set of issues, which has not been a positive legacy. When Michael Dukakis ran for president in 1988, he split the religious, church-going vote with George Bush. In other words, in the ‘80s we didn‘t see a big difference between religious people and non-religious people and how they voted. That begins to change fairly dramatically in 1992, and now religion—religiosity—has replaced social class as the primary determinant of party identification in America. Now I do think this is something in which Bill Clinton had a part. While he didn‘t begin this trend, and I don‘t think that his presidency did anything to help it, frankly. In fact, his presidency put Democrats on the wrong side a lot of what are perceived to be moral and personal responsibility issues.

Democrats are paying for it today. The Democratic Party is seen as a secular, non-religious, non–family values party, despite the fact that we passed the Family and Medical Leave Act. When you put the Family and Medical Leave Act up against people‘s personal behavior, the second one is the one that sticks in the voters‘ minds.

If you look at the future and you look at Bill Clinton‘s legacy, I think it is true that he‘s a complex man and he leaves a very complex legacy to the party—a legacy Democrats can build on, but a legacy that also leaves Democrats a lot of problems that they have to confront in the future. Democrats have to move beyond what New Democrat Bill Clinton was and figure out how to become Democrats in the twenty-first century.

II. DOMESTIC ECONOMIC POLICY

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 3

PRESIDENT CLINTON’S ECONOMIC POLICY AND APPROACH TO DECISION-MAKING Robert E. Rubin Council on Foreign Relations New York, NY, US I first spent time with President Clinton at a dinner for about fifteen politically experienced financial and media people that I co-hosted with a friend of mine, David Sawyer, in mid-1991 when the then-governor was contemplating running for the presidency. We had a three-hour discussion about a wide range of economic issues. When he left, I said to another guest that I had never been with a political figure who was as knowledgeable and thoughtful about economic issues, or who engaged in as vigorous and open a give-and-take with those around the table. I also said that Governor Clinton seemed to have a deeply internalized sense of the importance of reestablishing fiscal discipline after so many years of deficits. All of that was the Bill Clinton as economic leader that the country got to know over the course of his presidency.

On January 7, 1993, during the transition, the recently named economic team had its first meeting with the president-elect in Little Rock. We had prepared a lengthy discussion about the economic decisions he faced, particularly the importance of making significant progress with respect to reducing our deficits. Before the meeting, George Stephanopoulos warned us that it was unreasonable to expect the president-elect to make such a momentous decision at this meeting and told us we ought not to be disappointed if he didn‘t. Instead, less than an hour into the discussion, the president-elect looked at us and said that the threshold issue for sustained economic recovery was to reestablish sound fiscal conditions. My impression, though I never asked him about this, is that he already had this view and that our discussion simply reaffirmed his own judgment.

Though there was growth in the economy in 1992, the economy generally was considered to be in a deep morass. Year-end unemployment was over 7 percent, long-term interest rates were over 7 percent, fiscal deficits had led to a quadrupling of the publicly held debt of the federal government over the previous twelve years and were projected by the outgoing administration to increase substantially in the years ahead. And there was widespread concern

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Robert E. Rubin

among business people here and abroad that our economy might well be in a long-term state of disrepair.

We felt that an attempt to promote recovery with an expansive fiscal policy, based on cutting taxes or increasing spending, could well be undermined by upward pressure on interest rates and adverse effects on business-consumer confidence in general. We believed that deficit reduction, while itself contractionary, had a better chance of working, by leading to more than offsetting benefits with respect to interest rates and confidence. Our program was a mix of spending cuts, income tax increases on the most affluent, and a very, very small gas tax.

The supply-side critics of our program banged their fists on the table and shouted on TV talk shows and in columns that these tax increases would lead to greatly increased unemployment or even to recession. I can remember one congressional leader on a Sunday show saying that we would have massive unemployment and that President Clinton would be responsible for each and every lost job. Instead, what followed was the longest economic expansion in our nation‘s history.

There is no question in my mind that while many factors contributed to the expansion, the decision to address the deficit was key and indispensable. It began as a virtuous cycle where deficit reduction contributed to lower interest rates that would otherwise have occurred at any given level of economic growth, and to increasing business confidence. These effects, combined with new technologies and globalization, led to growth. That in turn led back to additional deficit reduction, and this pattern, back and forth, became a virtuous cycle that continued throughout the Clinton presidency.

It is also important to note here that the remarkable productivity growth of the 1990s didn‘t just happen, but was indispensably fueled by public policy. More specifically, it was sound fiscal policy, trade liberalization that put pressure on American business to seek greater competitiveness and productivity, and continued support by President Clinton for the flexibility of our labor and capital markets, that enabled investment to pay off in this country.

By the time the Clinton administration came to an end, we had surpluses in this country for the first time since 1968 and projected surpluses far into the future. However, that, too, didn‘t just happen.

The powerful initial impetus was the 1993 deficit reduction program that passed the House by one vote and the Senate by the vice president‘s tie breaking vote. President Clinton had proposed and then achieved a dramatic change of fiscal policy widely viewed – by supporters and opponents – as putting his entire administration at substantial risk in that early period, both because he might not be able to get the proposals enacted and because the proposals, if enacted, might not work.

To look more closely at our theory of the case, our view that deficits threatened the economy had two elements. First was the traditional crowding-out theory, which supposes that government borrowing ―crowds out‖ private investment, increases interest rates, reduces productivity, and reduces growth. According to Federal Reserve Board models at the time, effects of the then-projected deficits with respect to crowding-out could have been significant.

But there was a far greater danger: the fear that fiscal disarray could lead domestic and foreign providers of debt capital to demand sharply higher, inflation-adjusted interest rates that we referred to at the time as a ―deficit premium.‖ We also realized after the fact, importantly, that large deficits had come to symbolize in many people‘s minds an inability of

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our society to deal with economic problems and that the restoration of fiscal discipline contributed greatly to consumer and business confidence.

Let me say parenthetically that this analysis and experience from 1993 is fully applicable today in November 2005. The risk is exacerbated now and extends to the risk—or at least the possibility—of sharp currency decline. Our large projected deficits are combined with a personal savings rate of roughly zero, huge current account deficits, heavy reliance on foreign capital to fund our deficits, and much closer proximity to the rapid increases in entitlement costs that will begin when the baby boomer generation starts retiring in the next decade.

Interest rates have not been affected so far; that is primarily because of vast inflows from central banks abroad seeking to support the dollar in order to subsidize their exports. That is not sustainable indefinitely, and what is not sustainable indefinitely will at some point cease.

Moreover, sound fiscal conditions provide the resilience to react to adversity, whether in national security developments or in economic conditions, without the risks that could come from piling new deficits on top of existing deficits.

From the very beginning, President Clinton‘s economic strategy was designed to promote sustained recovery in the short-term and to provide a strong foundation for long-term economic growth. That strategy was complex and multifaceted, as is economic reality, and I think of it as having four components. first, sound fiscal policy, which I‘ve already discussed. second, international economic policy, including trade liberalism, aid to developing countries, and crisis response in Mexico and then later in Asia. third, public investment to promote productivity to help those dislocated by technology and trade, to further income growth for middle income workers, and to address poverty more effectively. The initiatives in this third category included education, basic research, welfare reform, improvements and increases in many anti-poverty programs, healthcare reform—unsuccessful in its initial, comprehensive form, but then later successful on many specific objectives—and much else. Fourth, and importantly, was a seriousness of purpose that President Clinton brought to decisions and decision-making on economic issues. The seriousness was reflected in the president‘s unvaried and explicit support for the independence of the Federal Reserve Board, which contributed to the credibility of monetary policy and also to his own credibility around the world as an economic policy-maker. That seriousness can also be seen in his commitment to a sound dollar was based on sound policy, and in the creation of a new institution in the White House, the National Economic Council.

The National Economic Council innovatively addressed a problem every president has had great difficulty with: first, how to get all the various members of the administration involved in economic policy to come together to provide the president with the full range of considerations surrounding each issue so that he can make a fully informed decision; and then, when decisions are made, to get buy-in across the administration in order to most effectively implement those decisions. The NEC worked because President Clinton had the managerial insight to function through it from the very beginning, to reject the occasional effort to bypass the process, and to insist on teamwork as a norm in his administration.

The politically perilous deficit reduction program enacted in 1993 set the template for the remainder of the Clinton years. First, a focus on fiscal discipline combined with a commitment to investing in those requisites for success which markets, by their very nature, will not provide optimally. And, second, to have that success broadly shared. So even as President Clinton worked to reduce the deficit in 1993, we shifted priorities within the budget to fund education, basic research, infrastructure, programs to address poverty, and much else.

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This included large increases for the Earned Income Tax Credit, which was part of a much broader effort to lift people out of poverty, not only as a moral consideration, but as an economic imperative, with all the social costs that could thereby be saved and the additions to productivity that could create.

In this way, President Clinton brought together two views on economic structure—a strong role for markets and a strong role for government—that were often considered antithetical. Too often, those who advocate market-based economics are unwilling to support the public role that is needed to accompany that market-based economics, and those who support the public programs too often attempt to infringe unduly on the market-based economy. This is but one example of why ideology is a very poor guide for economic policy.

Also underlying all of President Clinton‘s strategy was his strong conviction, which permeated all of his discussions in the Oval Office and in public speeches, that this was a time of change of historic proportions, including new levels of global integration, profound changes in technology, the spread of market-based economics throughout the globe, and the emergence of many developing countries as both new markets and strong competitors. His forward-looking understanding of the rapid changes in the economic environment, still going on so powerfully today, were as insightful as those of anybody I knew in business or public life. His insight shaped a strategic view that policies to address these changes could produce great benefits, and failure to adapt could lead to stagnation or worse. Facing this great complexity, President Clinton, as I‘ve often told friends and acquaintances of mine in business, was an extraordinarily good decision-maker, perhaps as good as anybody I have ever known. He recognized the complexity of the issues he faced, and thus he approached decisions as being about facts and analysis, not ideology and opinion, and about probabilities, tradeoffs, weighing, and balancing.

The president also insisted on every possible effort to produce the full range of considerations surrounding each decision he had to make. Then he acted decisively on his conclusions, and he fought for those decisions. When the newly named economic team first met with President Clinton during the transition, he said at the beginning of the meeting that we had to make sure, once he was actually in office, to tell him exactly what we thought, or otherwise he‘d be dead. And throughout his presidency, he consistently sought to draw out all views on every issue, particularly the views that were opposed to his own. His occasional practice of engaging publicly in this weighing and balancing sometimes led to criticism. My view, though, is that effective decision-making is not believing in absolutes that you stick with through thick and thin, but rather making well-informed judgments based on full consideration of the facts and analysis.

That leads to the rather interesting question of how to react when the facts change. One possibility is simply to continue on a steadfast path no matter how circumstances change. The other is to take into account that change, and weigh and balance once again to see whether a course correction is sensible. While change, as a political matter, might sometimes be a negative in itself, continuing on a course that no longer makes sense is substantively wrong.

After the 1992 election, for example, facing the outgoing administration‘s greatly increased projections for future deficits, President Clinton had to defer some of his much-cherished public investment programs, so that he could still achieve what he viewed as his threshold objective: substantial deficit reduction.

As I look back on those early years of the Clinton administration, and certainly the first year, I think one mistake we made was to underestimate the importance of defining the prism

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through which the public saw what we were doing before our opponents defined it. Our 1993 deficit reduction program, for example, had an increase in income taxes that fell on the top 1.2 percent of Americans. But the opposition set up a great hue and cry about tax increases.

Senator Diane Feinstein of California told me that, when she ran for the Senate in 1994, 40 percent of the people polled in California thought their income taxes had been increased.

Let me now turn to international economic policy. President Clinton entered the presidency with a strong conviction that our economic future lay in integration with the rest of the global economy. The first decision was NAFTA, which as you all well remember was bitterly opposed by many allies, especially organized labor. As we all know, he came out for NAFTA during the campaign and then worked energetically to win its approval in a highly contentious legislative struggle. A singularly important moment, at least to me, was when President Clinton stepped up to the podium in the East Room of the White House and set forth his broader approach to trade. He said then that the world is changing rapidly; standing in the way of change simply will not work, but embracing it effectively could greatly enhance our future well-being. He then said that the right path forward was to combine trade liberalization and a market-based economy with a powerful domestic agenda aimed at promoting American competitiveness and helping workers dislocated by trade.

That is still the best path forward. The political problem as analyzed by President Clinton parallels the false choice between markets and government with respect to economic matters that I mentioned a moment ago. Those who support trade too often do not support the domestic programs, and those who support the domestic programs too often don‘t support trade. As President Clinton said, the right way forward is to bring the two together.

Our administration also restructured our trade relationship with China. President Clinton recognized that China was going to be a major force economically and geo-politically and that we needed to engage with China for a mutually beneficial relationship despite our very different views on human rights, democracy, and other matters. Today, China and India are major economies, and I might say, as to India, that we clearly underestimated their economic potential. I remember an Oval Office meeting where President Clinton handed out an article from The Atlantic Monthly by Robert Kaplan, who basically argued that in an ever more interconnected world, poverty abroad could seriously affect our own well-being through the spread of disease, transnational environmental problems, transnational crime, drugs, political instability, terrorism, and so much else. With that framework, we argued that it was in our interests, as well as morally compelling, to provide adequate foreign aid, both bilaterally and through multilateral institutions. But it was an uphill struggle with mixed results. President Clinton spoke forcefully to these issues, but in retrospect, one of my regrets is that all of us did not do more to advance public understanding of his strong vision in this area.

The financial crises that hit Mexico and later Asia brought this interdependence into sharp focus. In January 1995, immediately after I was sworn in as Secretary of the Treasury in the Oval Office, Deputy Secretary Larry Summers and I recommended a support program of unprecedented size, in conjunction with the IMF and conditioned on economic reform in Mexico, to address the financial crisis that was developing there. We said that we felt Mexico‘s problems could be a great threat to us, both directly and indirectly, by spreading to other developing countries. We told the president the solution we thought should work, but that it might not, and that support for Mexico was very unpopular with the American people.

A poll in the Los Angeles Times found that 80 percent of the people were against our support program for Mexico. It was no more than fifteen or twenty minutes before the president said,

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without hesitation, ―I understand the risks, but we should do this. Let‘s go.‖ In far shorter order than any of us expected, the crisis was stemmed in Mexico—though there were very difficult days—and we were repaid with a profit.

The contagion that we feared never occurred in conjunction with Mexico, but it soon developed on a large scale in a crisis that began in 1997 in Thailand and ultimately spread to many countries around the world, most notably Indonesia, Korea— then the eleventh largest economy in the world—Brazil, and Russia. The president fully understood the stakes, and he fully understood the many critical policy nuances throughout the year and a half of an enormous international effort centered on the administration and the IMF to promote recovery and to limit what could have turned out to be an all-engulfing global crisis.

Let me now draw all this together into my view of the legacy of President Clinton‘s economic stewardship. Most tangibly, a great deal of lasting good occurred during the Clinton years: the creation of a net 22 million new jobs; a decrease in the unemployment rate from 7.3 percent in 1993 to 4 percent in December 2000; large increases in productivity; a 22 percent reduction in the poverty rate; significant increases in real inflation-adjusted incomes for middle-income people for the first time in many, many years; and a dramatic change in the federal government‘s fiscal position from the quadrupling of the publicly held debt of the federal government over the prior twelve years to surpluses beginning in 1998 and a projected ten-year surplus of over $5 trillion when President Clinton left office.

Obviously, many factors contributed to these accomplishments, but I don‘t think there is any question that President Clinton‘s multifaceted strategy, built around a market-based economy, restoration of sound fiscal conditions, public investment, and forward-looking national economic policy, were both indispensable and key. More conceptually, President Clinton provided a blueprint for addressing our new and complex economy of rapid change.

That blueprint, grounded in his deep understanding of the complexities of a rapidly-changing economic environment, is as valid now as it was then. Circumstances change, but his fundamental strategy remains the best path forward in our complicated world. President Clinton also provided a model for presidential decision-making: a pragmatic, probabilistic weighing and balancing based on the facts, analysis, and intense intellectual engagement to bring forth all considerations around each issue.

I believe that is especially apt in response to the kinds of complex issues that we face today in economics and in national security. Many of the issues that we face today are extremely difficult politically. It is useful to remember, in that regard, how many of President Clinton‘s key economic decisions were fraught with political risk and involved exceedingly difficult legislative struggles: the 1993 Deficit Reduction Act, NAFTA, increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit, protecting the Community Reinvestment Act, Chinese accession to the WTO, the Mexican Support Program, rejecting calls for protectionism late in the 1990s, preserving the surplus that began in 1998 for debt reduction, and so much else. I believe that as history looks back on the Clinton administration, President Clinton will be seen as an extraordinarily effective thinker and leader on economic issues at a time of seminal economic change: one with a great willingness to make unpopular decisions and who had a deep understanding of the conditions he faced.

When President Clinton entered office, many questioned the vitality of our nation‘s economic system. By the time he left office, no one questioned our vitality, and a great deal had been accomplished, both in immediate benefit and in positioning us for the years and decades ahead. Obviously, there would be cyclical swings, and that has always occurred, but

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with our enormous surpluses, increases in productivity and so much else, we were well positioned to deal with those cyclical events and to enjoy long-term economic well-being.

Much has changed and once again in 2005 there are many questions about our economic future. I don‘t think there is any question, however, that we can meet the challenges we face.

But to do so, we have to face them and act in ways that are often complex and politically difficult. I believe the task today for all of us is to do in our time what President Clinton did so remarkably well in his time.

III. TRADE POLICY

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 4

ADAPTING TO A CHANGING GLOBAL ECONOMY Mickey Kantor Mayer Brown Washington, DC, US

When you live in a time of change the only way to recover your security and to broaden your horizons is to adapt to the change, to embrace it, and to move forward. Nothing we do in this great capital can change the fact that factories or information can flash across the world, that people can move money around in a blink of an eye. Nothing can change the fact that technology can be adopted, once created by people all across the world, and then rapidly adapted in new and different ways by people who have a different take on the way the technology works. For two decades, the winds of global competition have made these things clear to any American with eyes to see. The only way we can recover the fortunes of the middle class of this country so that people who work harder and smarter can at least prosper more, the only way we can pass on the American dream of the last forty years to our children and their children for the next forty years is to adapt to the changes which are occurring.1 Nothing can sum up Bill Clinton‘s presidency more than that. There may be other things he has said, but the fact is, that sums up where Bill Clinton was and, frankly, is today.

What were those changes and how did Bill Clinton address them? What small role did I and the people I worked with play, like Charlene Barshefsky, who later became US trade representative, or Rufus Yerxa, now the deputy director of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and others? President Clinton saw economic security and national security as synonymous. He said it many times: In the new world we live in, where interdependence is a fact of life, economic security and national security are synonymous. Foreign policy and domestic policy had to be integrated. We could no longer separate domestic issues, trade issues, and foreign policy issues from each other. As Tom Friedman once said, we were in each other‘s pockets, as well we should have been and are today, even more than we were back on January 20, 1993, when Bill Clinton was inaugurated.

Now, why were we so interdependent? Globalization, of course, had become a fact of life. Today, more than half the Fortune 500 gain more income from outside the United States—income—than they do from inside the United States. Technology has overwhelmed us. We are wired, we are connected, we are one. Anyone who doesn‘t understand that can‘t

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understand why we should have ―multilateralism first, unilateralism only when necessary, but practicality at the base of what we need to do.‖ The end of the Cold War, of course, was a vital fact. You had globalization and technology. But the end of the Cold War allowed us then to interact on other bases with countries around the world including Russia and China, and of course some of our current friends in Latin America, who weren‘t so friendly then. Those who were the non-aligned nations then became trade partners and foreign policy partners, but it affected our domestic economy in the most profound way as well. We were inextricably linked as nations. Look at what happens today and look at what happened ‘way back. We could have seen back in the ‘80s what was happening. Terrorism, international crime, health problems, environmental problems, the flow of capital: all are cross-border items. It‘s as King Canute said—you cannot hold back the tides. It was a reality that we were going to have to deal with.

But Bill Clinton had a problem: he had to move the Democratic Party forward. The Democratic Party, of course, for a number of years had moved away, at least in the economic sector—not in what we called the traditional foreign policy sector—from trade issues. The party was under pressure from labor unions, from constituents, from the American people.

The American people after the Second World War saw us giving away our markets as a necessity for the Japanese and the Europeans who sought to rebuild their economies.

Americans believed trade issues were not in their interest. That‘s a historic fact. Now, the policy was right at that time: we needed to rebuild Europe and Japan as bulwarks against Soviet expansionism. But the American people were very cynical about trade—not just skeptical, cynical.

So Bill Clinton faced a problem. He saw the global economy and interdependence and its connection to our domestic economy if he was going to rebuild jobs here through education, through research and development, through investment in the American people, creating new jobs, trying to hold down interest rates, and lowering the budget deficit. We needed new markets in order to use this newfound strength to build our standard of living and create jobs.

So he had to convince the Democratic Party to move forward on this issue. That he did, to a great extent. He saw that the only constant in this new era that we lived in was change.

Change was so critical to our future, and yet change was frightening to most people then, as it is today. We need to continue to build this new world and create a sense in the American people that change was their friend, not their enemy. President Clinton built a theoretical framework for dealing with trade and dealing with the domestic economy through foreign policy. It was a cohesive approach and strategy.

One of the most brilliant moves he made was announced at the L.A. World Affairs Council. He then called it the Economic Security Council; later it became the National Economic Council under the brilliant leadership of Bob Rubin, then Laura Tyson, then Gene Sperling. It was an enormously important idea. I know it may sound bureaucratic to some, but it wasn‘t so bureaucratic when you assembled around the table the secretary of state, the secretary of commerce, the secretary of labor, the US trade representative, and the secretary of the treasury, all having to make decisions together. Including the secretary of labor, by the way, was a brilliant idea, one not used enough today; it made a difference in decision making.

We had to invest rather than consume, which I‘ve talked about. The president had to give bond markets confidence and create investment in the American economy, and we had to engage in reform. It was jobs, jobs, jobs, but it was also welfare reform, it was government reform, it was healthcare reform—some of which worked, some of which didn‘t work, and

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some of which should have come earlier in the administration, in 1993. I believe we should have gone for welfare reform, political reform, and budget reform early in 1993. It would have helped with those Perot voters to lock them into Bill Clinton forever. We didn‘t do it; we finally got most of that done later.

In trade, we had a major agenda. What would our policy look like? How would we address a Uruguay Round, which was moribund when we came in, unfortunately? It had been going on for seven years, the largest trade agreement in world history, and it was going nowhere. The US and Europe could not agree. The rest of the world was trying to follow, but there was nothing to follow because there was no agreement. NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) was in trouble in the Congress. I would venture to say that two-thirds of the Congress would have voted against NAFTA in February 1993, and I don‘t think that‘s an overstatement. We had no trade policy beyond President George H. W. Bush‘s talking about a Free Trade Area of the Americas, as we called it: talk about a free trade agreement from Alaska to Argentina, bringing in all thirty-four democracies in the New World. I want to give him credit for that; he deserves it. The fact is, we needed a trade policy that had five different areas, and Bill Clinton announced these in February 1993 at American University.

Trade would be a priority element of national security, as clearly it is. We would compete and not retreat from the obligations, responsibilities, and opportunities that we had. We would not build walls or retreat, but instead open up. We‘d try to build new high-wage, high-skilled jobs for the American people as we domestically built this strength in the American economy.

There‘d be no more ―something for nothing‖; no more trade agreements for the sake of agreement; No more agreements just for the sake of agreeing, and then deciding it wasn‘t in the interest of the country.

We would have an integrated economic program, and we would also address the issues of labor and environment. Let me talk about that a second. It may sound strange to some of you that we address protection of investment in trade agreements, in breaking down barriers at the border in trade agreements. We have sanctions and dispute settlement mechanisms in trade agreements, but no one has ever addressed, as Bill Clinton did, labor and environment in a trade agreement. Stop and think about it: is labor not a part of trade? Is that not vital to making sure that the benefits of trade are spread across all of the population, not just to the big corporations and the favored few? If we‘re going to build a new world economy and take advantage of it and create our markets of the future, we need to remember that 96 percent of the population of the world is outside of the United States. We need to raise the standard of living around the world and provide the leadership to do it. One way to do it is to have labor standards in a trade agreement, which will inevitably raise wages in those countries, build the middle class, build their strength politically and, of course economically, and they‘ll be our markets of the future. No one had ever articulated that from a presidential level before, and it was brilliantly done by Bill Clinton, beginning with his Georgetown speeches in 1991—not in 1992, not in 1993. He understood it as the governor of Arkansas, and he understood how it would affect even the folks in Arkansas.

The president said in many of his speeches, ―multilateral when possible, unilateral when necessary.‖ Of course that‘s correct. It‘s been turned on its head, unfortunately, in the last few years.

How did we get there? What did we do? Bill Clinton called me in February 1993. We‘d been in office about three weeks. He said, ―Mickey, we‘ve got to finish the Uruguay Round

by December 15.‖ And of course I‘m a smart aleck, and I said, ―Which year, Mr. President?‖

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He said, ―This year.‖ I said, ―Well Mr. President, we have NAFTA, we have APEC, we have the Free Trade Area of the Americas, we have the Framework Agreement with Japan, we have the G-7 meeting in Tokyo. How are we going to do that?‖ He says, ―You‘ll do it.‖ Well, Bill Clinton‘s confidence may have been misplaced, but he certainly did make my stomach tighten up. And off we went in trying to do that, which we were able to do by December 16 which, I never told him, happened at four in the morning—we finally finished the Uruguay Round, the largest trade agreement in history.

Let me tell you how that happened. It wasn‘t because of any brilliant negotiating on my part, though I hope I did an okay job. What it really had to do with was that Bill Clinton was completely engaged as a president. In Tokyo in July 1993, he engaged then-[Japanese] Prime Minister [Kiichi] Miyazawa, the first of five Japanese prime ministers we dealt with, even in the first term. He did it by dealing with [French] President Francois Mitterrand, with [German] Chancellor [Helmut] Kohl, with [British] Prime Minister [John] Major, almost on a daily basis as we got close to the end. He did it by putting his elbows, hands, feet, and arms into the problem, understanding every detail of it, and making sure that it got done. No one, as big as all our egos may be, does these things by themselves. But none of us can do anything without our president backing them up, agreeing with them, and getting involved.

We were trying to move, then 117 nations, now 147 nations, of the old GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) into becoming the World Trade Organization. At the same time, we were trying to move the nation and the Congress on NAFTA. Bill Clinton had promised in October 1992 that he would be for NAFTA, but only with labor and environmental side agreements. As I said, no one had ever said that or promoted that before.

It was a tough haul. We first had to negotiate with the Mexicans and the Canadians.

Then, of course, we had to get it through the Congress of the United States. Bill Clinton, again the engaged president, the practical president, would have members of Congress down there every day at the White House, sitting either in the Roosevelt Room or the Cabinet Room, imploring them to support NAFTA. The brilliance of his arguments and the light of his personality moved the House from being two-thirds against. Standing up, we got 232 votes to 200, and NAFTA passed.

It was critical that we got NAFTA passed. Just look at what‘s happened to Mexico today.

You can‘t argue that Mexico is more of a democracy, more stable, growing economically, and more connected not only to Canada and the United State, but connected in a most positive way to the world, than it was in 1992 because of NAFTA. It was critical that we got it done, and because of Bill Clinton, we did.

Then came the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum and the Free Trade Area of the Americas in 1994, and the Framework Agreement with Japan in 1993. Three hundred trade agreements later—three hundred in eight years. No one in the history of any nation, in any time, had ever reached that many trade agreements in that short a period of time. Bill Clinton left office with 22 million more jobs, with the greatest percentage of home ownership in America‘s history, halving the unemployment rate in the country, with the strongest economy over eight years in the history of the United States. I will submit that his ability to be practical and pragmatic, to have vision along with it, and to be personally engaged, made the difference. It was a critical time for America. It was a time of economic triumph. It was a time of incredible progress in foreign policy. It was a time when the country came together and was actually lauded overseas, and thought to be a friend of all.

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ENDNOTE 1

Bill Clinton, ―Remarks at the Signing Ceremony for the North American Free Trade Agreement Supplemental Agreements, September 14, 1993, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents 29 no. 37: 1754–56).

IV. ANTITRUST AND BUSINESS REGULATION

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 5

ANTITRUST AND BUSINESS REGULATION: THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION’S “NEW DEMOCRAT”APPROACH TO ANTITRUST POLICY Larry Bumgardner Department of Business Law, Pepperdine University Graziadio School of Business and Management Westlake Village, CA, US

When the Clinton administration took office in 1993, many observers in the business and political arenas anticipated a greatly renewed interest in antitrust policy. There were expectations that the first Democratic administration in twelve years would bring far more vigorous use and enforcement of the nation‘s antitrust laws—with the differences most noticeable compared to the strong deregulatory approach of the Reagan administration of the prior decade.

In retrospect, that expectation was only partially correct, at best. The Clinton administration clearly proved to be more aggressive in pursuing and punishing cartels and other anticompetitive conduct, with price-fixing prosecutions and the Microsoft monopolization case as prime examples. However, the administration took a much more relaxed, pro-business view in approving proposed mergers—the other major area of antitrust law enforcement.

This chapter will examine the Clinton administration‘s antitrust record in both anticompetitive conduct and merger cases. Space constraints do not allow a detailed statistical or thorough legal analysis of all the antitrust cases of the Clinton years. Rather, this chapter focuses on the most significant antitrust decisions of that period, giving special attention to the people and philosophies involved in setting the administration‘s antitrust policy. In the political context, one could conclude that this centrist view on antitrust—tough on anticompetitive conduct, but lenient on approving large mergers—was yet another manifestation of the ―New Democrat‖ or ―Third Way‖ approach espoused by President Clinton in many other policy areas.

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INTRODUCTION TO ANTITRUST LAW AND POLICY To the business world, antitrust policy has long been a controversial aspect of US law. It addresses a fundamental question in a predominantly free market economy: when the government should intervene to protect consumers or competitors, versus when the government should let the free markets alone decide the outcome of business competition.

At the federal level, the antitrust debate dates back to congressional passage of the Sherman Act in 1890. Still the most important antitrust law in the United States, the Sherman Act addresses both collusive activities and the act of monopolization. Specifically, Section 1 prohibits concerted action to restrain trade.1 Generally, ―concerted action‖ requires that at least two companies or entities be involved in restraining trade, as opposed to unilateral action by one business. (Price-fixing or bid-rigging are classic examples of illegal concerted action.) Section 2 of the Sherman Act outlaws monopolization: the willful acquisition or maintenance of monopoly power.2 On the other hand, merely being a monopoly, whether based on economic conditions or historical accident, is not illegal by itself.

The other primary US antitrust law is the Clayton Act, passed in 1914.3 When the courts did not interpret the Sherman Act as strictly as Congress had hoped, the Clayton Act was added to allow the federal government to try to stop potential monopolists in advance, before they could gain monopoly power. The Clayton Act covers a variety of antitrust issues (and includes some overlap with the Sherman Act). Its most important provision empowers the government to block proposed mergers, as mergers of large firms are a prime way that businesses might achieve monopoly power. Thus, the Clayton Act prohibits mergers when the effect ―may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.‖4 Of course, the ambiguous wording of that test gives government regulators a fair amount of leeway in deciding which proposed mergers to challenge. Although decisions by antitrust regulators on mergers require court enforcement, the judicial process requires significant time and resources for companies hoping to merge. As a practical matter, most companies choose to drop their plans for a merger if they cannot easily gain approval from government regulators.

These regulatory decisions on antitrust come principally from two different parts of the federal bureaucracy. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission share most of the antitrust review authority, dividing the workload usually (though not always) on an amicable basis.5 The Justice Department‘s antitrust work is done almost entirely by its Antitrust Division, led by an assistant attorney general for antitrust. A president can more directly influence or control antitrust policy in the Justice Department than at the Federal Trade Commission, as the attorney general and assistant attorney general for antitrust serve at the pleasure of the president. By contrast, of the five commissioners of the FTC, no more than three can come from the president‘s political party. In addition, because commissioners are appointed to seven-year terms, it may be several years into a presidential administration before the incumbent president is able to name even a majority of the FTC commissioners.

As there are two main laws and federal agencies, there are also two primary philosophies of antitrust. The more traditional approach has called for strong enforcement of antitrust laws against large businesses and consolidating industries. As Judge Learned Hand of the US Circuit Court of Appeals explained in 1945, traditional antitrust theory is ―based upon the belief that great industrial consolidations are inherently undesirable, regardless of their

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economic results.‖6 Using this theory, US antitrust enforcement reached a high point in the 1960s and 1970s, during both Republican and Democratic administrations.

The main competing theory, the Chicago School view of antitrust, gained dominance in US policy in the 1980s during the Reagan administration. Focusing more on questions of economic efficiency and the effect on consumers, rather than company size alone, the Chicago School approach fit well with the overall deregulatory thrust of the Reagan administration. The effect was a more pro-business approach and much more lenient antitrust enforcement for most of the 1980s. While the administration of the first President Bush was far less devoted to the Chicago School view, it did not completely reverse the pro-business inclinations of the Reagan years. Significantly for the Clinton administration, many of President Reagan‘s selections for the federal judiciary were proponents of the Chicago School approach. As most of the Reagan judges remained on the bench through the 1990s, they were in a position to review and overturn antitrust decisions of Clinton administration officials.

This potential for the courts to reverse a more expansive view of antitrust likely had some effect on the Clinton antitrust policy.

THE PRINCIPAL ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS Like most Presidents before him, Bill Clinton did not take a vocal role in setting antitrust policy. Nor did antitrust law, often an arcane and fairly complicated subject, play a significant part in either the 1992 or 1996 presidential campaigns. Thus, one must look to other officials—primarily the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and the assistant attorneys general for antitrust—to study the antitrust policy of the Clinton administration in depth.

The most intriguing, and arguably most telling, choice by Clinton for these top posts was that of Robert Pitofsky, who served as chairman of the FTC from 1995 to 2001. An FTC official during the Nixon administration and commissioner under President Carter, Pitofsky is a well-known antitrust expert who served as a top official in the Clinton transition team after the 1992 presidential election. Perhaps more importantly, Pitofsky wrote an antitrust textbook that a young Bill Clinton reportedly used when teaching antitrust law at the University of Arkansas.7 Thus, one can assume that Clinton certainly knew—and likely agreed with— Pitofsky‘s views on antitrust.

For those watching closely, Pitofsky gave some hints of his antitrust approach even before becoming chairman of the FTC. In a 1993 article entitled ―Antitrust Policy in a Clinton Administration,‖ Pitofsky contended that ―new thinking about antitrust is required.‖8 Then a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, Pitofsky first described the antitrust efforts of the Reagan years as ―about as minimal an antitrust program as can be imagined.‖9 Discussing the economic efficiency arguments espoused by the Chicago School proponents, Pitofsky argued that ―there is a germ of truth to most of that reasoning but that in every instance the analysis was carried too far. Antitrust should be interpreted primarily, but not exclusively, to achieve economic goals … and the market usually does a good job of allocating resources, but that is not always the case.‖10

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Noting that the first Bush Administration had departed from a doctrinaire Chicago School approach and thus strengthened antitrust enforcement compared to the Reagan years, Pitofsky speculated about possible courses of action for the Clinton administration: A second course is more likely. If you assume the Bush Administration raised the net above where it was placed during the Reagan years, a second approach would be to raise that net another notch or two. Antitrust enforcement would be more vigorous, but essentially on the same track, as the Bush years. As a result, a tough anticartel policy would continue. Close questions in all areas would more often lead to government challenges. Unjustified nonenforcement at the federal level would end.11

After giving more detailed predictions on how such a course could be implemented, Pitofsky added: ―Let us hope that in the 1990s we will see a continued rejection of the occasionally excessive enforcement of the 1960s and the minimal enforcement of the first eight years of the 1980s.‖12 In many respects, this prescription for a centrist approach to antitrust was indeed what became the Clinton antitrust policy.

At the Justice Department, Clinton‘s first assistant attorney general for the antitrust division was Anne Bingaman, an antitrust lawyer who had won a $1 billion verdict against a uranium cartel in the 1970s. When Bingaman, the wife of Democratic senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, began her job in June 1993, she was described as ―a plaintiff‘s lawyer with a reputation for being tough on big companies.‖13 Similarly, in a speech before the American Bar Association‘s antitrust section two months later, she spoke of her responsibility ―to reenergize antitrust enforcement for the benefit of both US consumers and producers‖ and called herself ―an unabashed and enthusiastic supporter of vigorous antitrust enforcement.‖14 Despite this apparent call for a return to traditional antitrust theories, there were still some signs that Bingaman had a more nuanced view of antitrust. In the same speech, she said she expected ―to employ a balanced approach‖ as assistant attorney general, noting that ―neither antitrust policy scholars nor enforcement officials view large firm size as a source of concern, in and of itself.‖15 After Bingaman served as assistant attorney general for most of Clinton‘s first term, Joel Klein held the position for most of the second term. Klein had been deputy White House counsel before moving to the Justice Department and serving as Bingaman‘s deputy. At the outset, his selection as assistant attorney general was not well received by those wanting strong antitrust enforcement. Then-senator Ernest Hollings, the powerful South Carolina Democrat, briefly blocked Klein‘s confirmation and said, ―We‘ve got an antitrust fellow here who rolls over and plays dead.‖16 The New York Times in 1997 editorialized that Klein ―has created strong doubts that he can provide aggressive antitrust leadership,‖ recommending to the Clinton administration ―withdrawing the nomination and finding a stronger, more aggressive successor.‖17 A column in the Financial Times reported that Klein‘s selection initially ―prompted howls of anguish from consumer groups and politicians.‖18 Ironically, it was Senate Republicans who ultimately forced a vote to confirm Klein, and all twelve senators who voted against Klein were Democrats.19 However, the concerns about Klein proved to be incorrect, as Klein eventually proved to be a tougher antitrust enforcer than Bingaman in many respects. His impact was shown by a Wall Street notion called the ―Klein spread,‖ described by The Economist as ―the discount in a company‘s shares based on possible antitrust problems.‖20 Even the New York Times changed its view. By the time he

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was leaving office in 2000, a Times editorial said of Klein: ―What he has done is take antitrust enforcement seriously. For that alone he warrants the nation‘s gratitude.‖21

CARTELS AND PRICE-FIXING Price-fixing occurs when businesses conspire to set prices either directly or indirectly (such as by limiting the supply of their products). This has long been viewed as one of the worst types of anticompetitive conduct, and there is little debate along political or philosophical lines about the need to stop such activity. Price-fixing can be penalized criminally or through civil proceedings brought by the government. An important part of the Clinton antitrust legacy will be the vigor with which the administration pursued and punished illegal price-fixing, both inside the United States and internationally. Between 1993 and 2000, more than eighty companies and sixty individuals involved in almost twenty different cartels were prosecuted for price-fixing.22 Many large companies admitted their guilt and paid massive fines, and a number of executives of those firms were sentenced to prison for their roles.

For example, Archer Daniels Midland Company in 1996 pleaded guilty to conspiring with international competitors to fix the price of agricultural products, agreeing to pay a record $100 million fine.23 (The previous record fine for criminal price-fixing was only $15 million.) Moreover, three top executives of the food processing company were convicted of price-fixing and sent to federal prison. One of those three was Michael Andreas, a company vice chairman and son of the politically powerful former chief executive officer of ADM, Dwayne Andreas. The $100 million record fine was eclipsed in 1999 in an international vitamin price-fixing case, when Hoffmann-La Roche of Switzerland and BASF of Germany agreed to fines of $500 million and $225 million, respectively.24 Lesser fines were obtained from five other companies that also pleaded guilty to participating in the vitamin cartel, and several international executives of the firms pleaded guilty and agreed to serve prison terms in the United States.

In fact, there was a remarkable increase in antitrust fines collected by the Clinton Justice Department. While total fines in the final full years of the first Bush administration were $20 million in fiscal year 1991 and $24 million in 1992,25 the numbers soared as high as $972 million in fiscal year 1999 and $308 million in 2000, the last two years of the Clinton administration.26 Antitrust fines had fallen back to $64 million by fiscal 2003 in the second Bush administration.27 This dramatic rise in antitrust fines can be attributed in part to much greater emphasis on enforcement in the Clinton administration, as well as to increased budgets and staff for the antitrust agencies. A revision to the Corporate Leniency Policy (better known as the amnesty program) for antitrust violators may have contributed even more. The amnesty program had been in effect since 1978, permitting the government to grant amnesty from criminal prosecution to the first company to self-report an antitrust law violation in most cases, so long as the report came before the Justice Department had begun its investigation. Assistant Attorney General Bingaman revised the guidelines in 1993, guaranteeing amnesty to the first reporting company under stated circumstances and permitting consideration of amnesty to the first reporting company even if Justice had already begun an investigation.28 The Justice

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Department normally received about one amnesty application per year before the policy revision, but the number had increased to about two per month, or more than twenty a year, by 1998.29 Even if one assumes that cartel activity increased in the 1990s, such a dramatic rise in amnesty applications still shows the effect of a much greater incentive to self-report after the amnesty program enhancements.

Yet another reason for the heightened price-fixing enforcement in the Clinton years was much greater emphasis on international cartels, as demonstrated by both the ADM and Hoffmann-La Roche cases. As Assistant Attorney General Klein reported to a Senate subcommittee in 1998, more than 90 percent of the antitrust fines imposed in fiscal years 1997 and 1998 resulted from prosecutions of international cartels.30 While no foreign-based corporations were prosecuted for criminal antitrust in fiscal years 1987 through 1990, Klein noted that 32 percent of corporate defendants were foreign-based firms in fiscal year 1997, and 50 percent in 1998.31 Another sign of greater international emphasis was the passage by Congress, at the urging of the Clinton Justice Department, of the International Antitrust Enforcement Assistance Act of 1994.32 This law allows US antitrust officials to enter reciprocal agreements with their counterparts in other nations to share evidence of illegal antitrust activity.

MONOPOLIZATION AND MICROSOFT The Clinton antitrust team was similarly aggressive in cases alleging monopolization, though here it met with only mixed success. The best example came in what is undoubtedly the signature case of the Clinton antitrust policy, the civil suit alleging monopolistic conduct

by Microsoft Corporation. The government claimed that Microsoft was using the undisputed dominance of its Windows operating system to strong-arm current and potential competitors.

In a major victory for the Clinton antitrust officials, a federal district judge in 2000 ruled that Microsoft had violated the Sherman Act in three ways: by using a series of anticompetitive acts to maintain its monopoly power in the operating systems market; by attempting to monopolize the separate web browser market; and by bundling the less popular Internet Explorer browser with the highly popular Windows (known as a ―tying agreement‖ in antitrust law).33 Even more significantly, the federal judge ordered that Microsoft be broken into two separate companies. Such a drastic structural remedy is rarely imposed by courts, and it raised concerns about government interference with the business world.

Much of this potential landmark ruling, though, was reversed on appeal in 2001. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 7–0 vote, affirmed the illegal monopoly maintenance finding but overturned the attempted monopolization charge and remanded the tying agreement issue for more evidence.34 Further, the appellate court reversed the order to split up Microsoft, in part due to the trial judge‘s improper comments to the media soon after his ruling. The new Bush antitrust team at the Justice Department decided not to pursue the breakup of Microsoft on remand, nor to retry the less important tying agreement charge. Before a second trial on the appropriate remedy for monopolization was held, the Justice Department and Microsoft agreed to settle the case on terms that most observers considered lenient to Microsoft.

The Justice Department‘s willingness to settle on terms favorable to Microsoft in 2001 certainly provides some evidence of a less aggressive approach or a different antitrust

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philosophy in the second Bush administration. However, other factors also played a role. For one, Microsoft now had more incentive to settle, because it had been found guilty on appeal of at least one antitrust violation (a finding that would have greatly aided its competitors‘ private antitrust suits seeking treble damages). In addition, the new trial judge assigned to the case on remand strongly urged both sides to settle, and the September 11 terrorist attacks had occurred only two months before the settlement, damaging the US economy and refocusing the Justice Department‘s priorities.35 Whatever the principal reason for the Microsoft settlement, it meant that very little was left from what might have been the most stunning antitrust achievement of the Clinton administration. Though it was noteworthy that the main monopolization charge against Microsoft had been upheld on appeal, that still did not deter Microsoft from engaging in similar conduct involving newer products—acts that led the European Union to penalize Microsoft in 2004 for violating EU antitrust law.36 The Justice Department had even less success in its monopolization case against American Airlines, where it alleged that American had engaged in predatory pricing to harm low-price competitors trying to invade American‘s hubs. The case, brought by the Clinton Justice Department, was dismissed by a federal district judge in April 2001.37 Surprising some observers, the new Bush Justice Department chose to appeal the dismissal. However, American Airlines‘ victory was affirmed on appeal, further weakening the already disputed antitrust theory of predatory pricing.38 Probably the biggest victory in monopolization cases in the Clinton years was the FTC‘s suit alleging that Mylan Labs used anticompetitive means to monopolize the market and drastically increase prices for two generic drugs. The FTC and state attorneys general sought to force ―disgorgement‖ of Mylan‘s profits from those drugs, even without specific statutory support for such a remedy. In a significant ruling, a federal district court accepted the FTC‘s disgorgement theory,39 prompting Mylan to settle the case for $100 million.40 Depending on future use of this novel theory, the threat of disgorgement might prove to be an important part of the Clinton antitrust legacy.

MERGER MANIA The Clinton record on mergers is more debatable and subject to interpretation, as it is difficult to isolate the antitrust issues involving mergers from the surrounding business and economic conditions. With a strong US economy marking most of the Clinton years, the 1990s have been described as a time of ―merger mania.‖ The stock market soared for much of the decade before the bubble burst in 2000. As a result, it became easier—and more tempting—for companies to buy out their competitors or distributors with their inflated stock.

Acknowledging these unusual market conditions, one might still be surprised by the permissiveness of the Clinton team in allowing mergers, even among directly competing companies. The level of merger activity can be measured by examining regulatory filings under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act,41 which requires advance approval from antitrust regulators for mergers over a certain size. (Mergers worth at least $15 million had to be reported until December 2000, when Congress raised the threshold to $50 million. Thus the revised law would skew any comparisons with the number of HSR filings in the second Bush administration.)

