Bill Clinton Defends His Economic Legacy

[DonViejo]

By AMY CHOZICK

Former President Bill Clinton, who has grown increasingly frustrated that his economic policies are viewed as out-of-step with the current focus on income inequality, on Wednesday delivered his most muscular defense of his economic legacy.

The speech reflected a strategic effort by Mr. Clinton and his advisers to reclaim the populist ground now occupied by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and other ascendant left-leaning Democrats, and, potentially, to lay out an economic message that could propel his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to the White House in 2016.

“My commitment was to restore broad-based prosperity to the economy and to give Americans a chance,” Mr. Clinton told students at Georgetown University, his alma mater, as Mrs. Clinton looked on from the front row. For nearly two hours, the former president defended the impact of policies like welfare overhaul and the earned-income tax credit, and displayed a series of charts detailing the number of people his policies lifted out of poverty.

“You know the rest,” he said of the 1990s. “It worked out pretty well.”

-snip-

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/us/politics/bill-clinton-defends-his-economic-legacy.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1

[octoberlib]

1. Indeed. I do know the rest.

His deregulation policies led directly to the crash of 2008.

[closeupready]

13. And NAFTA led to the loss of thousands of manufacturing and union jobs.

Helping lead to a large-scale decline in the American middle class.

Also, granting permanent Most Favored Nation Trading Status to China did the same, but in reverse.

No thanks. Don't want your Republican economic policies back.

[upaloopa]

2. Alan Greenspan and the dot com bubble did

most of the work to build the economy.

[Katashi_itto]

3. They want us to vote Hillary after all...

[Recursion]

4. 1993-1999 was the only time median real wages went up

... in my lifetime.

[Whisp]

5. His welfare reform did help the rich.

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~ryahnke/filmteach/My-Archive-of-Film-Notes/bowling-columbine-VIEW.htm
CHAPTER 27:WELFARE TO WORK (from Bowling for Columbine)

40. Cut to the little boy’s mother entering the courtroom. Moore’s voice-over: In order to get food stamps and health care for her children (close-up, slow motion, of the mother), she was forced to work as part of the state of Michigan’s welfare to work program. This program was so successful at tossing poor people off welfare that its founder, Gerald Miller, was hired by the number one firm in the country that states turn to privatize their welfare systems. That firm was Lockheed Martin. (Now Moore’s story seems to have come full circle—from Lockheed in Columbine to Lockheed affecting Flint.) Lockheed had found the perfect way to diversify, the perfect way to profit from people’s fear—from an enemy much closer to home—poor black mothers—like Tamarla Owens (close-up of the mother in the courtroom. She is crying.)

41. Cut to a well-dressed man sitting behind his desk. He complains about a program that sends single-mothers 60 miles one way to work. “How does that help a community?” He scoffs at this kind of system. And he is the sheriff of Flint, Michigan! “I wish I could put two parents in every home, and make them equally responsible—but you can’t do that!” Cut to a bus that is driving through streets early in the morning. Moore’s voice-over: This is the bus she was forced to ride every morning in order to work off the welfare money the state had given her. She and many others from Flint who were poor would make the 80-mile round trip journey every day from Flint to Auburn Hills. (Cut to the beautiful suburban hones with big lawns.) She would leave early in the morning and return late at night—rarely seeing her young children. Back to the sheriff: “What’s the point in doing that? Where does the state benefit? Where does Flint benefit from that? I think that may be part of the problem! We drove the one parent out!” Back to the bus we go—and Moore interviews two of the riders. One man has been riding the bus for three years. “Half my neighborhood works out here in the mall.” He gets $3 more per hour. That’s why he spends the time in traveling to and fro on the bus. Did he know the mother? “She was a nice lady. She came to work every day. She worked two jobs. She was trying to make ends meet.”

42. Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Grill in a big mall in Oakland Hills. That’s where the mother worked (and a second job in the fudge shop). Moore’s voice-over explains who Dick Clark is—and then Moore sneaks in a low blow by slipping in a photograph of Clark with Bob Hope and Charlton Heston. One of the employees of the Grill refers to Clark’s trademark line: “Music is the soundtrack of your life.” Moore notes in voice-over that Clark applied for special tax breaks by hiring welfare-to-work clientele. Moore’s voice-over: Even though the mother worked up to 70 hours a week at these two jobs, she did not earn enough to pay her rent, and one week before the shooting was told by her landlord that he was evicting her. She asked her brother if he could take her in for a few weeks. It was there her son found a small .32 caliber gun and took it to school. His mother did not see him take the gun because she was on a bus to go serve drinks and make fudge for rich people.

43. Shot of the palm trees and wide avenues of Los Angeles. Moore’s voice-over: I decided to fly out to California to ask Dick Clark what he thought about a system that forces single mothers to work two low-wage jobs to survive. Cut to an awkward shot, the camera behind Moore, as he leans on the van where Dick Clark is safely huddled inside. Moore tries to explain the context of his documentary, and he mentions the six-year-old that shot a six-year-old. “Get in the car, Dave!” Clark yells at his associate, standing off camera to the left. “We’re really late.” Moore keeps talking. “But the mother of the kid works at Dick Clark’s Grill—” and Clark cuts him off. “Forget it. Close the door!” “These people are forced to work—Dick—I want you to help me convince the Governor of Michigan— ” But Clark yells, “Come on! We’re going!” and the woman next to him in the backseat slides the van door closed. Moore continues, “—that the welfare-to-work—these women are forced to work.” The van drives off. “They’ve got kids at home. Dick! Ah, Jeez!” as he turns around.