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In perhaps the most thorough review to date of the Clinton antitrust policy, two former officials of the Justice Department‘s Antitrust Division in the Clinton administration, Robert E. Litan and Carl Shapiro, have compiled a variety of statistics demonstrating the merger trend.42 For example, the number of these HSR filings more than tripled from the final three years of the first Bush administration to the final three Clinton years, from an average of 1,366 in 1990–92 to an average of 4,584 in 1998–2000.43 Moreover, the value of these deals soared from an average of $151 billion annually between 1990 and 1992 to an average of $1.7 trillion for 1998–99.44 Assistant Attorney General Klein notes that the amount of merger activity rose from $75 billion in 1992 to more than $2 trillion in 2000.45 Litan and Shapiro also note that ―the rate of challenges of mergers as a percentage of HSR filings … did not rise significantly from the early 1990s to the late 1990s,‖ and that ―despite the huge number of mergers proposed and consummated, virtually none of these mergers were challenged and litigated on antitrust grounds.‖46 In fact, the percentage of mergers challenged in court each year never exceeded one-half of one percent, according to Litan and Shapiro‘s calculations.47 The Clinton antitrust team did reject some large combinations, especially when two of only three competitors in a particular market were seeking to merge. That was seen in successful efforts in court to block the proposed mergers of Office Depot and Staples in the office supply store market and of H. J. Heinz and Beech-Nut in the baby food market.

Moreover, other deals were approved only after imposing many conditions, such as the divestiture of overlapping assets in the Exxon-Mobil merger or restraints on conduct in the AOL-Time Warner combination.

Still, one can easily conclude that the Clinton administration approved more and larger mergers than any prior administration. The more difficult question is whether this trend was caused by a permissive view of antitrust enforcement on merger issues, by business and stock market conditions in general, or by other factors. Litan and Shapiro attribute the high level of approved mergers in part to the predictability of merger enforcement, as companies could ascertain with some level of accuracy which mergers were likely to be challenged due to the government‘s Horizontal Merger Guidelines.48 While at least a plausible partial explanation, one could also argue that lenient merger enforcement early in the Clinton years emboldened businesses to try ever-larger mergers, hoping to rely on recent precedents and testing how far the trend could be stretched. It raises a classic cause-and-effect question: Did the large number of mergers of the 1990s lead to what appeared to be a lenient merger policy, or did the lenient policy of the early Clinton years lead to the merger mania?

Yet another potential cause of the permissive approach on mergers was the rapid globalization of the business world, which led to the theory that large US companies needed to merge to remain competitive as their international rivals were combining. Further, continued acceptance of economic efficiency arguments, a holdover from the Chicago School approach of the 1980s, likely also influenced the lenient view on merger control.

To judge the effects of the Clinton antitrust policy, one must also look to the future. Just as mergers of unprecedented size were approved in the Clinton years, that trend has continued in the second Bush administration. If one accepts the theory of the Clayton Act—that large mergers in some cases may lead to future monopolies—it would be reasonable to ask if the United States should anticipate an increase in monopolistic behavior in coming years because of the massive mergers of the past decade.

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THE CLINTON ANTITRUST LEGACY What, then, is the overall Clinton antitrust legacy? It is a truly mixed picture. It featured vigorous and highly effective efforts to punish domestic and international cartels, aggressive but far less successful prosecution of monopolistic behavior, and a generally permissive approach to large mergers. In short, it probably satisfied neither extreme in the antitrust debate—those who sought a return to traditional, strong antitrust enforcement, or those who hoped for a continuation of the Chicago School approach of the Reagan years. It was indeed a ―middle ground,‖ as FTC Chairman Pitofsky described it in a retrospective look in 2001,49 and in fact had forecast in 1993 before joining the FTC.50 Some have even called this middle ground a ―post-Chicago School‖ view of antitrust.51 Perhaps this should not have been a surprise, considering the centrist approach of the Clinton administration in other policy areas. It was never easy to categorize or label the Democratic president who proclaimed ―the era of big government is over,‖52 campaigned as a ―New Democrat,‖ and held ―Third Way‖ conferences with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other world leaders.53 With antitrust having a considerable effect on the business world, both directly through enforcement and indirectly through the threat of government intervention, it likely made sense for the Clinton administration to tread cautiously on antitrust to encourage business, especially in an era of strong economic growth and a booming stock market.

Several decades from now, viewed from the perspective of more distant history, the Clinton antitrust record will likely be seen as a period of moderately stronger antitrust activity than during the twelve years of two Bush administrations surrounding it, and significantly heightened enforcement compared to the Reagan years. Should the next Democratic administration choose to embrace the same middle ground, that would only enhance the lasting significance of this ―New Democrat‖ approach to antitrust.

ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

Section 1 of the Sherman Act states: ―Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal.‖ 15 USC § 1 (2005).

Section 2 of the Sherman Act states: ―Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony …‖ 15 USC § 2 (2005).

Of course, there are numerous other antitrust laws, at both the federal and state levels.

However, this chapter will focus primarily on the two statutes that are most frequently used by the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission in enforcing antitrust policy.

Section 7 of the Clayton Act states: ―No person engaged in commerce or in any activity affecting commerce shall acquire, directly or indirectly, the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital … of another person engaged also in commerce or in any activity affecting commerce, where in any line of commerce or in any activity affecting commerce in any section

50

5

6 7

8

9 10 11

Larry Bumgardner of the country, the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.‖ 15 USC § 18 (2005).

Depending on the type of business involved, other federal agencies may also play a role in antitrust issues. For example, the Federal Communications Commission must also approve mergers in the telecommunications and broadcasting industries.

United States v. Aluminum Co. of America, Inc., 148 F.2d 416, 428 (2d Cir. 1945).

Owen Ullmann, ―Another Tough Cop for the Antitrust Beat,‖ Business Week, November 14, 1994, 49.

Robert Pitofsky, ―Antitrust Policy in a Clinton Administration,‖ Antitrust Law Journal 62 (1993): 217.

Ibid.

Ibid., 218.

Ibid.

12

Ibid., 220.

13

Stephen H. Wildstrom and Catherine Yang, ―An Activist at Antitrust,‖ Business Week, June 21, 1993, 51.

Anne Bingaman, ―A New Direction for Antitrust Enforcement,‖ The Recorder, September 1, 1993, 8.

Ibid.

Mike Mills, ―Hollings Acts to Block Antitrust Nominee,‖ Washington Post, June 3, 1997, C1. ―A Weak Antitrust Nominee,‖ New York Times, July 11, 1997, A26.

Gerard Baker, ―New Game of Monopoly,‖ Financial Times (London), November 20, 1997, 17.

Helen Dewar, ―Holder Approved for Justice Post,‖ Washington Post, July 18, 1997, A10. ―The New Enforcers,‖ The Economist, October 7, 2000, 79. ―Legacy of an Antitrust Chief,‖ New York Times, September 24, 2000, D4.

International Competition Policy Advisory Committee (ICPAC), ―Final Report to the Attorney General and Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust,‖ Chapter 4, http://www.justice.gov/atr/icpac/chapter4.htm Kurt Eichenwald, ―Archer Daniels Agrees to Big Fine for Price Fixing,‖ New York Times, October 15, 1996, A1.

David Segal, ―Record Fine for Vitamin Cartel,‖ Washington Post, May 21, 1999, A1.

Robert E. Litan and Carl Shapiro, ―Antitrust Policy in the Clinton Administration,‖ Chapter 7 in Jeffrey Frankel and Peter Orszag, eds., American Economic Policy in the 1990s (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 456.

US Department of Justice, ―Antitrust Division Workload Statistics, FY 1990–1999 and FY 2000–2009, http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/246419.pdf Ibid.

ICPAC, supra note 22.

Ibid. ―Statement of Joel I. Klein, Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, US Department of Justice, Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Antitrust, Business Rights and Competition Subcommittee,‖ October 2, 1998, http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/public/testimony/ 1971.htm Ibid.

International Antitrust Enforcement Assistance Act of 1994, 15 USC §§ 6200-6212 (2005).

14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

24 25

26

27 28 29 30

31 32

Antitrust and Business Regulation 33 34 35

36

37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52

53

51

United States v. Microsoft Corp., 87 F. Supp.2d 30 (D.DC 2000).

United States v. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d 34 (DC Cir. 2001).

Jonathan Krim, ―Circumstances Had Role in US-Microsoft Deal,‖ Washington Post, November 3, 2001, A21.

James Kanter, Don Clark, and John R. Wilke, ―EU Imposes Sanctions on Microsoft,‖ Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2004, A2.

United States v. AMR Corp., 140 F. Supp.2d 1141 (D. Kan. 2001).

United States v. AMR Corp., 335 F.3d 1109 (10th Cir. 2003).

Federal Trade Commission v. Mylan Labs., Inc., 62 F. Supp.2d 25 (D.DC 1999). ―States Reach $100 Million Settlement with Drug Manufacturer,‖ Antitrust Rep., July/Aug. 2000, 1.

Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, 25 USC § 18a (2005) Litan and Shapiro, ―Antitrust Policy,‖ 435–85.

Ibid., 470.

Ibid. ―A Trustbuster Looks Back,‖ Business Week, October 2, 2000, 52.

Litan and Shapiro, ―Antitrust Policy,‖ 470.

Ibid.

Ibid., 471.

Pitofsky, panel discussion in Frankel and Orszag, eds., American Economic Policy, 488.

Pitofsky, ―Antitrust Policy in a Clinton Administration,‖ 217.

William J. Holstein, ―Business‘s Biggest Stake in a Bush Win,‖ Business Week, December 11, 2000, 57.

Ann Devroy, ―Clinton Embraces GOP Themes in Setting Agenda; ‗Era of Big Government Is Over,‘ Clinton Tells Nation,‖ Washington Post, January 24, 1996, A1.

E. J. Dionne Jr., ―In Search of the Third Way,‖ Washington Post, September 25, 1998, A25.

V. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 6

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION: PROACTIVE LEADERSHIP IN TURBULENT TIMES Laura Lally Department of Information Technology, Hofstra University Hempstead, NY, US

Information Technology (IT) evolved at a rapid pace during the eight years of the Clinton administration (1992–2000). Computers became more powerful and more connected to one another. The World Wide Web provided a user-friendly interface to the Internet, making it accessible to a wide audience of non-technical users, and also permitted new ways to conduct business. In traditional business, processes could be streamlined and paperwork eliminated.

Supply chains could be managed more efficiently. Sales forces could be automated. More detailed information could be collected about customer preferences, permitting the development of products more suited for their needs. A whole new category of business, enterprises that existed only on the Web—exemplified by companies such as Amazon.com and Ebay—emerged. Additionally, the Web provided new opportunities for education in nontraditional classroom settings. The Web also provided new ways for people to keep in touch with family and friends. As bandwidth began to increase, the Web provided more opportunities for entertainment, as well.

The early days of the Web were often likened to the wild west, with new businesses emerging and often disappearing, at a rapid rate. The Web was a de facto global interchange, but there were no global standards for its use. The Clinton administration was faced with the challenges of: 1) developing an information infrastructure that would allow the businesses of United States to compete in the global marketplace; 2) encouraging the appropriate development of E-business applications; 3) cracking down on illegal or inappropriate E-businesses; and 4) making access to the Web a possibility for all Americans.

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At the same time as these new opportunities abounded, the growing complexity of computer systems and the rapidity with which they evolved made them less understandable, even to technical experts. The Y2K (―year 2000‖) problem was caused by shortsightedness on the part of software designers, who were constrained by a lack of space on Hollerith punch cards and in the computers‘ main memory, limitations that became known in the 1950s. As a result, the penny-wise, pound-foolish decision was made to use only two significant digits to represent the year in the date field. By the late 1990s, the use of two-character year fields had already been shown to cause inappropriate representations of the year 2000 in a wide range of applications, causing transactions to fail, computer controlled machines to malfunction, and computations involving algorithms with date functions to provide wrong answers. Y2K was the first computer-related risk that received the commitment of major resources from corporate CEOs and government leaders. The Y2K problem provided a stunning example of how an innocent error in design, embedded within millions of computers that were interconnected to each other, could possibly lead to worldwide system breakdowns, with catastrophic results. The Y2K problem revealed how quickly we had become dependent on computer systems and how devastating the impact of their failure could be on society. The challenge to the Clinton administration was to: 1) understand the nature of the problem and convey it to the American people in a concerned but not panic-inducing, manner; 2) assemble a team of technical experts from both industry and academia to address the problem; and 3) assure the American people that government agencies would be Y2K-compliant.

This chapter will analyze the responses of the Clinton administration to these major challenges and opportunities from the perspective of Normal Accident Theory and the theory of High Reliability Organizations (HROs). The chapter will argue that the administration exhibited many of the characteristics of executives in High Reliability Organizations, which resulted in Y2K having minimal impacts. The chapter will also argue that the Clinton administration‘s proactive approach toward technology, along with the high level of technical expertise of Vice President Gore, provided a positive atmosphere for the development of Ecommerce.

NORMAL ACCIDENT THEORY AND THE THEORY OF HIGH RELIABILITY ORGANIZATIONS Normal Accident Theory argues that characteristics of a system‘s design make it more or less prone to accidents. Accidents are defined as ―a failure in a subsystem, or the system as a whole, that damages more than one unit and in doing so disrupts the ongoing or future output of the system.‖1 Perrow distinguishes between disastrous ―accidents,‖ which are system-wide and seriously impact the system‘s overall functioning, and ―incidents,‖ which involve single failures that can be contained within a limited area and which do not compromise the system‘s overall functioning. Perrow argues that no system can be designed to completely avoid incidents, but that inherent qualities of the system determine how far and how fast the damage will spread. Systems that are not designed to contain the negative impact of incidents will, therefore, be subject to accidents in the course of their normal functioning.

The first key characteristic of accident-prone systems is their complexity. Normal Accident Theory argues that as systems become more complex, they become more accident-

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prone. Linear interactions (such as an assembly line), characterized by ―dedicated,‖ predefined connections between the process parts, make incidents easier to identify and less likely to propagate in unexpected ways. Linear interactions are likely to be more visible to operators, but even when the interactions are not visible, the process interactions are likely to be well understood and predictable. Operators, therefore, can respond quickly to an incident.

Complex systems, in contrast, are characterized by multiple possible connections between process parts. Complex systems are also more likely to have ―common-mode‖ connections in which one part serves a number of functions. An incident involving a common mode can propagate to a number of processes that depend upon it. The unanticipated propagation of incidents is also more likely in complex systems because these systems are likely to have fewer visible interactions. Operators, therefore, become more dependent on indirect control indicators. ―In complex systems, where not even the tip of the iceberg is visible, the communication must be exact, the dial correct, the switch position obvious, the reading direct and on-line.‖2 Perrow also notes that the greatest source of complexity is often the external environment and that having a system interact with the external environment is likely to significantly increase its complexity.

Normal Accident Theory distinguishes a second characteristic of systems that exacerbate potential problems brought about as a result of complexity: tight coupling. Tight coupling means that there is no slack time or buffering of resources between tasks; interactions happen immediately. Tight coupling, like complexity, is often more efficient from a productivity standpoint. However, incidents tend to propagate faster and their impact becomes more severe, because there is no lag time during which human intervention can occur and no buffer stocks to mitigate the impact of downtime.

Perrow developed his theory while studying complex technologies such as nuclear power plants and petrochemical plants to determine the conditions under which incidents such as valve failures could lead to accidents such as meltdowns and the release of poisonous gases into populated areas. Normal Accident Theory argues that incidents need to be anticipated and controls built into the system to contain their propagation.

Researchers in High Reliability Organizations have examined organizations in which complex, tightly coupled, technologically based systems appeared to be coping successfully with the potential for disaster. High reliability theorists‘ studies of the Federal Aviation Administration‘s air traffic control system, the Pacific Gas and Electric‘s electric power system—including the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant—and the peacetime flight operations of three United States Navy aircraft carriers indicate that organizations can achieve nearly error-free operation.3 High reliability organization theorists identify four critical causal factors for achieving reliability: 1. Political elites and organizational leaders put safety and reliability first as a goal.

2. High levels of redundancy in personnel and technical safety measures are present.

3. A ―high reliability culture‖ is in place in decentralized and continually practiced operations.

4. Sophisticated forms of trial-and-error organizational learning exist.

The two theories have been contrasted as ―pessimistic‖—indicated by Perrow‘s contention that disaster is inevitable in badly designed systems—versus ―optimistic‖—shown

by La Porte‘s pragmatic approach to achieving greater reliability. The theories, however, are

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in agreement as to which characteristics of systems make them more or less accident-prone.

This chapter will next argue that information technology is inherently complex and tightly coupled, with too few controls to contain the propagation of errors. These characteristics are what permitted a design flaw, such as Y2K, considered ―trivial‖ by software designers, to potentially propagate into a global disaster, and why even the experts were unable to predict what the impact would be.

THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION AND Y2K When the Y2K problem surfaced, the Clinton administration responded in a manner characteristic of leaders of High Reliability Organizations. President Clinton took a proactive role in putting the safety of the American people first. The Clinton administration faced two additional challenges with Y2K beyond those faced by HROs. Leaders of such organizations—managers of power plants, captains of aircraft carriers, and mayors of hurricane-prone cities, for example—develop an awareness of the type of challenges they are likely to face and the expected impact when such challenges do occur. Y2K, however, presented a problem that was unprecedented and its likely impact difficult to envision.

Secondly, problems in HROs happen within organizations with a common culture, where shared values and appropriate behaviors can be more readily enforced. But Y2K happened on a global sale, across many diverse cultures with widely varying degrees of computer literacy.

President Clinton‘s first challenge, therefore, was to clearly present, in terms understandable to a broad audience, the technical challenges of the Y2K problem.

In February 1998, he appointed John Koskinen as chair of the President‘s Council on Year 2000 Conversion. The Council had thirty-four agency working groups focused on areas from telecommunications to financial institutions. Working groups such as the Small Business Administration working group provided Web-based self-assessment tests. The Energy Department and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission worked with industry associations such as the North American Electric Reliability Council, the American Petroleum Institute, the Natural Gas Council, and the Gas Industry Standards Board. The Federal Reserve, chair of the financial institutions working group, and other federal financial institutions worked together to establish extensive testing of their systems. The President‘s Council was also charged with making federal agencies compliant by March 31, 1999.

President Clinton also created other initiatives to address the Y2K challenge.

He proposed ―Good Samaritan‖ legislation to encourage sharing of Y2K information among businesses, without being subject to lawsuits if the information was unintentionally inaccurate.

President Clinton established a Labor Department World Wide Web Y2K Job Bank to coordinate the supply and demand for computer talent to address the Y2K problem. He also committed $12 million to the World Bank to increase awareness of the Y2K problem in developing countries. The administration organized twenty regional conferences. He instituted a ―National Campaign for Year 2000 Solutions‖ to increase public awareness and foster information sharing about solutions.

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The president also demonstrated his ability to extend his vision of Y2K preparedness beyond party lines. In June1999 he backed a Year 2000 Bill to limit lawsuits arising from Y2K, strongly favored by business interests, the computer industry, and Republicans.

The proactive response of the Clinton administration and its many initiatives spanned the scientific community, government, private sector business, and global organizations. By December 1998 the president was able to announce that the Social Security Administration was 100 percent Y2K compliant. By December 27, 1999, John Koskinen was able to announce that 95 percent of all 911 systems were compliant, that hospitals would be exposed only to failures in accounting systems, and that automated security systems in prisons were compliant. As January 1, 2000, came and went, a number of isolated failures did occur, but President Clinton‘s statement that ―the savings and safety of the American people would not be at risk‖ and that government functions, ―from air traffic control systems to Social Security payment systems will continue to work exactly as they should‖ held true.

LESSONS FOR FUTURE ADMINISTRATIONS The Clinton administration approach to the Y2K problem exhibited the characteristics High Reliability theorists recommend for dealing with crises. Instead of exhibiting denial, as many high level executives do when confronted with a problem that may or may not be critical, the administration explored the problem through consultation with technical experts and presented it to the American people in a cautious but straightforward manner. It rallied technical experts to assist in solving the problem. Specialists in all major industries were assigned to ensure compliance. The American people received regular updates. The political and legal aspects of the problem were also addressed before the cutover date. This comprehensive, bipartisan approach to the problem provided a sense of assurance to the American people and played a major role in averting a catastrophe.

The same strengths the Clinton administration exhibited in dealing with Y2K also helped when facing a major IT-related opportunity, the World Wide Web. Like Y2K, the Web was unprecedented and global. The next section of the chapter will explore the challenges and opportunities of the emerging Web that faced President Clinton and Vice President Gore in the late 1990s, analyzing their performance in developing appropriate infrastructures and applications and in making the Web accessible to all Americans.

THE WEB EMERGES The World Wide Web emerged in the early 1990s, when a user-friendly interface for the Internet emerged. This interface allowed non-technical users to take advantage of the benefits of the Internet‘s vast infrastructure. The infrastructure itself was rapidly evolving, with computers becoming more powerful and telecommunications bandwidth increasing. Quickly, applications developed for the Web allowed businesses and individuals to access a wide range of services. With no centralized control, the challenge to the Clinton administration was to guide the development of the nation‘s infrastructure, to ensure that appropriate applications were developed that were in line with America‘s existing business laws, to develop new laws

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to address the unique aspects of the Web, and to promote the use of the Web by all American citizens.

The critical role of Vice President Al Gore, who had a vast technical knowledge of and fascination with emerging technologies, cannot be overemphasized, because he needed to rally and gain consensus among technical experts in the private sector. When new technologies evolve, standards must also evolve for their appropriate use and interoperability.

Achieving these standards is a far greater challenge in a free enterprise economy like the United States than in an economy in which there is more government regulation. An example of this was the adoption of standards for Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) by Singapore (ISDN is a protocol that allows faster transmission rates over traditional phone lines).4 Singapore rapidly recognized the potential for this innovation, and its government agreed that the nation would be 100 percent ISDN-compliant by 1989. Singapore achieved this goal, and as a result, a number of state-of-the-art applications were developed. For example, the automation of Singapore‘s seaport system became a benchmark for the rest of the world. This application leveraged Singapore‘s strategic location as an Asian trading hub and produced major benefits for its economy. Singapore‘s Internet applications in medicine, education, government, and cultural institutions were also state-of-the-art.

Unlike leaders of more managed economies, however, Vice President Gore could not dictate standards to industry but rather had to gather a consensus among industry players to achieve agreement on standards. Without a strong technical background he would not have had the credibility to interact convincingly with experts in the computer and telecommunications industry.

While a senator, Vice President Gore introduced the High Performance Computing Act, which was passed in 1991. The bill established the High-Performance Computing and Communications Program, which provided research and development funding for the creation of more powerful supercomputers and faster computer networks and created the first national high-speed network. This network required a close alliance between the administration and the private sector that was spearheaded by the vice president.

EXPANDING THE USE OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB The Clinton administration had as major goals improvement of education and closing the ―digital divide.‖ In 1996, the president created ―Net Day‖ and personally helped wire classrooms in California. In 1998, he called on states to impose a ―technology literacy‖ requirement on all children in middle school and proposed spending $180 million to train teachers in states that adopted such a requirement. In 1999, Clinton rallied executives of technology companies and representatives of minorities and civil rights groups to develop a series of partnerships and initiatives to make computers available to low-income groups. At the same time, the president pursued initiatives to eliminate pornographic content on the Web. To encourage trust in online transactions, the Clinton administration established ―Digital Ink,‖ online signatures that would take the place of handwritten ones. The Clinton administration also pursued initiatives to preserve international copyright laws on the Web. In 1998, to encourage business to move to the Web, the administration called for a bill that would bar state and local governments from enacting taxes on the Internet until 2004. The

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same year, Vice President Gore announced a list of a dozen initiatives to tighten the security of financial and medical records and to protect the privacy of children who use the Internet. In November, 1999, the president fielded questions from the public for an hour and a half on the Internet.

All these initiatives were proactive and required a close alliance between the Administration and the private sector. As with the Y2K problem, not only did the administration explore the technological dimensions of the issues, but it also considered the political, legal, and social implications. The American people were continually encouraged to join in and benefit from the progress being made.

DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH The Clinton administration faced another major challenge: the re-emergence of terrorism.

Cyberterrorist attacks became more frequent and more severe, and the administration again had to rally the scientific community and private industry to combat these threats. An analysis of the administration‘s response to this challenge, as well as an examination of technologies currently emerging in the post-9/11 environment to help future administrations counter terrorism, will be the next focus of this research.

ENDNOTES 1

2 3

4

Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 66).

Ibid., 84.

T. R. LaPorte and P. Consolini, ―Working in Practice but Not in Theory: Theoretical Challenges of High Reliability Organizations,‖ Journal of Public Administration 1 (1991), 19– 47; Scott Sagan, The Limits of Safety (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

See Laura Lally, ―From Singapore to Al Gore: Guidelines for Infrastructure Development,‖ Proceedings of the National Decision Sciences Conference (Washington, DC, November 1993) 372–74.

VI. CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 7

“THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT”?

BILL CLINTON AND CIVIL RIGHTS Peter B. Levy Department of History and Political Science York College York, PA, US Nothing angered Bill Clinton‘s critics more than the overwhelming support he received from African Americans. At the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, polls showed that about 90 percent of blacks approved of the job he was doing. Members of the congressional black caucus and national black leaders and intellectuals rallied to Clinton‘s defense. Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates‘s declaration, ―We are going to the wall for this president,‖ epitomized the depth of black affinity for the president, as did noted black author Toni Morrison‘s description of Clinton as the ―first black president.‖1 Only style, not substance, conservatives contended, could account for the extreme fealty of the black community to Clinton. Randall Kennedy, an African American professor at Yale Law School, stated, ―The main explanation for blacks‘ widespread and enthusiastic support of Clinton is the perception [my emphasis] that he has been supportive of them. J. C. Watts, the black Republican congressman from Oklahoma, concurred. ―I … give him an ―A‖ for putting race on his agenda, but I give him a ―D‖ for execution.‖ Or as Abigail Thernstrom wrote: ―I am trying to think of what he has done, and I can‘t.‖2 Nearly all assessments of his presidency agree that when it came to African Americans, Clinton displayed a mastery of the politics of symbolism. Clinton pledged that his administration would look like America, and he appointed numerous African Americans to high posts, including his cabinet appointments of Ron Brown, Hazel O‘Leary, and Mike Espy. Clinton frequented African American churches and, as many observed, genuinely appeared comfortable among blacks. Whereas his opponents avoided black venues, Clinton interacted directly with black audiences through both traditional forums, such as the annual NAACP convention, and through BET and the Arsenio Hall Show.

Clinton also took the most of important symbolic moments to display his concern for and knowledge of African American history. For instance, he delivered a moving address at the

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Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on the thirty-fifth anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights March, where he honored those who were assaulted on Bloody Sunday in March 1965 and an array of civil rights activists who had died in the fight for racial equality.3 But was this all? Did the support Clinton received from African Americans rest largely on style rather than substance? What was his record on civil rights? How does it compare to the records of his contemporaries? Does his record look good on its own, or only in comparison to the Republican presidents who have occupied the White House since Lyndon B. Johnson (excluding Jimmy Carter‘s brief interregnum)?

While any analysis of Clinton‘s civil rights record cannot ignore the symbolic actions he took, ultimately it was his conscious decision to emphasize non–race based measures to address the persistence of racial inequality in America that deserves the greatest amount of attention and which, in the long run, accounts for the support he received from African Americans. Indeed, a careful review of the record reminds us that black support for Clinton was tenuous when he first rose to national prominence, and that he took a number of actions that risked losing black support at various times during his presidency. By developing and following a vision for improving the condition of African Americans, he earned the support of the black community and the title ―the first African American president.‖

HISTORICAL CONTEXT Any discussion of Clinton‘s civil rights record cannot ignore the historical context of his ascendancy to the presidency. Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and Bush (father and son), transformed the Republicans from a party that conceded the South to the Democrats into one whose base lay in the heart of Dixie. Suffice it to say this transformation had many causes, but among other things it entailed pursuing political strategies and policies that appealed to whites and offended African Americans. This included Ronald Reagan‘s decision to open his political campaign for the presidency in 1980 by delivering a speech at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murder of civil rights martyrs Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, where he declared his support for ―states‘ rights‖; and George W. Bush‘s infamous use of the Willy Horton advertisement to attack Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. More substantively, notwithstanding the ―Philadelphia Plan,‖ the first official federal affirmative action program which originated during the Nixon administration, the Republicans became the anti-affirmative action party when their leaders appointed or tried to appoint individuals to the federal bench who had abysmal civil rights records. The increasing prominence of Southern Republicans who at the least had white supremacist ghosts in their closets—from Jesse Helms to Trent Lott, not to mention Strom Thurmond— reinforced the image of the GOP as the party of racial redemption.4 True, during the 1990s there were Republicans who sought to expand the GOP‘s base.

In his autobiography, Clinton praises Jack Kemp, who served as George W. Bush‘s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and as Bob Dole‘s running mate, as ―an interesting man … with a genuine commitment to bringing economic opportunity to poor people and an openness to new ideas from all quarters.‖5 Conservative critiques of welfare as a system that trapped poor people, especially African Americans, into a cycle of dependency, dovetailed with the Democratic Leadership Council‘s and Clinton‘s views and were not, as some

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contended, proof of their racism. Further, even though calls to get tough on crime originated as a code for keeping blacks in their place, calls for anti-crime measures did not have to be viewed as being anti-black. Still, even ―compassionate conservatives‖ had a legitimacy problem, and that made Clinton shine in comparison.

Of course, Clinton did not, as some have argued, take black support for granted. On the contrary, from very early in his political career he assembled a record that allowed him to cast himself as a symbol of the new, post–Jim Crow South. In 1963 at the age of seventeen, he delivered a speech aimed at representing Arkansas at Boys‘ Nation in which he lamented the ―shame‖ of the Little Rock school crisis. As a sophomore in college he campaigned for Judge Frank Holt for governor of Arkansas, the progressive challenger against the white supremacist Jim Johnson. While in college and law school he befriended black students, including Lani Guinier, formed an interracial rock band, and reveled in the music of Ray Charles. In contrast, Trent Lott, who was only five years older than Clinton and seemingly had similar political aspirations, initially worked for Congressman William Colmer, one of Mississippi‘s standard bearers of the ―Old South,‖ and changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican so as to make clear to his Mississippi constituents his opposition to the civil rights revolution.6 More importantly, from his time as attorney general and governor of Arkansas to his campaign for the presidency, Clinton did not stand for the ways of the Old South. In his first inaugural address as governor of Arkansas, Clinton declared, ―For as long as I can remember, I have believed passionately in the cause of equal opportunity.‖ The educational reforms he implemented as governor disproportionately benefited blacks. Evidently because they came to believe that he meant what he said, blacks overwhelmingly supported him for reelection in 1982 and afterwards. A core of blacks from Arkansas played a seminal role in his campaign for the presidency in 1992, and their efforts helped make him the comeback kid.

EARLY RECORD Clinton‘s appointment of more African Americans to high posts than any previous president, his openness to the black congressional caucus, and his friendship with leading black spokespersons such as one-time National Urban League chairman Vernon Jordan and Atlanta congressman and civil rights veteran John Lewis got him off to a good start with black Americans. One hundred days into Clinton‘s presidency, 90 percent of African Americans gave him a favorable job approval rating; in contrast, only 59 percent of whites did. Over the next year and a half, however, black support for Clinton fell precipitously, to a low of 63 percent in the fall of 1994.

What happened? To an extent, black opinions about Clinton paralleled white opinions. As an admixture of snafus, scandals, and policy miscues cast doubt over his leadership, support from whites and blacks declined. Certainly the Lani Guinier imbroglio, in which he nominated and then withdrew the nomination of Guinier, hurt him. Yet Clinton‘s pursuit of a set of policies outside the traditional liberal mainstream, from NAFTA to welfare reform, also contributed to these falling poll numbers among African Americans. Few black leaders supported these policies, and numerous African Americans sharply criticized them. A Fall 1993 editorial in The Crisis, the NAACP journal, lamented, ―How many more ‗snow jobs‘

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will the disenfranchised, the working class folks of color, and others … have to see and hear before they come to the conclusion that many Americans truly cast their votes for Slick Willie?‖7 Black author Juan Williams wrote a column entitled ―Reaganite on Civil Rights?

Why Clinton‘s Compassionate Agenda May Look Familiar,‖ in which he noted that black support for these policies was tenuous at best. As Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel quipped, ―I don‘t think he‘s one of those ‗compassionate conservatives,‘ but that is who he has been producing for.‖ Indicative of his declining support among African Americans, the major media outlets released a flurry of reports on the growing differences between Clinton and the Congressional Black Caucus. Clinton‘s refusal to send troops to Haiti to restore JeanBetrand Aristide to power, in spite of his suggestions on the campaign trail that he would do so, further angered blacks.8 So what accounted for the improvement in Clinton‘s fortunes, such that his approval rating shot up to over 80 percent in the late spring of 1995 and consistently stayed there for the rest of his presidency, and that witnessed the NAACP calling him an ―honorary black‖?9 To an extent, acts that can be seen as symbolic renewed black faith in him. Clinton did, after all, restore Aristide to power in Haiti. He journeyed to Africa and established a close relationship with Nelson Mandela. He continued to court black support via regular speeches to the NAACP, at black churches, and at other black venues. He filled the civil rights post at the Justice Department, left vacant when Lani Guinier‘s nomination was withdrawn, with Deval Patrick, an attorney with a strong commitment to combating racial discrimination.

Moreover, a number of these ―symbolic‖ actions had material or real effects. His black appointments opened the corridors of power to African Americans. As one article in The Crisis observed, ―President Clinton‘s highest ranking black appointees took black experience, expertise, and sensibilities into areas that too long had been the province of an all-white, ‗good old boys‘ network.‖ For instance, as the article went on to observe, Jesse Brown, the head of the Bureau of Veterans Affairs, whom Clinton elevated to cabinet status, upgraded the minority affairs office at the VA and increased recruitment at Historically Black Colleges.10 Black officials vetted material and steered ideas and proposals to his desk that they wanted him to hear, making sure that the voice and concerns of African Americans were heard in the White House.11 Along the same lines, Clinton worked with the Congressional Black Caucus, gaining concessions for some of his priorities and granting concessions on other occasions.12

ADDRESSING THE LEGACY OF RACISM But ultimately, his polices and the focus of his administration, as well as his combat with an increasingly conservative Republican Party, demonstrated a substantive agenda that best accounted for the support he received among African Americans and for which he should be judged by them. In the 1980s, William Julius Wilson, a black sociologist, then at the University of Chicago, began advocating for Democrats to reorient their policies away from those that focused on addressing racial discrimination to those that addressed the legacies of racism. Wilson came to this position for political reasons—he saw affirmative action and other racially based policies as divisive among the core constituencies of the Democratic Party—and because he felt that race, though not the legacy of racism, had declined in

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significance as an issue. Bill Clinton not only read Wilson‘s studies but utilized Wilson as an unofficial advisor in the 1992 presidential campaign. As Wilson himself stated, ―The president is developing a vision based on my work.‖13 In November 1993, in arguably his most important policy speech on racial matters, delivered at Memphis‘s Mason Temple Church of God in Christ, the site of Martin Luther King Jr.‘s last sermon, Clinton explicitly recognized Wilson‘s influence. More memorably, Clinton used the occasion to rhetorically inquire what King would think if he were still alive. ―If he were to reappear by my side today and give us a report card on the last twenty-five years, what would he say? ‗You did a good job,‘ he would say, ‗voting and electing people … [and] opening opportunity.‘ But,‖ Clinton continued, ―he would say, ‗I did not live and die to see the American family destroyed. I did not live and die to see thirteen-year-old boys get automatic weapons and gun down nine-year olds … to see young people destroy their own lives with drugs.‘‖ Clinton then made clear that the problems that beset the black community could not be addressed solely through old-fashioned liberal programs but rather had to involve a concerted effort upon the part of the black community to restore families, communities, and an ethic of responsibility.14 Some disparaged Clinton‘s use of King to lecture the black community. In an editorial for the Boston Globe, Derrick Jackson called Clinton‘s remarks a ―profound lie,‖ because, in his view, Clinton shifted the blame from whites to blacks. Civil rights historian Kenneth O‘Reilly described the address as Clinton‘s attempt to establish a ―Dan Quayle/Jerry Falwell line on social programs and ‗family values.‘‖ Syndicated columnist Cynthia Tucker acknowledged that if Clinton had given the same speech in the same church ten years earlier, he would have been ―denounced as being racist, or foolishly naïve, or both.‖ But then Tucker went on to praise Clinton for delivering a ―message too long delayed.‖ Indeed, the audience at the church received Clinton‘s words with great enthusiasm. As Joe Klein observed, ―the ministers seemed to sense, as many African Americans did, that the President of the United States was family. He was willing to confront black audiences with some difficult truths—about the need for welfare reform … and parental responsibility—but he was equally insistent on the need for racial tolerance and a determined government effort to promote diversity.‖15 What these reporters did not know was that Clinton had met with a number of prominent black clergy before the speech. They impressed upon him the need to address the social problems that beset the black community, especially the issue of black-on-black murder. The meeting itself was facilitated by Ben Johnson, one of the top black officials in the White House, who took it upon himself to make sure that blacks gained Clinton‘s ear. In contrast, previous presidents whose administrations were lily-white, rarely gave blacks such access to the White House.16 Many of Clinton‘s domestic policies followed Wilson‘s formula and flowed from the vision he articulated during his Memphis speech. His economic package of 1993 included a hefty increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit. He refused to compromise on this tax credit for the working poor, even though it almost led to the defeat of his larger economic program.

Although his call for national health insurance went down to defeat, the Children‘s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, was enacted later in his presidency. His anti-crime proposals included programs aimed at keeping inner-city youths out of trouble, much to the chagrin of conservative Republicans, who opposed such policies. He created ―empowerment zones,‖ aimed at rehabilitating impoverished areas, primarily in older industrial cities. During his administration, funding for Head Start grew 90 percent and college aid to lower- and middle-

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income families grew as well. In 1996, the minimum wage was increased for the first time since 1989. Even welfare reform and NAFTA, both much bemoaned by black politicians and advocates of minority rights, reflected Clinton‘s broader goal of increasing the opportunities for working and middle-class Americans rather than defending the status quo.

These programs, in combination with the expansion of the economy, which Clinton and many of supporters argue grew out of his macroeconomic policies, resulted in tangible and significant gains by African Americans. As Clinton observed in his last State of the Union Address, ―Not only did every major income group see double-digit income growth, but the lowest 20 percent saw the largest income growth since 1993.‖ The unemployment rate for African Americans fell from 14.2 percent in 1992 to 7.6 percent in 2000. The poverty rate for blacks fell from 33.1 percent in 1993 to 26.1 percent in 1998. Median income for African Americans increased 15.1 percent during the same time period. Moreover, crime fell to a twenty-five year low, teenage pregnancy declined, and the number of Americans on welfare decreased dramatically.17 Of course, some might contend that Clinton did not deserve credit for the improvements that took place. While I will leave it to other scholars to deliver definitive assessments of Clinton‘s economic policies, it seems clear that several of the programs that lay at the core of his vision for combating racial equality enjoyed positive results. The Earned Income Tax Credit, which the Republicans uniformly opposed, lifted an estimated one million African Americans out of poverty. CHIP, Head Start, and the creation of empowerment zones disproportionately benefited blacks. Clinton himself acknowledged that the gap between whites and blacks remained large and that ―there remain pockets of poverty in America where the light of our glowing prosperity does not shine.‖ He could have added that the economic boom of the 1990s had little impact on the ―wealth gap‖ between blacks and whites, a crucial component to the long-term fight against racial inequality. Still, given the skepticism with which Clinton‘s programs were received, the accomplishments of his administration deserve our praise.18 In addition, Clinton‘s record and the support he received must be placed within the context of the opposition he faced. He was elected with only 43 percent of the popular vote in 1992 and faced a Republican-controlled Congress for three-fourths of his presidency.

John F. Kennedy, whom the public often reveres for his vision and courage, enjoyed a much stronger mandate and a more cooperative Congress, yet he achieved far less than Clinton.

Only Lyndon Johnson had a stronger civil rights record. Blacks understood this when they rallied around Clinton during the impeachment imbroglio.

In a sense, blacks saw Clinton as the ―first black president‖ because they realized that he depended on them more than any other president in history. They felt, as Toni Morrison put it, that ―The presidency is being stolen from us.‖ Writing for The Crisis, Ida Lewis concurred. ―The right could not elect a president democratically. So they are attempting to take it by professing values they do not practice.‖ Moreover, for some blacks like Morrison and Lewis, conservatives sought to impeach Clinton because he granted blacks more power than they had ever had. He ―committed an unforgivable error. He betrayed their [white] trust by giving access to power to people of color and … go[ing] to the wall for‖ issues such as children‘s and women‘s health and education. Even if this perception of the motives for Clinton‘s impeachment is exaggerated, it does show that Clinton earned support from the black community through acts of both style and substance. He committed himself to giving minorities access to power and pursuing policies that helped those most in need. He was

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opposed by politicians who disagreed not only with the style of his presidency but with these policies.19

CLINTON’S VISION Noted presidential scholar James MacGregor Burns faults Clinton‘s presidency, arguing that he was not a ―transformative politician.‖ From Burns‘s perspective, Clinton lacked the will to promote a new vision and instead pursued incremental changes. In terms of civil rights, Burns writes, ―The neo-liberal approach … while having obvious strategic and possibly ideological advantages, did not attend to deep-seated structural racial conflicts in the United States.‖ Yet Burns then goes on to wonder if Clinton was ahead of his time. I would like to suggest that in many ways Clinton was ahead of his time: that his greatest shortcoming, in terms of civil rights, was not that he lacked a vision but rather that he did not fully articulate this vision nor openly educate America about his belief that the best solution to resolving the persistence of racial inequality in America was by pursuing non–race based programs of the sort promoted by William Julius Wilson.20 If Clinton had a blind spot or a flaw in his civil rights record it was not that he pursued incremental change or that he was all style and no substance. Rather, Clinton‘s greatest failing in terms of racial matters was his unwillingness or inability to demand a change in the criminal justice system, a system that was locking up a disproportionate number of young black men on drug charges and was vastly increasing the number of blacks on Death Row. Indeed, changes in federal laws, supported by Clinton, contributed significantly to the latter development. This said, Clinton hoped that in the long run his macroeconomic programs, along with his reforms of the welfare system, would produce a significant decrease in the crime rate, which in turn would disproportionately benefit African Americans.21 Moreover, in a roundabout way, Clinton‘s ―National Conversation on Race‖ grew out of the heightened sense of the racial divide that emerged in the wake of the most famous criminal trial of the era, O. J. Simpson‘s alleged murder of his wife. Black and white perceptions of this case and its verdict displayed the wide gulf between the two races in terms of their perceptions of the fairness of the criminal justice system. Clinton saw a need to help close this divide. Unfortunately, as scholars have shown, the dialogue did not achieve its lofty goal, in part because Clinton‘s own bout with the law distracted the public‘s attention away from this unprecedented national conversation.22 Ironically, in the last few years of his presidency, as blacks rallied to his side, Americans, black and white, came to see Clinton as a race man. While this helped save Clinton from impeachment, it undermined or obscured his broader goal of building bridges between blacks and whites, which he saw as his ultimate challenge, first while running for office in Arkansas and again when he ran for president in 1992. Put somewhat differently, to overcome the problem of race, Clinton saw a need to promote cross-racial policies. Yet, when a group composed largely of white conservatives, many from the South, sought to end his presidency, African Americans, more than any other group, came to his defense. Clinton not only welcomed this support, he openly expressed his thanks and gratitude to blacks for sticking by him. Unfortunately, this course of events obscured the fact that more than any other president,

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Clinton pursued non–race based policies to overcome the racial divide. This fact, more than the support that blacks lent him, should be how we best remember his civil rights legacy.

ENDNOTES 1

2

3 4

5 6 7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Toni Morrison, ―Comment,‖ New Yorker, ―Talk of the Town,‖ October 5, 1998, http:// www.newyorker.com/archive/1998/10/05/1998_10_05_031_TNY_LIBRY_00001650. Gates quoted in Randall Kennedy, ―Is He a Soul Man? On Black Support for Clinton,‖ The American Prospect, March–April 1999, 26.

Ibid.; Thernstrom and Watts quoted in Timothy W. Maier, ―Why Blacks Stand by Their Man,‖ Insight on the News, November 2, 1998, 16. ―Speech by President to Citizens of Selma Alabama,‖ March 5, 2000.

Earl Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2002); Kenneth O‘Reilly, Nixon’s Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton (New York: Free Press, 1995).

Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Knopf, 2004), 721.

Ibid., 61 and 84–89. ―Editorial: Slick Willie Rides Again?‖ The Crisis 100, no. 6 (August–September 1993): 3.

Juan Williams, ―Reaganite on Civil Rights? Why Clinton‘s Compassionate Agenda May Look Familiar,‖ Washington Post, December 23, 1993, C1; On the Congressional Black Caucus‘s differences with Clinton see, ―CBC Says No to NAFTA,‖ Black Enterprise, February 1994, 28; Bob Cohn, ―Buying Off the Black Caucus,‖ Newsweek, August 1, 1994, 24; Susan Garland, ―The Black Caucus Has Clinton Running Scared,‖ Business Week, August 8, 1994, 33; ―Black Caucus Denounces Policies on Haiti,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly, March 26, 1994, 756; William Greider, ―Back to the Back of the Bus?‖ Rolling Stone, February 10, 1994, 675.

All poll numbers come from The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, which routinely asks the question: ―Do you approve or disapprove of the job the president is doing?‖ Ida E. Lewis, ―Bill Clinton as Honorary Black,‖ The Crisis 105, no. 4 (September–October 1998): 15.

Richard Willing, ―A Year of ‗Highs‘ for African-Americans in Clinton‘s Cabinet,‖ The Crisis 101 no. 2 (February–March 1994): 32.

Ben Johnson, “President Clinton’s Outreach to African Americans,” a speech delivered at the Eleventh Annual Presidential Conference, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, November 11, 2005.

Kitty Cunningham, ―A Test of Strength,‖ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, August 7, 1993, 2126; Cohn, ―Buying off the Black Caucus,‖ 24.

William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Jean Hopfensperger, ―Sociologist Traces Roots of Poverty,‖ Minneapolis Star Tribune, November 19, 1993, 7B. ―Remarks to the Convocation of the Church of God in Christ in Memphis,‖ November 13, 1993, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton 1993 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1994), 1981–86.

Derrick Z. Jackson, ―Clinton‘s Black Lie,‖ Boston Globe, November 28, 1993, A7; O‘Reilly, Nixon’s Piano, 416; Cynthia Tucker, ―A Message Delayed for Too Long,‖ New Orleans Times-

―The First Black President‖? Bill Clinton and Civil Rights

16 17

18 19

20

21

22

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Picayune, November 22, 1993, B5; Joe Klein, The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 81–83.

Johnson, ―President ―Clinton‘s Outreach to African Americans.‖ Office of the Press Secretary, ―Fact Sheet on African Americans,‖ Clinton Presidential Library; William J. Clinton, ―Message to Congress: The Unfinished Work of Building One America,‖ January 15, 2001, http://clinton5.nara.gov/library/hot_releases/January_ 15_2001_8.html.

Clinton, ―Message to Congress,‖ January 15, 2001.

Morrison, ―Clinton: The First Black President;‖ Ida Lewis, ―Bill Clinton as Honorary Black.‖ The Crisis 105, no. 4 (September–October 1998): 5.

Yet Burns‘s analysis seems flawed, since his greater criticism of Clinton is that he pursued moderate solutions to problems that demanded much more radical measures, not that he lacked will. James MacGregor Burns and Georgia J. Sorenson, Dead Center: Clinton-Gore Leadership and the Perils of Moderation (New York: Scribner, 1999), 254–55.

I thank Michael Mushlin, participant in the panel on Civil Rights and Liberties at the Eleventh Annual Presidential Conference at Hofstra University, for reminding me of this flaw in Clinton‘s presidency.

Keith Reeves, ―The ‗New Democrat‘ from Hope and Racial Politics: A Critical Assessment of President Clinton‘s National Conversation on Race,‖ Panel on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Eleventh Annual Presidential Conference, Hofstra University.

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 8

PRESIDENT CLINTON’S OUTREACH TO AFRICAN AMERICANS Ben Johnson Assistant to the President, and Director of The President‘s Initiative on One America

INTRODUCTION Having worked in the White House for Bill Clinton‘s entire term, I‘ve had a chance to witness a lot of the things that have been discussed here today and yesterday. The discussion regarding President Clinton‘s remarks at Mason Temple brought back memories to me, because that was the first time that I had flown on Air Force One, and it was one of the best trips of the forty-nine times that I flew on the plane. I say that, because the president made a good speech at Mason Temple. As some of you may know, Mason Temple is the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ and the site where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his last speech. I wouldn‘t give a lot of credence to [William Julius] Wilson. Prior to giving his speech the president met with all of the bishops of the church. The bishops took this opportunity to discuss concerns they had regarding the drug-related violence in the African American community, and the thousands of funerals held to bury so many people who had been shot down due to poverty and drug violence.

But I want to start with the beginning of the administration. During President Clinton‘s first campaign, he said, ―I‘m going to have a government that looks like America,‖ and a lot of people, after the election was over, said, ―Well, that‘s fine for you to make those promises to get elected, but you don‘t need to do that now because you‘re in office.‖ But what did he do? He appointed Hazel O‘Leary to head the Department of Energy, he appointed Ron Brown as secretary of the Department of Commerce, he appointed Jesse Brown to lead the Veteran‘s Administration, he appointed Mike Espy as secretary of agriculture, and he named African Americans to the number two positions at HUD, HHS, and the State Department. He also appointed an African American secretary of the army. The head of the Corps of Engineers was a three-star black general named Joe Ballard, whom you probably read about in recent

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days regarding the Halliburton scandal. If you looked at the White House staff there were no black props. Clinton had African American staff that were department heads.

There were at least ten assistants to the president; out of twenty-six assistants in the White House. There were whites, Asians, and Hispanics heading all White House offices as well. There were several minority deputy assistants to the president; as many of you know, those are the number-two White House positions. We had nine special assistants to the president. We also had numerous African American, Asian, and Hispanic associate directors.

Whether it was in administration, presidential personnel, speechwriting, cabinet affairs or political affairs, African Americans were there in large numbers, and in on all of the decisions that were being made in the White House. Hillary Clinton had an African American chief of staff.

History will show that this was one of the most diverse administrations in history and one of the most successful. In fact, there were more people of color in the White House than at any other time in history.

People often talk about the president being slick this and the other, but let me just say something: the man was genuine. Unlike many white politicians, Clinton was able to look at an African American and see a person, not just another black face. And when he came to Washington—a lot of folks don‘t know this or talk about this—but Bill Clinton never got the majority of white votes in any election that he ran in. He always got a percentage of the white votes, yet he always got the overwhelming majority of African American votes. And so when he appointed this kind of leadership in the White House and in the cabinet, it said a lot about the man and his commitment to race relations.

African Americans serving during his administration had an impact on federal policy, and for the first time since the Vietnam War, unemployment in the black community was in single digits. African Americans had the highest minority home ownership in the history of the country, the lowest poverty rate in a long, long time, not to mention a number of other firsts.

African Americans provided the guidance for the first White House conference on Africa.

The president went to Africa not just for symbolism, but to talk about African trade and economic development on the African continent.

One of the most important moments in my life in that White House was when the president bestowed the Medal of Honor on nine African American men who, as a study at Shaw University revealed, should have received long ago the highest military honor that this country has to offer. One gentleman had killed many Germans by himself, but he never received the Medal of Honor until Bill Clinton gave it to him.

Another proud moment was the Tuskegee syphilis apology, which I helped plan with the help of Surgeon General David Satcher. I must say that when you work in the White House, there are competing interests for the president‘s time. For years these African American men with syphilis were intentionally untreated by our government. It was recommended by HHS Secretary Donna Shalala that the president should apologize for our nation‘s health service debacle, and the recommendation was sent to us. White House staff had several meetings on the subject. We decided that a presidential apology was absolutely the right thing to do.

Having heard for years about cruel experiments on African Americans, I, for one, wanted it to be a big ceremony, but there were others on the staff responsible for scheduling who said that we didn‘t need a ceremony in any room other than the Oval Office. Their reasoning was that the president could quickly do it, and then he could move on to the next thing on his schedule.

I objected and quickly found a way of getting around that. Bypassing the staff secretary and

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the scheduling director, I took the scheduling request to Betty Currie and asked her to put it on her desk, because I knew the president would often come out of the Oval Office and read documents on her desk. He did read it, agreed with my proposal, and said, ―I want to have the ceremony in the East Room.‖ He later read this long-overdue apology to the remaining syphilis survivors in wheelchairs. One gentleman was said to be 103 years old. David Satcher and I made sure that the ceremony was piped into Tuskegee, Alabama. The press had been all over the pending apology story so I had been on the phone every day with Fred Gray, the attorney for the men. Attorney Gray, a forceful man and the former attorney for Rosa Parks, wanted to have the ceremony in Tuskegee, Alabama, but I said, ―Fred, if you have it in Tuskegee, the press is not going to be there. If you have it at the White House, there‘s going to be loads and loads of press here.‖ After some push and pull we agreed to a televised feed into Tuskegee University, where families of the men were to be assembled, but the actual ceremony was in the East Room of the White House. We were all proud of the fact that those men who had syphilis all those years, many in their 90s, could hear the president of the United States issue one of the most eloquent apologies that anyone has ever heard.

These were the things that were occurring while we were in the White House. When the California courts acquitted the Los Angeles police officers who beat down Rodney King, the administration took the case to the Justice Department. The assistant attorney general for civil rights filed civil rights violation charges against the offending officers, resulting in their being found guilty. We integrated public housing. If you can believe it, in the 1990s there were public housing units in the United States where you couldn‘t live if you were African American or Hispanic; there were all-white public housing units in Texas and other parts of the US. At our urging, the Justice Department broke that discriminatory system down and ended this egregious practice.

President Clinton was the first president to discuss racial profiling in the way that many African Americans experienced it: driving while black. Bob Nash, an African American assistant to the president, was pulled over in Silver Spring, Maryland, and ordered to get out of his vehicle and told to put his hands behind his head and walk backwards to the police vehicle. The police handcuffed him and his wife. It turned out the car they were looking for was a different color than his and a year older than his, but they stopped him without checking the license plates. All of this was going on during our watch, but this administration put a stop to it as best we could. A message was sent out to all police departments around the country: ―We will investigate and charge police officers if you continue to do this.‖ So, when you look at the administration, you can‘t really do justice in ten minutes.

Take the issue of affirmative action and Rosa Parks. Can you imagine that it took until the mid-1990s for this country or a president to recognize her and give her the Medal of Freedom? In addition, this administration awarded a Medal of Freedom to Dorothy Height, civil rights icon and prestigious member of the National Council of Negro Women. John Johnson, the publisher of Ebony and Jet magazine, was also awarded the Medal of Freedom.

And you know, I am really proud of the fact that President Bush recognized Muhammad Ali and gave him the Medal of Freedom. I submitted Muhammad Ali‘s name for this honor three times, but could not overcome the anti-Ali fervor among some recommending staff. He would make the list, but would be taken off the final list by the time it got to the president. We finally gave him the Citizens Medal.

When I look hard at this administration as it relates to race, as it relates to the racial environment that existed in this country, a lot of people said that there was no crisis during

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this administration. I beg to differ. When the president enacted or put together the race initiative, if you really look back at the times, there was a big division between white and black citizens, which still exists today. Events such as the hate crime involving a black man had been tied to a truck by two white men and dragged until his head was severed, and the O. J. Simpson acquittal revealed the rumblings of a huge problem that the American people were going through that involved race. Those incidents and others convinced the president that the country needed to have a dialogue regarding racial issues. The respected historian John Hope Franklin chaired the President‘s Initiative on Race and did his best to bridge the racial divide.

Meetings were held throughout the country with participants from many diverse backgrounds and views. But I agree with the gentleman who preceded me that the administration could have done more in this area and should have done more, but you may also recall that during this period, high drama ensued in the White House around the president‘s indiscretions in his personal life, which caused a shift in focus. Thus the momentum was slowed on the dialogue around racial issues.

But if you look back at this presidency and the people who were involved in the success that we had as a nation in coming together, you will see we accomplished a lot. For example, as president, Bill Clinton built up the military that we have fighting overseas today.

All of those sophisticated weapons – the Predator -- were developed on our watch. There is so much more I could say about the racial, domestic, and foreign policy successes of the Clinton White House, but my time is up. Thank you.

VII. GUN CONTROL

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 9

CLINTON AND GUN CONTROL: BOON OR BANE? Robert J. Spitzer Department of Political Science SUNY Cortland Cortland, NY, US

With the possible exception of abortion, no policy issue has provoked more protracted political heat and controversy in recent decades than gun control. Far from avoiding this hotbutton issue, Bill Clinton embraced, and advanced, a gun control agenda that saw the enactment of some key initiatives, but that also fortified conservatives‘ disdain for his policies and administration.

Aside from political heat, the results of Clinton‘s advocacy of gun control measures resulted in two politically significant, if policy-marginal, enactments: the Brady Law, enacted in 1993, which requires background checks and (until 1998) waiting periods for handgun purchases; and the Assault Weapons Ban, enacted in 1994, which banned the sale and possession of nineteen types of assault weapons and of ammunition clips capable of holding more than ten bullets. A third effort to enact control legislation that would have required background checks for gun show purchases, restricted Internet gun sales, required gun locks to be sold with guns, and imposed greater restrictions pertaining to juvenile gun possession, passed the Senate in 1999, but failed in the House of Representatives.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the Clinton administration‘s legislative policymaking through the lens of the gun policy issue.1 This examination will focus on three questions: the policy impact of these gun control enactments, their political impact on the Clinton presidency, and the consequences of this policy for the Democratic Party. Whether for good or ill, Clinton‘s embrace of the gun issue left a difficult political legacy for postClinton Democrats, many of whom believe that the issue has inhibited that party‘s ability to capture America‘s political center.

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THE BRADY LAW In its conception, the idea behind what came to be known as the Brady Bill (named after James Brady, the former White House press secretary and subsequent gun control advocate who was shot and seriously wounded in the assassination attempt against President Reagan in 1981) was both simple and modest: to enact a nationwide waiting period for handgun purchases in order to allow for a background check for the prospective gun purchaser to weed out felons or others, such as the mentally incompetent, not entitled to the gun purchase; and to allow for a ―cooling off‖ period for those seeking to buy a gun on impulse for a potentially nefarious purpose. The idea of a waiting period for handgun purchases had long found wide public support; even the National Rifle Association supported the idea until the mid-1970s.2 As enacted in 1993, the Brady Law3 codified a five-business-day waiting period for handgun purchases. It also authorized $200 million per year to help states improve and upgrade their computerization of criminal records, increased federal firearms license fees from $30 to $200 for the first three years and $90 for renewals, made it a federal crime to steal firearms from licensed dealers, barred package labeling for guns being shipped (to deter theft), required that state and local police be told of multiple handgun sales, and stated that police must make a ―reasonable effort‖ to check the backgrounds of gun buyers.4 The basis for monitoring handgun sales arises from a simple fact regarding the connection between guns and crime: while there are twice as many long guns as handguns in America, and long guns are usually easier to obtain, about 80 percent of all gun crimes are committed with handguns. Further, long guns are usually obtained and used for hunting and sporting purposes, while handguns have little hunting-sporting use.5

Brady Policy Consequences Pre-1993 state experiences with waiting periods showed that such laws had modest, if measurable, effects: about 1–2 percent of prospective gun buyers were denied sales as the result of background checks.6 Studies of the Brady Law‘s effects found that it produced a handgun purchase rejection rate of about 2.5 percent. From 1994 through 2001, background checks stopped about 690,000 handgun sales. By 2010, over a million sales had been blocked.7 The statistical impact was small when compared to overall gun sales, and smaller still when compared to gun crime rates, as only a subset of the blocked sales would likely have resulted in the guns‘ use in gun crimes. These considerations spurred critics to charge that the law had no real effect on crime.

In 1998, the five-day waiting period lapsed, as per the terms of the law, and was replaced by the FBI‘s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). This system is designed to allow an immediate background check to occur, although the system was initially hampered by gaps in information and other technical problems. The check must be completed within three days, but 95 percent of the background checks are completed within two hours, according to a US Justice Department report. In 2000s, twenty-six states conducted their own background checks; the rest relied on FBI data. State checks resulted in a slightly higher rejection rate, probably owing to better and more complete state data.8

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One area of gun sales continued to be omitted from nationally mandated background checks. In most places, ―secondary market‖ gun sales by unlicensed individuals can occur without background checks. Referred to generally as the ―gun show loophole,‖ these sales at gun shows, flea markets, on the Internet, and other unregulated venues account for as much as 40 percent of gun sales.

Arguably more significant was the law‘s impact on the number of gun dealers. The increase in license fees for dealers decreased the number of dealers, from 285,000 before the law to 224,000 after one year (about 80 percent of these dealers were individuals with no storefront, referred to as ―kitchen table‖ dealers, who sought the relatively cheap licenses for their own gun acquisition or that of acquaintances). By 1996, the number of licensed dealers had dropped to about 103,000; in 2007 there were still about 50,000 licensed dealers, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.9

Brady Law Politics Clinton‘s embrace of the Brady Bill in his first year in office placed him squarely in the sights of gun control foes. Yet unlike other important domestic issues of the time, such as health care, the issue was not Clinton‘s invention, nor was it considered an administration priority. In fact, many of Clinton‘s people were caught by surprise when he began to aggressively promote the issue in 1993.10 The Brady Bill had been gestating in Congress since 1987. In 1991, both houses passed the measure, but in different versions. After a compromise version was hammered out, it was repassed in the House, but died in the Senate by filibuster. President George H. W. Bush threatened to veto the larger crime bill to which it was attached, which also hampered its chances.11 Thus, when Congress again took up the measure in 1993, it had already come tantalizingly close to passage. These circumstances underscore the fact that a relatively small political nudge from the newly elected president could have an important impact on the outcome.

Another factor working in favor of bill passage was that the national political environment was highly conducive to support for this measure. National crime rates rose from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, fanning public concern about the connection between guns and crime. Public opinion had consistently and overwhelmingly favored a handgun waiting period. For example, Gallup polls reported 91 percent public support for a handgun waiting period in 1988 ―in order to determine whether the prospective buyer has been convicted of a felony or is mentally ill,‖ 95 percent in 1990, 93 percent in 1991, and 88 percent in 1993.12 Adding to the national consensus was the Brady Bill‘s endorsement by former presidents of both parties, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and most importantly, Ronald Reagan. In a 1991 speech, Reagan flatly endorsed the Brady Bill, reversing his prior opposition. It was a stunning and unexpected political blow to Brady Bill opponents.13 Yet despite the seeming tidal wave of support, the Brady Bill‘s enactment was by no means assured; it was a tooth-and-nail fight every step of the way, a fact consistent with the tumultuous politics surrounding other gun control measures.14 In fact, the most important feature of the Brady Bill‘s enactment was that it represented a political defeat for the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA): the first such legislative defeat since Congress enacted the Gun Control Act of 1968. As then-House member and Brady supporter Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) noted, ―people realized that there's life after voting against the NRA.‖15

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THE ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN In January 1989, five elementary school children were killed and twenty-nine others wounded in a schoolyard massacre in Stockton, California, in a shooting spree by a mentally disturbed drifter, Patrick Purdy, using a Chinese-made AK-47–style assault rifle. Before taking his own life with a handgun, Purdy had fired 105 rounds. This event, more than any other, riveted the nation‘s attention on civilian possession and use of assault weapons. Within weeks, thirty states and many localities were considering bans on these weapons. Indeed, 1989 witnessed an explosion of interest in such weapons.16 Like the Brady Bill, Congress took up assault weapons ban legislation before Clinton entered office. Several bills aimed at curbing or banning assault weapons were introduced in 1989, but those bills languished in committee until 1990, when the Senate narrowly approved a provision to ban the production, sale, and possession of nine semiautomatic assault-type weapons. The House Judiciary Committee had approved a similar measure, but it never left committee. A conference committee failed to reach agreement on the measure. In 1991, the Senate again enacted a ban, but the measure failed in the House.

After political tumult that exceeded even that surrounding the Brady Bill, Clinton signed the measure into law in September 1994 as Title XI of a large crime control package, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.17 In its final form, the assault weapons ban outlawed for ten years the sale and possession of nineteen specified types of weapons, incorporating assault rifles, pistols, and shotguns, as well as dozens of ―copycat‖ weapons that possessed two or more characteristics of the nineteen named types. It also specifically exempted 661 named sporting rifles and limited gun clips to those that could hold no more than ten bullets. Existing assault-style rifles were exempted from the ban, and Congress was given the power to review the inclusion of additional weapons under the terms of the measure. The law included a ten-year sunset provision: it was set to lapse in September 2004 (Congress failed to renew the law).

Assault Policy Consequences Regulation of such weapons posed a practical problem, since the definition of a semiautomatic weapon is one that fires a round with each pull of the trigger, which would include wooden-stocked hunting rifles. Assault-style semiautomatic weapons are distinguished from others not by their firing style, but in that they are configured specifically for military use. They typically have, or can receive, large clips holding twenty to thirty bullets or more, are more compact in design, have barrels under twenty inches in length, take intermediate-sized cartridges, include extensive use of stampings and plastics, and are lighter in weight (six to ten pounds). In addition, they often have pistol grips or thumbhole stocks (features designed to facilitate ―spray fire‖), a forward grip or barrel shroud (which allows the user to hold the gun with the non-trigger hand despite the heat generated by repeated firing), flash suppressors, folding or telescoping stocks, grenade launchers, and bayonet fittings.18 In policy terms, the assault weapons ban‘s effect was limited, if measurable. Before the ban‘s enactment, about 1.5 million assault weapons were privately owned. In connection with crime, about 2–8 percent of gun crimes were committed with assault weapons (mostly assault

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pistols). According to a 2004 study, after the ban‘s enactment, assault weapon crimes dropped from 17–72 percent, a figure consistent with the US Justice Department‘s finding of a decline in assault weapons crimes from 3.6 percent of gun crimes in 1995 to 1.2 percent of gun crimes in 2002. In other words, assault weapons accounted for only a small percent of gun crimes to begin with, but that percentage declined in the ten years following the law‘s enactment. The other target of the 1994 law was large-capacity bullet magazines (LCMs), defined as those holding more than ten bullets. These had obvious appeal to criminals, yet have no manifest hunting or sporting use. Indeed, 14–26 percent of pre-1994 gun crimes involved these clips. No diminution of the criminal use of such clips was observed after the ban, however, perhaps owing to the large number of such clips already in circulation: about 25 million.19 More to the point, the ban‘s chief policy features were its limited scope and large loopholes. As mentioned, guns manufactured before 1994 were grandfathered in, as were LCMs already in circulation. Many gun manufacturers skirted the ban by making minor changes in banned weapons to make them legal. For example, the banned Colt AR-15 was modified to become the legal Bushmaster AR-15.20 While the federal law lapsed in 2004, seven states maintain their own bans on assault weapons.21

Assault Politics If anything, the political maelstrom surrounding this bill was even more contentious and heated than that surrounding the Brady Bill. Gun control forces had been emboldened by their victory the previous year; control foes were even more alarmed at the prospect of more gun regulations. Like the Brady Bill, this proposal found consistent favor among the public. For example, a 1992 poll reported 79 percent of the public in support of an assault weapons ban; a 1993 poll reported 66 percent approval.22 It, too, won support from former Presidents Reagan and Bush.

Like the Brady Bill, Clinton inherited this legislation from the prior administration, but in this case Clinton weighed in earlier and more strongly on behalf of this bill. In early 1994 he enlisted the help of several cabinet secretaries, most notably treasury secretary and gun owner Lloyd Bentsen. Ban supporters received unexpected help from Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), a staunch conservative who had opposed gun measures in the past. Thanks in part to Hyde's support, the measure was approved by the House Judiciary Committee in April, despite the opposition of Committee Chair Jack Brooks (D-TX).

Symptomatic of Clinton‘s determination was his reaction to an unexpected defeat on the floor of the House. In August of 1994, Clinton and congressional supporters pushed for an early vote in the House. This proved to be a serious tactical blunder, because they had not lined up the necessary support. In a dramatic reversal on a procedural vote to adopt a rule for the bill, the House rejected the crime bill on August 11 by a vote of 225-210. Especially embarrassing was the fact that fifty-eight Democrats voted against the bill. Under normal circumstances, a defeat on a rules vote would spell the end of the legislation. Yet Clinton vowed to ―fight and fight and fight until we win this battle for the American people.‖23 He launched an intensive public campaign, enlisting the assistance of police organizations and several members of his cabinet. Congressional leaders vowed to bring back the bill, and in

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another departure from normal procedure, they negotiated a new version of the bill, which eventually won passage.24 By far the most significant political question that hovered over the bill‘s enactment was its impact on the 1994 midterm elections, when the Democrats lost eight Senate seats and fifty-two House seats, yielding control of both houses to the Republicans for the first time since 1954 (they needed a gain of forty seats to win control of the House; thirty-four Democratic incumbents lost, compared to no Republican incumbent losses). Clinton echoed the sentiments of many, including Republicans and Democrats, when he attributed the heavy Democratic losses as least partly to support for the assault weapons ban and perhaps the Brady Bill. Yet Clinton also noted the multi-causal nature of the Democrats‘ loss, attributing it to the defeat of his signature health care initiative, the approval of NAFTA (both of which, he argues, demoralized the Democratic base), and several other issues that mobilized the Republicans, including a tax increase on upper-income citizens and the two gun bills. The turnout differential, Clinton argued, ―probably accounted for half of our losses. . . .‖25 As if to punctuate the impact of the NRA, two senior Democrats who traditionally opposed gun control measures, House Speaker Tom Foley (D-WA) and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jack Brooks (D-TX) both lost their reelection bids. Foley worked for passage of both bills; Brooks had opposed both, but did agree to allow a vote on the assault weapons ban in the Judiciary Committee, a move that was sufficient to prompt the NRA to turn on him at election time. Clinton confessed in his memoir that Foley, Brooks, and Democratic Majority Leader Dick Gephardt had earlier urged Clinton not to push the assault weapons ban, arguing that ―many Democrats who voted for it would not survive the election in November.‖26 The factors cited by Clinton were surely important, but do not exhaust the list. First, two structural factors worked against the Democrats: the president‘s party almost always loses seats in midterm election years, and many of the seats then held by Democrats were in districts where Republican registration and voting patterns in other elections suggested unusually high Democratic vulnerability. Second, Clinton‘s own popularity was at an unusually low ebb (hovering below 50 percent for much of his second year), partly for the policy reasons cited by Clinton, but also because of a series of political missteps and the ongoing investigation of the Whitewater land deal, dating to the time of Clinton‘s governorship. Third, Rep. Newt Gingrich‘s unprecedented efforts in 1994 to mobilize strong congressional candidates, provide challengers with ample funding, and unite them under the ―Contract with America‖ probably played the largest role among short-term factors.27 One significant study has sought to isolate the impact of the NRA on the 1994 and 1996 House elections. It concluded that the NRA endorsement helped Republican congressional candidates in 1994, but not Democrats endorsed by the NRA that year. In the 1996 congressional races, Republicans were helped slightly, but not to a statistically significant degree. Endorsed Democrats were not helped in 1996. The degree of vote help for Republicans in 1994 was about 2 percent for challengers and about 1.5 percent for Republican incumbents, according to the researchers.28 Assuming finding validity, the small percent boost can be counted as significant in close races (of which there are fewer in recent years). Yet the two null hypothesis findings—the failure of the NRA endorsement to help the Democrats it endorsed, and the apparent absence of any effect in 1996—suggest that the NRA‘s measured impact in 1994 is mostly attributable to the unique nature of that year‘s race, when an array of short-term and long-term factors converged to give the Democrats their worst drubbing since 1946, rather than to some enduring ability by the NRA to shape

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congressional outcomes to a statistically significant degree.29 Despite these caveats, one may certainly conclude that the NRA‘s efforts had some effect in 1994, although probably less than anecdotal or reputational verdicts would suppose, and certainly less than Clinton‘s assertion that the NRA had a ―devastating impact . . . on the ‗94 congressional elections.‖30 Based on this analysis, one may reasonably conclude that 1) the NRA played a non-trivial role in the 1994 midterm outcomes; 2) that the NRA‘s role may have been decisive in a few races, like the defeat of Rep. Jack Brooks, but that 3) the Republicans would have likely won control of Congress even without the Brady and Assault Weapons Ban bills.

THE POST-COLUMBINE REACTION The third major gun control initiative of the Clinton presidency took place in the summer of 1999. On April 20, 1999, two high school boys entered their school, Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado, with four guns and explosives. When their shooting spree was done, twelve students and one teacher were killed, and another twenty-three wounded. The two boys then killed themselves. In the aftermath of the incident, which was the culmination of a series of mostly rural public school shootings,31 national shock and outrage put unprecedented pressure on Congress to respond.

A week after the shootings, Clinton called for new gun control measures that became the basis for new legislation.32 After weeks of intense pressure, media attention, and negotiations, the Senate passed a bill on May 20 that would have required background checks to occur within three days for firearms purchases at gun shows, flea markets, and pawn shops (closing the ―gun show loophole‖ mentioned earlier; three of the four guns used by the two assailants were purchased by a friend at an area gun show), revocation of gun ownership for those convicted of gun crimes as juveniles, tougher penalties for juvenile offenders who used guns in crimes and also for those who provided such guns to juveniles, required sale of locking devices or boxes sold with all new handgun purchases, blocked legal immunity to those who sold guns to felons, and a ban on the import of high-capacity ammunition clips (those that could hold more than ten bullets). These measures were attached to a larger, juvenile justice bill. The heightened degree of public attention and outrage focused on this issue as the result of the Columbine killings was emphasized by two salient political features: the Senate had defeated attempts to require gun locks and ban the import of high-capacity clips the previous year; and unlike 1993–94, the Senate was under the control of Republicans hostile to any new gun controls.

The Senate-passed bill met a chilly reception in the House of Representatives, although the initial reactions of House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and House Judiciary Committee Chair Henry Hyde (R-IL) were positive, as both expressed support for many of the elements of the package. Yet Republican House leaders had long records of opposition to stronger gun laws, and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) led the NRA-backed counterattack.

House stalling tactics gave bill foes the time they needed to mobilize opposition and hope for declining public interest as schools let out, families went on vacation, and the country‘s attention began turning to other matters. Clinton‘s vocal support for the gun measures was insufficient to turn the tide in the House, which eventually passed the juvenile justice bill minus the gun control measures. The bill then died in conference committee. Still, passage of

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the Senate bill marked the final successful effort to pass any new gun law during the Clinton presidency.

THE GUN ISSUE AND CLINTON’S LEGACY Perhaps the most important question regarding gun control in the post-Clinton era is its legacy for Democrats. Clinton‘s legacy on the gun issue consists of three parts: solidification of the impression that the Democratic Party was the party of gun control; a centrist turn on the gun issue, seen in Clinton‘s effort to unite sympathy with the hunting/sporting tradition and gun controls; and redefinition of gun regulation efforts by reframing the issue as one of ―child safety‖ instead of crime control.

First, leaving aside the policy costs and benefits of these enactments, Clinton‘s support for gun control, culminating in two politically significant enactments, cemented the link between his administration, the Democratic Party, and support for gun control. This link became the chief focus of gun control foes, especially the NRA. Throughout the 1990s, NRA literature and public statements sought to demonize Clinton as the embodiment of everything they opposed. So virulent was their anti-Clinton rhetoric that, even in 2004, with the Clinton administration nearly four years out of office, the NRA organized its efforts to prevent renewal of the Assault Weapons Ban by dubbing it the ―Clinton Gun Ban.‖33 These efforts failed to stop the enactment of the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban, and also failed in the effort to defeat Clinton‘s reelection in 1996, but they did help the NRA mobilize its base, raise money, and find common cause with other conservative interests opposed to the Clinton presidency.

Second, from the start of his administration, Clinton sought to define a ―Third Way,‖34 centrist approach to the gun issue by emphasizing his connection with, and desire to protect, the country‘s gun hunting-sporting tradition. This shift in emphasis was evident in his 1992 campaign, when the Democratic Party Platform included this assertion: ―We do not support efforts to restrict weapons used for legitimate hunting and sporting purposes.‖ In 1993, Clinton‘s comments delivered at the signing of the Brady Bill included extended personal reminiscences in which he described his first shooting experiences as a boy, shooting tin cans with a .22, hunting for deer, and his personal regard for these and similar traditions.35 Unquestionably, Clinton‘s repeated public statements about this aspect of the American gun culture were aimed at finding common ground with the American gun hunting and sporting community, which has long served as the core support for the NRA, and to underscore the secondary point that support for at least some gun control is by no means incompatible with gun ownership and use. This appeal to gun owners represented a departure from those in the Democratic Party who have supported gun control and who have little interest in or sympathy for gun ownership and use.36 Third, Clinton sought to reframe the gun issue as one revolving around family safety and child safety, as distinct from the conventional emphasis linking gun control with crime control. Thus, for example, advocacy for requiring the sale of trigger locks with all new handgun sales emphasized that they were ―child safety locks,‖37 not devices to deter criminal theft and use (although their purpose obviously includes the latter function). The clearest expression of this emphasis on child and family safety was the Million Mom March

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organization that emerged in 2000. While privately formed, it was closely allied with Clinton supporters, and it relied heavily on family safety themes previously articulated by Clinton.38 The legacy of these efforts for Democrats was mixed. Clinton‘s identification with, and support for, America‘s legitimate hunting and sporting tradition juxtaposed with support for some gun controls foreshadowed similar themes echoed in John Kerry‘s 2004 presidential bid and that of Barack Obama in 2008. The effort to link limited gun control with legitimate gun use also spawned at least one new centrist gun organization, Americans for Gun Safety, formed in 2000.39 While the strategy seemed to produce no visible benefits for Democrats, this owed less to the merits of the strategy itself and more to the fact that during George W. Bush‘s presidency, the gun issue receded almost to the vanishing point on the American domestic scene.

On the other hand, Clinton‘s heir-apparent, Al Gore, adopted an even tougher gun control stand in his 2000 presidential race, when he supported not only the measures defeated in Congress the previous year but a national licensing system that would have required gun owners to obtain a photo identification card. Gore‘s tougher stand on gun control was blamed by many for his loss to George W. Bush, especially in Gore‘s loss of three swing states, Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia. While there is good reason to believe that the gun issue did not, by itself, throw the election to Bush,40 it prompted much Democratic soulsearching, leading many Democrats to the conclusion that support for gun control was not a winning issue for them, at least in the post-Clinton era. As the head of one liberal activist group noted, ―gun control has become the shorthand for why Democrats don‘t do well.‖41 While some may be tempted to conclude that only a political figure with Clinton‘s singularly adept political skills could pull off a ―Third Way‖ gun strategy, it seems more likely that America‘s shifting political environment plays a greater role. If any feature of the gun issue is predictable, it is its cyclical nature (a pattern traceable back to the start of the twentieth century), alternating between short periods of intense focus on the issue, with upsurges in crime or political assassinations drawing the issue to center stage, and the absence of these factors having the contrary effect. America‘s continuing low crime rates and intense focus on a bevy of other domestic and foreign policy issues all but guarantee that gun control will continue to reside at the margins of American politics for the foreseeable future, except during moments when gun tragedy strikes the national psyche.

ENDNOTES 1

2

A similar examination of the George W. Bush presidency viewed through the lens of the gun issue is found in Robert J. Spitzer, ―Gun Rights for Terrorists? Gun Control and the Bush Presidency,‖ in Jon Kraus, Kevin McMahon, and David Rankin, eds., Transformed By Crisis: The Presidency of George W. Bush and American Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 141–65.

Osha Gray Davidson, Under Fire (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 194. According to an NRA flyer from the time, a waiting period ―could help in reducing crimes of passion and in preventing people with criminal records or dangerous mental illness from acquiring guns‖ (194). The NRA‘s abandonment of this and other more moderate positions on gun issues was

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3 4

5

6 7

8

9 10

11

12

13 14 15

16

17 18

19

Robert J. Spitzer symptomatic of the organization‘s radicalization, dating to the late 1970s. See Robert J. Spitzer, The Politics of Gun Control, fifth ed. (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2012), 107–108.

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act; PL 103–59; 107 Stat. 1536.

The constitutionality of the Brady law was challenged in court as a violation of states‘ rights under the Tenth Amendment. In 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the provision of the Brady law requiring local police to conduct background checks. In a 5-4 ruling in the case of Printz v. U.S. (521 U.S. 898), the Supreme Court held that Congress had overstepped its power, violating state police power. The ruling did not challenge the propriety of barring handgun sales to those with criminal backgrounds or those deemed mentally incompetent. In the aftermath of the case, President Clinton urged the states to continue conducting background checks.

Spitzer, The Politics of Gun Control, 50–54; William J. Vizzard, Shots in the Dark (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 171.

Richard Lacayo, ―Beyond the Brady Bill,‖ Time, December 20, 1993, 29.

Fox Butterfield, ―Brady Law Halts Permits for 45,000,‖ New York Times, March 12, 1995; Cheryl W. Thompson, ―Ashcroft Urged to Drop New Rule on Gun Sales,‖ Washington Post, April 12, 2002, A3; Spitzer, The Politics of Gun Control, 180–82.

Even though waiting periods are no longer required by the national government, nineteen states have their own, ranging from a few days to several months. They include Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin. Control proponents have argued for a restoration of a national three-day waiting period, in part because of the perceived value of a cooling-off period before handgun purchases.

Spitzer, The Politics of Gun Control, 151. ―President‘s Jump in Favor of Gun Control Startles Aides,‖ Syracuse Post-Standard, December 10, 1993. ―Anti-Crime Bill Falls Victim to Partisanship‖ and ―Brady Bill Part of Stalled Crime Package,‖ CQ Almanac 1991 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1992), 262–70, 271–73; ―No Compromise Forged on Crime Bill,‖ CQ Almanac 1992 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1993), 311–13; Robert J. Spitzer, The Right to Bear Arms (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2001), 90–96. ―Sentiments on Gun Issues,‖ New York Times, March 12, 1992; ―A Little Gun Control, a Lot of Guns,‖ New York Times, August 15, 1993; Lawrence L. Knutson, ―Poll Finds Wide Support for Gun Control,‖ AP story in Cortland Standard, December 30, 1993.

Davidson, Under Fire, 247–48.

See Spitzer, The Politics of Gun Control, 14–16.

Gwen Ifill, ―House Passes Bill To Set 7-Day Wait To Buy Handguns,‖ New York Times, May 9, 1991.

Robert Reinhold, ―Effort to Ban Assault Rifles Gains Momentum,‖ New York Times, January 28, 1989. The weapon used by Purdy was actually a legally imported 7.62mm AKM-56S. Vizzard, Shots in the Dark, 138.

PL 103-322; 108 Stat. 1796.

Violence Policy Center, Bullet Hoses: Semiautomatic Assault Weapons (Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, May 2003).

Christopher S. Koper, with Daniel J. Woods and Jeffrey A. Roth, An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994–2003, Report to the National Institute of Justice, US Department of Justice, Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania, June 2004, 1–3. See also Robert J. Spitzer, ―Why Gun Ban Died

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21

22

23

24

25 26 27

28

29

30 31

32 33

34 35

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Quietly,‖ San Jose Mercury News, Sunday ―Perspective,‖ September 19, 2004, P1; Jeffrey A. Roth and Christopher S. Koper, Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994–96 (Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, US Department of Justice, March 1999); Jeffrey A. Roth et al., Impact Evaluation of the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994 (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 1997). Critics of the ban argued that these limited benefits, assuming they exist, did not justify the federal restrictions, and that the ban infringed on citizens‘ gun rights. See Jerry Seper, ―Ban On Assault Weapons Didn‘t Reduce Violence,‖ Washington Times, August 17, 2004; Sandra S. Froman, ―Which Freedom Won‘t You Surrender?‖ America’s 1st Freedom, February 2004, 29–31.

The Bushmaster AR-15 was the weapon used by the Washington, DC–area sniper in 2002.

Spitzer, ―Why Gun Ban Died Quietly.‖ The seven states with assault weapons bans as of 2004 include California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. Despite court challenges, the federal and state bans have been held constitutional. ―Sentiments on Gun Issues,‖ New York Times, March 12, 1992; Leslie McAneny, ―Americans Tell Congress: Pass Brady Bill, Other Tough Gun Laws,‖ The Gallup Monthly, March 1993, 3.

Douglas Jehl, ―Clinton Fights Back: ‗This Crime Bill Cannot Die,‘‖ New York Times, August 13, 1994.

After the Republicans won control of Congress, they vowed to repeal the ban. In 1996, the House voted to do so, 239-173, under Clinton‘s threatened veto. The full Senate failed to vote on the repeal.

Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 629.

Clinton, My Life, 611.

Burdett A. Loomis and Wendy J. Schiller, The Contemporary Congress (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2004), 75–76; James G. Gimpel, Fulfilling the Contract: The First 100 Days (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996), 2–12.

Christopher Kenny, Michael McBurnett, and David Bordua, ―The Impact of Political Interests in the 1994 and 1996 Congressional Elections: The Role of the National Rifle Association,‖ British Journal of Political Science 34 (April 2004): 331–44.

The prevailing literature argues that interest group mobilization has little to no systematic impact on the outcome of congressional elections. See Margaret A. Latus, ―Assessing Ideological PACs,‖ in Michael A. Malbin, ed., Money and Politics in the United States (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1984), 142–71; Kay L. Schlozman and John T. Tierney, Organized Interests in American Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1986). This argument should not be mistaken for the claim that interests have no influence, or that group involvement is somehow futile; groups are key to the mobilization of resources, publicity, and support in any election, a fact no less true even if powerful groups like the NRA cannot actually alter electoral outcomes.

Clinton, My Life, 898.

See Spitzer, the Politics of Gun Control, 76–80; Robert J. Spitzer, ―The Gun Dispute,‖ American Educator, Summer 1999, 10–15.

Clinton, My Life, 853.

The NRA‘s web site posted to organize opposition to ban renewal was www.clintongunban.com See Clinton, My Life, 381–82.

Comments by President Clinton at the November 30 signing ceremony for the Brady bill, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, December 6, 1993, p. 2478.

92 36

37 38

39

40

41

Robert J. Spitzer In the 1976 and 1980 Democratic Party platforms, specific reference was made to ―the right of sportsmen to possess guns for purely hunting and target-shooting purposes,‖ reflecting the more conservative and rural views of Jimmy Carter. The 1984 and 1988 platforms dropped these references, reflecting the more liberal views of Democratic nominees Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. Spitzer, The Politics of Gun Control, 125–27.

Clinton, My Life, 897, 898. ―Over 4,000 Kids Shot Dead Every Year,‖ paid advertisement, New York Times, May 7, 2000, 35; Robin Toner, ―Mothers Set for a Day of Marches for Gun Control,‖ New York Times, May 11, 2000, A28.

AGS was formed by corporate CEO Andrew McKelvey. See http://www.americansfor gunsafety.com Despite intense campaigning by Republicans and NRA President Charlton Heston, Bush lost such battleground states as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Mexico. In four Senate races, Democratic pro-gun control candidates defeated Republican incumbents backed by the NRA. See Noam Scheiber, ―Gun Shy,‖ New Republic, January 29, 2001, 15–16; E. J. Dionne Jr., ―Guns and Votes,‖ Washington Post, February 13, 2001, A21; Spitzer, ―Gun Rights for Terrorists?‖ 145–48.

James Dao, ―New Gun Control Politics: A Whimper, Not a Bang,‖ New York Times, March 11, 2001, E1.

VIII. WELFARE REFORM

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 10

WELFARE REFORM: IS THE PAST PROLOGUE? Peter Edelman Georgetown University Law Center Washington, DC, US

As of 2005 nine years had passed since President Clinton signed into law a far-reaching set of changes to the nation‘s legal framework of cash assistance for families with children— otherwise known as welfare. I was not and am not a fan of that law. I did not think it was a political imperative for President Clinton to sign it, and I thought and still think it was bad public policy.

Nonetheless, for good or for ill, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, as it is now called, has served as a living laboratory, and the experience can point the way toward future policy. The question, though, is whether anyone will draw relevant lessons from the TANF experience. It does not appear that those currently in power nationally have paid any attention, or at least any thoughtful attention, to what has actually occurred. President Bush‘s reauthorization proposal for TANF was based more on ideology than on any facts on the ground.1 The principal premise of the 1996 law—that welfare policy should be connected much more closely to employment policy—was correct. The problem was not the premise but the deeply flawed way in which it was embodied in legislation. Income maintenance policy for families with children headed by a nondisabled person of working age should emphasize helping the head of household to get and keep a job far more than the predecessor Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program did. AFDC was demonstrably in need of reform to move large numbers of welfare recipients into the workforce. Welfare policy should be tied to employment policy, and AFDC was mainly not. (A second premise should be that welfare is a safety net, especially to protect the children in the household. This was in theory a feature of AFDC, although the fact that states always had total discretion to set benefit levels as they liked meant that it was not an effective safety net in many states. Its safety net aspect was severely damaged by the drafters of TANF.) I want to say parenthetically that what happened to poverty during the Clinton years is something of a paradox. Poverty went down on President Clinton‘s watch, to a level almost as low as the early 1970s, when we had the lowest poverty rate since we started counting. Child

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poverty dropped substantially. Poverty among African Americans and Latinos reached record lows, although still considerably above 20 percent and still 2 1/4 to 3 times the levels among whites.2 Of course the biggest reason for the reduction in poverty was the hot economy of the late 1990s, and President Clinton deserves some credit for this. His fiscal policies buoyed confidence in the business and investment communities and among consumers, and the economy prospered. A healthy economy is always the strongest weapon we have to reduce poverty.

But President Clinton took other policy steps to reduce poverty. Most significantly, he obtained a big increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit in 1993, and this was extremely important. He played a major role in the enactment of the State Child Health Insurance Program in 1997. He helped to get significant increases in childcare funding. And he obtained the enactment of Americorps, the Empowerment Zone program, school-to-work, Head Start reform and expansion, and a number of other programs that have a constructive impact in reducing poverty. So my displeasure with TANF must be placed in a context of other policies that had a distinctly positive effect.

Rather than discuss the details surrounding the enactment of TANF, I want to begin by examining the experience under TANF from 1996 to 2005 and then suggest that the biggest ―lesson‖ from the experience is that we should not do income maintenance policy in isolation.

Rather, it should be just a part—actually, a relatively small part—of a larger strategy to end poverty in the United States and enlarge our frame of reference to focus on an adequate income at a level considerably in excess of the inadequate measure that we call ―poverty.‖ The most salient fact about TANF is that it is a block grant. That means states have enormous leeway in implementing it. Perhaps equally important, TANF was enacted in an atmosphere of strong antipathy to welfare recipients, so the flexible money that the states received was accompanied by a strong political message that they should use it to reduce the welfare rolls in any way they could. ―Welfare to work‖ was the mantra, but the subtext was ―welfare to anywhere that‘s not welfare.‖ The states were already free, under the prior AFDC law, to set benefits at any level they wished. But TANF ended the obligation that all states had under AFDC to provide benefits to anyone defined as eligible under federal law, and to do so on a timely basis.

TANF‘s block grant structure freed the states to have whatever time limits they wished— much shorter, if they wanted—than the newly imposed five-year time limit for using federal funds to pay for benefits. It allowed states to have whatever sanctions policies they wanted for throwing people off the rolls and whatever policies they wanted to deny people benefits in the first place. It allowed states to have family caps on benefits, prohibitions on attending college while receiving benefits, and on and on. During the early years, governors and state welfare commissioners went to national meetings in search of bragging rights to be the state that had reduced the size of the welfare rolls the most.