===
so the very rich Dick Clark got subsidized by the taxpayers and got richer while poor single mothers were forced into an impossible situation.

Great welfare program there Bill! Always thinking of the little people.

[DJ13]

6. ^^^ +1 ^^^

[deutsey]

12. Passing NAFTA and repealing Glass-Steagall really helped us all out as well n/t

[Gman]

7. The absolutely best economic times of my working life

Best president ever. No doubt, no serious challenge to that. But, blah, blah, blah..., you say. Doesn't matter. People were working. Lowest unemployment in 15 years. And people made good money. Blaming his policies on the crash 8 years later blindly assumes that a President Gore would have also ignored all the warning signs and started 2 wars, etc. and let's not forget Ralph Nader is to blame for screwing up pretty much everything since 00.

[otherone]

11. Blame Nader

thats rich

[Gman]

21. Had Nader not run and Gore won

You're arguing Gore would have started two unpaid for wars and all the other things? Doesn't work like that.

[Whisp]

19. If you give credit to Clinton for the good times

are you also blaming Obama for the bad times of now? I don't think it works that simply.

There are other factors involved besides just the Charm of Billie and the Evil of Barack.

Oh, and I do believe it was during Clinton's time that that killer shark called derivatives came into being. Same that Chelsea was handling on her wall street job(s). Maybe all that law making and sausaging went down behind the scenes while everyone was focused on that huge idiotic Clinton distraction that lasted for, what a whole freaking year?

[Gman]

20. Those two are completely unrelated

And are a very poor comparison for all the very obvious reasons.

[bunnies]

8. says the man who deregulated the financial industry...

that continually fucks over the middle class.

[aquart]

9. No, Bill. You were deadly wrong.

[fredamae]

10. Yes, It was good for Me too

But only at the Expense of Hundreds of Thousands of Others who LOST Jobs/Retirement etc.

It was Not good--just because a few did well at the expense of others losses.

[magical thyme]

14. it was very good for me. but I'll never forget the day I read he'd repealed Glass-Steagall

My first thought was "we're going to have a depression."

I gave us 10 years.

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. Clinton's economic legacy? He's the Democrats' Calvin Coolidge.

The 1990's, like the 1920's, were a period of economic expansion driven by the maturation of emerging industries that created an economic bubble; in the '20's it was cars and refrigeration and radio and film and aviation, in the 90's in was tech. Both bubbles burst eventually because the market couldn't support the all the companies that wanted a piece of the pie. And the economic expansion would have happened no matter who was president--and the bad policy decisions that contributed to the eventual near-collapse of the financial system in 2008 would have happened, too, considering that the Ayn Rand acolyte Greenspan was a Bush I appointee. You want to talk about the economic legacy of the Clinton era? Go to any one of a hundred small towns in North Carolina or Georgia or Virginia or Tennessee or Alabama where the textile industry supported the local economy. All those mills closed and the jobs moved to Mexico or China or India , all of it a consequence of neoliberal trade policy. (There were nine hundred thousand jobs in the textile and apparel industries lost in the USA between 1994 and 2005, per this from the USDA's Economic Research Service. That's just one manufacturing sector affected by NAFTA and liberalisation of trade with China.)

And welfare reform is nothing to be proud of, either.

[Laelth]

22. Great post. Thanks. n/t

-Laelth

[Laelth]

16. Bull hockey.

Just because Bill Clinton was the best Republican President since Eisenhower doesn't change the fact that from 1995-2000 he advanced Republican policy.

-Laelth

[GeorgeGist]

17. Hey Bill ...

go fuck yourself.

[hatrack]

18. The 90s have been over for longer than they lasted, Bill

Do us a favor and stop dining on their bleached bones, since the meat once there is long since gone.

The world has changed, and substantially for the worse, and much of it can be laid at your door.

We. Don't. Live. There. Anymore.

[Robbins]

23. Clinton

You should have seen hardball tonight mentioning the clintons are more tight and liked by wall street than Obama. Hillary would be
right to Obama on wall street and corporations.

Here are 3 problems with clinton record

1:NAFTA pushed dems into free trade.
2:Wellfare reform sold out single and poor mothers
3 eregulation lead to 2008 crash

[madville]

24. So where does the Republican Congress he was working with

Fit into all that? Are they just as responsible for the negative stuff and able to claim credit for the positive?

[krawhitham]

25. It is all about timing, he got lucky with the Dot-com bubble

[Whisp]

27. True, I give credit to the Intel guys/Siliconvalley/invention for that boom.

What Bill did was make the filthy rich even richer and the poor more miserable by his Welfare reform fiasco.

[yallerdawg]

26. Clinton's Secretary of Labor...

Robert Reich wrote a great book about working in the Clinton White House called "Locked in the Cabinet," at least as long as he could stand it.

A very short summary would be Clinton chose Wall Street over the people.