TANF was especially hard on legal immigrants. It barred legal immigrants already in the country, as well as those who would come in the future, from receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI, the program for the disabled and elderly poor) and food stamps, unless they had the equivalent of ten years of work experience in the US. It also barred legal immigrants from receiving benefits under any means-tested federal program (e.g., TANF and Medicaid) until they had been in the country for five years, leaving eligibility thereafter to state discretion. President Clinton vowed to change these restrictions. Consequently; SSI has been

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restored to immigrants already in the country when TANF became law in 1996, and food stamps have been somewhat more broadly restored. However, immigrants who arrived after August 1996 are still ineligible for SSI, and the five-year initial ban on eligibility for federal means-tested benefits is still in place.

The overall result of TANF—not surprisingly given its block grant structure—was good states and bad states. Good states offered decent (or at least relatively decent) benefits, helped recipients to find jobs, added to income from low-paying jobs, invested extensively in child care, assisted with transportation to work, offered job training and coaching to new workers, operated transitional job programs, allowed recipients to attend college, made individual judgments about the need for some parents to stay home with disabled or chronically ill children or to be caregivers for older relatives, passed child support payments on to the children for whom they were intended, and used state money to help legal immigrants barred by federal law and extend benefits past the federal five-year limit (20 percent of the caseload can continue to receive federally funded benefits past the five years if the state chooses to so provide). Bad states had short time limits, tough sanctions, make-work employment programs, low benefits, diversion programs to keep new applicants off the rolls, family caps, prohibitions on attending college, no help for legal immigrants, no pass-through of child support payments, and on and on.

Good states saw substantial reductions in their welfare rolls even with their good policies, in part because their policies worked in positive ways to help people find work and because jobs were available. Not surprisingly, bad states achieved deeper reductions: in some cases, 90 percent or more. In all, the rolls went down from over 14 million people in 1994 to about 5 million in 2005 (and about 4 million in 2014)—with the initial 9 million reduction comprised of about 3 million adults (mainly women) and 6 million children.3 Nationally, the good news was that single mothers‘ employment went up from 59 percent to 73 percent during the first few years of TANF.4 However, various studies show that only about half of those who found work escaped poverty. Getting off welfare does not mean getting out of poverty. And it was extremely fortunate that jobs—albeit too many of them at low wages—were available when the push came. No one could foresee in 1996 how hot the economy would become in the ensuing years. Things could have been quite different.

As it was, too many were pushed off welfare and didn‘t find work, or only found intermittent and/or part-time work. The research shows that 40 percent of former recipients have no work and are not on welfare on any given day. Since a net of about 3 million women left welfare during the plunge in the rolls, that means 1.2 million former recipients (who have about 2.4 million children) have neither a job nor welfare at any given time. 5 And about a third of that group, encompassing well over a million people, are completely out— didn‘t get married, didn‘t move in with extended family, didn‘t qualify for disability benefits, and so on.

So when we turn to the numbers for extreme poverty—people with incomes below half the poverty line, or below $7500 for a family of three (as of 2005)—we see they have jumped up in recent years, from 12.25 million when President Clinton left office to 15.25 million in 2005 (and 20 million in 2012). 6 Extreme poverty characterized more than 5 percent of Americans in 2005 (and 6.7 percent in 2012), and the curtailment of welfare is undoubtedly a major cause of that sad fact. So there are three big stories about the 1996 law: one, people found work but too many didn‘t escape poverty; two, surprisingly large numbers are worse

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off; and three, some states have awful policies, all perfectly legal. Idaho is the best example I know about: a two-year lifetime time limit with no exception for inability to find a job, and a ―three strikes and you‘re out‖ sanctions policy—three infractions of failing to show up for an appointment or being late for a work assignment and the entire family is disqualified for life (meaning for the entire childhood of that mother‘s children).

Events since President Clinton left office highlight the weaknesses of TANF. It is at best a policy for good times, when jobs are available. Shredding the safety net as it does, it is not a policy for a time of recession. Of course it will be pointed out that the welfare rolls have not gone up much over the past four-plus years, but poverty has, by a total of more than five million people as of 2005 (and nine million more by 2012). The best hypotheses are that there are two reasons why welfare rolls haven‘t shot up: one, that many states have policies of diversion which simply deny welfare benefits to people applying for them; and two, that many recipients understand all too well that they have a cumulative time limit of eligibility and will suffer serious privation before using up the now- precious limited lifeline of welfare. Should there be any doubt about the validity of these hypotheses, one has only to look at the significant increase in the food stamp rolls between 2000 and 2005 (with 20 million more people added as of 2014)—food stamps continue to be available as a matter of right under federal law.

The lessons I would offer for welfare policy assume the continuance of the TANF framework. We are not going back to the drawing boards any time soon, although we could certainly create a more intelligent framework. But using the TANF framework, the lessons are to have federal policy follow the example of the good states and discourage the example of the bad states. Following the example of the good states means finding ways to encourage the good policies I listed earlier, especially to make sure welfare is part of an overall antipoverty strategy. Discouraging the example of the bad states means placing restrictions on unduly short time limits and especially mean sanctions policies.

Funding needs to keep pace with inflation. Because the program has been funded at the same nominal level since 1996, it has lost well over a third of its value over that time, even with the low inflation we have had. The funding formula should be recalibrated, too, since the low-benefit AFDC states were penalized in 1996 for their previous parsimony. And the federal time-limit policy deserves reexamination. The arbitrariness of the federal five-year time limit is going to be more and more visible as the years pass and more people hit the limit despite the efforts that so many have made to manage their limited eligibility and only use it when they absolutely need to.

So at least we should learn from the TANF experience that: one, it should be connected to other policies to help people find and keep jobs, move up the job ladder, and take home from work and various income supplements enough money to support their families; two, it should be a more consistent safety net for people unable to find work or otherwise not in a position to work, and this includes help for legal immigrants and passing through child support payments to the children for whom they are intended; and three, states should be barred from having unrealistically short time limits and punitive sanctions policies.

The TANF reauthorization bill that was pending in Congress in 2005—especially the House bill, embodied new restrictions offered by the then-current president—went mainly in the wrong direction.7 Its highlight was a push to force a higher percentage of people currently on the rolls into working while they receive welfare. This proposal was oblivious to the demonstrated interest of welfare recipients in taking jobs, and pushed states to use their

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ever-shrinking TANF dollars to create expensive workfare programs instead of devoting funds to helping people succeed in getting off the rolls and staying off. We have had a national demonstration that welfare recipients are not deadbeats. The adults left on the rolls constitute barely half of 1 percent of our population, and most of those are people who go on and off the rolls. The remainder is people with various problems which mean that they need individualized attention to succeed in the workplace or are deserving candidates for a decision that they need not be required to obtain a regular job. The Bush administration was uninterested in these facts.

The other highlight of the Bush reauthorization proposal was an emphasis on telling recipients to get married. Modest funds were made available in the bill to encourage marriage, so the fiscal impact was not huge, but the premise was flawed. The issue about marriage is not a matter of telling someone she should get married. Apart from women who prefer not to marry, as they obviously have a right to do, the issue is more than anything else a matter of lack of ―marriageable men,‖ to use William Julius Wilson‘s term. This is a complicated question, and it is fair to say we have had almost no constructive policy attention to it, certainly none that matches the attention TANF has paid, for better or worse, to women. The Bush administration‘s rhetoric about marriage is a political formulation, not a substantive proposal—certainly not a positive and realistic substantial proposal, anyway.

The bigger lesson from TANF, though, is not about TANF itself. It is that welfare policy needs to be integrally connected to antipoverty and living-wage policies more generally. We can look at this in concentric circles. The first is about what has to go along with welfare itself. People will not succeed in staying in the workplace and off welfare without health coverage and help with child care, and very often housing assistance will be needed on a continuing basis as well. And the safety net for people out of work will not work properly unless we reform our frayed system of unemployment insurance.

A broader circle is how to improve the returns from low-wage work. Increasing the minimum wage, fixing the federal labor laws so they do not obstruct organizing, improving the Earned Income Tax Credit and the refundable child tax credit, and providing universal health coverage, childcare for everyone who needs help with it, a national Housing Production Trust Fund and a properly funded housing voucher program, and help with the expenses of attending college are all on the list.

A different broader circle is investing in our children, so that all are ready for school at age five, all graduate from high school being able to read and write and work productively and be good citizens, and everyone gets the further education and training they need to make the most of their talents. Investing in our children includes the off-school hours, too, to shore up what is going on in school, add caring adults to the lives of children who often lack them, help connect young people to the labor market, and provide a place of safety and security during times when their parents are still at work.

Then there are the services of varying kinds, beyond health care and childcare, that people need from time to time: lawyers, mental health care, education for parenting, drug and alcohol treatment, attention to domestic violence, and so on.

And there is the special problem of concentrated poverty in cities, brought to the surface by Katrina for many who had not been paying attention, and the continuing issues in other places of poverty—Indian reservations, migrant farmworkers and sharecroppers, family farms in deepening trouble, Appalachia, the colonias in south Texas, and so on.

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Overarching all of this are continuing issues of race, ethnicity, and gender. We have to address the fact that African Americans and Latinos had a poverty rate of 23 percent as of 2005, while whites are poor at a rate of little under 9 percent. We have to address the fact that a third of families headed by a single mother are poor (again as of 2005), and that this is over three times the poverty rate of two-parent families. Poverty is not an equal-opportunity scourge; it plays favorites.

The answers to all of these issues require public policy, but they do not rest only on public policy. Unless there is community and civic responsibility and an insistence on personal and individual responsibility, with community responsibility meeting personal responsibility to help people with the aid they need to make it, we will not make the progress that we need to make.

I do not want the past to be prologue if that means repeating our mistakes and failures and omissions yet again. I want the past to be prologue from which to learn, so that we can take the lessons of our history to be the foundation of a new era of justice—social, economic, and racial justice for all of our people.

ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4 5

6

7

The reauthorization as enacted was indeed retrogressive, beyond the problems created by the 1996 law. Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 101-171, 120 Stat. 4 (2006).

These are all census statistics, drawn from the annual publication, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance in the United States (available at http://www.census.gov) These are official data from the US Department of Health and Human Services (available at http://www.hhs.gov).

Ibid.

See, e.g., Pamela J. Loprest, ―Making the Transition from Welfare to Work,‖ in Alan Weil and Kenneth Feingold, eds., Welfare Reform: The Next Act (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2002).

These are census data. See Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance in the United States, note 2, supra.

See Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, note 1, supra.

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 11

WHAT THIRD WAY? CLINTON, NEW DEMOCRATS AND SOCIAL POLICY REFORM Daniel Béland1 and Alex Waddan2 1

Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Saskatchewan Campus, Saskatoon, SK, Canada 2 Department of Politics, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

President Clinton came to office pledged to govern as a New Democrat.1 Central to the New Democrat message was that it offered a distinct political agenda. This was exemplified

by Clinton‘s acceptance speech at the 1992 Democrat convention when he declared, ―We offer our people a new choice … The choice … is not conservative or liberal; in many ways it‘s not even Republican or Democrat. It is different. It is new.‖2 This claim to be developing a new political synthesis was given added gravitas by the use of the term ―the Third Way,‖ especially as this came to have a broader, international, application when many center-left parties in other nations looked to accommodate their traditional commitment to social justice with the pressures perceived to arise from neo-liberalism, a globalized economy, demographic change, and related fiscal constraints.3 Outside the United States, the term was also associated with Tony Blair and the attempt to mold a New Labour project in the United Kingdom. Indeed, those attending seminars to explore the possibilities of the Third Way included the leaders of center-left parties from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Brazil.

DEFINING THE THIRD WAY An explicit goal of the Third Way was to reclaim the ground of the political center.

Leading New Democrats were keen to emphasize that this was not a centrism simply devoted to splitting the difference between left and right. The ambition was to move the debate about policy issues and potential solutions beyond these traditional categorizations. That is, Third Way centrism did not mean taking the median position when a bold new initiative was necessary. Thus New Democrat writing is sprinkled with references to the need for a ―radical departure‖ and to the dynamism of ―the ‗vital center‘ of American politics‖ with its ―fresh

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agenda of big ideas.‖4 In short, the Third Way was not to be ―opportunistic‖ centrism but ―principled‖ and ―integrative‖ centrism.5 Hence, to its advocates the Third Way was a recipe for bold, not timid, government.

The aim of this chapter is to examine the experience of the Clinton administration in its efforts to reform health care and welfare in order to gauge how this informs us about the Third Way and the New Democrat project. Implementing significant change to the health care and welfare systems were clear promises made in the 1992 campaign, although the reforms were not articulated in detail at this stage. It was always likely that both would be difficult tasks, given the history of failed reform attempts in both areas. Nevertheless, there also appeared to be a consensus that the time had arrived for real change in both arenas. At the start of the 1990s the longstanding worries of health care policy experts about the health care system had been placed at the front of the political agenda as a result of Harris Wofford‘s surprise win in a special Pennsylvania senate election after he had placed great stress on health care reform. There was also agreement that the existing welfare system, particularly as represented by the much-disparaged Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, was dysfunctional and required repair. As became increasingly evident, however, consensus on the need for change did not extend to accord on what change should actually comprise.

On both issues, Clinton‘s actions divided Democrats, illustrating the difficulty of crafting a new political message. The effort at health care reform left the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), effectively the official voice of the New Democrat movement, exasperated.

Particularly in the aftermath of the 1994 midterm elections, a conventional wisdom developed that blamed the administration‘s Health Security Act (HSA) for undoing Clinton‘s reputation as a New Democrat and instead allowing opponents to portray him as a Big Government Democrat. Conversely on welfare reform, while New Democrats urged Clinton to sign the 1996 welfare reform bill forwarded by the Republican Congress, liberal Democrats were dismayed at what they saw as a radical conservative move to end an entitlement for some of the most vulnerable American families.

On the other hand, it is important to examine the details of the Clinton administration‘s reform efforts in these key areas of social policy on their own terms rather than just relying on the post-dated conventional wisdom. It would obviously be difficult to argue that the eventual outcomes in either health or welfare represented a successful negotiation of a path between conservative and liberal ideas that created a lasting ―Third Way‖ synthesis; but, if the administration‘s initial designs in these policy domains are disentangled from the subsequent political rows, then it is possible to discern an attempt at innovative policymaking combining elements of conservative and liberal thought to tackle complex problems. In the light of this, it is important to understand why the administration lost control of both the political and policy agendas in the debates over health care and welfare reform and to appreciate what this says about the possibilities and limitations of Third Way politics.

HEALTH CARE Retrospective commentaries on the administration‘s efforts to overhaul the US health care system have tended to portray the HSA as recklessly overambitious. Henry Aaron, for

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example, commented that nothing on a scale ―remotely approximating the size and complexity‖ of the HSA had been enacted outside of war or economic depression.6 Moreover, the conventional wisdom determined that the HSA was a liberal Big Government project well to the left of the acceptable parameters of American politics. According to John White, the health care reform effort, along with the Brady Bill and the gays-in-the-military episode, ―reminded voters why they disliked the Democratic Party in the first place. Instead of Bill Clinton, many suspected they had elected George McGovern.‖7 Quirk and Cunion maintain that the insistence on universal coverage reflected movement away from the center and a ―drift toward liberal, partisan positions.‖8 And, critically, leading New Democrats concurred with this judgement. According to Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, the DLC‘s resident think tank, the HSA‘s insistence on universal coverage harked back to the ―old-time Democratic religion.‖9 PPI health analyst David Kendall later commented: ―Without question, the historic setback Democrats suffered in 1994 was due in part to public apprehension about the Clinton health plan—an effort to secure universal access to health insurance through a new federal entitlement.‖10 At the end of 1994, what was by then regarded as the health care fiasco was central to the assessment of the then-chair of the DLC, Dave McCurdy, that Clinton was a ―transitional figure‖ who had the ―mind of a New Democrat‖ but the ―heart of an old Democrat.‖11 Yet, when Clinton came to office there was considerable evidence that the US health care system was ripe for reform. By 1992 health care expenditures accounted for 13.4 percent of US GDP with costs rising for both employers who provided health care benefits for their workers and to government.12 The rising expenditures, however, were not leading to a reduction in the overall number of uninsured Americans. In 1987, 31 million persons, constituting 12.9 percent of the population, were uninsured. By 1993 the number of uninsured stood at 39.7 million, amounting to 15.3 percent of the population.13 Hence, in the early 1990s substantive reform of health care provision appeared to be an undertaking that would constitute good policy and politics; and the Clinton campaign promised action to reform a system that ―leaves 60 million Americans without adequate health insurance and bankrupts our families, our businesses, and our federal budget.‖ But there was also a commitment to ―preserve what‘s best in our system: your family‘s right to choose who provides care and coverage, American innovation and technology, and the world‘s best private doctors and hospitals.‖14 In a speech in September 1992 Clinton insisted that reform would leave in place ―personal choice, private care, private insurance, private management.‖15 Thus there was a strong message about the need for decisive change coupled with reassurance that this was not going to lead to the ―socializing‖ of American medicine.

In order to achieve its various goals the administration alighted on the concept of ―managed competition.‖ This was in fact a relative newcomer to the debate on how to reform the health care system. According to Paul Starr, a principal architect of the HSA, it was ―not on the menu at all‖ at the start of 1992.16 At that point the best known models for comprehensive health care reform aimed at achieving universal coverage were the ―single payer‖ and ―play-or-pay‖ designs. The ―single payer‖ model would have effectively constituted government-run health care, as it would have largely undone the private insurance system and funded care through taxation. ―Play-or-pay‖ would have left employers to choose whether to provide insurance for their employees or to pay money into a government fund to pay for coverage for the remaining uninsured. Conservatives saw both these plans as Big Government and advocated more incremental measures based around extending tax credit

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schemes, although there was no claim that this would achieve universal coverage. Clinton rejected all these ideas but quickly embraced the emerging principles of managed competition as a means of accomplishing significant reform while leaving intact the essence of a private, insurance-based system.17 The HSA would have provided universal coverage through a mandate on employers to provide insurance for their employees and through subsidies to the poor and remaining workers without insurance. Insurance would be bought through so-called ―health alliances‖ that would be established by the states and would effectively act as purchasing agencies. They would sort through various plans offered by insurers and providers and then offer their subscribers a choice from a set of recommended plans. The plan aimed to combine a series of objectives: first, the continued prevalence of the private sector in terms of both funding and care provision; second, regulation to ensure that everyone would be covered in one way or another; third, the retention of choice between different types of insurance and care plans; fourth, incentives for savings of scale and efficiency.18 The strategy was outlined by Walter Zelman, one of the inner circle who designed the HSA. [T]he Health Security Act … draws on many competing proposals. But its goal is not to merge them into a lowest-common-denominator political compromise; rather, it is to draw on the best of competing ideas to create a new, higher-level synthesis, and in doing so to overcome the ideological and political deadlock that has marked the reform debate over the past decade. In this way, the Health Security Act attempts to achieve … a ―bridge to compromise.‖19

The expectation that the debate about health care reform would be conducted in a rational manner turned out to be misplaced. Theda Skocpol had correctly predicted that ―reformers … placing their faith in technically complicated insider bargaining‖ as a means of overcoming ideological and political obstacles were deluding themselves.20 Certainly ideology and politics were at the forefront of Republican minds. In December 1993 the influential GOP strategist William Kristol distributed a memorandum urging that the HSA be ―killed,‖ as successful reform might ―revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates.‖21 According to Clinton, Newt Gingrich later revealed how he had warned House Republicans that if the congressional Democrats passed the HSA then that would keep the Democrats in the majority ―for a long time.‖22 And while the steadfast opposition of the GOP meant that the legislative process would be difficult, the lack of enthusiasm among Democrats was equally damaging. Some liberals were disappointed that the administration had passed up the more radical and comprehensible single payer and pay-or-play options. More harmful, though, was the skepticism from centrist Democrats who turned on the White House for adopting a Big Government approach. Particularly distracting was the proposal from Jim Cooper, a Democratic representative from Tennessee. Cooper advanced a reform plan that he claimed would provide access to insurance to about 60 percent of the then-uninsured. Cooper explicitly contrasted his ―bipartisan proposal‖ with the HSA and asserted that his proposal was ―squarely in the middle‖ of the reform options.23 As it was, the Cooper plan made no progress, but for opponents of any significant reform it served a useful purpose by reinforcing the image that the HSA was out in left field.

Hence, in the crucial months after the plan was unveiled, the HSA was championed only softly by pro-reform constituencies and was denounced vigorously by its opponents. The

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public responded to these messages, and by July 1994, polls showed that ―endorsement of the plan had dropped from 57 percent to 37 percent.‖24 Polls showed continuing unhappiness with the prevailing health care system, but there was skepticism that government could deliver effective reform.25 In the end, a flagship policy commitment, designed to be representative of a new governing paradigm, was ridiculed as liberal Big Government at its worst. In his memoirs Clinton insists: ―Contrary to how it was later portrayed, health experts generally praised it [the HSA] as moderate and workable. It certainly wasn‘t a government take-over of the health-care system, as its critics charged.‖26 In his recollections, Sidney Blumenthal reflects on how the attempt to craft a reform bill that borrowed from different ideological perspectives left the HSA bereft of committed supporters: ―The assiduous care the task force took to put together a centrist approach alienated both liberal and conservative Democrats, and the bill was depicted as a bureaucratic monstrosity by everyone.‖27 Ultimately, a social policy reform that might have reshaped the political map in favor of the Democrats ended up having exactly the opposite partisan effect.28 The benefit of hindsight makes it easy to say that the HSA was misconceived and an expensive political misjudgement. It is, however, only the benefit of hindsight that makes it easy to reach this conclusion. Contrary to much of the post-1994 commentary, there was a general sense at the time that significant reform was likely in the 103rd Congress.29 Furthermore, the uncertainties generated by rising costs and rising uninsurance in the early 1990s demanded attention. Indeed, finding a remedy for these problems would appear to have been an ideal opportunity to put into practice the type of bold thinking promised by New Democrats in their advocacy of the Third Way. When, however, the administration produced a plan that promised comprehensive reform in a manner that balanced the perceived virtues of the American system against the need for greater regulation in order to achieve universal coverage and cost control, many New Democrats effectively abandoned the president and called for a more incremental approach.

WELFARE REFORM One of the complaints from New Democrats about Clinton‘s approach to health care reform was not just that it was too liberal but that it came before welfare reform. Following the 1994 midterms, Kaus speculated that if the administration had prioritized welfare over health care reform, ―we might now be talking about a Democratic realignment rather than a Republican realignment.‖30 In his account of the New Democrat movement Baer explains the importance of welfare as an issue: ―Welfare reform—and the theory of governance that undergirded it—was, quite simply, the most significant policy innovation that differentiated Clinton from liberal Democrats.‖31 And through the 1992 campaign the message to ―end welfare as we know it‖ was heavily promoted, particularly in potential swing states in the weeks leading to the general election.

Unlike health care, President Clinton did finally sign into law a major piece of welfare reform legislation, and New Democrats hailed this as a triumph.32 The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation (PRWORA) was, however, largely the handiwork of congressional Republicans, and there was considerable anger among more liberal Democrats when Clinton decided to sign the legislation in August 1996. Before

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looking at PRWORA it is worth examining the reform bill advanced by the administration in the summer of 1994. In hindsight the Work and Responsibility Act (WRA) may appear to be little more than a staging post on the journey to PRWORA, but the manner in which it attempted to pull together aspects of competing ideologies and fashion a distinctive and coherent Third Way–style compromise deserves attention.

The call for welfare reform had been a persistent theme in American politics since the mid-1960s, and the jump in the number receiving AFDC from 10.9 million to 13.6 million between 1988 and 1992 had again highlighted the issue.33 Hence Clinton‘s campaign message to change the system was not simply political posturing but did address a genuine issue.

There was, though, a discrepancy between the crude motto ―to end welfare as we know it,‖ which implied coercive measures against welfare recipients, and the more calibrated language used in the small print. In Putting People First Clinton and Gore had explained: It‘s time to honor and reward people who work hard and play by the rules. That means ending welfare as we know it—not by punishing the poor or preaching to them, but by empowering Americans to take care of their children and improve their lives. No one who works full-time and has children at home should be poor anymore. No one who can work should stay on welfare forever.34

This passage does reflect traditionally more conservative concerns about a culture of welfare dependency, but it also illustrates an understanding of the interdependence of welfare, access to health care, low pay, and job insecurity that concerned liberals. The implication here was that compulsion would be combined with more supportive measures, and indeed the WRA did attempt to reconcile these contrasting political instincts.

The WRA was a complex plan of many parts, but the headline proposal was to limit the amount of time that people could stay on AFDC to two years. After this, if recipients had not found a job in the private sector they would be required to participate in community work schemes if they were to continue to receive financial assistance. Furthermore, adult recipients would have to engage with education and training schemes. Countering this clear element of compulsion was a guarantee that government would act as an employer of last resort.

Furthermore, welfare recipients who did move into work could ―buy back‖ future welfare time.35 It is also important to take into account the wider policy context in which the administration was developing the WRA. The extension of the Earned Income Tax Credit, enacted as part of the 1993 budget, did mean that low-income jobs, which are what await the vast majority of those leaving welfare for work, were better rewarded than before.

Furthermore, although the prospects for health care reform were diminishing rapidly by the summer of 1994, the administration was still working on the basis that leaving the welfare rolls would not also mean losing access to health care coverage.

Unfortunately for the administration, its efforts to craft a reconciliation between coercion and governmental support left those who wished either for more coercion or more support dissatisfied. New Democrats and various editorial writers offered praise for the plan. The New Democrat magazine proclaimed, ―President Clinton has it right.‖ The New York Times described the WRA as a ―measured attack on a social pathology.‖36 Republicans, however, were not prepared to compliment this exemplar of Third Way thinking. Newt Gingrich scoffed: ―The president is brilliant at describing a Ferrari, but his staff continues to deliver a

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Yugo.‖37 Liberal Democrats were also sceptical, particularly those representing minority groups.38 In the end, there was no serious legislative action on the WRA, and the critical moment on welfare reform came in summer of 1996, when the president had to decide whether to sign PRWORA. To those liberals who had rebuked the president for his efforts, the Republican plan emphasised just how the WRA had blended compulsion and support. The primary ingredient evident in PRWORA was coercion. In brief the new law devolved primary responsibility for running welfare to the states, but it stipulated that recipients be restricted to two years‘ benefits before being required to engage in work activity. It also laid down a fiveyear lifetime limit for welfare receipt. Thus PRWORA acknowledged that government has an initial obligation to aid those falling on hard times, but it also stated that after a time government no longer has an obligation to help.

The debate within the White House over whether the president should sign or veto PRWORA was a bitter one. Those lobbying against PRWORA included Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, and most of the policy advisers. In favor were the political advisers and one senior domestic policy adviser with ties to the DLC, Bruce Reed.39 Hillary Clinton, too, came down in favor of signing—even though this set her against many of her friends.40 Underlying the debate was the question of whether a veto would give the GOP a wedge issue for the November elections. According to Dick Morris, polling showed that a veto would cost Clinton reelection.41 In the end the president signed the legislation and was keen to claim credit for doing so.

Subsequently the welfare rolls did drop significantly, although there is still argument about the reasons for this and the long-term effects on those leaving welfare.42 Yet even if PRWORA is seen as a success, it is difficult to see it as representative of a Third Way in social policy reform unless the Republican congressional leadership of the mid-1990s falls under this banner. Certainly there were enough differences between the WRA and the PRWORA that some of the chief designers of the former were outspoken in their condemnation of the latter.43 Former cabinet member Robert Reich lamented that there was ―no point to winning reelection if it has to be done this way.‖44 Former aide George Stephanopoulos, who also opposed the bill, reflected that Clinton was persuaded in part by his ―conviction that what was best for the poor was for him to be president,‖ but this rationale hardly constitutes a coherent political philosophy.45

CONCLUSION Clinton‘s experience suggests that the Third Way‘s ambitions of creating a new paradigm that bypassed old left-and-right ideology and politics is unlikely to materialize. There are many who broadly identify themselves as New Democrats, but there is not a natural Third Way coalition that falls into place once the details of a policy are articulated. Sometimes Clinton was able to build a winning coalition, but he had to do this on an issue-by-issue basis.

For example, he eventually won the budget and NAFTA votes in 1993, but even on these fundamentals of his economic program he was dependent on a shifting rather than resilient political base.

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The difficulties of developing an integrated Third Way agenda that generated a coherent political response were clearly highlighted by the traumas of health care and welfare reform.

Both the HSA and the WRA borrowed ideas from liberal and conservative traditions and put them together in an innovative manner designed to achieve substantive change. As such, both can be seen as representative of Third Way thinking; yet in neither case was there a Third Way end product. In the aftermath of the failure of the health reform effort, New Democrats were among those alleging that the administration had betrayed its Third Way principles by pursuing a Big Government plan. Yet Clinton was committed to reforming health care arrangements and produced a plan that did accommodate the market-oriented approach of the prevailing system, certainly if compared to the single payer and play-or-pay options.

Moreover, successful reform would have led to a dramatic improvement in the economic security of millions of Americans without insurance and would have simultaneously contained costs to the benefit of the overall US economy. If the implication of the New Democrat analysis is that the president should have followed a smaller-scale plan, then this would seem to narrow significantly the horizons of the Third Way. On welfare reform, it was perhaps inevitable that Clinton would upset the liberal wing of his party but, given that action was promised, then the WRA does look like a genuine attempt at finding some middle ground with substantive content. Welfare receipt was to be time-limited, but government would protect those making an effort to play by the rules. Hence, the WRA did redraft the relationship between government and welfare recipient but still maintained a sense of mutual obligation. PRWORA firmly shifted the balance away from government and towards the individual. As such, it was an embodiment of conservative ideology, and it is difficult to see how it was tempered sufficiently by liberal principles to earn the title ―Third Way.‖

ENDNOTES 1

2

3

This chapter was first presented as a paper in November 2005 at a conference reexamining the Clinton presidency at Hofstra University. The authors would like to thank the audience for their comments and advice. Daniel Béland would like to thank the Canada Research Chairs program for its support. ―Nominee Clinton Describes Vision of New Covenant,‖ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, July 18, 1992, 2129.

In the UK the concept gained wide currency and became more central to political debate in the late 1990s than was ever the case in the US (Tony Blair, Third Way: New Politics for the New Century, (London: Fabian Society, 1998); Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: the Renewal of Social Democracy, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998); Anthony Giddens, The Third Way and Its Critics, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000). The most public example of a continental European commitment to the Third Way came from Gerhard Schröder when he made a joint declaration with Tony Blair. See Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder, ―Europe: The Third Way—die Neue Mitte,‖ June 8, 1999 (London: Labour Party and SPD; see http://www.fcpp.org/publication. php/349). There is a question, however, of the relevancy of the term outside the Anglo-Saxon framework with its particular model of political development through the 1970s and 1980s; see Ralf Dahrendorf, ―Whatever Happened to Liberty?‖ The New Statesman, September 6, 1999, 25–27. Certainly the Thatcher and Reagan experiences did give a different dimension to the problems of reinventing the center-left in the US and the UK.

What Third Way? 4

5

6

7

8 9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

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18

19

20

21

22 23 24

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Al From and Will Marshall, ―Preface,‖ in Will Marshall and Martin Schram, eds., Mandate For Change (New York: Berkley Books/The Progressive Policy Institute, 1993), xv; Al From and Will Marshall, ―From Big Government to Big Ideas‖ in Will Marshall, ed., Building the Bridge: 10 Big Ideas to Transform America, (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield/Progressive Policy Institute, 1997), 1.

Paul Quirk and William Cunion, ―Clinton‘s Domestic Policy: The Lessons of a New Democrat,‖ in Colin Campbell and Bert Rockman, eds., The Clinton Legacy, (New York: Chatham House, 2000), 202–204.

Henry Aaron, ―The Problem That Won‘t Go Away,‖ in Henry Aaron, ed., The Problem That Won’t Go Away: Reforming US Health Care Financing (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press), 3.

John Kenneth White, The New Politics of Old Values, third ed. (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1998), 251–52.

Quirk and Cunion, ―Clinton‘s Domestic Policy,‖ 216.

David S. Cloud, ―Health Care: Clinton‘s Quandary,‖ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, special supplement, October 10, 1994, 19.

David B. Kendall, ―Modernizing Medicare and Medicaid: The First Step Toward Universal Health Care,‖ in Marshall, ed., Building the Bridge, 57.

Rhodes Cook ―President Defends Record, Concedes Mistakes,‖ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, December 10, 1994, 3516.

Kant Patel and Mark. E. Rushefsky, Health Care Politics and Policy in America, second ed., (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), 162.

Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1996 (Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 1996), 120 (Table 173).

Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Putting People First: A Strategy for Change (New York: Times Books, 1992), 107.

Theda Skocpol, Boomerang: Health Care Reform and the Turn against Government (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997), 45.

Paul Starr, The Logic of Health Care Reform: Why and How the President‘s Plan Will Work, revised ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), xiv.

Theda Skocpol, ―The Rise and Resounding Demise of the Clinton Plan,‖ Health Affairs 14, no.1 (Spring, 1995): 69–70.

Patel and Rushefsky, Health Care Politics and Policy, 271–74. For a detailed account of the development of the ideas behind managed competition see Starr, The Logic of Health Care Reform, and Jacob S. Hacker, The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton’s Plan for Health Security, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

W. A. Zelman, ―The Rationale behind the Clinton Health Reform Plan,‖ Health Affairs 13, no.1 (Spring, 1994): 11.

Theda Skocpol, Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 281.

Haynes Johnson and David S. Broder, The System: The American Way of Politics at Breaking Point (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1997), 234.

Bill Clinton, My Life (London: Hutchinson, 2004), 577–78.

Johnson and Broder, The System, 314.

Daniel Yankelovich, ―The Debate That Wasn‘t: The Public and the Clinton Plan,‖ Health Affairs 14, no. 1 (Spring, 1995): 11.

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26 27 28

29

30

31

32

33

34 35

36 37

38 39

40 41

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Lawrence R. Jacobs, ―The Politics of American Ambivalence toward Government,‖ in James A. Morone and Gary S. Belkin, eds., The Politics of Health Care Reform: Lessons From the Past, Prospects for the Future (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1994).

Clinton, My Life, 549.

Sidney Blumenthal, The Clinton Wars (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 121.

Daniel Béland, Francois Vergniolle de Chantal, and Alex Waddan, ―Third Way Social Policy: Clinton‘s Legacy?‘ Policy and Politics 30, no.1 (January 2002): 19–30.

Mark A. Peterson, ―The Politics of Health Care Policy: Overreaching in an Age of Polarization,‖ in Margaret Weir, ed., The Social Divide: Political Parties and the Future of Activist Government (Washington, DC; The Brookings Institution, 1998), 221; Jacob S. Hacker, ―Learning From Defeat? Political Analysis and the Failure of Health Care Reform in the United States,‖ British Journal of Political Science 31, no.1 (2001): 63.

Mickey Kaus, The End of Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1995), xiv. Indeed Clinton himself suggests that had he abandoned health care reform earlier and moved on to pursue welfare reform, then ―we might not have lost either House‖ (Clinton, My Life, 631).

Kenneth S. Baer, Reinventing Democrats: the Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2000), 214.

Will Marshall, ―Mr. Clinton Keeps His Welfare Promise,‖ Wall Street Journal, August 1, 1996; Democratic Leadership Council, ―A Final High Note on Welfare Reform,‖ New Dem Daily, December 21, 2000, available at http://www.dlc.org House Committee on Ways and Means, 1994 Green Book: Background Material and Data on Programs within the Jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means, (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1994), 325.

Clinton and Gore, Putting People First, 164.

According to David S. Ellwood, who had been drafted into the HHS in order to work on the welfare bill, the most serious internal dispute prior to publishing the bill concerned the length of time people could stay in government-sponsored jobs. Some thought that this should be timelimited. Others, including Ellwood, thought that it was enough that people were swapping a welfare check for a paycheck and that they should therefore be supported as long as necessary.

In the end, anyone still in need of a public job after two years would have their case thoroughly reviewed, but there would be no cutoff point. David Ellwood, interview with coauthor, April 1999. ―Message to Teenage Mothers,‖ New York Times, June 15, 1994, 24.

Ruth Marcus and Dan Balz, ―Clinton Outlines Plan to Break Welfare Cycle,‖ Washington Post, June 15, 1994, A18.

R. Kent Weaver, ―Ending Welfare As We Know It,‖ The Social Divide, 361–416.

For accounts of the White House meeting at which PRWORA was debated, see Robert B. Reich, Locked in the Cabinet (New York: Vintage Books edition, 1998), 328–31; George Stephanopolous, All Too Human: A Political Education (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1999), 419–22. For a comprehensive account placing PRWORA in a historical context, see Weaver, ―Ending Welfare As We Know It,‖ The Social Divide.

Hillary Clinton, Living History, updated edition (London: Headline Publishing, 1994), 369–70.

Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties (New York: Random House, 1997), 300.

Alex Waddan, ―Redesigning the Welfare Contract in Theory and Practice: Just What Is Going on in the USA,‖ Journal of Social Policy 32, no.1 (January 2003): 19-35.

What Third Way? 43

44 45

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David S. Ellwood, ―Welfare Reform As I Knew It,‖ The American Prospect, no. 26 (May–June, 1996): 22–29; Mary Jo Bane, ―Welfare As We Might Know It,‖ The American Prospect, no. 30 (January–February 1997):47–55; Peter Edelman, ―The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done,‖ Atlantic Monthly, March 1997, 43–58.

Reich, Locked in the Cabinet, 421.

Stephanopoulos, All Too Human, 331.

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 12

WHAT CLINTON ACTUALLY DID IN WELFARE REFORM Lawrence M. Mead Department of Politics New York University New York, NY, US

I just want to say three things about the substance of welfare reform. First, it clearly was a success—indeed, a remarkable success. It brought about clear-cut reductions in poverty and dependency, plus rises in work levels among poor parents. There were also some surprising, although small, positive effects on the children and families, something I did not expect.

These results were pretty dramatic and obviously indicated a major success in social policy.

Equally important, there is no clear evidence of hardship. As Peter Edelman says, some recipients came out of welfare reform not employed, but we don‘t really know whether they have suffered actual hardship. Many among the poor are still struggling, I don‘t dispute that for a second, but they were struggling before, and it‘s difficult to find hardship that is directly attributable to welfare reform. So the policy is a success.

But second, it is an incomplete success. There are several things we did not achieve in welfare reform that we should still be working on now. One of them is to keep single mothers employed after they leave welfare. There has actually been a decline in work levels for the last several years, in my view only partly accounted for by the recent recession, so we need to do something to keep work levels up where they were several years ago. Also, we have to do more to raise the incomes of the working poor, and here I think Peter and I would agree. We need to do things to make it possible for people to make it when they‘re working, at least for serious hours.

The third thing we need to do is address the problems of low-income men. Welfare reform was aimed pretty much at welfare mothers. The fathers have their own work problems—they are worse off on many counts than the mothers. We know much less about how to help them or even how to reach them. That‘s something I am working on now.

Now, as some have already said, Clinton was not the main mover of welfare reform as it actually happened. That was the doing mainly of the Republicans. Governors throughout the

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country—Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, John Engler in Michigan, and a few others—had moved the ball forward by carrying out their own reforms, in the Wisconsin case quite brilliantly. Wisconsin was a substantially bipartisan achievement, and I urge you all to read my book on that. At the federal level, Republicans took a key role. They put their own welfare plan together, going back before the election of 1992, and that plan became the basis for the Republican Contract with America of 1994 and eventually the Personal Responsibility Act of 1996. So, the drafters of reform were primarily Republicans, and fairly conservative Republicans at that.

But Bill Clinton did three essential things. He will always be remembered for them positively, in my view, and I say that as a Republican. First of all, he and also Bruce Reed put the issue on the agenda in the 1992 campaign by promising to end welfare as we know it.

That was an apt phrase that anticipated well what we actually achieved in welfare reform. It was Clinton‘s most important promise during the campaign and one that the public remembered. The second thing he did was to sign the Personal Responsibility Act when it came to him in 1996. This was after a period of extended jousting with the Republicans in Congress. The bill was more moderate than it would have been without that, but it was still essentially a Republican bill. Clinton signed it despite the opposition of most of his advisers and of a certain proportion of his own party in Congress. And thirdly, his administration implemented the act, quite effectively. So Clinton‘s role in reform was very important.

Now, the crunch question in understanding what Clinton did, and which is still before us today, is entitlement. By entitlement I mean the philosophy that says that people should be entitled to aid simply because they are needy. Do you get aid because you are poor, because you are under a need standard, or do you have to do something for it? That‘s really the crunch question. Now, Peter has said that he now believes that welfare should pay more attention to employment than it did a few years ago, and that is certainly true. But to say that does not actually abandon entitlement, because it depends how we finally promote employment. Do we provide new benefits incentives or opportunities for people to work, or do we finally say they must work as a condition of aid? In short, is work a further benefit that government must assure to the poor, or is it an obligation that they have to discharge? Do we finally take aid away from the family if they did not work or make serious attempts to work? That‘s the place I think Peter Edelman and I would still differ. I think Peter in the end would say that a mother is allowed to declare her incompetence, to say, ―I cannot do this,‖ and then she would still get aid. Whereas the Republicans say and I say that, no, at a certain point you have to do this, and if you don‘t do this, we will not give you aid. We will take the risk that you will be in trouble rather than give you aid. If you are needy and employable, it is more important to defend the principle of contribution, the principle of obligation, reciprocity, and social contract, all that, rather than the principle of unconditional aid That was the question where Clinton parted company with much of his party and with almost the entire academic world. Almost all experts opposed this reform—an astounding fact, but it‘s true. All of them parted company particularly on this question. They also wanted to promote employment, but they would not do so as a condition of aid, and they still don‘t like doing so today, despite the fact that the policy is successful. Most liberals and most experts continue to see the poor as overwhelmed by an indifferent and unjust society. They see them fundamentally as victims of whom nothing can be expected. So that means they‘re not responsible for anything, even matters of personal lifestyle, such as obeying the law, getting through school, getting a job, and supporting your family: things that you have some

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immediate personal control over. If you take this position, you don‘t feel that we can enforce any of these good behaviors as a condition of aid.

Now, Clinton confronted his party on this. He came from a different place. He believed that it was possible for most of the recipients to work and, therefore, the policy was going to work out in practice, and that‘s how it happened. Equally, he believed that his party had to give in on entitlement in order to restore its credibility in American politics. At the level of public opinion, there‘s absolutely no question that most Americans reject entitlement. They want to help needy families, but they also insist that the adults work, and they‘re prepared to enforce it. Most Democratic leaders and politicians have accepted this position. New York City is an exception; there, many leaders have not accepted it, but in most places they have.

However, the community groups, the lobby groups in Washington, and many thinkers allied to the Democratic Party still do not really accept this. Given the success of reform, few will say this openly. Peter is willing to do that, and I honor him for his candor, but this is still a running sore in the Democratic Party.

Now, did Clinton create a ―third way‖? Béland and Waddan argue persuasively that Clinton‘s health proposal was torn apart by interest groups. That was because it tapped directly into the partisan division about the scale of government. There could be no middle way between the Democratic administration proposing a traditional form of big government and a newly conservative Republican party, determined to oppose that, so the act was defeated.

On welfare, however, there is a third way. Now, the authors say the Personal Responsibility Act was too conservative for that label. I might agree if you focus on the formal policy of the act, even more if you mean the rhetoric surrounding it. The act did end entitlement, in that it time-limited aid and capped funding for it. It also included loud statements about the need to promote marriage as a solution to poverty. All of this is really scary from the point of view of the left, particularly the American left, where much of the energy is really about women‘s rights. The act was a body blow to the feminist worldview in which all family forms are equal. But in practice, the act was not about this. Mostly, it strengthened work requirements, a process that was already under way prior to 1996.

At the local level, if not at Washington, aid remains an entitlement. Time limits have affected few recipients, because states have found ways to keep them on the rolls, to keep helping them even after five years, if they‘re cooperating with the program. Work requirements are much more important for driving the rolls down than time limits. Funding caps did not cause states to run out of money, because the caseload fell. And states had ignored the marriage provisions almost entirely. None of this is going to change with the reauthorization, which is pending in Congress. Meanwhile, in return for work tests, the country has spent much more on other benefits for the poor, including Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, childcare, and health care. The welfare state has not been cut back. If anything, it‘s expanding, in terms of what we do for families. Previously, we may have given people more as an entitlement, but now we‘re connecting them to employment, which to most of them is worth more.

So welfare reform is not about saving money, and the motivation behind it is not the desire to keep my pocketbook from being nicked by the poor. Rather, the goal is to cause the poor to fulfill the civilities that most people, rich or poor, think are essential to belonging in this society. Reform took a step toward doing that. So in welfare policy, a third way has emerged. Welfare now means a combination of this new insistence on good behavior and the

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abandonment of entitlement with greater efforts to help people function than we made before.

The old view was that people who can‘t function had the greatest claim on aid. They were the neediest, therefore they should get the most. The new view is that the poor have stronger claims if they function, that it‘s precisely by functioning that they establish a claim for public attention and support.

But unfortunately, much of the intellectual class has yet to accept that. For them, to give up the idea of the poor as helpless victims is very, very costly, emotionally and intellectually.

The desire to help the helpless often lies behind their careers and their commitments. I accept that those intentions are good. But that image of the poor as helpless is unhelpful and impolitic, until they abandon it, there will still be a fissure at the heart of the Democratic Party.

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 13

ENDING WELFARE AS WE KNOW IT WAS CLINTON’S IDEA Bruce Reed Office of the Vice President The White House Washington, DC, US

Some of the other members of the panel have offered up the notion that the 1996 welfare reform law was some kind of cynical political tragedy forced upon Bill Clinton by a Republican Congress. The truth is that as Larry Mead suggested, ―ending welfare as we know it‖ was Clinton‘s phrase and largely Clinton‘s idea—and like it or not, in most important respects, we got the welfare reform deal we wanted. A decade later, I think the evidence is clear that in most respects, while we still have work to do, the law has worked. So let me elaborate on each of those points.

First, there would not have been the landmark welfare reform law if Bill Clinton had not written the road map and been elected president. Until Clinton came along, welfare reform was the most divisive wedge issue in American politics. Year after year, Republican politicians used it to beat up Democrats on the campaign trail, then came into office and did absolutely nothing about the problem. Clinton, as a former governor, forced Washington to stop demagogue-ing and take welfare reform seriously. He proposed a radical transformation of American policies toward the poor. He set out to create a new social contract that was based on work, not dependence, a contract that expanded opportunity, but demanded responsibility in return. Expansion of the EITC, the end of permanent welfare, the expansion of childcare and health care were all part of the same vision that social policies would neither succeed nor be sustained unless they were inextricably linked to work.

We believed firmly that three decades of reforms had fallen short either because they relied on cutting benefits instead of helping people go to work, or because they provided benefits without insisting that people go to work. We wanted to get the values and incentives right: making every job pay better than welfare, but at the same time requiring everybody who could work to do so. In October 1991, in the first major policy address of his campaign, Clinton said, ―We‘re going to put an end to welfare as we know it, people who work

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shouldn‘t be poor, and no one who can work can stay on welfare forever.‖ Those phrases defined the welfare reform. We put the radical idea of time limits and work requirements on the table. We proposed a sweeping crackdown on absent parents who owed child support. We proposed a system that spent more on childcare and on putting people to work instead of spending it writing people checks for life. These ideas were more far-reaching and serious than any national politician had put forward before Clinton.

The truth is, Bill Clinton was able to do something quite remarkable. He succeeded in keeping his campaign promise to end welfare as we know it, even though many in both parties in Washington did everything they could to try to stop it. Congressional Democrats largely didn‘t want to pursue welfare reform, because it divided liberals and moderates in their caucus. Congressional Republicans didn‘t want to enact welfare reform, because they had made their living blaming the old welfare system on Democrats and they had a presidential nominee in 1996 who desperately wanted President Clinton to veto welfare reform. So, all the odds were against us getting any kind of bill at all, let alone one we could sign.

As Joe Califano had said decades earlier, welfare reform has always been the Middle East of social policy—endlessly debated, never resolved. So, even before the 1994 elections, we didn‘t have the votes in Congress. We had to make the most of the only two assets we had: the power of the presidency and the power of Clinton‘s Third-Way argument on welfare reform, which was eventually able to prevail. We used the power of the presidency to force a reluctant Congress that didn‘t want to send us a welfare reform bill to send us one. President Clinton believed that if we did everything in our power to reform welfare, a Republican Congress would be shamed into acting as well, so he granted more than eighty state waivers for welfare reform experiments, which was more waivers than all previous administrations combined. From the beginning of 1995 to the summer of 1996, he signed a dozen executive orders on welfare reform and child support enforcement. We cracked down in the federal government on delinquent parents. We ordered teen mothers to stay in school. We even found a way to order a third of the welfare caseload to go to work, all through executive orders.

But most important, we were winning the philosophical argument. We did find a Third Way, as Larry suggested. When Bill Clinton was offering serious welfare reform based on work, conservatives were pushing an entirely different social agenda, designed largely on punishing illegitimacy. We were deeply concerned about the rising tide of unwed teen births, but we believed the best way to break that cycle was to show young women and young men that if they had a child, they would have to go work to support that child. Conservatives scoffed at the idea of the work and pushed Charles Murray‘s radical notion of cutting off support for unwed teen mothers altogether, as well as the Contract with America‘s idea of sending those kids off to orphanages.

We had the better argument, so we were able to prevail in the congressional debate. At first, Republicans tried to give the money to the states in block grants, no strings attached.

Clinton said no, that was weak on work. That wasn‘t welfare reform, and he forced them to add work requirements. Then the Republicans tried to put a whole bunch of conservative strings on the money, such as cutting off teen moms and mandating that every state adopt a family cap: no additional benefits for additional children who were born on welfare. Clinton said no, and won the support of Republican governors around the country who decided they didn‘t want to trade liberal strings from the old welfare system for conservative strings from Washington in the new system. And finally, Clinton said, ―If we‘re serious about work, the

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bill has to put up money for work,‖ and so we ended up with billions more for childcare and job placement.

Now, despite that, Republicans desperately wanted not to send Clinton a bill he could sign. During the government shutdown, they had sent him the same bill twice, knowing full well that he wouldn‘t sign it and that many in their own ranks didn‘t even support it. In the spring of 1996, they came up with the idea of linking welfare reform to a Medicaid block grant, which Clinton had said he would never accept. But Clinton had beaten the congressional Republicans so badly in the budget debate and beaten them again so badly over the course of the welfare reform debate that by the summer of 1996, Republican members of Congress cried ―uncle‖ and panicked, because they thought they would have to run for reelection in 1996 without having enacted a single important piece of legislation. So in the end, they gave us a welfare bill that was most of what we wanted, but attached to it a poison pill that had nothing to do with welfare: big cuts in immigrant benefits. Clinton decided that it was a good welfare bill wrapped in a sack of lousy immigrant cuts. He agreed to sign it because he thought that the welfare reforms would work and would keep his promise, and he thought the immigrant benefits would backfire so badly that even a Republican Congress would have to come back and fix them, which is exactly what they did.

The aspect of the bill that most troubled principled opponents like Peter Edelman—block granting welfare to the states—never troubled Clinton. In fact, he viewed it in some ways as a plus, because it gave states a whole lot more money. In fact, they‘ve had billions more than they would have under the old system. The other divisive aspect, the lifetime limit, didn‘t trouble the president the way it troubles Peter either because, as Larry said, the real issue was entitlement, and we had already crossed that bridge. The president was the one who had said that no one who can work should stay on welfare forever.

So, in the end, the reason we ended welfare had little to do with Newt Gingrich and certainly very little to do with Dick Morris. It happened because Bill Clinton had promised to make it happen. He made that promise because he believed that we would never succeed in helping the poor unless we put work, not certainty, back at the heart of every policy we proposed.

IX. HEALTH CARE REFORM

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 14

FALSE PROMISES: LESSONS FROM THREE HEALTH CARE REFORM CATASTROPHES Richard Himelfarb Department of Political Science Hofstra University Hempstead, NY, US

Recent history has proven enormously frustrating and disappointing for federal policymakers intent on reforming the American health care system. Between 1988 and 1996, three distinct efforts to address such issues—Medicare catastrophic care legislation in 1988, the Clinton administration‘s health care reform proposal of 1993, and the House GOP effort to reform Medicare in 1995—met ignominious defeat. Indeed, the aftermath of each of these events has left observers questioning whether significant health care reform is possible within the current American political system.

Certainly, the three efforts differed in scope and objective. The Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 (MCCA), the most incremental of these efforts, attempted to plug many of the gaps in the existing Medicare system and was to be financed by premiums imposed on all senior citizens, with the lion‘s share to be paid by the most affluent. By contrast, the Clinton plan, extraordinary for its non-incremental approach, sought to provide universal health insurance and was to be paid for mainly by employers. The third measure, advanced by the House GOP, sought to reduce Medicare‘s costs (relative to projections) by cutting payments to health care providers and providing the elderly with incentives to join managed care programs.

Nevertheless, the three events are most striking in the enormous similarities they share.

Indeed, all three policy failures unfolded in an analogous manner and followed roughly parallel scripts. Each proposal was the product of Washington ―insiders‖ and was developed with virtually no public deliberation; each constituted an ambitious departure from previous policy; and each was initially popular with the public but became even more unpopular with the passage of time.

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Further, these three events were not unrelated. In the latter two episodes, policymakers sought to apply the lessons from the previous debacle to avert disaster themselves. Thus, the Clinton administration learned from the catastrophic care episode the necessity of framing their proposal in the context of a health care crisis. In 1995, House Speaker Newt Gingrich sought to avoid Clinton‘s missteps by employing a highly disciplined public relations campaign to sell the program to the public and by keeping the details of the Republican program hidden from public scrutiny for as long as possible lest it be picked apart by critics as had the Clinton plan.

In attempting to explain the demise of these measures experts have advanced a variety of theses, some common to all three measures, others specific to each. Discussions of the MCCA and its repeal emphasize the role of demagogic interest groups, inadequate media coverage, the greed of affluent seniors who protested the program‘s supplemental premiums, and the failure of the MCCA to provide coverage for long-term care.1 Explanations for the failure of the Clinton plan are both more numerous and complex. As in the case of the MCCA, they include demagogic interest groups, an incompetent media, and a greedy and mistrusting citizenry unwilling to subsidize benefits for the needy.2 Specific to the case of the Clinton plan are institutional factors, including the difficulty of navigating comprehensive legislation through an American political system in which power is extraordinarily fragmented3 and in which partisan majorities are not synonymous with policy majorities.4 Regarding the rejection of the GOP Medicare reforms, two of the most frequently cited causes—demagogic interest groups and misreporting of the proposal by the media5 —mirror those of the previous episodes. Unique to this case were the president‘s relentless assaults on the GOP plan.6 In short, a relatively comprehensive set of explanations have been advanced to account for the demise of the MCCA, the Clinton plan, and the GOP Medicare proposal. However, amid the numerous analyses of the three events, one factor has arguably been overlooked: the failure of the advocates of each to provide clear and candid explanations for the rationales that underlay their plans. Specifically, the propensity of each program‘s advocates to emphasize their proposal‘s benefits while downplaying its costs strained public credulity and in the process left each vulnerable to the distorted appeals of political opponents. This chapter argues that a significant key to understanding the demise of these three proposals lies in a series of false promises by policymakers who believed they could convince the public that their plans provided significant benefits while imposing few, if any, additional burdens.

Further, it argues that the failure of these efforts is likely to make future health care reform, be it liberal or conservative, no easier.

THE MEDICARE CATASTROPHIC COVERAGE ACT OF 1988 (MCCA) Upon its passage in 1988, few anticipated that the MCCA would become embroiled in controversy so bitter that Congress would vote to repeal the legislation a mere seventeen months later.7 Indeed, even as criticism of the legislation escalated in the months following its passage, the program‘s supporters still believed that this anger could be quelled through

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intensive public education efforts. One reason the program‘s supporters may have been slow to see the rising public discontent is that from the outset the legislation had been ―an insider initiative driven by policy analysis‖8 with little or no public deliberation. In fact, the legislation was designed largely by a small group of Democratic and moderate Republican House members and senators in consultation with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). The AARP played a crucial role in persuading rank-and-file congressmen to support the legislation. Indeed, during the floor debates over the MCCA, supporters in both chambers cited the organization‘s endorsement as evidence that the program enjoyed broad support among the elderly.

The final version of the MCCA that was passed by Congress filled in many of the existing gaps in Medicare by providing coverage for expenses associated with acute hospital care, physician services, and prescription drugs. However, the bill‘s ―catastrophic‖ label was a misnomer, for while the program did include increased coverage for skilled nursing facilities, it failed to address the elderly‘s primary health care concern: long-term nursing home care. Because the media missed this point in its discussions of the program before congressional passage, many elderly likely felt misled and disillusioned when later they learned otherwise.

Of course, the most ambitious aspect of MCCA concerned not its benefits but its groundbreaking method of financing. In an attempt to pay for such benefits in a deficitneutral manner without imposing costs on younger generations, the new program imposed all costs on the elderly themselves. Further, to avoid unduly burdening low-income elderly, costs were to be distributed in a progressive manner, with two-thirds of the program financed by the most affluent 30 percent of the elderly who paid federal income taxes. This latter group would be liable for a surtax or supplemental premium equivalent to 15 percent of one‘s tax liability up to a maximum of $800 for individuals ($1,600 for couples).

This financing system marked a precedent in social insurance policy-making. Although many of the elderly believed that they ―earned‖ their Social Security and Medicare benefits through the payroll tax they paid during their working years, these two programs in fact provided enormous federal subsidies even to those with the highest incomes. The MCCA was different. For the first time, significant numbers of participants, in this case the roughly 30 percent of the elderly with the highest incomes, would be worse off through participation in the new program (that is, liable for costs exceeding the expected value of benefits to them).

However, in public discussions of the legislation, congressional advocates of the MCCA refused to acknowledge the redistributive implications of the program. Instead, they admitted only that the legislation would mean a slight dilution of the Medicare subsidies received by the wealthiest elderly. Coverage of the issue in the major print and electronic media and the AARP Bulletin reinforced this message by emphasizing the importance of the legislation‘s new benefits rather than its unprecedented method of financing.

Not surprisingly, this focus led the elderly to support the program by wide margins during the period before MCCA‘s passage. However, in a pattern that would recur in subsequent health care reform efforts, public opinion became increasingly hostile towards the legislation with the passage of time. Interestingly, this proved to be the case even among those elderly with the lowest incomes, all of whom stood to receive significant benefits at minimal personal cost under the program. Perceptions of how the MCCA‘s benefits and costs (particularly the supplemental premium) would affect one personally appear to have been highly influential in senior citizens‘ decisions to oppose the legislation. Unfortunately for the

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MCCA‘s supporters, during the period following the program‘s passage the intended (net) beneficiaries—the 60 percent of the elderly with the lowest incomes—steadfastly refused to believe or never came to realize that they were not liable for its supplemental premiums.

The MCCA‘s supporters attributed this phenomenon almost solely to the activities of one group, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. Named one of the nation‘s worst interest groups in the March, 1988 issue of Washington Monthly, the organization entered the debate with a reputation for adopting militant, uncompromising stands on policy issues and utilizing misleading and inflammatory methods in its fundraising and political action efforts. Following the MCCA‘s passage, the organization sent its 4.5 million members numerous letters attacking the program in shrill, virtually hysterical terms. ―A special tax on senior citizens. Have you ever heard of anything so outrageous in your life?‖ exclaimed one appeal. Another began: ―1989 INCOME TAXES WILL INCREASE BY UP TO $1,600 ($800 FOR SINGLES)—IT‘S A TAX ON SENIORS ONLY AND IT MUST BE STOPPED.‖ The National Committee‘s appeals had their desired effect. In the months preceding MCCA‘s repeal, Congress was deluged with literally thousands of pieces of mail protesting the program. Although much appeared to consist of postcards bearing preprinted messages from the National Committee, its sheer volume significantly influenced Congress‘s decision to repeal the program.

At the same time, it is important to note that the National Committee was by no means the sole group opposed to the MCCA. Indeed, a number of more reputable groups cast more reasonable arguments on behalf of the MCCA‘s repeal. These included a number of public employee unions whose members already received many of the MCCA‘s benefits at minimal or no cost as part of their retirement plans, as well as grassroots groups representing affluent seniors who under MCCA would be compelled to pay supplemental premiums well in excess of the value of the program‘s benefits. Thus elderly opposition to MCCA would likely have remained significant even in the absence of the National Committee.

Ultimately, the deeper reason for MCCA‘s demise may concern the earlier failure of the program‘s advocates to address clearly and honestly the redistributive implications of the legislation‘s financing. By making little attempt to discourage the perception that all elderly beneficiaries stood to benefit considerably from the legislation, MCCA‘s advocates paved the way for the disillusionment and anger that followed. When the affluent elderly learned that what had been touted as an unmitigated benefit for all senior citizens was in fact a redistributive program that taxed the affluent to pay for benefits for the poor, they likely believed that MCCA constituted an exercise in deception.

At the same time, the 60 percent of senior citizens who stood to receive significant benefits from MCCA at minimal personal cost were likely confused by all of the controversy surrounding the program. If MCCA was in fact such a good deal for the elderly as its advocates claimed, why were so many of their fellow seniors organizing and writing the representatives to demand its repeal?

Such confusion only further deepened when a number of MCCA‘s architects, frustrated by their inability to maintain public support for the program, made remarks that appeared to criticize all senior citizens, not just those with the highest incomes, as greedy and responsible for MCCA‘s impending demise. ―A lot of my colleagues are upset with the seniors,‖ said Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA). ―They say, ‗Okay, the hell with them. If they are going to be this nasty, let‘s cancel the whole thing.‘‖

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―At some point, somebody has to abandon the notion that there‘s always someone else to pay for these things,‖ agreed Senator David Durenberger (R-MN). Such references likely muddied public understanding of the program‘s purposes still further. In the end then, the false promise of MCCA as financially beneficial to all elderly participants may have been responsible for its repeal in fall of 1988.

THE CLINTON HEALTH SECURITY PLAN, 1993–1994 MCCA‘s demise influenced the Clinton administration‘s approach to health care reform.9 Both the president and the first lady, who would lead the reform effort, ―directly questioned, in private, leading participants in the fight for catastrophic insurance about the lessons of this disaster.‖10 From these discussions, the Clintons appear to have learned that an effort as ambitious as health care reform would not succeed unless the public perceived that some manner of crisis requiring public action existed.11 Thus, early on Clinton sought to establish a moral imperative for his Health Security Plan. In his September, 1993, address to Congress the president proposed ―to fix a health care system that is badly broken.‖12 ―Our health care system,‖ he said, ―takes 35 percent more of our income than any other country, insures fewer people, requires more Americans to pay more for less and less and gives them fewer choices.‖ Only a comprehensive overhaul of the American health care system providing every American health security—in Clinton‘s words, ―health care that‘s always there, health care that could never be taken away‖—would remedy these problems.

At the same time, however, the Clinton administration failed to heed other important lessons from the catastrophic care episode. For example, the secrecy with which the White House health care task force operated in designing the Clinton plan contributed to the perception that health reform, like the MCCA, was an elite-driven effort that contained unpopular elements. True, there is nothing unusual or inherently wrong about preparing a proposal, particularly one as complex as the Clinton plan, in private. At the same time, it is undeniable that the actions of White House media officials to keep even the names of task force members secret ―raised suspicions even among those groups inclined in support of this plan.‖13 Additionally, in overseeing the design of the Clinton Health Security Plan, task force chief Ira Magaziner ignored another of the factors that had contributed to MCCA‘s initial passage, specifically the inclusion of pro-reform moderate Republicans in the development of the legislation. Instead, Magaziner behaved with an arrogance that alienated potential political allies. ―Anybody who was a Republican, regardless of what they had done in the past, was evil,‖ said Christy Ferguson, a key staff aide to Senator John Chafee (R-RI), a pro-reform moderate.14 ―Republicans were frozen out of the process,‖ agreed Senator David Durenberger. Similar treatment was also accorded to influential interest groups, including the American Medical Association and the Health Insurance Association of America.15Equally as important, Magaziner also succeeded in antagonizing congressional Democrats and potentially sympathetic Clinton administration officials. ―They came over all the time but ignored what we said,‖ commented Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), chair of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee. Magaziner ―was arrogant enough that basically whatever advice was proffered by anyone who did understand the government or was an expert in

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health care was ignored,‖ agreed David Abernathy, staff director of the same committee.16 Within the administration, those who believed themselves slighted or ignored by Magaziner and his task force frequently retaliated by leaking ―damaging and often misleading information‖ about the plan.17 Such negative information likely fed public distrust of the Clinton effort.

Upon its release, the Health Security plan was further undermined by its enormous complexity. Under the proposal virtually every American was to be required to join a ―mandatory regional purchasing cooperative.‖ These mechanisms, which the Clinton administration dubbed ―health alliances,‖ would have been established in each state and would have undertaken numerous functions including revenue collection, information dispersal, and legal work as it related to employers, insurance companies, and individual citizens. Essentially, these bodies were to control health care costs by bargaining with providers on behalf of their enrollees. Unfortunately for advocates of the Clinton plan, explaining exactly how such entities would work in practice, much less how they would come into existence proved impossible to articulate in simple, accessible language. Indeed, because no working models of such alliances existed, even supporters of health care reform had difficulty understanding them. As for the general public, the specter of these alliances would always remain ―a large and potentially frightening unknown and this a vulnerable target ...‖18 A second aspect of the Clinton plan that appeared to mystify the public was its financing.

Possibly remembering the MCCA fiasco, the Clinton administration quickly concluded that any attempt to pay for its plan through direct taxation such as payroll taxes or premiums would prove politically unpopular. Instead, it decided to pay for its program through a hodgepodge of indirect sources including taxes on tobacco, reductions in Medicare and Medicaid spending, and most significantly, an employer mandate. Ironically the absence of direct taxes on individuals may have served only to increase public skepticism about the plan.

In the words of Robert Blendon, ―Americans could not understand how more people could be covered, more benefits added, and more bureaucracies established without costing them more money.‖19 Instead of attempting to explain the complexities of the Health Security program‘s alliances and its method of financing, the Clinton administration adopted a strategy similar to that which had proven disastrous in the case of the MCCA, namely an emphasis on the general benefits of their program accompanied by a concerted effort to downplay unpleasant specifics, particularly the details of its financing. ―Whatever you do,‖ said the author of one White House memo, ―don‘t get caught up in the details of the policy.‖20 Instead, allies were encouraged ―to focus on the personal, human impact of Health Security, not on its governmental means or legislative contents.‖21 Under the White House strategy, the American people would be encouraged to accept the plan on faith. In the words of Clinton adviser Mandy Grunwald, ―Opponents will try to confuse the issue by making it seem more complicated, but it‘s really pretty simple: If the president‘s reform passes, you‘ll know this— you‘ll get a Health Security card which guarantees that you can pick any doctor you want, fill out one form, and you‘re covered.‖22 At the same time Clinton continually skirted the issue of financing. Throughout 1992, the Clinton campaign avoided the issue, saying only ―that we don‘t need to lead with a tax increase on working Americans.‖23 In his September, 1993, speech unveiling his Health Security plan, the president promised to ―reform the costliest and most wasteful health care system on earth without any new broad-based taxes.‖24 As for employer mandates and

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Medicare and Medicaid reductions, Clinton mentioned these only in passing. Indeed, after pollsters warned against mention of the word ―tax‖ in discussions of the plan, Hillary Clinton avoided the term, even though it was virtually impossible to interpret the plan‘s mandatory premiums otherwise.25 Just as occurred in MCCA, public support for the Clinton plan, initially strong, would decline significantly following the plan‘s introduction in September, 1993. In the succeeding twelve months, public opinion would shift from 59–33 percent in favor to 49–44 percent opposed. As in the case of MCCA, the most significant factor influencing American attitudes toward health care reform concerned ―whether their families would be better or worse off under a given reform plan.‖26In designing its plan, Clinton administration officials lost sight of the fact that although most Americans claimed to be dissatisfied with the nation‘s health care system, the vast majority were satisfied with their own coverage. Consequently, any uncertainty regarding how health care reform would affect their existing health care arrangements was likely to create increasing anxiety.27 By June 1994 Americans feared that the Clinton plan would jeopardize quality and cost more than they worried about the achievement of universal coverage and cost control, the two major goals of health care reform.28 A number of key explanations for the decline in public support for the Clinton plan paralleled those given for the MCCA‘s demise seven years earlier.29 For example, the media once again failed to provide the public with information necessary to understand the issue. In this case the media were criticized for focusing on the politics of the battle rather than the substance of the debate.30Confessed veteran reporters Haynes Johnson and David Broder: ―The evidence is overwhelming that we—for this is our institution—failed to convey to most of the American people what was at stake.‖31 Additionally, just as MCCA‘s advocates had cited elderly greed and ingratitude as a cause of the program‘s demise, so too did health reform proponents accuse Americans of harboring hostile attitudes towards the poor. According to Johnson and Broder, the health care battle suggests a hardening of public attitudes toward the people who are most vulnerable and in need of assistance, with the poor being most dramatically affected.32 ―President Clinton and the Democrats struggled to extend health coverage to all Americans within a climate of elite opinion that is in principle unsympathetic to democratic inclusiveness,‖ agreed Theda Skocpol.33 And finally, just as in the case of MCCA, the conventional wisdom emphasized the role of special interest groups in undermining health care reform. Indeed, when surveyed as to the causes of the Clinton plan‘s demise, Americans most frequently mentioned the role of lobbyists and special interest groups.34 According to Johnson and Broder such organizations spread a ―largely false message in a campaign that cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars and involved the use of every technique developed for the modern high-tech election campaign.‖35 Most prominently mentioned were the efforts of the National Federation of Independent Businesses and the Health Insurance Association of America, the latter of which sponsored the famous ―Harry and Louise‖ ads attacking the Clinton plan. These commercials, featuring a married couple worried about increasing government bureaucracy and health care rationing resulting from the Clinton plan, ended with one of the characters opining, ―They choose. We lose,‖ or, ―There‘s got to be a better way.‖ The ―Harry and Louise‖ spots, which were aired heavily in Washington, DC, and then publicized on the national news, influenced legislators and perhaps the public to doubt the promises of the plan36.

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However, while the efforts of interest groups likely played a key role in undermining public support for the Health Security Plan, it is arguable that, as in the MCCA episode, reform advocates exposed their proposal to attack by failing to provide a clear and candid explanation of its benefits and costs.37 As discussed earlier, Americans never understood the health alliance mechanism at the center of the Clinton plan and were unclear as to how such a massive program would be financed without some form of direct taxation. Further, the Clinton administration made a concerted effort to avoid these complicated issues. Thus, instead of admitting that the proposed health alliances would require many Americans to accept new limitations on their freedom to choose doctors or hospitals, the administration argued that its plan would increase consumer choice.38 Instead of acknowledging that health care reform would be paid for by Medicare and Medicaid spending reductions and employer mandates (which would likely be passed on to consumers), the administration implied that cradle-to-grave health coverage for all Americans would be purchased at no significant cost for ordinary citizens. In sum, as in the case of the MCCA, the Clinton plan‘s advocates sought to sell their proposal as one that ―would leave nearly every American better off‖ rather than one that would produce definitive winners and losers.39 Unfortunately, this was not true. In reality, health care reform, at least in the short term, was to be a zero-sum game in which Americans with health insurance would likely incur higher costs and fewer choices while 37 million uninsured Americans received coverage.

Not surprisingly, many Americans were skeptical of the Clinton plan from the outset. In October, 1993, one month after the formal unveiling of the administration‘s proposal, 80 percent of Americans believed that the health plan would cost more than the president had estimated, including 54 percent who expected it to cost much more. Further, the public was never as supportive of health care reform as administration officials believed. True, over 80 percent of Americans consistently supported ―fundamental reform or a complete rebuilding of the health care system.‖ Further, a similar majority believed ―government should be responsible for medical care for people who can‘t afford it.40 However, support for universal coverage declined significantly when the public was confronted with the consequences of providing health insurance to everyone. As in the case of the MCCA, ―whether or not a reform is seen as adding to personal costs is the single most important predictor of the lack of public support.‖41 Given the public‘s belief that the Clinton plan would cost them more and their resistance to health reform when presented with increased costs, it is not surprising that Americans proved receptive to the efforts of the NFIB, HIAA and others. Indeed, even in the absence of such organized campaigns, Clinton administration missteps and other events conspired to undermine public support for the plan. These included the previously discussed secrecy surrounding the Clinton task force and the leaks that undermined its plan. In this context, the administration‘s reassurances that no significant public sacrifice was necessary for its ambitious program proved unbelievable to the public and ultimately resulted in its undoing.

As in the MCCA episode, health reform advocates never succeeded in persuading the public that its plan would prove universally beneficial.

Unlike the demise of the MCCA, which occurred in a non-election year, the downfall of the Clinton plan had severe electoral repercussions for its supporters. Throughout the 1994 campaign, GOP candidates continually denounced the already repudiated Clinton plan as ―the mother of all entitlements‖ and an example of ―bureaucracy run amok.‖42 The ex-officio leader of the Republican effort, Newt Gingrich, acknowledged that such rhetoric ―scared

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everybody‖ including seniors and ultimately persuaded the electorate that the Clinton administration was ―committed to a government-controlled, left-wing vision of America.‖43 The effectiveness of this appeal combined with the widespread demoralization of Democratic groups supportive of health care played a key role in the Republican takeover of Congress that fall.

THE REPUBLICAN MEDICARE REFORM PLAN, 1995–1996 Although Republicans mounted a vigorous attack on the Clinton plan during the 1994 campaign, they were largely silent about their own intentions with respect to health care.

Their campaign manifesto, The Contract with America, made no reference to this issue. True, a pair of the document‘s provisions, a commitment to balance the federal budget in seven years in combination with a pledge to reduce income and business taxes, likely would have affected Medicare significantly. However, the Contract neglected any mention of how such plans would affect this program.

It was only once the Republicans began to perform the arithmetic necessary to balance the budget by 2002 while cutting taxes by $245 billion that they were confronted by the necessity of reducing Medicare spending. After figuring out how to reduce spending in all other programs, the House Republican leadership calculated that $270 billion in savings from Social Security and/or Medicare would be necessary to achieve a balanced budget.44 With Social Security declared off the table by Newt Gingrich, the savings would come entirely from Medicare. Thus, under the GOP plan, 30 percent of the spending reductions would come from a program that in 1995 accounted for less than 12 percent of the federal budget.

Of course legitimate policy reasons existed for reducing Medicare spending. By 1995, program costs were growing by almost 10 percent yearly, faster than any other item in the federal budget. In the absence of federal action, Medicare spending was to rise from $178 billion (11.6 percent of the federal budget) to $345 billion (16.1 percent) in just seven years.

Indeed, in 1993 Clinton had proposed reductions comparable to those in the GOP plan as a means of financing his health care plan.

While the necessity of reducing Medicare spending by $270 billion between 1995 and 2002 was not disputed by Republican leaders as necessary for achieving a balanced budget and tax cut, specifying exactly how such savings should be achieved proved far more difficult. The most touted and innovative aspects of the GOP plan involved giving the elderly incentives to abandon Medicare‘s costly fee-for-service system in favor of less expensive managed care alternatives or medical savings accounts (MSAs, into which individuals would make tax-free deposits for expenses not covered by Medicare). However, this set of policies resulted in only 13 percent of the $270 billion in savings slated for Medicare (indeed, the MSAs would actually have increased Medicare costs by giving money to seniors who incurred minimal costs under the current system). As a result, the lion‘s share of savings would have to be achieved through more traditional and painful means: increased premiums for beneficiaries and reduced payments to doctors and hospitals.

If enacted, the GOP plan would have significant implications for Medicare beneficiaries.

Reductions in payments to providers would likely result in fewer doctors and hospitals participating in the fee-for-service portion of Medicare. Between 1995 and 2002,

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beneficiaries‘ Part B premiums would rise from $46 monthly to $87.60, 30 percent more than the rate contained in the current law. As for the highly publicized incentives for the elderly to join managed care programs, the proposal would likely increase the number of such alternatives available to senior citizens (under the plan, doctors and hospitals were to be permitted to form their own managed care programs) and many would likely provide coverage items such as prescription drugs which Medicare failed to cover. However, these advantages would come with a price: the presence of managed care ―gatekeepers‖ who saved money for managed care programs by imposing lower-cost providers and treatments on patients or even denying medical services. Additionally, some feared that the GOP plan‘s managed care alternatives and medical savings accounts would be subscribed to mainly by healthier, wealthier and younger senior citizens intent on saving money. This would leave older, poorer, and sicker elderly in a Medicare fee-for-service system that would become prohibitively expensive over time, ultimately dooming it to extinction.

Among Republicans, some raised concerns that their proposal would be attacked by political opponents as draconian and as a result would fail to garner public support. Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican National Committee, viewed Medicare as the party‘s Achilles‘ heel and believed that ―the Democrats wanted the Republicans to go after the program like the pope hates sin.‖ He urged that Gingrich and others take Medicare off the table for at least two years so the public could be educated and prepared for such change.45 Such a delay would have had the added virtue of carrying the Republicans beyond the 1996 elections.

Gingrich and House Republican leaders rejected Barbour‘s arguments. First, they argued that the degree of budgetary reduction would be much more ―difficult and drastic‖ if action were delayed. Second and more importantly, Gingrich appeared to believe that a carefully planned and orchestrated public relations campaign on behalf of the GOP plan could overcome the pitfalls that had undermined public support for the MCCA and Clinton Health Security Plan.

In devising a strategy, Gingrich and his lieutenants realized the importance of establishing a moral imperative for their plan. ―The public, according to Republican pollsters, did not think there was anything broken in the Medicare system that needed fixing. It appeared that the Republicans were merely tapping into it for their own purposes, to balance the budget and release a similar amount of tax cuts for the wealthy.‖46 Fortunately for the Republicans, a fortuitous event intervened to aid them, specifically the release of the annual Medicare trustee‘s report. The news it contained was not significantly different from previous years: In the absence of government action, the Medicare Part A trust fund financing hospital care would be bankrupt soon after the year 2000. Nevertheless, the report provided Gingrich with a means of separating Medicare from the issue of a balanced budget or tax cuts. Now, the Republicans were able to argue that Medicare was going bankrupt and needed to be saved regardless.47 Believing they had established a rationale for government action, Gingrich and Republican leaders sought to construct a concise, persuasive argument for their plan. Not surprisingly, in the aftermath of the MCCA and the Clinton plan, focus groups conducted by Republican pollsters in early 1995 revealed that seniors were leery of any proposal that emphasized ―changing Medicare.‖ The research also revealed that the terms ―‗cut,‘ ‗cap,‘ and ‗freeze‘ ... would bring nothing but trouble and help the Democrats define the process in negative terms.‖48 Advised instead to explain their plan with ―soothing words that evoked

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stability,‖49 House Republicans spent late March and April 1995 trying to compile a list of such terms. After considerable tinkering and further focus-group testing, they settled on the argument that their plan would ―preserve, protect, and strengthen‖ Medicare.

Just as important, they mounted a concerted effort to persuade the media that their plan did not ―cut‖ Medicare spending but merely increased it at a slower rate. Throughout the summer and fall of 1995, House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich (R-OH) and Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour ―pounded away fiercely on the issue, calling reporters late at night or early in the morning to warn them off the dreaded word.‖50 The GOP leadership also ordered the House rank-and-file ―that no statement or story using the word ―cut‖ should go unanswered.‖ An examination of media coverage of the Republican plan indicated that, at least initially, such efforts were surprisingly successful. According to one review: ―Once the formal GOP proposals were introduced in September [1995] there were enough examples of neutralized coverage to suggest the GOP was indeed winning the battle over language.‖51 Consequently, ―Even as the fall became winter and the GOP began to lose the political war over Medicare and the balanced budget, the Republicans‘ public relations effort continued to show success.

Even those reporters who referred to ‗cuts‘ in Medicare elaborated on the meaning of the phrase, and many parts of the media subjected the Democratic position to tough scrutiny.‖52 The final, novel twist in the Republican strategy involved Gingrich‘s decision to keep the plan‘s details secret until just before the House voted on the plan in October, 1995. According to Johnson and Broder,53 ―This deliberate strategy was part of the lesson learned from watching the Clinton plan founder.‖ With the number of public hearings minimized, lobbyists would have little time to mobilize against the plan, while the media would be unable to critique it. Because Gingrich ―in effect wrote the bill in his office,‖54 even GOP House members were likely unaware of some of its contents when they voted for it.

For at least a brief period in the summer and fall of 1995, the public appeared persuaded about many aspects of the Republican plan. ―On the public opinion front,‖ said one article in The Weekly Standard,55 ―Republicans have achieved a level of success that amazes even them.‖ Specifically, an August survey found only 36 percent agreeing that ―if balancing the budget requires cuts in Medicare or slowing Medicare spending, I would rather not balance the budget‖ (56 percent disagreed). Additionally, 52 percent disagreed that Republicans wanted ―to cut Medicare spending to pay for their tax cut for the rich.‖ A poll taken for the Republican National Committee even showed that by a 57-30 margin the public trusted Congress more than Clinton to rescue Medicare. These results, combined with the fact that Republican members visiting their districts had encountered few protests on the issue, led Newt Gingrich to declare that ―on the core questions—Does Medicare need to be saved and do you want to see somebody do something about Medicare?—we had won.‖56 Unfortunately for Gingrich and the Republicans, as had occurred in the cases of the MCCA and Clinton plan, this public relations victory proved only temporary. By October, 1995, attacks on the GOP plan had mounted and public opinion shifted heavily against it. In a CBS–New York Times poll that month, Americans opposed the plan by a 57-26 margin.57 Further, in a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 58 percent of respondents said that ―leaving Medicare alone was more important than balancing the budget.‖58 By December, 1995, only 16 percent of the public believed that the Republicans‘ primary motive in curtailing Medicare spending was to ―preserve‖ the program. Instead, 34 percent said they thought the

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Republicans‘ primary motive was to balance the budget while 36 percent said it was to provide a tax cut.59 Support for the GOP plan would erode still further when the failure of Congress and the president to agree on a balanced budget plan (including Medicare reform) forced a government shutdown in December, 1995, and January, 1996. While Clinton successfully cast himself in the role of savior of Medicare, Newt Gingrich and the GOP-majority Congress received the brunt of the blame for the ensuing crisis.

Beginning in the spring of 1996 and continuing through Election Day in November, Democrats regularly invoked the Medicare issue in their campaign advertising. Particularly influential in these efforts was the AFL-CIO, which spent $35 million attacking House Republicans, including the GOP freshmen most supportive of Gingrich‘s proposal. Believing that public opinion on Medicare had turned irrevocably against them, Republicans sought to downplay or distance themselves from their plan. Thus, instead of defending the GOP reforms as necessary to save the system from bankruptcy, the party‘s presidential nominee, Bob Dole, merely accused Clinton of ―playing politics with the issue‖ and ―scaring seniors.‖60 Despite the obvious substantive differences between the GOP Medicare reform proposal and that of the MCCA and Clinton plan, supporters attributed its demise to virtually identical factors: inadequate and/or biased media coverage and demagogic attacks by political opponents. As in the previous episodes, such arguments contained an element of truth. Media coverage of the Medicare debate was at times superficial and biased against the Republican perspective.61 More significantly, it is undeniable that Democratic opponents of the plan, including President Clinton, engaged in a concerted ―Mediscare‖ campaign that systematically distorted the GOP proposal (and ironically resembled the conservative attack on the Clinton plan two years earlier).62 While Democratic opponents of the plan attacked Republicans for planning to ―eliminate Medicare and ―using the resources to pay for tax cuts so they can get a balanced budget,‖ President Clinton charged variously that the GOP plan would ―dismantle,‖ ―destroy,‖ and ―devastate‖ the program. (Such charges were particularly suspect in light of the fact that two years earlier, the White House had proposed roughly comparable reductions in Medicare spending to pay for its Health Security Plan, while its 1995 budget alternative envisaged $124 billion in reduced Medicare spending by 2002.) Commenting on the Democratic efforts, ABC‘s Chris Bury concluded that though the president‘s rhetoric had been a ―smashing public success, many critics believe the price of admission has been an honest debate.‖ Similarly, the Washington Post agreed that ―The Democrats, led by the president, have shamelessly used this issue, demagoged [sic] on it because they think that‘s where the votes are.‖63 However, as in the cases of the MCCA and Clinton plan, inadequate and biased media coverage, combined with demagoguery by opponents of the legislation cannot completely explain the demise of the GOP Medicare plan and the political backlash that ensued. First, as previously discussed, the House Republicans achieved a surprising degree of success in defining the terms of the Medicare debate, particularly in prodding the media to avoid using the term ―cut‖ in describing the plan. Indeed, a review of media‘s coverage of the issue during 1995 ―indicates that the GOP‘s political problems cannot be pinned on the press.‖64 Second, while it is true that demagogic attacks by political opponents distorted the GOP plan, it is arguable that no matter how persuasive the Republicans‘ arguments, significant numbers of senior citizens would have rebelled against any proposal that raised Medicare Part

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B premiums and potentially limited access to the fee-for-service system to which most were accustomed. Indeed, the careful planning of Republican leaders in developing their plan and then selling it to the public attests to their awareness that significant opposition was likely to arise.

Instead, the chief cause of the demise of the GOP Medicare plan is arguably similar to that which befell the MCCA and the Clinton Health Security Plan, namely the failure of the plan‘s advocates to put forth a clear and honest explanation for the rationale that underlay it.

As in the two earlier episodes, proponents of health care reform, in this case political conservatives, attempted to introduce policy changes that would likely leave beneficiaries worse off but attempted to sell their program as one that would benefit everyone. However, just as in the past, these arguments proved vulnerable to attack and ultimately left their proponents looking politically and intellectually dishonest.

Two aspects of the GOP Medicare plan created and reinforced this impression. The first involved the House leadership‘s efforts to defend its proposal as a means of saving the program from bankruptcy. While it is true that Medicare Part A‘s trust fund was projected to go broke in 2001, only a small amount of the GOP plan‘s $270 billion savings, $78 billion, were required to shore up this part of the program in the short term. More importantly, the $270 billion figure was only a bit more than the $245 billion tax cut included in the Republican plan, a fact that allowed the two items to be connected symbolically by opponents. The Republicans unintentionally strengthened this connection ―when, on the same day in October 1995, the Senate Finance Committee approved tax cuts while the House passed reductions in projected Medicare spending.‖65 Ultimately, this permitted the proposal‘s opponents to argue that the GOP sought the changes in Medicare not to preserve the program but to finance tax cuts for the wealthy.

Equally as problematic were the attempts of the Republican leadership, particularly Newt Gingrich, to sell their proposed reforms as painless policy changes that would maintain Medicare‘s quality of care while significantly reducing Medicare expenditures.66 ―I believe we can design a Medicare program which gives every senior citizen greater choice of health care at lower cost, and, as a consequence, saves a heck of a lot of money,‖ said Gingrich,67 making a point he would reiterate throughout the Medicare debate.

Unfortunately, such assertions were, in fact, doubtful. True, many health policy analysts agreed ―that over the long haul, a basic restructuring of Medicare to produce greater use of managed care‖ would produce ―some of the painless savings‖ Republicans promised.68 However, the consensus was that reducing Medicare spending by so much in such a short time would mean increased costs for beneficiaries and lower payments for health care providers (which could induce many to stop accepting Medicare patients or shift costs to those with private health insurance). ―There‘s really no way to do this without imposing real sacrifice and real pain,‖ said Robert Reischauer, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, ―and both beneficiaries and providers will feel it. The notion that this can be squeezed out of the system with greater efficiencies is wishful thinking.‖69 In the aftermath of the MCCA and the Clinton plan, the public found the GOP Medicare proposal no more believable than the experts. As in these earlier cases, Americans likely asked how the GOP plan could leave them personally better off while simultaneously providing significant savings to the program. And as in these earlier cases, opponents of the proposal were easily able to exploit such skepticism using methods virtually identical to those previously employed against them.

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CONCLUSION Between 1988 and 1996, three major proposals to reform part or all of the American health care system were considered and ultimately rejected by an angry and confused public.

Each of these plans involved significant redistribution from the wealthy to the poor, insured to uninsured, or older to younger. Just as significantly, each was sold to the public as a ―positive sum‖ policy where many, if not all citizens stood to receive significant benefits at minimal personal cost.

While the conventional wisdom holds that the demise of each was attributable to a number of factors including an incompetent or irresponsible media and demagogic interest groups, a larger explanation for the failure of each must include the strategy of the plans‘ advocates themselves. Believing that the American people could not be told the truth about the costs their plans would impose on individuals, public officials from Bill Clinton to Newt Gingrich steadfastly denied that any significant personal sacrifice from Americans was necessary for the realization of their objectives. Ironically, the results of this strategy have been just the opposite of what was intended; almost ten years later, the federal government has done little to further the health care agenda of either the left or the right.

During Clinton‘s second term, congressional Republicans and the president cooperated to pass the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. The legislation contained modest accomplishments for each party. Democrats won passage of a $24 billion (five-year) program to provide health insurance for children. Republicans were able to claim credit for $115 billion dollars in Medicare spending reductions. However, these small victories never approached the fundamental reforms of American health care sought by either party.

The emergence of significant federal budget surpluses between 1998 and 2001 did little to change the health care debate. In the 2000 election, neither Al Gore nor George W. Bush proposed more than modest measures to provide health insurance to 40 million uninsured Americans. While Bush pledged to seek Medicare reform, his rhetoric suggested little beyond a desire to provide senior citizens with more health care choices.

The only notable exception to the federal government‘s continuing inactivity on health care reform occurred with the emergence of the prescription drug issue. With pharmaceutical costs rapidly rising and the elderly increasingly reliant on them for their well-being, both Gore and Bush promised to provide federal subsidies to the vocal and politically active constituency.

Somewhat ironically, in 2003, Bush and a conservative Republican Congress would pass the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act, the most significant expansion of government subsidized health care since the creation of Medicare. Whether the Bush administration presented its rationale for the legislation in a clear and candid manner is a question best addressed elsewhere.70 However, three pertinent observations might be made about the measure. First, by financing the program largely through borrowing, Bush was able to avoid the pitfalls that had undermined support for the MCCA and the Clinton Plan. Second, as the program‘s projected cost has exploded in the period following its passage, conservatives in Congress have accused Bush administration officials of dishonesty in its initial estimates. Third, the elderly response to the legislation has been tepid. While virtually no one predicts that the legislation will suffer the same fate as the MCCA, the new program‘s deductibles, copayments, its so-called ―donut hole‖ (where no coverage is provided), and

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sizable monthly premiums (which begin at $35 a month and are certain to escalate with increasing prescription drug prices) may augur poorly for the new program‘s popularity.

Consequently, it is too soon to know whether Bush‘s efforts will be seen as an improvement relative to the three earlier episodes examined in this paper.

ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15

16 17

18 19

Richard Himelfarb, ―Echoes of Catastrophic Care? The Passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 and Its Implications for the Future of Medicare,‖ Presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Meetings, Chicago, April 7– 10, 2005.

Haynes Johnson and David Broder, The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point (Boston: Little, Brown, 1996); Theda Skocpol, Boomerang: Clinton‘s Health Security Effort and the Turn against Government in U.S. Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996).

Sven Steinmo and Jon Watts, ―It‘s the Institutions, Stupid! Why Comprehensive National Health Insurance Always Fails in America,‖ Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 20, no.

2, Summer 1995, 329–72.

Morris L. Barer, Theodore R. Marmor, and Ellen M. Morrison, ―Health Care Reform in the United States: On the Road to Nowhere (Again)?‖ Social Science and Medicine 41, no. 4 (1995), 453–60.

David Marannis and Michael Weisskopf, Tell Newt to Shut Up! (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).

See ABC News Nightline, ―Mediscare: Rhetoric vs. Reality.‖ Journal Graphics, December 12, 1995.

The information in this section is adapted from Richard Himelfarb, Catastrophic Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995).

Ibid., 98.

Johnson and Broder, The System, 69–70, 175.

Ibid.

Himelfarb, Catastrophic Politics, 98.

Skocpol, Boomerang, 1.

Julie Rovner, ―Congress and Health Care Reform 1993–1994.‖ In Mann and Ornstein, eds., Intensive Care: How Congress Shapes Health Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1995), 186.

Johnson and Broder, The System, 131.

Graham K. Wilson, ―Interest Groups in the Health Care Debate.‖ In Henry J. Aaron, ed., The Problem That Won’t Go Away: Reforming U.S. Health Care Financing (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), 120.

Johnson and Broder, The System, 172.

Johnson and Broder, The System, 611; See also Wilson, ―Interest Groups in the Health Care Debate,‖ 121.

Johnson and Broder, The System, 174–75; Skocpol, Boomerang, 96–97.

Quoted in Skocpol, Boomerang, 110.

138 20

21 22 23 24

25 26

27 28 29

30

31 32 33

34 35 36

37

38 39

40

41 42 43 44

Richard Himelfarb

Ibid., 118; See also Jacob S. Hacker, The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton’s Plan for Health Security (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 140.

Skocpol, Boomerang, 120.

Ibid.

Ibid., 39.

Eric Eckholm, Introduction,‖ in The President’s Health Security Plan (New York: Times Books, 1993), 304.

Amy Waldman, ―Opportunity Lost,‖ Washington Monthly (June 1996), 41.

Mollyann Brodie and Robert J. Blendon, ―The Public‘s Contribution to Congressional Gridlock on Health Care Reform,‖ Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 20, no. 2 (1995), 406.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Of course, one major line of argument about the defeat of the Clinton plan argues that its demise was virtually inevitable given this nation‘s fragmented political system and process (see Steinmo and Watts, ―It‘s the Institutions, Stupid!‖) and the fact that the president did not possess a true ―policy majority‖ for his proposal (Barer, Marmor, and Morrison, ―Health Care Reform in the United States‖). Jacob S. Hacker (The Road to Nowhere, 173, 176) has criticized explanations of this type as overly deterministic. Beyond failing to explain how previous landmark legislation became law (e.g., the Tax Reform Act of 1986) they raise the question of why politicians such as Clinton ever believed health care reform would be enacted in the first place.

Skocpol, Boomerang, 128; Johnson and Broder, The System, 230–31; Hacker, The Road to Nowhere, 141; Mark A. Peterson, ―The Health Care Debate: All Heat and No Light,‖ Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 20, no. 2 (1995), 428.

The System, 632.

Ibid., 638.

Boomerang, 16; See also James A. Morone, ―Nativism, Hollow Corporations, and Managed Competition.‖ Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 20, no. 2 (1995), 393.

Wilson, ―Interest Groups in the Health Care Debate,‖ 110.

The System, 629.

Adam Clymer, Robert Pear, and Robin Toner, ―For Health Care, Time Was a Killer,‖ New York Times, August 29, 1994.

Hacker‘s account of the demise of the Clinton plan supports the substance of this thesis. See The Road to Nowhere, 138–42, 144–45, 178.

Skocpol, Boomerang, 124.

Eckholm, ―Introduction,‖ xii; See also Adam Clymer, ―White House Tries New Numbers to Bolster Health Plan‘s Appeal,‖ New York Times, November 5, 1993.

Daniel Yankelovich, ―The Debate That Wasn‘t: The Public and the Clinton Health Care Plan,‖ In Henry J. Aaron, ed., The Problem That Won’t Go Away: Reforming U.S. Health Care Financing (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), 75.

Ibid., 81.

Johnson and Broder, The System, 547–48.

Ibid.

David E. Rosenbaum, ―The Medicare Brawl: Finger-Pointing, Hyperbole, and the Facts behind Them,‖ New York Times, October 1, 1995.

False Promises 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59 60

61 62 63 64 65 66

67 68

69 70

139

Maraniss and Weisskopf, Tell Newt to Shut Up! 130.

Ibid., 132.

Ibid.

Ibid., 130.

Ibid., 129.

Ibid., 136.

Christopher Caldwell, ―Memo to GOP: Don‘t Blame the Media for Medicare,‖ Forbes Media Critic 3, no. 3 (1996), 39.

Ibid.

The System, 586 Ibid.

Matthew Rees, ―Healthy Recess,‖ The Weekly Standard, September 18, 1995, 12.

Ibid.

Adam Clymer, ―Americans Reject Big Medicare Cuts, a New Poll Finds, New York Times, October 26, 1995.

John Greenwald, ―Signs of an Uprising,‖ Time, October 15, 1995, 79.

Robin Toner, ―Health Care‘s New Victim,‖ New York Times, December 17, 1995.

Dan Balz and Blaine Harden, ―Dole Pursues President throughout Final Debate,‖ Washington Post, October 17, 1996.

Caldwell, ―Memo to GOP.‖ ABC News Nightline, ―Mediscare.‖ Ibid.

Caldwell, ―Memo to GOP,‖ 34.

Ibid., 41 See for example Michael Wines, ―Democrats Strongly Attack G.O.P. Budget Plan,‖ New York Times, January 7, 1995; and Wines, ―Gingrich Promises Big Medicare Cut with Little Pain,‖ New York Times, May 8, 1995; Robert Pear, ―G.O.P. Puts Friendlier Face on Its Plans to Overhaul Medicare,‖ New York Times, September 7, 1995.

Wines, ―Democrats Strongly Attack G.O.P. Budget Plan.‖ Robin Toner, ―Medicare Target Could Be Elusive, Many Experts Say,‖ New York Times, May 16, 1995.

Ibid.

See Himelfarb, ―Echoes of Catastrophic Care?‖

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 15

THE POLITICS OF UNIVERSAL HEALTH INSURANCE: UNDERSTANDING THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION’S TROUBLED EFFORT AT COMPREHENSIVE REFORM Theodore R. Marmor Department of Public Policy and Management & Department of Political Science, Yale University New Haven, CT, US

For a brief period in the early 1990s (from roughly 1991 to 1993) the enactment of national health insurance once again appeared imminent in American politics.1 Public opinion seemed supportive, a new president had campaigned on the promise, and interest groups of all stripes claimed that the medical status quo was unsustainable. To understand how fundamental reform rose to the top of the public agenda and almost as quickly disappeared is the major topic of this chapter. To do so it helps to understand not only the behavior of the Clinton administration but also how that story fits into the history of comparable reform efforts in twentieth century American politics. That background makes possible educated projections of what will happen to medical care issues in the politics of the next decade and beyond.

In 1990, national health insurance was hardly mentioned by pundits, politicians, or the press. The November 1991 election of the largely unknown Democrat Harris Wofford— filling the senatorial seat opened by the unexpected (accidental) death of Republican Senator John Heinz—changed all that. In an instant, Wofford‘s upset victory, widely attributed to his advocacy of national health insurance, suddenly and dramatically turned the attention of the nation‘s political commentators to the troubled state of American medicine.2 Yet, the very fact of Wofford‘s impact indicated how misleading conventional wisdom‘s earlier dismissal of national health insurance had been.

The nation‘s reporters—and many of its politicians—discovered what students of American politics had known for a decade or more. A remarkable consensus had emerged over the 1980s that American medical care, particularly its financing and insurance coverage, needed a major overhaul.

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The critical unanimity on this point, what political sociologist Paul Starr rightly termed a ―negative consensus,‖ bridged almost all the usual cleavages in American politics: between old and young, Democrats and Republicans, management and labor, the well-paid and the low-paid. Americans had come to spend more on and feel worse about medical care than our economic competitors, with nine out of ten (including Fortune 500 executives) telling pollsters that American medical care required substantial change. That was the good news for medical reformers, whether in Congress, among interest groups, or in what would become the Clinton administration.

The bad news for reformers was, as had been the case in earlier decades, a bitter truth. A consensus on the seriousness of American medical care problems did not signify agreement on the shape, magnitude or priority of those problems. Nor did a negative consensus bring with it agreement on remedies. For a variety of ideological and institutional reasons, American politics makes it very difficult to coalesce around any acceptable policy solution.

And this applies all the more particularly to a policy that would satisfy the requirements for a stable and workable system of financing and delivering modern medical care. No one has assurance that agreement on the seriousness of the nation‘s medical ills can generate the legislative support required for a substantively adequate and administratively workable program of reform. That understanding, however, was not apparent to the enthusiasts President Clinton brought to the White House in January 1993.

The precise shape of the plan President Clinton proposed in October 1993 could not have been anticipated from his campaign promises. As a campaigner, he had understandably avoided the details of health reform or its implementation. As president, he had different obligations, opportunities, and risks. The product of his unprecedented Health Task Force was but the beginning of a furious debate that concentrated more on ideological name-calling and mind-numbing claims than clarification of the substantive policy and political choices.

Whether the president‘s plan, or adjustments to it, could have commanded a majority of the Congress was made moot by the proposal‘s slow death in September 1994. This humiliating policy defeat prompted a furious and continuing round of blaming, exculpatory rhetoric, and scholarly inquiry.3 What is far less clear is the meaning of this defeat for the future of American health policy.

HISTORY: LESSON OR LAMENTATION? The task of substantially changing the rules of American medical care is one of the most difficult any set of reformers faces. At four other moments in twentieth-century American politics, advocates of national health insurance and their presidential backers tried. In the Progressive era, during the New Deal, under President Truman, and during the early 1970s, many advocates thought universal health insurance was imminent, only to be ultimately disappointed. In the 1990s, as earlier, entrenched interests helped block national health insurance by skillfully manipulating Americans‘ deepest fears to protect what they regarded as their interests. In 1993, to be sure, those interest groups seemed to be on the defensive; the time for sweeping reform appeared to have arrived. The president‘s speech of September 22, 1993, put the issue squarely on the legislative agenda, and the initial public response to the call for ―comprehensive‖ reform was favorable. But before the Clinton administration and

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Congress could meet the challenges of workable reform, they had to resolve—or at least cope with—some of the nastiest ideological and budgetary conflicts available in American politics.

And that proved impossible.

The Nixon Years: Seeming Consensus, Undeniable Disappointment By 1970, the controversial topic of health reform had shifted back from Medicare to national health insurance once again. Though it is difficult for many to remember, the striking feature of the 1970–74 period was the intense competition among proponents of different forms of universal health insurance. There was the catastrophic coverage proposal Senators Russell Long (D-LA) and Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT) advocated, the Kennedy-Corman bill that closely resembled Canada‘s universal health insurance program, and the Nixon administration‘s plan for mandated health insurance for employed Americans known then as the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan (CHIP).4 The lessons of this period were surely relevant to American circumstances in the early 1990s. There was stalemate over the reform proposals of the 1970s, because shifting coalitions defeated every attempt at compromise: cycling negative majorities, we might say in political science. The majority that agreed on the need for reform consisted of factions committed to different proposals. The more modest proposals, like the Long-Ribicoff bill, seemed too limited to those who wanted to translate the negative consensus into universal, broad coverage. The proposal for employer-mandated insurance, similar in financing to what President Clinton in fact proposed later, seemed too indirect, incomplete, and incapable of cost control to those favoring more straightforward forms of national health insurance. Even Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who moved away from his more ambitious version of national health insurance (the Kennedy-Corman bill) to a compromise plan that he and the powerful Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills (D-AK) could accept, was incapable of generating majority support among a coalition of liberal and conservative Democrats.

It is no wonder that many congressional figures from the 1970s were anxious to act, once Clinton became president. They had come so close once—and with a Republican president (Nixon) in the White House. However, the cautionary point here is that the lessons of the 1970s are multiple and complicated, not single and simple. What might well have made sense then—namely, mandated, employment-based coverage—need not define the limit of what would be possible twenty years later. Indeed, sensibly sorting out the implications of more than two decades of frustration with partial reform was a major task facing advocates of universal health insurance in the early 1990s.

The Reform Task in 1992–94: Daunting but Do-able?

The lessons of history are never simple. What worked once may not, in changed circumstances, work again. What failed earlier may succeed later. And some constants in American politics are always relevant to lesson-drawing. Consider the following regularities.

First, compulsory health insurance, whatever the details, is an ideologically controversial proposal that involves enormous symbolic, financial, and professional stakes. Such legislation does not emerge quietly or with broad bipartisan support, either here or elsewhere. Legislative

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success requires active presidential leadership, the commitment of an administration‘s political capital, and the exercise of all manner of persuasion and arm-twisting. This President Roosevelt was unwilling to do in the New Deal and President Nixon refrained from doing in the early 1970s. President Johnson was fully willing to use all his legendary legislative energy in 1965, but the composition of Congress at that time hardly made it necessary. Giving priority to the Medicare bill (with H.R.1 and S.1 as the numerical symbols) represented President Johnson‘s determination as well as his concentration on Medicare as the legislative centerpiece of his administration‘s first year.

Second, the limits of political feasibility are far less distinct than Beltway commentators seem to recognize. Political constraints are real, but they do not submit to estimates as precise as the budgetary work of the Congressional Budget Office. For example, the Johnson administration, anxious to make sure its first step would be overwhelmingly acceptable in 1965, requested hospital benefits under Medicare only. But the oddest thing happened. A combination of liberals, anxious to make the Medicare program broader, and conservative Democrats, wishing to head off step-by-step expansion later, produced a wider reform than Johnson requested. Not only was physician insurance (what is now known as Part B) added to Medicare by the Ways and Means Committee, but Medicaid emerged as part of an unexpected ―three-layer cake.‖ Accordingly, no one should assume that the substantive and ideological packages sent to Congress as health reform are fixed in stone. And no one should treat legislative outcomes—whether enactment or stalemate—as the purposeful achievements of skillful entrepreneurs. Such outcomes or resultants emerge from very complicated bargaining and are a challenge to explain or to predict. The lesson is not that anything is possible but rather that feasibility estimates must acknowledge considerable uncertainty.5 Third, the role of language and emotive symbols in this policy world cannot be overestimated. How a president reaches out to the public, what counts in the evening news and the morning newspapers as the central reform (or anti-reform) themes, and whether Congress faces a determined grass-roots movement—all shape the legislative outcome and, even more important, whether the resultant is sufficiently coherent and implementable to satisfy the expectations for reform. Pressure groups that can prevail in quiet politics are far weaker in contexts of mass attention, as the American Medical Association learned to its regret in the Medicare battle of 1965.

But the central lesson of the past—of both defeats and victories like Medicare—is cautionary in a different sense. It is wise to wait if what is acceptable is not workable. It is foolish to hesitate if what is workable can be made acceptable. If the central elements of a workable plan are acceptable, the pace of implementation can be staggered. But American political history in this area shows that the opportunities for substantial reform are few and far between, precious enough to make their squandering close to a sin.

THE CLINTON REFORM EFFORT REVISITED It all began with such marvelous intentions, back in the late 1992 US post–election victory glow of the Clinton administration‘s agenda for the first ninety days. A federally crafted health care reform was finally going to lay to rest the ghosts of health-care-reform-

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efforts-past, along with the dual bugaboos of out-of-control costs and a large, growing, and embarrassing un- and under-insured population.

But as everyone who cares to know now knows, this road to reform was as filled with potholes and poorly concealed land mines as all efforts past. In September 1994 those travelling along it came to the precipice and turned back.6 What went wrong?

To understand the failure of this particular initiative, one must first recall its origins and objectives. Two political imperatives justified the Clinton campaign‘s promise of reform and the White House‘s mounting a serious effort to deliver it. The first was that the nation‘s health care costs were predicted, prior to Clinton‘s election, to reach 18 percent of GDP by the turn of the century.7 With the US already spending far more than all other advanced industrialized countries,8 and the gap between it and the rest of its economic competitors getting larger, there was increasing concern about the economic or opportunity cost of health care expenditures. Additional resources going into health care meant less competitive American goods and services, lower exchange rates, and more expensive imports, or lower American worker wages.9 Health care had become, or at least seemed to be, a burden on general economic growth and prosperity.

The second imperative was the growing insecurity of middle-class America about the adequacy and stability of their health insurance. In this period, approximately 15 percent of the population was without health insurance coverage at any given time.10 But that was a static and incomplete view of the extent of health insurance protection.

Those with coverage, who wanted some assurance that they would be able to keep it and that it would be there when they needed it, represented the potent political force. As the costs of coverage rose, more and more employers were eliminating or modifying the options they offered to their employees, and the private health insurance sector was becoming increasingly adept at risk selecting and payment avoidance.11 Not only were middle-class working families unsure their current coverage would still be there next year, or even next week, but they could be relatively sure that, if they had any health problems, switching jobs was likely to be a costly venture (insurance coverage is rarely, if ever, portable across carriers in the US).

With these problems widely (if superficially) understood, Clinton‘s vision of reform expressed two key initial objectives: cost control, and ―health security‖ (or guaranteed lifetime insurance coverage for all Americans). The details of Clinton‘s strategy for achieving these objectives are now well known, and will not be repeated here. There has also been no shortage of blow-by-blow descriptions of the demise of this reform initiative. But there have been few attempts to date to sift the sense from the nonsense, the plausible from the improbable in those many pages of hand-wringing and second-guessing that have fed the ―Theory of the Month‖ club.12 It is surely worth considering the claims and counterclaims about the size and placement of the most critical potholes, because such reflection holds the key to understanding what is likely to come next in the US health reform soap opera.

One can usefully group the proffered reasons for failure into six categories: external events; timing; the policy itself; politics; communication/media coverage; and interests. These are not independent, as we will see. But in considering each, it is important to ask ourselves, ―Absent this reason or category of reasons, would we have new federal health care legislation in place today in the United States?‖ If the answer is ―no‖ or ―probably not,‖ then such individual elements may have been interesting sideshows, but on their own they were clearly not decisive. Of course it is possible that a collection of individually unimportant reasons

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could, nevertheless, be critical. In the analysis that follows, we attempt to do some grouping of elements that appear to be intertwined in this way.

External Events Closely tied to the ―timing‖ reason is the argument that events beyond the control of the Clinton administration (e.g., the fiasco in Somalia, the ongoing distraction of Bosnia) intervened at politically inopportune moments to suck the administration‘s (and the American public‘s) energy and attention from the health care reform effort.

Timing There are two quite separate components to this argument: external and internal. The external version is simply that the recession (and the public concern about jobs, incomes, and employment-related health insurance) ended too soon. This in turn undermined a key source of reform pressure. It was this ―premature‖ recovery that underpinned the Republican challenge to the very need for comprehensive reform. The ―What Crisis?‖ campaign by the Republican leadership, in this view, cast doubt on the case for system overhaul at a critical juncture.

The internal version has to do with the policy development process itself. This argument has included many subthemes. But the dominant version characterizes the administration as squandering its ―window of opportunity‖ by becoming mired in a complex, consultative, time-consuming development process. Why should careful policy development work against the chances of enactment? It is because such policy development takes time, thus giving opponents plenty of opportunity to mobilize their constituencies, refine their rebuttals, and search for allies.

The Policy Itself and the Legislative Process The Health Security Act, 1,342 pages long, was, arguably, too complex and bureaucratically cumbersome to have any hope of being understood, let alone embraced, by the general public. The proposal tried to find some middle ground that would satisfy both those who would have preferred a single-payer model of national health insurance with no role for the private insurance sector, and those who would have preferred nothing more than ―life insurance reform.‖ This strategy satisfied neither group and so, in this argument, was doomed to failure.

In the many arcane details of the American political process, the one legislative feature that some have presented as the key determinant of stalemate over reform is the necessity to obtain at least sixty votes in the Senate in order to overcome a possible filibuster. Had the health reform initiative been piggybacked onto the budget reconciliation bill, it would have required only a simple majority vote for passage. But the administration was unable to get the political support for this approach because of the opposition of a few key members of the Senate.

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Electoral Politics With Clinton‘s victory in 1992 and Democratic Party control of Congress was supposed to come the end of policy gridlock in Washington (looking back, one might be excused for not having noticed any difference). The early version of this position was straightforward: the party seen as blocking health care reform would be doomed at the midterm (fall 1994) elections. However, as the process dragged on, as the Democrats failed to reach consensus on their own reform proposal,13 and as the special interests made their influence felt on Congress and on public opinion, the Republicans realized they could afford to drag their heels. By the summer of 1994, the official unofficial Republican Party position was that no Democratic proposal would see the light of day. And the Republicans had the votes to ensure that this was the case.

To be fair, the Republicans could not have carried out their agenda but for divisions within the Democratic Party. One of the structural realities of American politics is that a partisan majority does not guarantee a policy majority. Democrats in Congress rarely stand united on a key policy issue, and this was particularly true during the health care reform debate. Policy solidarity takes a back seat in this process.

Communications/Media Coverage There are two arguments here that initially appear to be in conflict. One is that the media did an abysmal job of providing informed, balanced analysis of the implications of the administration‘s plan to the public. Instead, the media treated the reform process as political theater in which who said what today was more important than a careful determination of the likely effects of the reforms on different subsets of real American people.14 The second view is that the administration failed to recognize the critical importance of communication in ―selling‖ its policy, and so gave short shrift to involving the press, particularly its Washington corps, in getting the message out. There was no ―elevator speech‖ that could be delivered during the trip up to the fifth floor that captured the essence of the plan in a way easily understandable, and attractive to the (wo)man on the street.

There is the temptation to argue that these cannot possibly both be true. After all, if the administration was unwilling to involve the press in the early stages of policy evolution, how could the press be taken to task for simply reporting on the congressional and committee mudslinging? Or, turning it around, if the administration knew how the media was likely to report on health care reform, how could it possibly entrust the same media with the inner details of the plan‘s logic and analysis?

In fact, our view is that both are to a large measure correct and that both could (and did) exist. The administration did make some early strategic errors in its failure to hone an elevator speech and in its interaction with the Washington press in particular.15 But once details of the plan were public, there was in fact a dearth of informative reporting and analysis by the media. It is likely that the latter was a more critical determinant of the outcome.

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Interests While the media may not have done its job in sorting out for the public who would gain and who would lose as a result of the Clinton reform plan, those in the latter category were quick to recognize themselves and to mobilize. And the Clinton administration appears to have made some rather egregious errors in sizing up which interests could be counted on as allies and which were likely to be opposed.16 What resulted may, in retrospect, turn out to have been one of the most effective public influence campaigns ever waged, even in America.

It was clear from the outset who the winners and losers were likely to be. The uninsured and underinsured would be better off, at least in terms of insurance security, but also likely in terms of overall cost per family.

Despite the fact that the administration‘s plan left private insurance as the central player in providing coverage, it was likely that many smaller insurance companies (and those insurers unable to make the transition from fee-for-service to managed care) would have been ―shaken out‖ of the market. Managed care was likely to take a big bite out of pharmaceutical company bottom lines and to put downward pressure on (at least specialist) physician incomes. And malpractice reform would be a direct hit on the bottom line of many of the country‘s trial lawyers.

It was no surprise, then, that the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA), the American Medical Association, and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers‘ Association jumped into the fray, early and often, and that, behind the scenes, lobbyists for associations such as the Trial Lawyers of America, the Life Underwriters, and the Health Underwriters were hard at work doing what they do best (and succeeding).17 The overall strategy appears to have been best captured by a line in the famous ―Harry and Louise‖ ads sponsored by the HIAA. After anguished discussion about how the plan was going to remove their choice of physician and benefits, they conclude that ―There has to be a better way.‖ If the objective of the campaigns, littered in inaccuracies and half-truths,18 was to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of the public, then it was wildly successful. And doubt was really all that was needed to scuttle the plan, because there was a dearth of easily digestible and personally relevant information being provided by the administration.19 This made it relatively easy for powerful congressional factions to succumb to the pressures of the lobbyists, knowing full well that doing so would not alienate their increasingly doubtful constituencies. There was also a ready political ear for those targeted campaigns. What the Republicans did not want, most of all, was a made-inDemocrat-country health reform bill (see “Politics” above).

Of course the media was largely complicitous because of the virtual absence of balanced, critical discussion, both of the issues and of the claims.20 In stark contrast to the media coverage of the O. J. Simpson murder case, the media (with few exceptions) did nothing to clear up the confusion created by the paid advertisements.21

THE CRITICAL FACTORS OF DEMISE As we noted above, it is helpful in sifting through the various claims about the reasons for the failure of the Clinton plan (or even of any of the alternatives that came with a rush toward the end), to ask ourselves whether the absence of a particular reason would have

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meant a different outcome. In some cases, the answer seems relatively simple. For example, we believe that the first three categories—external events, the policy itself and timing—were secondary at best. If there had not been these particular external events, there would have been others. The nature of politics (as with life itself) is that one never has the luxury of focusing on only one thing, and it would be naive of anyone to believe that the Clintons thought this would be possible or desirable.

As for the policy and the legislative process, despite its length and apparent complexity, one must recall that the details of the act were never meant for public consumption. The details of the American Social Security Act or the Environmental Protection Act are no less complex—little more than the titles are understood by the public—yet they became law. More important by far was the failure to communicate the key features (see below), and to effectively counter the vested interests‘ clever use of the media.

To sustain the external timing argument, one would have to believe that had the US remained in recession, the plan, or a modification, would by now have been passed into law.

There is no evidence of which we are aware that would support such a view. The internal timing arguments are equally difficult to support, requiring that quicker introduction, or introduction as part of the budget bill, would have resulted in passage: in this case possible, but unlikely.

But why unlikely? Because of the three other categories: politics, communication/media coverage, and interests. The American constitutional dispersion of power and authority and the resulting labyrinthine political process make passage of much less complex and farreaching initiatives exceedingly difficult. It is no surprise that American policy is shaped by incrementalism.22 Desperate times may call for desperate measures, but if such are not possible, well, maybe the times are not quite that desperate, after all.

It may be, however, that the greatest single impediment to passage of this or any other significant reform proposal is the insidious interplay among the special interests, the public, and their elected politicians through the media. Any major reform involves intent to change the distribution of costs and benefits; if it did not, it would not be reform. In health care, change invariably involves diffuse benefits and concentrated costs: a bit better insurance coverage for a whole lot of people at the expense of lost or reduced incomes for those involved in the health insurance business; more integrated patient care (and perhaps even better patient outcomes) through managed care at the expense of reduced pharmaceutical company revenues, fewer (and lower) specialist physician incomes, and fewer hospital-based incomes; less unnecessary defensive medicine and lower medical and legal costs at the expense of the incomes of malpractice lawyers; and so on.

Those concentrated interests with the most to lose have far more powerful incentives to get their case across than does anyone to make the case for the effect of reform on the average American. And the calamities that are just around the corner if reform X is passed tend to fit much more closely with the sort of story that every editor of every daily newspaper or television news magazine admonishes his or her staff to seek out than do careful analyses or dull interviews with pointy-headed experts. Most of the latter have already been done, at least once. They are no longer ―fresh material,‖ even if they are no less true today than when first run.

Furthermore, the vested interests have at their disposal resources that far outstrip the resources available to (or likely to be committed to) a ―voice on the other side.‖ Not only do those interests represent important sources of campaign funding in an environment where

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election and reelection is prohibitively costly,23 but they are also able to support academics promoting ―friendly‖ proposals,24 and to engage high-priced and obviously quite effective help in the ―media influence‖ game.

In sum, from where we sit, it appears that politics, the media coverage, and interests were the critical factors in undermining this particular effort at significant reform, but these are not separable elements, and it is their interaction that produced the mix of discourse to which the American public was subjected. By November 1994, the American public, which had earlier been so supportive of health care system reform, was now ―rejecting a major overhaul of the system.‖25 In the final analysis, disinformation and the spin doctors won out again.

WOULD IT HAVE MATTERED, ANYWAY? But we lose ourselves in such debates over the key reasons for policy development failure at our peril, for there is something more fundamental of which we should not lose sight. As we noted at the outset, two political imperatives drove the Clinton reform initiative: cost control and security of benefits. This leads us to a fundamental question: Would any plan passed in this latest round of health care reform frenzy have achieved either or both of these overarching objectives?

The administration understood that leaving the cost control piece to market forces, whether through managed competition or other mechanisms, was likely to fail.26 That is why they built limits on premium increases into their proposal as an explicit attempt to limit the rate of growth of funding and thus expenditures. Yet very early in the debate, the interest in cost control simply disappeared. The ―untouchable‖ piece of the Clinton plan was universal and lifelong coverage for some basic package of health care benefits; everything else was on the table.

And then even the untouchable became vulnerable. By the summer of 1994, universal coverage had given way to a willingness to accept coverage for 95 percent of Americans as ―universal.‖27 By early September, that number had slipped even further, until it looked not a whole lot different from the unsatisfactory status quo (about 85 percent of the population covered).28 And therein lies a continuing and fundamental dilemma for US health reform. The rest of the developed world figured out some time ago that providing universal coverage did not have to mean uncontrolled costs, and that controlling costs did not have to mean foregoing universal coverage. Those simple facts are still largely seen (or at least promoted) within US health policy circles as fundamental contradictions, and for good reason: Those with the most to lose (see above) have compelling reasons (controlled costs = fewer/controlled incomes) to keep the confusion levels high.

In fact there are a small number of beliefs, promoted by a small number of powerful special interests and embraced for political/ideological reasons by key members of Congress and the Senate, which seem to us to stand in the way of any health reform initiative that is likely to achieve cost control and universal coverage in the United States.29 The first of these, as noted above, is the firmly held belief that universal coverage will require additional revenue. There are good reasons to question this belief.30 The international evidence provides striking proof that the opposite can be true. The ―made in America‖ analyses fall down in

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their failure to take a population-based approach to estimating the impact of extending coverage to those presently without it.31 A second fundamental and perhaps even more deeply held belief that stands as an impediment to successful reform is the notion that ―big government‖ will mishandle it, or, taken the other way, that the private sector is more efficient at providing health insurance coverage than the public sector. This view continues to be promoted heavily by the private insurance sector, for obvious reasons. But that promotion is given weight by many American health economists, who seem to (or must) believe fervently that private markets (the invisible guiding hand) must by assumption be able to respond to the preferences of a population far better than any government or public sector structures.

Of course this view conveniently ignores the litany of evidence to the contrary,32 largely on the grounds that some additional private market reforms are all that stand between the current problems and health insurance nirvana. Yet it seems obvious to most interested observers outside the United States that much of the activity in which the US private insurance sector engages is little more than wasted motion: necessary only because of the peculiar ideological need (powerfully promoted, of course) to cling to the private market and support many corporate players. Risk pooling and community rating would eliminate the need for much of this busy work but would, by definition, also eliminate many jobs and a lot of insurance company black ink.

Add to these the strong and enduring beliefs in the need to incorporate significant user fees in any reform package (presumably to control costs, but again in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary), and to hitch the funding of the system to place of employment (despite the complications and additional opposition from the small business community so created), and one has a formidable set of structural impediments to any attempt at health care system reform. In the face of such a collection of strongly held beliefs, there seems to us to be little prospect of seeing either universal coverage or (even less likely) cost control in the US any decade soon.

ENDNOTES 1

2

3

This presentation is a later version of views I published soon after the Clinton reform efforts of 1993–94; see Morris L. Barer, Theodore R. Marmor, and Ellen M. Morrison, ―Editorial: Health Care Reform in the United States: On the Road to Nowhere Again?‖ Social Science and Medicine 41 (August 1995): 453–60.

The details of how the Wofford election affected the coverage of national health insurance are provided and analyzed in Jacob S. Hacker, The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton's Plan for Health Security (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), chapter 1.

See, for instance, James Fallows, ―A Triumph of Misinformation,‖ Atlantic Monthly, January 26, 1995; Hacker, The Road to Nowhere; Theodore R. Marmor and Mark A. Goldberg, ―Reform Redux,‖ Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 20,no. 2 (1995), 491–94; Paul Starr, ―What Happened to Health Care Reform?‖ The American Prospect 20 (Winter 1995): 20–31; Sven Steinmo and Jon Watts, ―It‘s the Institutions, Stupid! Why Health Care Reform Always Fails in America,‖ Journal of Health Policy, Politics and Law 20, no. 2 (1995), 329– 72; Joseph White, ―The Horses and the Jumps: Comments on the Health Care Reform

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Steeplechase,‖ Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 20, no. 2 (1995): 373–83; and Daniel Yankelovich, ―The Debate That Wasn‘t: The Public and the Clinton Plan,‖ Health Affairs 14, no. 1 (1995):7–23.

These plans were the subject of enormous journalistic and scholarly scrutiny; see Judy Feder, Theodore R. Marmor, and John Holahan, eds., National Health Insurance: Conflicting Goals and Policy Choices(Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 1980).

See Theodore R. Marmor, The Politics of Medicare (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1973), chapter 6.

Adam Clymer, ―National Health Program, President‘s Greatest Goal, Declared Dead in Congress,‖ New York Times, September 27, 1994, A1.

Sally T. Burner, Daniel R. Waldo, and David R. McKusick, ―National Health Expenditures Projections through 2030,‖ Health Care Financing Review 14, no.1 (1992).

George J. Schieber, Jean-Pierre Poullier, and Leslie M. Greenwald, ―Health Spending, Delivery, and Outcomes in OECD Countries,‖ Health Affairs 12, no. 2 (1993): 120.

Uwe E. Reinhardt, ―Health Care Spending and American Competitiveness,‖ Health Affairs 8, no.4 (1989): 5; United States Congressional Budget Office(CBO), Economic Implications of Rising Health Care Costs(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1992).

Jill Foley, Sarah Snider, and Sarah Boyce, Source of Health Insurance and Characteristics of the Uninsured, Employee Benefits Research Institute, Issue Brief No. 133 (Washington, DC: EBRI, 1993).

Donald W. Light, ―The Practice and Ethics of Risk-rated Health Insurance,‖ Journal of the American Medical Association 267 (1992): 2503.

New York Times, September 27, 1994.

Marilyn M. Rosenthal, ―Whatever Happened to the Reform of American Health Policy?‖ British Medical Journal, November 26, 1994.

Tom Hamburger, Ted Marmor, and Jon Meacham, ―What the Death of Health Reform Teaches Us about the Press,‖ The Washington Monthly, November 1994.

Fallows, ―A Triumph of Misinformation.‖ George A. Silver, ―Topics for Our Times: Clausewitz vs. Sun Tzu—the Art of Health Reform,‖ American Journal of Public Health 85 (1995): 307.

Daniel Franklin, ―Tommy Boggs and the Death of Health Care Reform,‖ The Washington Monthly, April 31, 1995. ―Health Care Hucksters: What Their Ads Say—and Don‘t Say,‖ Consumer Reports, February, 1994, 116.

Richard Craig Lefebvre, ―Health Reform in the United States: a Social Marketing Perspective,‖ Journal of Public Policy Marketing 13 (1994): 319.

See, e.g., Silver, ―Topics for Our Times.‖ Theodore R. Marmor, ―A Summer of Discontent: Press Coverage of Murder and Medical Care Reform,‖ Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 20, no. 2 (1995), 495–501.

James A. Morone, ―Seven Laws of Policy Analysis,‖ Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 5 (Summer 1986): 817.

Silver, ―Topics for Our Times.‖ ―U.S. Health Reform: Clichés, Cost, and Mrs. C.,‖ editorial, The Lancet 347 (1993): 791.

Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, news release, 1994 Henry J. Aaron and William B. Schwartz, ―Managed Competition: Little Cost Containment without Budget Limits,‖ Health Affairs 12, no. suppl. 1 (1993): 204.

The Politics of Universal Health Insurance 27

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Mark Goldberg, Ted Marmor, and Jerry Mashaw, ―The Odd Jargon of the 95% Promise,‖ Los Angeles Times (Washington edition), August 4, 1994.

28 Paul Starr, ―Reform Is Dead. Long Live Reform,‖ New York Times, September 4, 1994, E11.

29 Morris L. Barer, ―So Near, and Yet So Far: a Canadian Perspective on U.S. Health Reform.‖ Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 20, no. 2 (1995).

30 Morris L. Barer, Robert G. Evans, M. Holt, and J. L. Morrison, ―It Ain‘t Necessarily So: The Cost Implications of Health Care Reform in the United States,‖ Health Affairs13, no. 4 (1994): 89; Barbara L. Wolfe, ―Why Changing the U.S. Health Care System is So Difficult,‖ Social Science and Medicine 36 (February, 1993): iii–vi.

31 In this they succumb to the so-called Rand Experiment fallacy. A major finding of the Rand health insurance experiment was that those in the sample faced with user fees used less care than those having to pay no user fees, and that the higher the user fee, the less care was sought.

Despite the fact that the experiment precluded, by design, the extrapolation of such results to entire populations, generalizations have nevertheless become commonplace. The results of the experiment have been used to conclude that user fees can control costs, in spite of contrary population-based evidence from Canada and the fundamental lack of logic in a conclusion that focuses exclusively on the demand side of this market.

Analyses of the effects of extending coverage in the US have fallen into the same analytical quicksand: differences in service use by sub-populations with different degrees of insurance coverage have been extrapolated to estimate the global, population-based, implications of extending coverage to all.

32 Emily Friedman, ―Insurers under Fire,‖ Health Management Quarterly, third quarter (1991): 23; Donald W. Light, ―Life, Death and Insurance Companies,‖ New England Journal of Medicine 330 (1994): 498.

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 16

THE NEW DEMOCRATS “GOT IT WRONG” Bruce C. Vladeck Nexera, Inc. New York, NY, US

Ira Magaziner has borne, disproportionately I think, the brunt of public criticism for the failure of health reform in 1993 and 1994, so I think it might be more appropriate to let him talk about it. Like everyone else, I have my own explanations for what happened, which I think Ted Marmor hit on very accurately, maybe just a little bit indirectly. The simple fact is, I think, that in January 1993 we didn‘t have the votes—and nothing happened between January 1993 and December 1994 that created them—to do anything comprehensive about health care reform. I am reminded of conversations I had with my kids last November when everyone was busy in the postmortem process and I just said, ―Well, there are more of them than there are of us; that‘s the lesson of the election.‖ And I think in the Congress of the United States at least, that was true in 1993 and 1994 as well.

What I want to focus on instead harks back to the title of this conference, suggesting that, in at least two important ways, the New Democrats got the health care issues all wrong, at least at the outset of the Clinton administration, and that it took the president until 1995 or 1996 to really figure it out, after which the quality of health policymaking that emerged from his administration improved enormously, leading to the very real and very important accomplishments of the second term. But those two significant mistakes in the New Democrats‘ understanding of health care and health policy continue to haunt us and continue, I think, to bedevil the Democratic Party and the Democratic policy community as it thinks about health care in the more recent elections and going forward.

The first thing that they got wrong, which has already been discussed but which I want to revisit very briefly, is the notion of ―managed competition‖ as the mechanism for containing the costs of healthcare. The second thing, which has a much greater personal resonance for me and that is still not very well understood, is simply that the New Democrats, as reflected by the president and the first lady in the first year or two of the administration, didn‘t understand Medicare. They didn‘t understand how Medicare worked or what it did. More importantly, they didn‘t understand the political resonance of the Medicare program with Democrats in Congress and with much of the base of the Democratic Party. They finally

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learned those lessons, I think very effectively, thanks to Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America Congress in 1995. I think you can make a very strong argument that the president‘s reelection was connected to a much different and better understanding of Medicare and the historical meaning and politics of Medicare and the president‘s ability to rearticulate the traditional attitude of Democrats and of the majority of the American public towards the Medicare program and what it meant and how it should be operated. Indeed, at the very end of the Clinton administration (after I left), there were the most substantive and thoughtful, well-developed proposals to expand and improve the Medicare program that had been put forward in a generation.

To return to the issue of managed competition and health care costs, let me just remind everyone, as several of the other speakers already have, that when you think about comprehensive health care reform in the United States, I think you have to start by remembering that every other industrialized nation has managed to solve the intellectual problem of how to cover everyone, and every other country does it for less money than we are now spending. Even the least sophisticated and well-governed Western countries have done it. So, the notion that there is some intellectual problem that keeps us from adopting universal health insurance is just, at a minimum, inconsistent with our prejudices about the intellectual capacities of policy makers in this country as opposed to many others. But in the 1970s and ‗80s we got it into our heads in this country that the methods that all of those countries and parts of the healthcare system in the United States had historically used to control costs wouldn‘t work and were somehow intrinsically immoral as well. Almost every rational proposal to do anything about cost containment in the period surrounding the discussions of health reform was immediately labeled as ―price controls,‖ which by definition in American intellectual and policy circles cannot ever succeed, despite the overwhelming evidence of cases in which they have succeeded, including most of Europe.

But the New Democrats bought into the same kind of ideological nonsense that was perhaps best captured by Gingrich in describing Medicare as an ―East European style of Soviet bureaucracy.‖ Of course Gingrich would apply the same description to many of the proudest legacies of the New Deal and the Great Society; that reflects long-standing Republican dogma, but I never could quite comprehend why the New Democrats bought into it. In real countries with democratic governments in most of the rest of the world, of course, in countries that have universal healthcare systems and a better experience than we do at cost containment, price controls become, de facto, the basis of some form of a structured bargaining relationship or other form of negotiation between buyers and sellers to overcome the fundamental problem of applying market principles to health care.

The intrinsic imbalance of information and power at the point of service between those who provide services and those seeking them relegates the prospect of any kind of real market in health services to the land of academic fantasy. More practically, as a way of controlling costs, the encouragement of more market-like behavior has never worked. And the public has never really understood why it should, probably because the public is smarter than the experts. There are very profound theoretical reasons why market-based efforts to control health care costs can never work in any realistic way, yet the rhetoric had the appearance of promoting a new and innovative idea, a new approach that differed from the old bureaucratic, rigid ways of doing things (which was in fact a mixture of the use of markets and government powers) that had this enormous, seductive appeal to the intellectual leadership of the Democratic Leadership Council and other people like them and became the mantra of the

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efforts at health reform in the early parts of the Clinton administration. To me, the fundamental dangers associated with the idea are reflected in the fact that the core structure of the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act of 2003, the Bush prescription drug legislation—which is a terrible piece of legislation—is based on many of the same managedcompetition principles that were espoused by the New Democrats a decade earlier.

Ironically, the Clinton administration in its second term was largely responsible for the most successful effort at cost containment in health care in American history. Given how many more dollars are at stake in the American health system than anywhere else, one might argue that it was the most successful effort in the history of the world. That was the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which achieved enormous reductions in rates of spending by application of the traditional, old-fashioned approaches of unilaterally using Medicare‘s market power to reduce the amount of money it paid to providers of service. As a result of the BBA, in 1998, for the first time in its history and in a way that is entirely anomalous in the history of any insurance program, public or private, Medicare expenditures actually went down, despite the fact that more people were being covered and there was no reduction in benefits. In fact, there was some modest improvement in the benefits. And of course, the Balanced Budget Act, as was described earlier, also contained, as a compromise piece of legislation, some significant components of bastardized managed competition theory, in the form of the so-called Medicare+Choice Program, which had the unique distinction of both costing Medicare more money than the pre-existing traditional Medicare program and being largely unsuccessful at the same time.

Medicare works, and the traditional ways in which Medicare has sought to limit its expenditures work, and the public gets both of those lessons. As I suggested earlier, in fact, by 1995 and 1996, so did President and Mrs. Clinton. The result was not only the largely sound policy innovations of the Balanced Budget Act, but, as I noted before, by 1998 and 1999–2000 (after I had left the government and wiser heads were presumably in place), some very sound, well reasoned, well thought out proposals to make Medicare available to people between the ages of sixty and sixty-five, which the Republicans in Congress refused to even discuss in any public forum. In addition, in its last years the Clinton administration introduced some very sensible proposals to provide a prescription drug benefit to Medicare beneficiaries, which created the momentum that forced the second Bush administration to advance and see enacted a proposal far inferior to what Clinton had proposed.

I am very proud of my service in the Clinton administration, and as Chris Jennings is going to point out in a few moments, there‘s quite a lot to be proud about, both in the ultimately unsuccessful fight for the Health Security Act and the many successful health care accomplishments of the Administration in both terms. The first term brought with it, among other things, the most successful efforts to increase immunization of children of middle and low income in the nation‘s history and enormous progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS, including the steps that were put in place in the first term that have largely eliminated maternal-fetal transmission of HIV in this country. But at the same time, as we think going forward about the continuing crisis we face in health care in this country and about the possibility that at some point in the future the political moon and stars may realign themselves in a way that makes it possible to have a serious opportunity to do something about health care, I think the most important lesson of the Clinton administration in this regard is that it might be much more productive and much more effective to go back to some of the old Democratic principles of strong public programs serving as the alternative to the private

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sector, whether the private sector‘s role is defined by some sort of employer mandate or ―pay or play‖ provision. Perhaps even more importantly, we need to acknowledge that, if you really want to control the costs of health care, you have to find some way to dampen the market power of the people who provide health care services, and the only way to do that is provide a mechanism through which the organized collective purchasing institutions in healthcare can exert market power to counteract those of the provider community. If we can remember those lessons and we can get enough members in the House of Representatives, maybe we can get health care reform in our lifetimes.

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 17

CLINTON MADE HEALTH CARE A PRESIDENTIAL ISSUE Chris Jennings Jennings Policy Strategies Washington, DC, US

I will briefly respond to the Health Security Act debate discussion as well as outline the remainder of the Clinton administration healthcare legacy. To paraphrase President Clinton, though, the only certainty about health reform is that it is a never ending process and that reform will always be reformed.

I want to say, Ted, that I almost always agree with you, but I do want to say a few things about the ―too-much/too-quick‖ critique you attribute to the Health Security Act (HSA).

Frequently, this critique is attached to HSA policies; that is to say, it was too big and required too many changes too quickly to the system. While there is some truth to that, any time we do comprehensive healthcare it will be burdened by that charge and it will also still, nonetheless, require major and relatively quick changes. The truth is that what was perhaps ―too-big/tooquick‖ was the president‘s appetite for doing lots of big things. The president had many such items on his agenda in ‘93–94 that required and spent a lot of political capital to successfully achieve. Moreover, unbeknownst to us, the Democratic Congress was about to go through a realignment election. We had Democrats who were residing in what would become safe Republican districts. And, we were asking for very tough votes on our first down payment on the balanced budget in 1993, on a difficult-to-pass NAFTA trade bill, and on politically challenging crime and gun safety regulation. One can ask for one, maybe two tough votes from members of Congress, but we were asking for four very, very tough votes even before we were seriously engaging the Congress in the always-controversial health reform debate.

So, while there were policy overreaches in the HSA, such as premium caps and mandatory alliances, the truth is that the president‘s excessive appetite for getting things done was at least as much of the problem. In other words, the ―too-much/too-quick‖ critique is more accurately applied to his (and our) overall agenda and the perhaps somewhat unrealistic sense that he could do it all without an overly negative impact on his ability to succeed on the health reform front, an issue that had confounded countless presidents before him.

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Secondly, I don‘t believe that any of us—probably even the president—had a completely accurate sense about the success many in the Republican Party had achieved in demonizing and undermining trust in government programs. Clearly, many Americans felt that government programs were more about dependency than empowerment. I think this is why the president now talks about how he may have done better by promoting welfare reform first, as Senator (Daniel Patrick) Moynihan (D-NY) suggested. This way, he might have secured better welfare reform law and checked an important credibility box to engage in the harder health care reform policy later on. While that may be true, I also have to say that he had already asked the Democratic base to vote for the extremely politically sensitive policies I mentioned previously, and it would have been extremely difficult to get them to vote for welfare reform on top of that.

Ted Marmor mentioned that all these other distractions are relevant to every administration and I totally agree with that, but I will say that I‘m not aware of any first-term Congress who had to deal with as many distractions as we did. The president not only had to deal with an ailing economy, foreign policy challenges in Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia, and controversial nominations such as Zoe Baird, but all this coincided with the loss of power of House Ways and Means Chairman (Dan) Rostenkowski (D-IL) and the departure of Senate Finance Committee Chairman (Lloyd) Bentsen (D-TX), who had left for the Treasury Department. They were going to be the two most likely and effective advocates for health reform, and they were diminished in their ability to do the work that was necessary. You throw in all the other largely baseless, so-called scandals, such as Whitewater, Travelgate, and Vince Foster, and you have a president who is being politically assaulted as he is trying to advocate for the reform of the most personal, most complicated and politically complex domestic policy issues that one can raise: health care. When one considers all of these factors, plus our delay in the unveiling of HSA to the fall of 1993, one could even argue that it was a miracle that we did as well as we did.

Let me quickly move on to discuss the post–Health Security Act period. First, I want to underscore President Clinton‘s spirit and his commitment to the health care issue. Even after we lost both hs of Congress in 1994, he still insisted on writing a letter, on December 27, to speaker-elect Newt Gingrich and incoming majority leader Dole. In it, he stated that he had not given up and was going to keep pushing for health reform. Specifically he said, ―We can pass legislation that includes measures to address the unfairness of the insurance market, make coverage more affordable for working families and children, for surer quality and efficiency in Medicare and Medicaid, and reduce the long-term care federal deficit.‖ In hindsight, it‘s very remarkable when you look at that letter and apply it to the remainder of the administration‘s actual legislative achievements.

But before we were able to produce any positive legislative achievements, we had to engage in round two of health reform. I am referring to the debate around the so-called ―Contract with America‖ and Speaker Gingrich. It truly was yet another major—albeit unconstructive—health reform debate within the context of their (what we would say severely flawed) balanced budget/tax cut vision.

Sometimes achievements in healthcare aren‘t just about what you do, but also about what you stop. The president did draw a line in that debate when he vetoed the Republican-passed budget along with its damaging and flawed Medicaid block grant, which would have resulted in even more uninsured Americans and excessively large Medicare cuts. This actually enhanced his standing with the public and his ability to engage in subsequent negotiations to

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achieve bipartisan health care agreements in the years that followed. This debate showed the president at his best, as he was able to effectively promote ―right way/wrong way‖ policies to balance the budget, negotiate, and govern from a position of strength.

I am not going to list all the hundreds and hundreds of health care achievements that followed his strong pushback on the ―Contract with America,‖ but I do think when you look at the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Health Insurance Affordability and Accountability Act (and its well-known insurance reforms and lesser known privacy protections), the Medicare reforms that reduced costs and extended the solvency of the Trust Fund, the enactment of the CHIP program, the enactment of the Work Incentives Improvement Act program (which allows people with disabilities to go back to work without losing healthcare), the Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention and Treatment Act, the FDA Modernization Act, and historic NIH budget increases, the president racked up an impressive list of health- and life-improving initiatives. Virtually all of these policies were bipartisan achievements that he was able to secure through ongoing negotiations with Republicans.

When he could not achieve legislative agreements, he did frequently use executive actions to make changes. These included actions to expand coverage through Medicare waivers to extend patient protections to 85 million people in federal health plans, provide privacy protections, give guidelines for stem cell research, provide labeling and testing requirements for pharmaceuticals for the treatment of children, unveil a landmark movement on mental healthcare parity both through a White House conference on aging and the Surgeon General‘s report as well as legislation, reverse the gag rule, extend contraceptive coverage to federal plans, and initiate a major effort to combat smoking in teens.

Beyond his legislative achievements and executive actions, the president offered up many additional proposals that set the stage for the future debate. This, of course, starts with the Health Security Act but also included his longer-term Medicare reforms, his proposal for a new Medicare prescription drug benefit, and his long-term care proposals. Few can dispute the fact that President Bush, who just signed the Medicare Modernization Act into law, as flawed as it is, would not have done so without President Clinton laying out the first vision of Medicare prescription drug coverage. Candidate Bush was effectively forced to commit to a Medicare drug benefit in the 2000 election to respond to Al Gore‘s pledge to finish up the agenda for the president. I should of course also underscore that Al Gore, Tipper Gore, Donna Shalala, and of course, Hillary Clinton, were heavily involved in many of these policies and have a long-standing link to them going forward. Of course, Bruce Vladeck rightly mentioned some of the targeted reform expansions, including the Medicare buy-in proposal for fifty-five to sixty-five-year-olds, new coverage of parents of CHIP children, tax credits for small business, and other initiatives on coverage that set the stage for future reforms.

Finally, as nice as it is to propose and enact legislation, the most important fact to note about these achievements is their impact on people. By the end of the Clinton administration, 35 million people had taken advantaged of the FMLA, nearly 5 million children had been covered in the CHIP program, and we saw a turnabout in the number of uninsured Americans in this country for the positive. In addition, smoking rates declined, eighth graders‘ cancer rates declined, and the HIV/AIDS mortality rates declined by 70 percent between 1995 and 2000. And in an achievement that I know Bruce is very proud of, the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund was extended from 1999 to 2030 by the time we left office. The growth rates in those programs declined substantially below private sector growth rates, effectively

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reducing premiums and cost-sharing for seniors below what they otherwise would have been.

In short, people‘s lives were changed for the better.

Let me conclude with this observation. Perhaps one of President Clinton‘s greatest achievements in this policy area, though, is that he made health care a presidential issue. No other president can afford to ignore this issue going forward. And, consistent with the old Winston Churchill admonition, and I paraphrase, ―Americans will always do the right thing, but it‘s not until they have exhausted every other option first.‖ By forcing subsequent presidents to engage in this issue, there is little doubt in my mind that President Clinton has brought us close to exhausting every other option and we are well on the road to getting to the promised land when it comes to health reform. With this and his impressive record in mind, it will always be my honor and privilege to say I worked for the man from Hope, Arkansas, who became our forty-second president.

X. EDUCATION POLICY

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 18

CLINTON’S LEADERSHIP ROLE IN EDUCATION Richard W. Riley Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP Washington, DC, US

When Bill Clinton came to Washington in 1993, he had a good, solid idea of what he wanted to do to improve education in America. Bill Clinton knew the value of education for all children, but from his own personal experience he especially understood how a good education could make all the difference in the world for poor minority children – those considered by many to be from the wrong side of the tracks.

President Clinton and I were governors together. We were elected on the same day in 1978, to begin service in January, 1979. We met at the Governor‘s Conference Center in Washington a month after that. We were dealing with similar problems. We each had a large African American population that had been discriminated against for decades, and we both as governors were determined to try to do something about that. Hillary and I worked together on infant mortality and children‘s issues. During all that time my wife (Tunky) and I developed a very close friendship with the Clintons.

Over the years, our connection grew in large measure because President Clinton and I were part of a bipartisan group of southern governors who recognized the important link between improving education and economic growth.

We then were very much involved with the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council), our mutual political home. Al From is here and has presented that side of the political issue, something a little different for a Democrat. . . a third way.

It was a very exciting time for education reform, especially in the South. Like many of my colleagues across the South, though, I also came to the conclusion that the only way that we could make education reform permanent was to measure what we were doing. Education reform had peaks and valleys, but if we measured it, we could make it a permanent part of our landscape.

In 1988, for example, I was co-chair of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), the nation's first regional interstate (sixteen states) compact for education. We developed and published goals for education, called Challenge 2000. We set out a list of nine goals, and many of those were exactly the same goals that President George H.W. Bush then proposed in

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1989 at the National Education Summit in Charlottesville. All of the governors had been involved in goal setting in their respective states and in their region, but at the 1989 summit they all were called upon to pull together and deal with something different: high education priorities for the whole country. That summit, then, set a new course for the nation.

President Bush (41) and the governors agreed to some very significant ideas: to set national education goals that all would work on and talk about; to align federal programs with state education reform efforts; and to create a national goals panel for the purpose of measuring progress in meeting the goals. This was the first time that we had made education goals a national priority, rather than just a priority for the respective states.

So when I came to Washington in 1992– first as the president‘s transition director for personnel and then as his Secretary of Education beginning in 1993 – we made a clear and positive decision to support the basic policy parameters laid out by the national summit.

Our immediate project was passage of the Goals 2000 Act, so that the education goals could be enshrined into law – as statements of national aspiration, not federal mandate.

Then we proposed that the states would set standards for meeting the goals, implement aligned assessments to measure status and progress, and develop a comprehensive plan for improving achievement. We provided broad flexibility in the particulars of each plan, including state control over standards and complete flexibility over the use of funds provided in the Goals 2000 Act. No Child Left Behind is really an extension of all that. It‘s built on the standards movement. Obviously the next move would be to have more accountability. I think we can make some changes to No Child Left Behind and make it very effective. But I think we have to provide more resources to the states and the local schools, and we‘ve got to provide flexibility so that states can design their own reform strategies for making standards the same all across the country and move forward to achieve them.

No Child Left Behind is too much of a compliance-driven effort, in my judgment, but I supported it with those statements and caveats.

Goals 2000, on the other hand, was administered throughout without writing one single new regulation. I think that was important. It was a no-strings-attached law and, because that was so novel, the states really doubted that it was true. We had some difficulty getting many states to believe that the federal government really was giving them the money and the flexibility that they needed to design their own reform strategies.

There was also a great deal of suspicion among the very strong right-wing groups that Goals 2000 was the federal government camel getting its nose under the tent. More federal intrusion was on the way, they said. (They didn‘t realize that a few years later a Republican president, then in the name of ―compassionate conservatism,‖ would lead the federal intrusion that they were worried about back then.)

We made every effort to reach out to groups that were concerned about the issue. But the suspicion was very strong and some people were making wild statements. I remember a newspaper article from a Western state that reported on people testifying on Goals 2000 before the local legislature. The headline read—―I became a sex slave to Goals 2000.‖ Now, I never did quite understand that, since most of the money spent was for professional development. So I don‘t know what was going on out west. In the end, we got all fifty states to support Goals 2000. Only one didn‘t have formal state standards but, in accordance with its constitution, it did have local standards.

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Now, let‘s look at what I believe we accomplished during the Clinton years. First, as I have discussed, we put standards-based reform on firm, nationwide footing. I think that‘s very significant.

When I became the Secretary of Education in 1993, the idea of higher standards was emerging and talked about all around, but really only in fits and starts, and the federal government was not involved in it. Many people simply did not believe or accept the fundamental principle that is the very foundation of the standards movement: that we should have the same high expectations for all children. As I said earlier, that includes those living in poverty, newly arrived immigrants from foreign lands, and so forth — all children.

President Clinton and I believed strongly that Title I children should have these same high standards.

Second, we laid the groundwork for a broad consensus of standard-based reform. The Goals 2000 legislation was enacted with broad bipartisan support, as well as with the support of a coalition of business groups, teachers and other education groups, organized labor – including the AFL-CIO, the NEA and AFT. It was a broad sweep of support.

Third, every state now has aligned assessments in place, and about half had met the specific requirements of the 1994 Title I law. Then the rest came along after that. By the year 2000, a great portion of them were in place.

Fourth, we shifted the role of the federal government away from supporting just a few narrow categorical programs to a broad national commitment to excellence for all children, without sacrificing any commitment to equity. We also shifted federal programs to support state and local reforms. Our goal was to take a more coherent approach to federal support for state-led reforms.

I also want to make the point that we had very good reasons not to promote the compliance-based reform, built on regulations, that was in effect when we took office.

Indeed, we thought such an approach was counterproductive and would do little to help reform take hold.

Bill Clinton and I had the advantage of having been governors. We had a pretty good sense of the what the current governors would accept. We were aware that many state and local leaders remained suspicious of federal mandates, especially from a Democratic president.

Our efforts to take a leadership role in education became even more difficult with the sea change that occurred in 1994 when Newt Gingrich led the Republicans to power in Congress.

This resulted, of course, in a very intense and very public battle over the federal role in education. Newt Gingrich sought to shut down the federal government over the size of the federal budget, which included new spending for education. Bob Dole ran for president on a platform to abolish the federal Department of Education.

Those were not the easiest times to be the Secretary of Education. We had so many positive things going on, and we felt so good about it. The president obviously had education as a priority, and yet the Republicans wanted to close us down. I told people then and I‘ll tell you now, I found myself singing a country song by the title, ―I Don‘t Know Whether to Kill Myself or Go Bowling.‖ Well, we won the debate and the US Department of Education still exists. One reason we won the debate is because our Republican critics essentially misread the American people.

While the Republicans moved to the right and talked about closing down the US Department of Education and the need for private school vouchers, the Democrats, under Bill Clinton‘s

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leadership, moved to the center. While the Republicans listened to the concerns of their base, we were listening to the concerns of the parents of the baby-boom echo, as more and more children were crowding into our schools.

We also made a very strategic decision to change how we talked about education. Instead of yakking about who did what, block grants, or other federalism issues, we began to talk directly to parents and grandparents in very concrete terms. For instance, in 1996 we set a new national goal that every child should be able to read well and independently by the end of the third grade. We introduced legislation to achieve that goal. That was a goal that parents and the rest of the country could understand and get behind by reading to or with their children every evening. President Bush has followed our lead and has built on our foundation with his Reading First initiative. And that‘s very good for the country.

We also talked about getting technology into the classroom. Vice President Al Gore was so strong in that area. He and I spent more than a year persuading the Federal Communications Commission to create the E-rate, at a time when most Americans were just starting to learn about the use of the Internet and how valuable it could be in education.

We responded to the concerns of parents about overcrowding and the need for new schools and smaller classes. Out of that came some very interesting new thinking about redesigning schools as centers of communities. For instance, Hurricane Katrina totally destroyed 500 schools in New Orleans. We can rebuild those to be centers of the community, places where the community can grow around the school.

We introduced specific legislation to add 100,000 teachers, as (Attorney General) Janet Reno talked about 100,000 more cops on the street. The goal of adding 100,000 quality teachers put a strong emphasis on getting more young people on the path to college. We proposed and gained passage of the Hope Scholarship, the Lifelong Learning Tax Credit and a significant increase in Pell Grants to help more young people afford the opportunity for college. Direct lending saved students, taxpayers and the federal government billions of dollars. We also created GEAR UP, a new pathway to college for poor and minority students that links high-poverty schools with colleges and universities. One of my concerns then and now is the disconnection between the K-12 education system and our higher education system.

We made every effort to support innovation and to think in new ways. Despite significant opposition, we were very strong supporters of the just-emerging charter school movement.

There were one or two charter schools when we came in office: there were around 2,000 when we went out, and now there are multiple thousands.

We also started a $1 million demonstration program for after-school learning enrichment, especially for low-income students. In the course of just four years and due to popular demand, funding for that 21st Century Community Learning Centers program went from $1 million to $1 billion. Thousands and thousands of students benefit from that today.

During my last two years in office, we worked to start the now-growing movement to reform America‘s high schools. We also put the spotlight on the importance of international education.

And we did not ignore the debate over values. In 1995, for example, Janet Reno and I, working with lawyers who represented the various religions, diffused the bitter, forty-year struggle over school prayer. We did it by analyzing court decisions: not new matter, not what we thought, but what the courts said. We developed a consensus for the first time on voluntary guidelines dealing with religion in the public schools. As President Clinton often

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said, when you enter the schoolhouse, you do not leave your religion at the doorway, you take it in with you.

Despite our many successes, we also had some defeats. One was a voluntary national test in reading and math at the end of the third grade and at the end of the seventh grade. We worked hard to get that passed, but it did not succeed. Two years later, as we all know, President Bush came forward with No Child Left Behind, a radical departure from our partnership approach and more of a compliance-driven mandate for annual testing in reading and math for all students in grades three through eight. This was the right thing to go after but, as I said, the law needs some changes.

In the long run, I think President Clinton moved the country in the proper direction, and we are starting to see some results. During the last ten years, according to NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) test results, the achievement gap among the youngest group of tested students – i.e. fourth grade nine-year olds -- has closed by approximately 20 percent. Between Hispanics and blacks in that age group, both in mathematics and reading, the gap has closed altogether. For eighth grade thirteen-year olds, the gap closed only a little and, in a lot of cases, not at all. But those test scores tell me that our efforts to raise standards have been making a real difference. We finally are getting our arms around education. But we still have an awful lot of work to do, especially in middle and high school.

The lesson here is that it takes time to make education reform happen, and we have to stick with it, year after year. If you look at SAT scores, ACT scores, and AP courses, all of those are significantly up. SAT scores are at the highest level in the thirty-eight years since 1967, when SAT scores were first tracked. We‘ve increased steadily over the past fifteen years. Test takers have reached an all-time high, especially minority students taking the SAT. I‘d be remiss if I did not end by saying a word about the future. Bill Clinton, as you remember, always talked about helping all of our children cross that bridge to the twenty-first century. As we keep moving into the future, we have to keep true to the idea that all children should be challenged to reach high academic standards. To make that happen, we need prekindergarten services and all-day kindergarten in our high-poverty school districts, along with smaller classrooms and smaller schools. We also need to recognize that the lack of literacy is one of the major reasons why 1.2 million young people drop out of school each year. These children are being left behind. This means that we need to put a lot more focus on adolescent literacy.

We also must pay a lot more attention to a new and growing gender gap. Put simply, boys are struggling. Two-thirds of all students in special education are boys. Only 64 percent of all boys are graduating from high school, and that number is a dismal 42.8 percent for African American boys. My point here is not to take away from the great progress we've made for women with Title IX, which I have always strongly supported. The issue is more basic. We simply do not know why boys and young men are struggling with education, and we need to find out. An interesting report just came out showing that 57 percent of all college students are women; 43 percent are men.

Also, we still are sorting out the issues of adequacy and equity. For twelve years, my law firm has represented, on a pro bono basis, thirty-six poor, rural, predominantly black school districts in South Carolina that are demanding ―a minimally adequate‖ education for their children—as required by the South Carolina state constitution. They are looking at Brown v.

Board and why we haven‘t done more to move in the direction of Brown.

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Finally, we have to keep pushing to get well-qualified teachers in the classroom. We can‘t give children an excellent education if our universities continue to marginalize their colleges of education and fail to play a larger role in reforming public elementary and secondary education.

Now, I end in hope that I have conveyed to you some sense of the challenges and opportunities that we dealt with during the Clinton years. We worked to improve American education. There‘s a lot more to do, to my way of thinking. But we will get ahead if we are persistent and hopeful.

There are difficult times ahead, certainly. But I assure you that giving people a sense of hope and of possibility – something Bill Clinton talked about while in office and continues to talk about – makes a difference in their lives and ours. All of us must give our thoughts and prayers to the men and women who serve in our armed forces: Iraq, Afghanistan, or wherever, especially on this Veteran‘s Day, when we honor those who have served. These people are true patriots of our great country.

But at the same time, we must consider that every time a school teacher inspires a young person to stay in school, a patriotic duty is performed. Every time a guidance counselor persuades a young person to take a rigorous course to get on the path to college, our nation becomes somewhat stronger. Every time a college professor encourages a bright young person to become a teacher, our great nation becomes more secure. These educators also are American patriots.

President Clinton believes in the power of education, and he always has. The ―New Democrat from Hope‖ provided leadership to offer our young people an education of excellence and a future of hope. I‘ll tell you, they are responding. They are indeed crossing that bridge into the future and fulfilling the great promise of this nation that will sustain America as a democracy of learning.

XI. THE ENVIRONMENT

In: A True Third Way? Editors: Richard Himelfarb and Rosanna Perotti

ISBN: 978-1-63117-621-0 © 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 19

PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON’S ENVIRONMENTAL EXECUTIVE ORDERS Graham G. Dodds Department of Political Science Concordia University Montreal Quebec, Canada

INTRODUCTION Bill Clinton‘s two terms as president were remarkable for many reasons, but his use of executive orders was particularly noteworthy. Clinton issued 374 executive orders during his eight years in office, a number that is largely in keeping with the rate of other presidents since World War II.1 However, his executive orders occasioned a great deal of critical attention, and this was especially true for the many executive orders that he issued for environmental purposes. While some people saw Clinton‘s environmental executive orders as a godsend, others decried them as an unprecedented and unprincipled usurpation of power. My aim in this chapter is briefly to examine Clinton‘s use of executive orders for environmental purposes, to ascertain the extent to which it was new and different, and to consider its place in his overall legacy. Towards that end, I seek to place this aspect of Clinton‘s record in a broader context by briefly comparing his use of executive orders for environmental purposes with his use of executive orders for non-environmental purposes and also with earlier presidents‘ environmental executive orders. I find that Clinton‘s environmental executive orders were indeed important, but they often built upon earlier precedents and even occasioned much the same political response as those earlier executive orders.

BACKGROUND Executive orders are documents that the president issues unilaterally that have the force of law. They are one among two dozen different types of unilateral presidential directives, another of which is proclamations, which are legally identical to executive orders.2 In terms

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of an official definition of executive orders, there is no law—or even an executive order—that defines what an executive order is.3 A 1957 report by the US House of Representatives provisionally defined them as follows: ―Executive orders are written documents denominated as such ... Executive orders are generally directed to, and govern actions by, government officials and agencies.‖4 This definition certainly captures part of what executive orders are, but it is inadequate, as its authors realized: ―Essentially an Executive order is a written document issued by the President and titled as such by him or at his discretion.‖5 The following informal definition by a legal librarian is perhaps somewhat more helpful: ―Executive orders are the formal means through which the President of the United States prescribes the conduct of business in the executive branch. Executive orders are presidential directives issued to federal government agencies or officials. An executive order is basically a document the President issues and designates as such.‖6 More loosely, executive orders give presidents the means to enact their own policy preferences by a mere stroke of the pen, circumventing the normal policymaking process. Every president from George Washington to George W. Bush has issued executive orders (with the sole exception of William Henry Harrison, who served for only a month). They are an important tool of the presidential office and have figured in many interesting points in American political history but have been surprisingly little-studied.7

CLINTON’S NON-ENVIRONMENTAL EXECUTIVE ORDERS As the first Democratic president in twelve years, Clinton issued a lot of executive orders early in his first term to reverse policies of his two Republican predecessors, many of which were themselves enacted by executive orders. For example, some of his earliest executive orders reversed previous executive orders concerning abortion and organized labor.8 Also in 1993, Clinton issued an executive order to end the ban against homosexuals serving in the military, although political pressure soon caused him to rescind, revise, and reissue the order, resulting in the awkward compromise policy known as ―don‘t ask, don‘t tell.‖9 And in another early-term executive order, Clinton sought to change the restrictive system of regulatory review by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that Ronald Reagan had established by executive order. While Reagan‘s order required that the benefits of proposed government regulations outweigh the costs, Clinton‘s order required that the benefits merely justify the costs.10 Many of Clinton‘s more noteworthy executive orders came after the 1994 midterm elections delivered the House of Representatives to Republican control for the first time in a half century. Facing a hostile and assertive Congress under Speaker Newt Gingrich, Clinton often turned to executive orders rather than legislation to further his policy aims. Indeed, two years after the 1994 elections, Clinton remarked, ―One of the things that I have learned in the last two years is that the President can do an awful lot of things by executive orders.‖11 Paul Begala, communications counsel in Clinton‘s White House, was even more blunt in characterizing the power of executive orders: ―Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kind of cool.‖12 Referring to the president‘s new affinity for using executive orders to circumvent Congress, Clinton adviser Rahm Emanuel explained, ―Sometimes we use it in reaction to legislative delay or setbacks. Sometimes we do it to lead by example and force the legislative

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hand. Obviously, you‘d rather pass legislation that can do X, but you‘re willing to make whatever progress you can on an agenda item.‖13 And Clinton‘s White House chief of staff John Podesta offered the following justification of the president‘s authority to act unilaterally: ―The president has had a sense that he has authority that comes from statutes as well as from the Constitution that he can exercise to make progress for the American people, especially in areas where special interests have a hammerlock on Congress.‖14 Clinton‘s controversial executive orders after the 1994 elections included a 1995 order authorizing $20 billion in loan guarantees from the Exchange Stabilization Fund to stabilize the Mexican peso, despite congressional opposition.15 And in 1998, several years after his failed health care reform initiative, Clinton issued an executive order to enact a ―patients‘ bill of rights‖ when Congress failed to do so.16 These two executive orders were controversial and faced significant congressional antagonism, but they were sustained.

Two other controversial executive orders were overturned. In 1996, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously overturned Clinton‘s executive order 12954, which had prohibited employers from permanently replacing striking workers.17 The case marked the first time that the judiciary overturned an executive order in its entirety since the Supreme Court‘s dramatic rejection of Harry Truman‘s executive order seizing the steel industry in 1952.18 And in 1998, Clinton issued executive order 13083, revoking Reagan‘s 1987 executive order on federalism and shifting the balance away from states‘ rights and in favor of the federal government. However, reaction from Congress and the states was strongly negative, and when the House voted to withhold funds for implementing the executive order, Clinton suspended the order that same day.19

CLINTON’S ENVIRONMENTAL EXECUTIVE ORDERS These and other executive orders that Clinton issued were noteworthy and will likely be debated by historians and political scientists for many years to come. However, it is arguably in the area of environmental conservation, protection, and management that Clinton‘s unilateral directives drew the most attention.

Clinton often turned to executive orders for environmental purposes. In his first year in office, he issued an executive order calling for the reduction of toxic emissions from federal facilities and underscoring the public‘s right to know about any toxic release. In 1994, Clinton issued executive order 12898 to fight ―environmental racism,‖ a concept that that been quietly growing among grassroots environmental groups for many years before his executive order brought broad public attention to it. The order instructed federal agencies to conduct their programs in such a way as to achieve environmental justice by mitigating the disproportionately high and adverse environmental effects of government activities on minority and low-income populations.20 Three years later, Clinton issued a similar executive order that sought to mitigate the disproportionately high and negative environmental risks faced by children.

Also in 1997, Clinton preempted pending congressional legislation on protecting rivers by issuing executive order 13061, the American Heritage Rivers Initiative. The order directed agencies to ―coordinate their functions, programs, and resources to preserve, protect, and restore rivers and their associated resources important to our history, culture, and natural

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heritage.‖21 Critics contended that it essentially turned fourteen rivers and adjacent lands into federal property and that Congress had previously decided against such a program.

In June 1998, Clinton issued executive orders to expand the protection of coral reefs in the US and to ban oil drilling off the coastline. Two years later, he considerably expanded on these policies with two more executive orders on ocean protection: in May 2000 he issued an order to strengthen and expand the nation‘s system of marine protected areas, and in December 2000 he issued an order creating the nation‘s largest nature preserve (some 84 million acres) underwater off Hawaii.22 Some of Clinton‘s other environmental executive orders entailed establishing commissions, coordinating the actions of existing governmental entities, or other administrative matters. For example, in 1993, Clinton issued an executive order to establish the president‘s Council on Sustainable Development, and in 1994 he issued executive orders to establish a ―Border Environment Cooperation Commission‖ and a ―Trade and Environmental Policy Committee.‖ And in 1997, Clinton issued an executive order creating a federal interagency partnership to protect the entire Lake Tahoe ecosystem.

While these measures were largely administrative, other executive orders for environmental management had a more direct, substantive impact. For example, in 1993, Clinton signed executive order 12873 on government acquisition, recycling, and waste reduction. It said that the federal government‘s environmental performance in these areas should ―serve as a model‖ for other institutions. In 1999, Clinton issued an executive order declaring that ―the United States will factor environmental considerations into the development of its trade negotiating objectives.‖ And in 2000, he issued executive order 13148, entitled ―Greening the Government through Leadership in Environmental Management.‖ It said that ―environmental management considerations must be a fundamental and integral component of Federal Government policies, operations, planning, and management.‖ Clinton‘s other executive orders for environmental management included a 1999 order that created a council to monitor and control invasive species, which led some critics to worry about excessive federal controls over private lands. One of Clinton‘s last environmental executive orders came in January 2001, requiring federal agencies to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service before taking actions that could affect migratory birds.

Some of Clinton‘s most important and controversial unilateral environmental directives drew on the 1906 Antiquities Act, which empowers presidents to create national monuments by proclamation, in order to preserve areas of scientific or historical significance. Pursuant to the act, Clinton created and expanded many national monuments during his presidency, unilaterally conferring protected status on millions of acres of land. For example, when Congress failed to pass legislation to protect some 1.8 million acres of southern Utah, Clinton used a proclamation to unilaterally create the Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument in a dramatic signing ceremony at the Grand Canyon in 1996.23 According to an anonymous high-ranking environmentalist, something transformative happened that day: ―Clinton loved the feeling of setting aside that land and relished the fact that he didn‘t need to talk to any Republicans or members of Congress to do it.‖24 Whatever his motivation, Clinton proclaimed another nineteen national monuments before he left office. He created the last eight of his national monuments during his last month in office, infuriating Republicans who were counting the days until the inauguration of George W. Bush. According to some commentators, Clinton‘s proclamations for national monuments were an important part of a

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conscious effort to create a land legacy.25 As a spokesman for Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) said, ―This is essentially a way for Clinton to solidify his legacy without having to deal with Congress.‖26

REACTIONS Clinton‘s executive orders often elicited strong reactions, especially among his partisan detractors. While his executive orders for non-environmental purposes occasionally provoked cries of executive excess, his executive orders in the environmental realm were met with criticisms that seemed stronger and more widespread, touching on libertarian concerns about obtrusive governmental regulation and generations-old western hostility to federal land management. Phyllis Schlafley and other conservative critics charged that Clinton‘s environmental actions were simply ―unprecedented.‖ In 1999, Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) articulated the case against Clinton‘s unilateral environmental directives as follows: ―We have an attitude in this administration that not only does King William want to reign, he appears at this moment to be setting up a monarchy for Prince Albert [Gore] … These are not the King‘s lands, these are the people‘s lands, and we think he ought to come to the people‘s bodies to form and shape this kind of policy.‖27 A year later, R. J. Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute said, ―I think there is a blatant attempt by President Clinton to use the Antiquities Act for political purposes to shut out the democratic process.‖28 During the 2000 presidential campaign, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said that Clinton had no right to ―unilaterally‖ designate monuments, and Republican vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney accused Clinton of misusing his authority and acting ―willy-nilly all over the West.‖29 Within the legislative branch, the reaction against Clinton‘s environmental executive orders took two forms. First, several congressmen sought to personally involve the judicial branch in their conflict with the executive branch and sued to block the implementation of Clinton‘s executive order on heritage rivers. However, their case was dismissed for lack of standing.30 Second, Congress also used its oversight and legislative powers to try to expose and curtail unilateral presidential directives for the environment and other matters; Congress held hearings on the alleged presidential abuse of executive orders and in 1999 introduced several bills to restrain the practice. None of the several bills that sought to limit unilateral presidential lawmaking made it out of committee in 1999.31 In 2000, however, an effort to strip the president of his power under the Antiquities Act to proclaim national monuments passed in the House and failed by only one vote in the Senate.32 Despite the failure of these efforts, significant criticism of the president‘s environmental directives persisted.

ENVIRONMENTAL EXECUTIVE ORDERS BEFORE CLINTON In order to ascertain whether Clinton‘s critics were correct in charging that his environmental executive orders were unprecedented, it may be useful to briefly place them in a broader historical context. Presidents have issued thousands of executive orders and proclamations over the years, and many of these concerned the management of public lands and related environmental matters. For example, Thomas Jefferson used unilateral directives

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to manage the lands gained from the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, and many presidents in the nineteenth century used executive orders to manage Indian reservations and to remove lands from the public domain, often with little or no clear constitutional or statutory authority. In 1867, the Supreme Court upheld these longstanding practices in two separate cases: Wolcott v. Des Moines Navigation and Grisar v. McDowell. In the latter case, Justice Stephen Field deferred to the historical record, acknowledging that ―from an early period in the history of the Government it has been the practice of the President to order, from time to time, as the exigencies of the public service required, parcels of land belonging to the United States to be reserved and set apart.‖ With this judicial sanction, the presidential use of executive orders for land management and conservation grew through the late nineteenth century. For example, Presidents Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, and Benjamin Harrison issued executive orders to keep settlers from Indian lands. In 1891, Congress passed the General Land Law Revision Act, repealing the 1873 Timber Culture Act and empowering the president to create forest reserves.33 These reserves formed the foundation of what later became the National Forest system. From 1891 to 1893, Harrison withdrew millions of acres for this purpose, issuing proclamations that created forest reserves in Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, California, Washington, and Arizona.34 Cleveland continued to invoke the act during his second term, and in 1897 he proclaimed forest reserves in six western states totaling 20 million acres.35 Congress strongly objected to Cleveland‘s late-term directives for forest reserves, even though they were authorized by the 1891 act. Congress passed legislation to cancel Cleveland‘s reserves, but Cleveland vetoed the bill and thereby preserved the reserves. Ten days before his second term expired, Cleveland issued an executive order to stop the federal system of leasing and developing public lands. This system had facilitated the withdrawal from private entry of millions of acres of public land, but it still allowed private exploitation of natural resources in the socalled reserves.36 Soon after he took office, William McKinley signed a compromise measure that suspended Cleveland‘s late-term restraining order about public lands, effectively reverting to the old system of withdrawal and development; the Forest Management Act of 1897 reversed Cleveland‘s late-term thirteen forest reserves, transferring them back to public land.37 However, McKinley also issued many unilateral directives for land preservation. From 1897 to 1901, he issued proclamations to create millions of acres of new forest reserves in Arizona, California, New Mexico, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, and Oklahoma.38 Altogether, Harrison, Cleveland, and McKinley used executive orders to permanently reserve some 50 million acres of forests.39 McKinley‘s use of unilateral presidential directives ended in September 1901, when an anarchist assassin ironically brought to power the greatest advocate of activist government and assertive executive leadership that the nation had ever seen, Theodore Roosevelt. TR soon used executive orders in greater numbers and for greater purposes than his predecessors; during his seven-and-a-half years as president, TR issued nearly as many executive orders as all of his predecessors combined. Many of TR‘s most audacious executive orders were for environmental conservation, which he regarded as a prime duty of his self-imposed position of national steward.

TR frequently used executive orders and proclamations to create new forest reserves.

From 1905 to 1906, he added 21 million acres to the forest reserves.40 By the end of his

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second term, TR had created 138 national forests in thirty-one states, totaling 150 million acres.41 In total, TR‘s reserves quadrupled the amount of forest land that his predecessors had protected.42 By early 1907, Congress had become sharply critical of TR‘s frequent use of executive orders to create forest reserves, and it began to look for a way to limit the president‘s power to issue such directives. Infuriated by two years of what he perceived to be land encroachment by TR, Senator Charles Fulton (R-OR) attached to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill an amendment that would prevent the creation of further forest reserves in six western states: ―Hereafter no forest reserve shall be created, nor shall any addition be made to one heretofore created, within the limits of the States of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, or Wyoming, except by act of Congress.‖43 Congress sent TR the bill with the amendment on February 25th, and TR felt he could not reject the entire agricultural appropriations measure just to avoid the onerous amendment.

The Constitution gives the president ten days within which to sign or veto a bill, and in that time TR directed some of his aides and select members of the Department of Interior to draft a detailed list of the federal lands within the six states mentioned in Fulton‘s amendment. On March 2, the president had the relevant paperwork in place. TR then issued a series of executive orders that created twenty-one new forest reserves and enlarged eleven existing ones in the relevant six states, thereby transferring into the forest reserve system all seventeen million acres of land that Fulton wanted to block from executive protection. Two days later, TR signed the appropriations bill, including Fulton‘s amendment.44 Thus, the president‘s executive orders protected the lands in question just before he signed the law eliminating his future ability to protect those same lands. As biographer Edmund Morris explains, ―Only after the last acre was reserved did Roosevelt sign the Agricultural Appropriations Act, allowing Fulton‘s now worthless clause to float over his proud Theodore Roosevelt.‖45 Critics of TR‘s conservation directives and his other unilateral executive actions were outraged at his ―midnight proclamations.‖ Many congressmen strongly denounced the administration‘s ―arrogance‖ and called TR‘s presidency a ―dictatorship.‖46 Congress voted to overturn TR‘s executive orders, but TR met the measures with vetoes, which Congress was unable to override. Instead, TR‘s critics organized a Public Lands Convention in Denver to try to counter the president‘s ―government landlordism.‖47 The creation of forest reserves was perhaps the principal way in which TR used executive orders to protect lands for the public, but it was not the only way. At TR‘s urging, Congress passed the Antiquities Act in June 1906, enabling the president to use proclamations to unilaterally protect sites of special natural or historical value.48 TR used this new power to create four national monuments in the six months after the Act became law, and he created a dozen more before he left office, including the Grand Canyon.49 In addition to creating forest reserves and national monuments, TR also used executive orders to establish wildlife refuges and game reserves, generally without any statutory warrant whatsoever.50 For example, ornithologists asked for TR‘s help in protecting endangered birds on Pelican Island, Florida, that had been hunted nearly to extinction because their feathers were being used to decorate women‘s hats. In March, 1903, TR famously asked an aide, ―Is there any law that will prevent me from declaring Pelican Island a Federal Bird Reservation?‖ When he was told that there was none, and that the island already belonged to the federal government, TR responded, ―Very well, then I so declare it.‖51 By the end of his presidency, TR had used executive orders to establish fifty-one national bird reserves in seventeen states, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.52

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In addition to these bird reserves, TR also created 150 national forests, fifty-one bird reserves, four national game reserves, and eighteen national monuments before he left office.53 Altogether, he provided federal protection for almost 230 million acres.54 TR boasted that virtually all of his major conservation accomplishments ―have been done by me without the assistance of Congress.‖55 These environmental executive orders from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were not the only precedents on which Clinton would later draw. For example, in 1970, Richard Nixon issued executive orders to implement the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 and to expand the authority of the Council on Environmental Quality, and that same year he established the Environmental Protection Agency via Reorganization Plan No. 3. Similarly, Jimmy Carter issued executive order 11911 in 1977 to authorize the Council on Environmental Quality to issue binding environmental regulations, he issued executive orders protecting wetlands and floodplains, and in 1979 he issued executive order 12114 to stipulate how agencies should review the environmental impact of their actions in foreign countries.56 Carter‘s most dramatic use of unilateral presidential powers for environmental purposes was in December 1978. When Congress adjourned without passing a major Alaska lands bill that was strongly opposed in that state, Carter issued a series of proclamations to turn 55 million acres of public land in Alaska into fifteen national monuments. Congress passed legislation in 1980 that incorporated most of the new national monuments into national parks and preserves, but it also curtailed the president‘s ability to establish further national monuments in Alaska, much as earlier Congresses had tried but failed to do with Cleveland and TR.57

CONCLUSION As this brief discussion of early environmental executive orders demonstrates, Clinton was by no means the first president to use the unilateral powers of the office for environmental purposes. Despite the oft-repeated charge by critics that Clinton‘s environmental executive orders were unprecedented, the historical record clearly shows that Clinton‘s environmental executive orders were in many respects very much in keeping with earlier uses. Indeed, it seems that many of Clinton‘s environmental executive orders were even directly and consciously inspired by earlier precedents. Clinton was an avid reader of presidential history; he reportedly read a biography of Theodore Roosevelt and was greatly influenced by it.58 In January 2000, Clinton designated three national monuments and expanded a fourth, and he marked the occasion with a speech at the Grand Canyon, during which he reflected on TR‘s unilateral actions for conservation: ―Secretary Babbitt talked about Theodore Roosevelt's role. You might be interested to know that it was exactly ninetytwo years ago today, on January 11, 1908, that he designated the Grand Canyon as one of our nation's first national monuments. Now, the first light falls on the twenty-first century and this breathtaking landscape he helped to protect. None of you who can see what is behind me can doubt the wisdom of that decision. And so it is altogether fitting that on this day and in this place we continue that great journey.‖ Clinton further elaborated on the moment in his memoir: ―Bruce Babbit, Al Gore, and I had done our best to be faithful to Roosevelt‘s conservation ethic and to his admonition that we should always be taking what he called ‗the

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long look ahead.‘‖59 Thus, Clinton‘s actions were very much in the mold that TR had established. Furthermore, the political criticism that Clinton‘s environmental orders occasioned was very much the same as that caused by the earlier presidents‘ environmental orders (e.g., Cleveland, TR, and Carter), from arousing the ire of western land interests to provoking legislative attempts to curtail the president‘s ability to protect public lands.

Having suggested that Clinton‘s environmental executive orders often followed earlier precedents, however, I do not mean to diminish their importance. Indeed, in at least three respects, they were (and are) very important. First, even insofar as Clinton‘s unilateral directives for the environment were in keeping with older uses, they were perhaps different in scope if not type. Specifically, in terms of his use of the Antiquities Act, Clinton boasted that he had ―protected more land in the lower forty-eight states than any administration since that of Theodore Roosevelt.‖60 Second, even though Clinton‘s environmental executive orders were often similar to some earlier ones, few presidents have used the tools of the office for environmental purposes with the same energy and determination; Clinton‘s use of environmental executive orders was not unprecedented, but it was still unusual, as many presidents have opted not to use the powers of the office for environmental purposes.61 The fact that Clinton did is all the more noteworthy given the subsequent ascent to power of politicians for whom environmental protection and conservation is not a priority. Third, not all of Clinton‘s environmental executive orders were in keeping with earlier orders, as some sought to advance environmental concerns in new areas and in new ways. His executive orders on environmental justice and invasive species are perhaps the prime examples of this, but there are many others.

In the end, Congress and future presidents may well undo some of the environmental policies that Clinton enacted by executive orders, but the many public monuments that Clinton created by unilateral executive directives cannot easily be undone and thus will be a lasting part of his legacy.62 And Clinton‘s other environmental executive orders will likely constitute a benchmark against which future presidents will be measured for many years to come. Last but not least, the fact that so many of Clinton‘s environmental executive orders aroused such strong reactions means that part of his legacy will also be an increased and lasting public awareness of executive orders as powerful tool for presidential policymaking.

ENDNOTES 1 2 3

4

5

6

http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/executive_orders/disposition_tables.html Wolsey v. Chapman, 101 U.S. 755 (1880).

Jennie Holman Blake, ―Presidential Power Grab or Pure State Might?‖ 2000 B.Y.U. L. Rev., 293.

Quoted in Phillip J. Cooper, ―By Order of the President: Administration by Executive Order and Proclamation.‖ Administration and Society 18, no. 2 (August 1986): 238.

House Committee on Governmental Operations, ―Executive Orders and Proclamations: A Study of a Use of Presidential Powers,‖ December, 1957, vii.

Mary Woodward, ―Executive Orders: A Journey,‖ Legal References Quarterly 10 no. 3 (1990): 125.

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8

9

10

11

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13 14

15 16

17 18

19 20

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23 24

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Despite the importance of executive orders, the existing scholarly literature on the topic is surprisingly small. Beyond a couple dozen articles in law reviews and political science journals, five recent books are of note: Kenneth R. Mayer, With the Stroke of a Pen (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Phillip J. Cooper, By Order of the President (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002); William G. Howell, Power Without Persuasion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); Adam L. Warber, Executive Orders and the Modern Presidency (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2006); Graham G. Dodds, Take Up Your Pen (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).

Nancy Kassop, ―Expansion and Creation: Clinton‘s Impact on the Scope of Presidential Power,‖ in David Gray Adler and Michael A. Genovese, eds., The Presidency and the Law: The Clinton Legacy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 7; Mayer, With the Stroke of a Pen, 89.

Lyn Ragsdale and Jerrold G. Rusk, ―Elections and Presidential Policymaking,‖ in Steven A. Shull, ed., Presidential Policymaking (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), 105–106.

Robert W. Hahn and Cass R. Sunstein, ―A New Executive Order for Improving Federal Regulation?‖ University of Pennsylvania Law Review (May 2002): 1489–90; John Contrubis, ―Executive Orders and Proclamations,‖ CRS Report for Congress, June 3, 1995, 16; Mayer, With the Stroke of a Pen, 132.

Quoted in Ragsdale and Rusk, ―Elections and Presidential Policymaking,‖ 126. Clinton actually issued more executive orders when Democrats controlled Congress, but on the whole his later executive orders were more controversial (Mayer, With the Stroke of a Pen, 99, 101).

James Bennett, ―True to Form, Clinton Shifts Energies Back to U.S. Focus,‖ New York Times, July 5, 1998.

Quoted in Alexis Simendinger, ―The Paper Wars,‖ National Journal, July 25, 1998.

Quoted in Richard W. Stevenson, ―Clinton Ending Term on a Busy Note,‖ New York Times, December 25, 2000, A27.

Kassop, ―Expansion and Creation,‖ 7.

George C. Edwards III and Stephen J. Wayne, Presidential Leadership, sixth ed. (Boston: St. Martins, 2003), 301.

Chamber of Commerce v. Reich, 317 U.S. App. D.C. 61 (1996).

Tara L. Branum, ―President or King? The Use and Abuse of Executive Orders in Modern-Day America,‖ Journal of Legislation 1 (2000): 63; Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952).

Branum, ―President or King?‖ 41.

The same day that Clinton issued executive order 12898, he also issued a presidential memorandum on environmental justice that sharpened the executive order by requiring federal agencies to use civil rights laws, especially Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in ensuring the government does not engage in or support environmental racism (Cooper, By Order of the President, 131).

Bryan A. Liang, ―A Zone of Twilight,‖ Perspectives on Legislation, Regulation, and Litigation 3 no. 3 (National Legal Center for the Public Interest, March 1999): 39.

Clinton revised his executive order on Hawaii reefs with another executive order in January 2001.

Branum, ―President or King?‖ 39–40.

Quoted in Kassop, ―Expansion and Creation,‖ 8. Originally quoted in Carl M. Cannon, ―Lands Legacy Gains Ground,‖ National Journal, June 10, 2000.

Carl M. Cannon, ―Lands Legacy Gains Ground.‖

President William Jefferson Clinton‘s Environmental Executive Orders 26

27

28 29

30

31

32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39

40

41

42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50

183

Ben O‘Connell, quoted in Michael Janofsky, ―Preservation Action, Then a Bigger Fight,‖ New York Times, November 30, 2000.

Quoted in Kassop, ―Expansion and Creation,‖ 8. Originally in David Sanger and Sam Howe Verhovek, ―Clinton Proposes Wider Protection for U.S. Forests,‖ New York Times, October 14, 1999.

Leon Harris, ―Clinton Declares New National Monuments,‖ January 11, 2000, cnn.com.

Douglas Jehl, ―Clinton vs. Western Interests,‖ New York Times, September 14, 2000. See also: Harris, ―Clinton Declares New National Monuments.‖ Branum, ―President or King?‖ 41. Chenoweth v. Clinton (1999). The main forces behind the case were Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R- ID) and Rep. Don Young (R-AK).

The main bills to curtail the presidential use of executive orders at this time included measures sponsored by Rep. Jack Metcalf (R-WA), Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Rep. Bob Barr (R-FL), and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-AK).

Jehl, ―Clinton vs. Western Interests.‖ Ed Quillen, ―RS-2477: Old Roads and New Controversies,‖ Colorado Central Magazine, May 2001.

Tim Taylor, Book of the Presidents (New York: Arno Press, 1972), 266–68.

Ibid., 276.

William Henry Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility (New York: Farrar, 1961), 320.

Ibid., 320.

Taylor, Book of the Presidents, 284–85.

Sources differ as to the exact amount of forest reserves that existed before TR became president. Some put it at 50 million acres, others at 46 million. Harbaugh says it was only 26 million (Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, 320).

Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 201.

Neil A. Hamilton, Presidents: A Biographical Dictionary (New York: Checkmark Books, 2001), 213.

H. W. Brands, TR: The Last Romantic (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 623; George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Harper, 1958), 214–15.

Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 485–86.

Nathan Miller, TR: A Life (New York: Quill, 1992), 471.

Morris, Theodore Rex, 487.

Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 215.

Ibid., 215.

Morris, Theodore Rex, 447-48.

Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 201–202. The Grand Canyon later became a National Park.

Forest reserves and national monuments constituted the main legislatively sanctioned ways in which TR used executive orders and proclamations to control land, but he also initiated twentyone reclamation projects under the auspices of the 1902 Reclamation (or Newlands) Act, which authorized the federal government to build flood control and irrigation projects in the Western US. See H. Paul Jeffers, Roosevelt the Explorer (New York: Taylor Trends Publishing, 2003), 106; Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 111.

184 51

52 53

54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61

62

Graham G. Dodds

Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, 331. The president‘s verbal order later became executive order 1104, which created the first National Wildlife Refuge, on Pelican Island, Florida.

Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 111.

James G. Barber, Theodore Roosevelt: Icon of the American Century (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1998), 67.

Theodore Roosevelt Association, http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Knopf, 2002), 248.

Mayer, With the Stroke of a Pen, 64.

Robert Shanley, ―Presidential Executive Orders and Environmental Policy,‖ Presidential Studies Quarterly 13 (1983):410; Mayer, With the Stroke of a Pen, 76.

Todd Leopold, ―Learning from the Masters,‖ www.cnn.com, November 7, 2000.

Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Vintage, 2005), 888.

Clinton, My Life, 948. See also Jehl, ―Clinton vs. Western Interests.‖ Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush are the only post-TR presidents not to designate national monuments.

Clinton considered conferring monument status on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) in order to protect it against drilling for oil and gas, but he ultimately decided against it. Congress has subsequently come close to authorizing oil drilling at ANWAR but has not yet done so.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Daniel Béland is Canada Research Chair in Public Policy (Tier 1) and professor at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School in Public Policy, a joint venture between the University of Regina and the University of Saskatchewan. A political sociologist analyzing politics and public policy from a comparative and historical perspective, he is the author of ten books and more than seventy peer-reviewed articles in international scholarly journals. His most recent books include The Politics of Policy Change: Welfare, Medicare, and Social Security Reform in the United States (with Alex Waddan, Georgetown University Press, 2012), and Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research (with Robert Henry Cox, Oxford University Press, 2011).

Larry Bumgardner is an associate professor of business law at Pepperdine University‘s Graziadio School of Business and Management. A graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Law, he has also taught a variety of political science, public policy, law, and communications courses at Pepperdine. Bumgardner previously served as executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Reagan Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley, California, and as an assistant vice president and associate vice chancellor at Pepperdine.

Graham G. Dodds is an assistant professor of political science at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, has been a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and has worked as a legislative assistant for a member of the US House of Representatives. Dodds teaches courses on American politics, political leadership, and political theory, and his main research interests include the presidency, American political development, and governmental apologies.

Peter Edelman is a professor of law at Georgetown Law Center. On the faculty since 1982, he has also served in all three branches of government. During President Clinton‘s first term he was counselor to HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and then assistant secretary for planning and evaluation. Earlier in his career he was a legislative assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and issues director for Senator Edward Kennedy‘s 1980 presidential campaign.

Mr. Edelman‘s new book, So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America, was published by The New Press in spring 2012.

Richard Himelfarb is an associate professor of political science at Hofstra University.

He received his BA from the University of Maryland in 1985 and his PhD from the University of Rochester in 1993. He teaches courses in American politics, public policy, the US Congress, the presidency, and most recently, the politics of American health care. Dr. Himelfarb‘s scholarly interests include matters relating to the elderly and health care. He is

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the author of Catastrophic Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995).

Chris Jennings is president of Jennings Policy Strategies (JPS), a consulting firm that serves clients who share a commitment to affordable, quality health care for all Americans.

Clients include consumer groups, labor organizations, businesses, public and private health plan purchasers, generic drug manufacturers, and not-for-profit foundations. He serves as a senior advisor to the non-for-profit foundation–sponsored Federal-State Implementation Project (F-SIP). From 1994– 2001, Jennings served in the White House as senior health care advisor to President William Jefferson Clinton on the Domestic Policy and National Economic Councils.

Ben Johnson has been a senior advisor to the FDIC, the National Cancer Institute, and the Department of Health and Human Services. He served as assistant to President Clinton and director of the president's Initiative for One America. In that capacity, he oversaw the first freestanding White House office in history to focus on closing the opportunity gap for minorities in the United States. He joined the Clinton White House staff in 1993 as an associate director in the Office of Public Liaison. He was later promoted to special assistant to the president and was responsible for all areas of outreach to the African American community. After Clinton‘s reelection, he was appointed to the position of deputy assistant to the president, with an expanded portfolio that included all areas of outreach to various constituencies, including seniors, Hispanics, Jews, and members of the disability community.

Elaine C. Kamarck is a senior fellow in the governance studies program and the Director of the Management and Leadership Initiative at the Brookings Institution. In the 1980s, she helped to found the ―New Democrat‖ movement that contributed to the presidency of Bill Clinton. As a senior staffer in the White House she created the National Performance Review, the largest government reform effort in the last half of the twentieth century. After the White House, she spent fifteen years at Harvard University teaching government management and American politics. She is the author of Primary Politics: How Presidential Candidates Have Shaped the Modern Nominating System (Brookings Institution, 2009), The End of Government as We Know It: Making Public Policy Work (Lynne Rienner, 2007) and How Change Happens: Understanding Success and Failure in Modern American Politics (Lynne Rienner, forthcoming).

Mickey Kantor served as US Secretary of Commerce and United States Trade Representative in the Clinton administration (1993–97). He is currently a partner in the international law firm of Mayer Brown. He currently serves as co-chair of the Pacific Council on International Policy and co-chair of the Council on Communications Law and Policy.

Kantor also serves on the board of CBRE and G-24 Innovations and on advisory boards of Octavian, Fleishman Hillard, and six non-profit corporations.

Laura Lally received her PhD in Information Systems from the Stern School at New York University. She is currently an associate professor of information technology at the Frank G. Zarb School of Business at Hofstra University. Since 1994, she has studied the role of information technology in crises. She has received two grants from the National Science Foundation to study this topic and has written several major journal articles and numerous conference proceedings.

Peter B. Levy is professor and chair of the history and political science department at York College in York, Pennsylvania. He received his BA from the University of California Berkeley and his PhD from Columbia University. He has written extensively on the civil

About the Contributors

187

rights movement and the 1960s; his titles include The New Left and Labor in the 1960s (University of Illinois Press 1994), Civil War on Race Street: The Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge, Maryland (University Press of Florida 2003), and, most recently, "The Dream Deferred: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Holy Week Uprisings of 1968 in Baltimore ’68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City (Temple University Press, 2011). He is currently working on a book about Spiro Agnew and the rise of the New Right.

Theodore R. Marmor’s scholarship concerns welfare state politics and policy in North America and Western Europe. He particularly emphasizes the major spending programs (The Politics of Medicare, second ed. (Aldine Transaction, 2000), and America's Misunderstood Welfare State (Basic Books, 1992). He is the author or coauthor of eleven books, including Politics, Health and Healthcare: Selected Essays (with R. Klein, Yale University Press2012) and Comparative Studies and the Politics of Modern Medical Care (with R. Freeman and K. Okma, (Yale University Press, 2009). Marmor has written more than a hundred articles in a wide range of scholarly journals, as well as being a frequent op-ed contributor to US and Canadian newspapers.

Lawrence M. Mead is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at New York University, where he teaches public policy and American government. He is also a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Wisconsin. An expert on the problems of poverty and welfare in the United States, Mead was the principal academic exponent of work requirements in welfare, the approach that now dominates national policy. He is a leading scholar of the politics and implementation of welfare reform and also of work programs for men. His many books and articles on these subjects have helped shape social policy in the United States and abroad.

Stephen K. Medvic is associate professor of government at Franklin & Marshall College. His research and teaching interests include campaigns and elections, political parties, the media and politics, and public opinion. In addition to numerous academic articles and book chapters, he is the author of Campaigns and Elections: Players and Processes (Wadsworth Publishing, 2009) and Political Consultants in U.S. Congressional Elections (Ohio State University Press, 2001). He is also editor of New Directions in Campaigns and Elections (Routledge, 2011), coeditor of Shades of Gray: Perspectives on Campaign Ethics (Brookings Institution Press, 2002) and an associate editor of the Guide to Political Campaigns in America (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2005).

Rosanna Perotti is an associate professor and chair of political science at Hofstra University. She is the editor of The Clinton Presidency and the Constitutional System (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2012) and co-editor of four volumes on the presidency of George H.W. Bush, stemming from the Hofstra University presidential conference entitled “George Bush: Leading in a New World,” published by Greenwood Press: A Noble Calling: Character and the George H. W. Bush Presidency (2004), Principle Over Politics?: The Domestic Policy of the George H. W. Bush Presidency (2004), From Cold War to New World Order: The Foreign Policy of George H. W. Bush (2002), and Honor and Loyalty: Inside the Politics of the George H.W. Bush White House (2002). She teaches courses in electoral politics, public opinion and media and American Politics.

Bruce Reed served as President Clinton’s chief domestic policy advisor from 1996 to 2001, after four years as assistant to the president for domestic policy planning and deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy. He was deputy campaign manager for policy in

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the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign and policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council when Governor Clinton served as chairman in 1991–92. He returned to the White House in 2011 as assistant to the president and chief of staff to the Vice President, after serving as executive director of the Simpson-Bowles Commission on Fiscal Responsibility. Reed is the author, with Rahm Emanuel, of The Plan: Big Ideas for Change in America (Public Affairs, 2006).

Richard W. Riley is a senior partner of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP and Education Counsel LLC. He served as US Secretary of Education from 1993–2001 and as governor of South Carolina from 1979–87.

Robert E. Rubin served as Secretary of the Treasury from January 10, 1995, to July 2, 1999, after serving in the White House as assistant to the president for economic policy and as the first director of the National Economic Council. He joined Goldman, Sachs & Company in 1966 and served as co-chairman from 1990 to 1992. From 1999 to 2009, he served as a member of the board of directors at Citigroup and as a senior advisor to the company. In 2010, he joined Centerview Partners as counselor of the firm. He is chairman of the board of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the nation’s leading community development support organization. He serves on the board of trustees of Mount Sinai Medical Center, is a member of the Harvard Corporation, and is co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Robert J. Spitzer is Distinguished Service Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at SUNY Cortland. He is the author of fourteen books, including The Presidency and Public Policy (University of Alabama Press 2012), The Presidential Veto (State University of New York Press, 1988) President and Congress (Temple University Press, 1992), The Presidency and the Constitution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Saving the Constitution from Lawyers (Cambridge University Press 2008), and The Politics of Gun Control (fifth edition Paradigm Publishers, 2011). Spitzer is the author of more than 500 articles and papers on various American political topics that have appeared in many books, journals, newspapers, and web sites. He is a former president of the Presidency and Executive Politics organization.

Bruce C. Vladeck served as administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration (since renamed the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) from 1993 through 1997. In that role, he oversaw the Medicare and Medicaid programs and related policy development.

Before coming to the federal government, he had been on the faculty of Columbia University, served as assistant commissioner of the New Jersey State Department of Health from 1979 to 1982, worked at The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and served more than nine years as president of the United Hospital Fund of New York. Vladeck has spent six years as senior vice president for policy and professor of health policy and geriatrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, served as interim president of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and consulted for a variety of organizations.

Alex Waddan is senior lecturer in American politics and American foreign policy at the University of Liecester, UK. His specialty is the development of American social policy, with an emphasis on the causes and consequences of the 1996 welfare reform, and on the development and reform of the American health care system. He is the author of Clinton’s Legacy? A New Democrat in Governance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), as well as numerous articles on US social policy.

INDEX # 9/11, 59

A Abraham, 141 abuse, 175 access, 5, 7, 53, 57, 67, 68, 102, 104, 133 accountability, 164 accounting, 57 adults, 95, 97, 98, 113 adverse effects, 24 advertisements, 147 advocacy, 79, 88, 103, 139 affirmative action, 19, 64, 66, 75 Afghanistan, 168 Africa, 66, 74 African Americans, vii, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 94, 98 African-American, 70 age, 65, 93, 98, 167 agencies, 42, 45, 49, 54, 56, 102, 172, 173, 174, 178, 180 agriculture, 73 Air Force, 73 air traffic control system, 55, 57 Alaska, 35, 178 American Bar Association, 44 American Presidency, 15 anger, 104, 122, 124 antagonism, 173 antitrust, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 anxiety, 127 appetite, 157 appointees, 66 appointments, 63, 66 appropriations, 177

Appropriations Act, 177 architect(s), 101, 124 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 182 Argentina, 35 arithmetic, 129 armed forces, 168 Asia, 25, 27, 36 aspiration, 164 assassination, 80 assault, 79, 82, 83, 84, 85 assessment, 101 assets, 48, 116 atmosphere, 54, 94 attitudes, 127 Attorney General, 45, 46, 48, 50, 166 authority, 17, 42, 148, 173, 175, 178 automation, 58 avoidance, 144 awareness, 56, 133

B backlash, 132 balanced budget, 19, 129, 130, 131, 132, 157, 158 ban, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 95, 172, 174 bandwidth, 53, 57 bankruptcy, 132, 133 bargaining, 102, 126, 142, 154 barriers, 35 base, 11, 20, 34, 64, 85, 88, 106, 153, 158, 166 basic research, 25 behaviors, 56 beneficiaries, 124, 129, 130, 133, 155 benefits, 24, 26, 35, 57, 58, 84, 87, 88, 94, 95, 96, 101, 105, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 122, 123, 124, 126, 128, 134, 142, 147, 148, 149, 155, 172 Bill Clinton, v, vii, 3, 4, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 23, 33, 34, 35, 36, 43, 63, 66, 70, 71, 73, 74,

190

Index

76, 79, 85, 101, 107, 108, 109, 112, 115, 116, 117, 134, 163, 165, 167, 168, 171, 182, 184 birds, 174, 177 births, 116 Blacks, 68, 70 blame, 67, 132 blind spot, 69 blueprint, 28 bond market, 35 Bosnia, 144, 158 Brazil, 28, 99 browser, 46 Budget Committee, 131 budget deficit, 34 budget surplus, 134 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, 81 bureaucracy, 42, 127, 129, 154 businesses, 42, 45, 48, 53, 56, 57, 101, 184 buyer(s), 80, 82, 154

C Cabinet, 36, 70, 109 campaigns, 8, 128, 147, 185 cancer, 159 candidates, 20, 85, 86, 89, 97, 128 capital markets, 24 caregivers, 95 cartel, 44, 45, 46 cash, 93 catalyst, 6 CBS, 131 Census, 107 central bank, 25 challenges, 29, 44, 48, 53, 54, 56, 57, 84, 141, 158, 168 Chamber of Commerce, 180 Chicago, 13, 14, 43, 44, 48, 49, 66, 70, 135, 183 Chief of Staff, 105 childcare, 5, 94, 97, 98, 113, 115, 116, 117 childhood, 96 children, 33, 58, 59, 68, 82, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 104, 111, 116, 134, 155, 158, 159, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 173 China, 27, 34 circulation, 84 city(s), 14, 56, 67, 98, 113, 185 citizens, 4, 85, 124, 130, 133, 134 citizenship, 5 civil rights, 58, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 75, 180, 185 Civil War, 185 classes, 166

classroom, 53, 166, 168 classroom settings, 53 Clayton Act, 42, 48, 49 cleavages, 140 clients, 184 climate, 127 Clinton administration, vii, 6, 24, 26, 28, 41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 79, 87, 100, 121, 122, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 147, 153, 154, 155, 157, 159, 184 coding, 7 coercion, 104, 105 Cold War, 34 college students, 167 colleges, 166, 168 color, 65, 68, 74, 75 commerce, 34, 49, 54 commercials, 127 communication, 55, 144, 146, 148 community(s), 5, 6, 8, 20, 57, 59, 63, 64, 67, 68, 73, 74, 88, 94, 98, 104, 113, 151, 153, 156, 166, 184, 186 competing interests, 74 competition, 42, 49, 101, 107, 141, 149, 153, 154, 155 competitiveness, 24, 27 competitors, 26, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 140, 143 complexity, 26, 54, 55, 101, 126, 148 compliance, 57, 164, 165, 167 complications, 151 composition, 142 compounds, 12 compulsion, 104, 105 computer, 54, 56, 57, 58 computer systems, 54 computerization, 80 conception, 5, 6, 80 conference, 74, 83, 87, 106, 153, 159, 185 conflict, 12, 146, 175 Congressional Budget Office, 133, 142, 143 congressional races, 86 consensus, 16, 58, 82, 100, 133, 140, 141, 145, 165, 166 conservation, 173, 176, 177, 178, 179 conservative ideas, vii conspiracy, 49 constituents, 34, 65 Constitution, 173, 177, 186 construction, 3 consulting, 184 consumer choice, 128 consumers, 42, 43, 44, 94, 128 consumption, 148

191

Index controversial, 42, 141, 142, 157, 158, 173, 174, 180 convention, 4, 12, 63, 99 conversations, 153 conviction, 26, 27, 105 cooling, 80, 81 copyright, 58 copyright law, 58 coral reefs, 174 cost, 103, 105, 123, 124, 127, 128, 130, 133, 134, 135, 141, 143, 144, 147, 149, 150, 151, 154, 155, 160 counsel, 44, 172 Court of Appeals, 42, 46, 173 crimes, 80, 81, 83, 87 criminal justice system, 69 criminals, 83 crises, 17, 19, 27, 57, 185 criticism, 26, 71, 122, 153, 175, 179 crowds, 24 CT, 139, 141 culture, 55, 56, 88, 104, 173 currency, 25, 106 current account, 25 current account deficit, 25 customer preferences, 53 cycling, 141

digital divide, 58 dignity, 14 direct taxation, 126, 128 direct taxes, 126 directives, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179 directors, 74, 186 disability, 96, 184 disaster, 55, 122, 125 discrimination, 66 dispersion, 148 disposition, 179 distribution, 148 District of Columbia, 173 diversity, 8, 67 divestiture, 48 doctors, 101, 128, 129, 130, 149 domestic agenda, 27 domestic economy, 34 domestic issues, 33, 81 domestic policy(s), vii, 19, 33, 67, 105, 158, 185 domestic violence, 98 dominance, 43, 46 draft, 177 drawing, 89, 96, 142 dream, 33 drugs, 27, 47, 67 dynamism, 100

D E damages, 47, 54 danger, 24 death penalty, vii defendants, 46 deficit, 24, 25, 26, 27, 123, 158 democracy, 27, 36, 168 Democrat, vii, 1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 16, 17, 20, 41, 44, 49, 65, 71, 99, 100, 101, 103, 105, 106, 107, 139, 147, 163, 168, 184, 186 Democratic Party, vii, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 34, 66, 79, 87, 88, 101, 113, 114, 145, 146, 153 demographic change, 99 denial, 57 Department of Commerce, 73 Department of Education, 165 Department of Energy, 73 Department of Health and Human Services, 184 Department of Justice, 50, 84 deposits, 129 depression, 101 depth, 43, 63 designers, 54, 56, 105 developing countries, 25, 26, 27, 56

economic boom, 68 economic change, 28 economic development, 74 economic efficiency, 43, 48 economic growth, 5, 24, 25, 49, 143, 163 economic policy, vii, 25, 26, 27, 28, 186 economic problem, 25 economic reform, 27 economic well-being, 29 economics, 26, 28 ecosystem, 174 education, viii, 5, 25, 34, 53, 58, 68, 98, 104, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168 education reform, 163, 164, 167 educators, 168 elbows, 36 election, 11, 26, 43, 73, 74, 85, 86, 89, 100, 112, 127, 128, 134, 139, 143, 149, 153, 157, 159 elementary school, 82 employees, 102, 144 employers, 101, 102, 121, 126, 144, 173 employment, 15, 93, 95, 112, 113, 142, 145, 151 employment programs, 95

192

Index

empowerment, 6, 67, 68, 158 encouragement, 154 endangered, 177 energy, 113, 142, 144, 179 enforcement, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 116 enterprise economy, 58 entrepreneurs, 142 environment, 11, 26, 28, 35, 55, 59, 75, 82, 89, 149, 175, 179 environmental effects, 173 environmental impact, 178 environmental management, 174 environmental protection, 179 Environmental Protection Act, 148 Environmental Protection Agency, 178 environmental regulations, 178 equal opportunity, 5, 65 equality, 64, 68 equity, 165, 167 ethnicity, 98 Europe, 14, 34, 35, 106, 154 European style, 154 European Union (EU), 47, 50 evening news, 142 evidence, 8, 9, 46, 101, 111, 115, 123, 127, 148, 150, 151, 154 evil, 125 evolution, 146 exchange rate, 143 execution, 63 executive branch, 172, 175 executive order(s), viii, 116, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182 exercise, 124, 142, 173 expenditures, 101, 133, 143, 149, 155 expertise, 54, 66 exploitation, 176 explosives, 86 exports, 25 external environment, 55 extinction, 130, 177 extreme poverty, 96

FDA, 159 FDIC, 184 fear(s), 24, 141 Federal Communications Commission, 49, 166 federal facilities, 173 federal funds, 94 federal government, 23, 28, 42, 116, 134, 164, 165, 166, 172, 173, 174, 177, 182, 186 federal judiciary, 43 federal law, 69, 84, 94, 95, 96 federal mandate, 164, 165 Federal Reserve, 24, 25 Federal Reserve Board, 24, 25 federalism, 166, 173 financial, 23, 27, 56, 59, 104, 142 financial crisis, 27 financial institutions, 56 firearms, 80, 87 fires, 83 firm size, 44 first lady, 125, 153 fiscal deficit, 23 fiscal policy, 24, 25 Fish and Wildlife Service, 174 flexibility, 24, 164 flight, 55 focus groups, 130 food, 45, 48, 95, 96, 113 force, 27, 47, 97, 103, 116, 125, 126, 128, 171, 172 Ford, 82 foreign aid, 27 foreign policy, 11, 19, 33, 34, 37, 76, 89, 158, 186 formula, 67, 96 foundations, 184 framing, 122 free market economy, 42 free trade, 35 Free Trade Area of the Americas, 35, 36 freedom, 8, 128 friendship, 65, 163 funding, 58, 67, 85, 94, 96, 102, 113, 149, 151, 166 fundraising, 124 funds, 97, 164, 173

F G factories, 33 fairness, 5, 69 faith, 5, 6, 8, 66, 102, 126 families, 67, 75, 87, 93, 97, 98, 100, 101, 111, 113, 127 fantasy, 154 farms, 98 FBI, 81

Gallup Poll, 70 GATT, 36 GDP, 101, 143 GEAR, 166 gender gap, 167 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 36 general election, 103

193

Index generic drugs, 47 geo-political, 27 Georgia, 71 Germany, 45, 99 global competition, 33 global economy, 27, 34 globalization, 24, 34, 48 goal setting, 164 God, 5, 6, 8, 67, 70, 73 good behavior, 113 goods and services, 143 governance, 103, 184 government intervention, 49 governments, 154 governor, 19, 23, 35, 65, 115, 186 grades, 167 grants, 116, 166, 185 graph, 9 grass, 143 grassroots, 11, 19, 124, 173 greed, 122, 127 grouping, 144 growth, 23, 24, 25, 68, 149, 159 growth rate, 159 guardian, 8 guessing, 144 guidance, 74, 168 guidelines, 45, 159, 166 guilt, 45 guilty, 45, 47, 49, 75 gun control, vii, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89

H hair, 85, 87 Haiti, 66, 70, 158 hate crime, 76 Hawaii, 84, 174, 178, 181 Health and Human Services, 105 health care, vii, 7, 81, 85, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 113, 115, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 133, 134, 136, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 151, 153, 154, 155, 158, 159, 160, 173, 184, 186 health care costs, 126, 143, 154 health care system, 100, 101, 103, 121, 125, 127, 128, 134, 149, 151, 186 health insurance, 67, 101, 121, 128, 133, 134, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 148, 150, 154 health problems, 34, 144 health services, 154 height, 63 Henry Louis Gates, 63

HHS, 73, 74, 108, 183 high school, 86, 98, 166, 167 higher education, 166 Hispanics, 74, 167, 184 history, 24, 28, 35, 36, 49, 63, 68, 74, 98, 100, 121, 139, 142, 143, 155, 172, 173, 176, 178, 184, 185 HIV, 155, 159 HIV/AIDS, 155, 159 home ownership, 36, 74 homosexuals, 172 hostility, 175 House, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16, 24, 36, 67, 74, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 97, 102, 107, 108, 109, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 156, 158, 171, 172, 173, 175, 179, 183, 184 House of Representatives, 79, 87, 156, 171, 172, 183 housing, 75, 97, 98 Housing and Urban Development, 64 hub, 58 HUD, 73 hue, 27 human, 27, 55, 126 human right(s), 27 hunting, 80, 83, 87, 88 Hurricane Katrina, 166 hybrid, 11

I icon, 75 ID, 175, 181 ideal, 103 identification, 20, 88, 89 ideology, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 15, 17, 26, 93, 102, 105, 106 image, vii, 64, 103, 114 IMF, 27, 28 immigrants, 95, 97, 165 immunity, 87 immunization, 155 impeachment, 68, 69 imports, 143 improvements, 25, 68 inauguration, 174 income, 24, 25, 27, 28, 34, 58, 67, 68, 85, 94, 95, 97, 104, 111, 123, 125, 129, 155, 166, 173 income maintenance, 94 income tax, 24, 27, 123 incumbents, 85, 86, 89 independence, 25 independent voters, vii India, 27 Indian reservation, 98, 176

194

Index

individuals, 45, 57, 64, 81, 123, 126, 129, 134 Indonesia, 28 industrialized countries, 143 industry(s), 42, 49, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59 inequality, 64, 68, 69 infant mortality, 163 inflation, 24, 28, 96 information sharing, 56 information technology, vii, 56, 185 infrastructure, 17, 25, 53, 57 insecurity, 143 institutions, 11, 27, 56, 58, 156, 174 insurance policy, 123 integration, 26, 27 integrity, 19 interdependence, 27, 33, 34, 104 interest groups, 113, 122, 124, 125, 127, 128, 134, 139, 140, 141 interest rates, 23, 24, 34 interface, 53, 57 interference, 46 international affairs, 19 international law, 184 interoperability, 58 intervention, 55 investment, 24, 34, 35, 94 Iowa, 89 Iraq, 168 irrigation, 182 isolation, 94 issues, 5, 19, 20, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, 34, 35, 42, 47, 48, 49, 59, 68, 76, 80, 85, 89, 98, 100, 121, 128, 139, 147, 153, 158, 163, 166, 167, 171, 184 Italy, 99

Korea, 28

L labeling, 80, 159 labor market, 98 landscape, 163, 178 Latin America, 34 Latinos, 94, 98 law enforcement, 41 laws, 41, 42, 49, 57, 80, 87, 97, 180 lawyers, 98, 147, 148, 166 lead, 24, 26, 44, 48, 54, 55, 73, 101, 125, 126, 164, 166, 172 leadership, 11, 17, 34, 35, 44, 65, 74, 105, 129, 131, 133, 142, 145, 154, 165, 166, 168, 176 leaks, 128 learning, 168 legislation, 56, 79, 82, 84, 85, 86, 93, 104, 105, 117, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 132, 134, 136, 142, 144, 155, 158, 159, 165, 166, 172, 173, 174, 176, 178 lending, 166 lens, 79 liberalism, 3, 7, 99 liberation, 5 liberty, 6, 8 license fee, 80, 81 lifetime, 96, 105, 117, 144 light, 36, 68, 100, 132, 146, 178 literacy, 56, 58, 167 loan guarantees, 173 loans, 7 lobbying, 105 local government, 58 Louisiana, 176

J Japan, 34, 36 Jews, 184 job insecurity, 104 job training, 95 Jordan, 65 journalists, vii judicial branch, 175 judiciary, 173 Judiciary Committee, 50, 83, 84, 85, 87 justification, 173 juvenile justice, 87 juveniles, 87

K kindergarten, 167

M macroeconomic policies, 68 magazines, 83 magnitude, 140 majority, 42, 74, 102, 104, 127, 128, 132, 136, 140, 141, 145, 146, 154, 158 man, 8, 20, 64, 69, 74, 75, 76, 94, 146, 154, 160 management, 101, 140, 173, 174, 175, 176, 184 mania, 47, 48 manipulation, 12 market-based economy, 26, 27, 28 marketplace, 53 marriage, 97, 113 Maryland, 75, 81, 84, 107, 184, 185 mass, 143 mathematics, 167

195

Index matter, 11, 26, 42, 96, 97, 133, 166 media, 23, 46, 66, 86, 122, 123, 125, 127, 131, 132, 134, 144, 146, 147, 148, 149, 185 median, 99 Medicaid, 95, 107, 117, 126, 127, 128, 142, 158, 186 medical, 5, 59, 128, 129, 130, 139, 140, 141, 148 medical care, 128, 139, 140, 141 Medicare, 107, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 141, 142, 143, 153, 154, 155, 158, 159, 183, 184, 185, 186 Medicare Modernization Act, 159 medicine, 58, 101, 139, 148 memory, 54 mental health, 98, 159 mental illness, 80 Mercury, 84 mergers, 41, 42, 47, 48, 49 messages, 4, 103, 124 methodology, 4 Mexico, 25, 27, 28, 36, 44, 89, 176 Microsoft, 41, 46, 50 middle class, 33, 35 Middle East, 116 military, 74, 76, 83, 101, 172 minimum wage, 67, 97 Minneapolis, 70 minorities, 6, 58, 68, 184 minority groups, 105 minority students, 166, 167 Missouri, 81 models, 24, 101, 126 moderates, 116 modernization, 11 mold, 99, 179 momentum, 76, 155 monetary policy, 25 monopoly, 42, 46, 49 monopoly power, 42, 46 Montana, 176, 177 moral imperative, 125, 130 morphology, 4, 9 mortality, 159 mortality rate, 159 motivation, 113, 174 multilateralism, 34 murder, 64, 67, 69, 147 music, 65

N National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 167 national community, 6

National Economic Council, 25, 34, 184, 186 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 178 national parks, 178 national policy, 185 national security, 8, 25, 28, 33, 35 natural resources, 176 needy, 112, 113, 122 negotiating, 36, 174 negotiation, 100, 154 Nelson Mandela, 66 Netherlands, 99 neutral, 123 New Deal, 141, 142, 154 New Democrat, v, vi, vii, 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 16, 17, 20, 41, 49, 71, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 153, 154, 155, 168, 184, 186 New England, 150 No Child Left Behind, 164, 167 nominee, 64, 116, 132 nonenforcement, 44 North America, 33, 35, 56, 185 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 27, 28, 333, 35, 36, 65, 68, 70, 85, 106, 157 nostalgia, 11 null, 86 null hypothesis, 86 nursing, 123 nursing home, 123

O Obama, 88 obstacles, 102 OECD, 143 offenders, 87 Office of Management and Budget, 172 officials, vii, 8, 9, 11, 43, 44, 46, 48, 66, 67, 125, 127, 128, 135, 172 oil, 174, 182 Oklahoma, 63, 176 OMB, 172 openness, 64, 65 operating system, 46 operations, 55, 174 opportunism, 11 opportunities, 6, 19, 35, 53, 54, 57, 68, 112, 140, 143, 168 organizational learning, 55 organize, 87 organized labor, 27, 165, 172 outreach, 184 overlap, 42 oversight, 175

196

Index

ownership, 87, 88

P Pacific, 36, 55, 184 PACs, 86 pain, 133 parallel, 121 parenting, 98 parents, 95, 98, 111, 116, 159, 166 parity, 159 participants, 76, 123, 125 pathology, 105 patient care, 148 payroll, 123, 126 penalties, 87 personal choice, 101 personal control, 113 personal life, 76, 112 personal responsibility, 8, 20, 98 personality, 11, 36 persuasion, 142 Petroleum, 56 pharmaceutical(s), 134, 147, 148, 159 Philadelphia, 64, 180 plants, 55 plastics, 83 platform, 8, 15, 19, 165 playing, 132 pleasure, 42 poison, 117 polarization, 11 police, 75, 80, 85 policy issues, 99, 124 policy makers, 154 policymakers, 121, 122 political force, 144 political instability, 27 political leaders, 183 political party(s), 42, 185 political problems, 133 political system, 4, 121, 122, 136 politics, 8, 63, 82, 89, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 113, 115, 127, 132, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 148, 149, 154, 183, 184, 185, 186 polling, 105 popular vote, 68 population, 8, 35, 97, 101, 143, 144, 150, 163 populism, 15 portfolio, 184 poverty, 25, 27, 28, 68, 73, 74, 94, 95, 96, 98, 111, 113, 165, 166, 167, 185 poverty line, 96

power plants, 55, 56 prayer, 166 precedent(s), 48, 123, 171, 178, 179 predatory pricing, 47 predictability, 48 preparedness, 57 prescription drugs, 123, 130 preservation, 176 presidency, 4, 7, 11, 15, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27, 33, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 76, 79, 86, 87, 88, 106, 116, 174, 177, 178, 183, 184 President Clinton, vii, 3, 4, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, 34, 41, 56, 57, 66, 70, 71, 73, 75, 80, 88, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99, 104, 105, 107, 116, 127, 132, 136, 139, 140, 141, 157, 158, 159, 160, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 175, 183, 184, 185 presidential campaign(s), 9, 43, 67, 175, 184 presidential candidate, vii, 20, 175 principles, 9, 102, 106, 154, 155 prisons, 57 private investment, 24 private sector, 6, 57, 58, 59, 102, 104, 150, 156, 159 privation, 96 producers, 44 productivity growth, 24 professional development, 164 profit, 28, 184 project, 15, 99, 100, 101, 164 propagation, 55, 56 prosperity, 68, 143 protected areas, 174 protection, 35, 144, 173, 174, 177, 178 protectionism, 28 public awareness, 56, 179 public concern, 82, 145 public domain, 176 public education, 123 public housing, 75 public interest, 87 public investment, 25, 26, 28 public life, 26 public officials, 134 public opinion, 9, 113, 123, 127, 131, 132, 146, 185 public policy, 24, 93, 98, 183, 184, 185 public schools, 166 public sector, 150 public service, 176 public support, 80, 82, 124, 127, 128, 130 publishing, 108 Puerto Rico, 178

197

Index

Q questioning, 121

R race, 17, 63, 64, 66, 69, 74, 75, 86, 89, 98 racial issue, 76 racism, 64, 66, 173, 180 radicalization, 80 reactions, 87, 175, 179 reading, 8, 55, 166, 167 reality, 25, 34, 128 reasoning, 43, 74 recall, 76, 143, 148 reception, 87 recession, 24, 96, 111, 145, 148 reciprocity, 112 reconciliation, 104, 145 recovery, 23, 24, 25, 28, 145 recurrence, 17 recycling, 174 redistribution, 134 redundancy, 55 reelection, 11, 65, 85, 88, 105, 117, 149, 154, 184 reformers, 102, 140, 141 regulations, 84, 165, 172 rejection, 44, 80, 81, 122, 173 relatives, 95 reliability, 55 religion, 20, 101, 166 religiosity, 20 repair, 100 reporters, 67, 127, 131, 140 Republican Party, 12, 17, 66, 146, 158 Republicans, vii, 11, 16, 44, 57, 64, 67, 68, 70, 85, 86, 87, 89, 102, 104, 105, 111, 112, 116, 117, 125, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 140, 146, 147, 155, 159, 165, 174 reputation, 44, 100, 102, 124 requirements, 113, 116, 140, 159, 165, 185 researchers, 86 resentment, 11 reserves, 176, 177, 178, 181, 182 resilience, 25 resistance, 128 resources, 42, 43, 54, 55, 86, 132, 143, 149, 164, 173 response, 10, 25, 28, 57, 59, 106, 135, 141, 171 restoration, 25, 28, 81 restrictions, 79, 84, 95, 96, 97 restructuring, 133 retirement, 124 revenue, 126, 150

rewards, 8 rhetoric, 87, 97, 113, 129, 132, 134, 140, 154 rights, 64, 67, 68, 69, 75, 80, 84, 94, 113, 173 risk(s), 24, 25, 28, 54, 57, 112, 140, 144, 173 roots, 143 rules, 85, 104, 106, 141 Russia, 28, 34

S safety, 55, 56, 57, 87, 88, 93, 96, 97, 98, 157 sanctions, 35, 94, 95, 96, 97 savings, 25, 57, 102, 129, 130, 133, 134 savings account, 129, 130 savings rate, 25 scholarship, 185 school, 5, 58, 65, 86, 87, 94, 98, 112, 116, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168 school learning, 166 science, 141, 180, 183, 184, 185 scope, 84, 121, 179 scripts, 121 Second World, 34 secondary education, 168 Secretary of Commerce, 184 Secretary of the Treasury, 27, 186 security, 5, 6, 7, 8, 33, 57, 59, 98, 106, 125, 144, 147, 149 self-assessment, 56 self-improvement, 14 self-sufficiency, 15 sellers, 154 seminars, 99 Senate, 9, 10, 24, 27, 44, 46, 50, 79, 81, 82, 85, 87, 89, 133, 145, 150, 158, 175 September 11, 11, 47 services, 57, 98, 123, 130, 154, 156, 167 sex, 164 shame, 65 shape, 86, 140, 143, 175, 185 Sherman Act, 42, 46, 49 shock, 86 shortage, 144 showing, 167 signs, 44 Sinai, 186 Singapore, 58, 59 SIP, 184 Sister Souljah, vii smoking, 159 social class, 20 social contract, 112, 115 social costs, 26

198

Index

social justice, 99 social policy, 100, 103, 105, 111, 116, 185, 186 social problems, 67 social programs, 67 Social Security, 57, 123, 124, 129, 148, 183 Social Security Administration, 57 society, 5, 6, 25, 54, 112, 113 software, 54, 56 solidarity, 146 solidification, 87 solution, 27, 69, 113, 140 Somalia, 144, 158 South Dakota, 81, 176 special education, 167 species, 174, 179 specter, 126 speech, 4, 5, 6, 7, 44, 64, 65, 67, 70, 73, 82, 99, 101, 126, 141, 146, 178 spending, 24, 58, 116, 126, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 143, 154, 155, 165, 185 spin, 149 Spring, 75, 107, 108 SSI, 95 stability, 131, 143 standard of living, 34, 35 stars, 155 state(s), 15, 24, 34, 47, 49, 58, 64, 80, 81, 82, 84, 89, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 102, 103, 105, 113, 116, 117, 126, 139, 163, 164, 165, 167, 173, 176, 177, 178, 179 state control, 164 statistics, 48, 94 statutes, 49, 173 statutory authority, 176 steel, 173 steel industry, 173 stereotypes, 6 sterile, 6 stock, 47, 48, 49 stomach, 36 stoves, 4 stress, 100 stroke, 172 structure, 4, 26, 94, 95, 155 style, 63, 64, 68, 69, 82, 83, 104, 112 subscribers, 102 Sun, 147 Supreme Court, 80, 173, 176 surplus, 28 survivors, 75 Sustainable Development, 174 Switzerland, 45 symbolism, 63, 74

sympathy, 87, 88 synthesis, 99, 100, 102 syphilis, 74

T tactics, 87 takeover, 129 talent, 56 target, 83, 88, 126 Task Force, 140 tax credits, 159 tax cuts, 130, 132, 133 tax increase, 24, 27, 85, 126 taxation, 102 taxes, 24, 27, 58, 126, 127, 129 taxpayers, 166 teachers, 58, 165, 166, 168 technology(s), vii, 24, 25, 26, 33, 34, 54, 55, 58, 59, 101, 166, 185 teens, 159 telecommunications, 49, 56, 57, 58 terrorism, 27, 59 terrorist attack, 47 test scores, 167 testing, 48, 56, 131, 159, 167 textbook, 43 Thailand, 28 theft, 80, 88 thoughts, 168 threats, 59 tides, 34 tin, 88 Title I, 165, 167 Title V, 180 tobacco, 126 tooth, 82 tracks, 163 trade, vii, 5, 24, 25, 27, 33, 34, 35, 36, 42, 49, 74, 116, 157, 174 trade agreement, 35, 36 trade liberalism, 25 trade liberalization, 24, 27 trade policy, 35 traditions, 88, 106 training, 5, 98, 104 transactions, 54, 58 transformation, 8, 64, 115 transmission, 58, 155 transportation, 95 Treasury, vii, 158 Treasury Secretary, vii treatment, 98, 125, 159

199

Index Trent Lott, 64, 65 trial, 46, 47, 55, 69, 147 triangulation, 11 trust fund, 98, 130, 133, 159 turnout, 85 Tuskegee University, 75 twist, 131

U unemployment insurance, 97 unemployment rate, 28, 36, 68 unhappiness, 103 unilateralism, 34 uninsured, 101, 102, 128, 134, 147, 158, 159 unions, 34, 124 United Kingdom (UK), 99, 106, 186 United States (USA), 5, 13, 14, 34, 35, 36, 37, 42, 45, 48, 49, 50, 53, 55, 58, 67, 69, 70, 75, 86, 94, 96, 99, 107, 108, 109, 135, 136, 139, 143, 144, 147, 150, 153, 154, 172, 174, 176, 183, 184, 185 universal access, 101 universities, 166, 168 uranium, 44 Urban Institute, 84, 96, 141 Uruguay, 35, 36 Uruguay Round, 35, 36 US Department of Health and Human Services, 95

V valve, 55 vested interests, 148, 149 veto, 81, 85, 105, 116, 177 Vice President, 54, 57, 58, 59, 115, 166, 186 victims, 112, 114 Vietnam, 74 violence, 73 vision, 5, 9, 27, 37, 57, 64, 67, 68, 69, 115, 129, 144, 158, 159 Vitamin C, 50 vote, 19, 20, 24, 44, 46, 84, 85, 86, 122, 145, 158, 175 voters, vii, 9, 20, 35, 101 voting, 9, 16, 67, 82, 85 voting record, 9, 16 vouchers, 165 vulnerability, 85

W wages, 35, 95, 143 war, 101, 131

Washington, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 33, 50, 59, 70, 74, 81, 82, 83, 84, 89, 93, 96, 107, 108, 113, 115, 116, 121, 124, 127, 131, 132, 135, 136, 137, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 157, 163, 164, 172, 176, 177, 182, 185 waste, 6, 174 wealth, 68 weapons, 67, 76, 79, 82, 83, 84, 85, 88 web, 46, 87, 186 web browser, 46 web sites, 186 welfare, vii, 5, 9, 11, 19, 25, 35, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 158, 185, 186 welfare reform(s), 5, 9, 11, 20, 25, 35, 65, 67, 68, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 158, 185, 186 welfare state, 113, 185 welfare system, 69, 100, 116 well-being, 27, 134 Western countries, 154 Western Europe, 185 wetlands, 178 White House, vii, 25, 27, 36, 44, 64, 66, 67, 73, 74, 75, 76, 80, 102, 105, 109, 115, 125, 126, 132, 137, 140, 142, 143, 159, 172, 184, 186 wildlife, 177 William Jefferson Clinton, 1, iii, vi, vii, 171, 184 Wisconsin, 81, 89, 111, 185 withdrawal, 176 work activity, 105 workers, 25, 27, 95, 101, 102, 173 workforce, 93 working class, 65 working families, 144, 158 working groups, 56 workload, 42 workplace, 97 World Bank, 56 World Trade Organization (WTO), 28, 33, 36 World War I, 15, 171 World Wide Web, 53, 56, 57, 58 worldview, 3, 113 worldwide, 54 worry, 174 writing process, 15

Y Yale University, 139, 185 young people, 67, 98, 166, 167, 168 young women, 116