Jim Hightower: Before We Bring Back Bill Clinton to Run the Economy, Let's Remember What He Did

[KamaAina]

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/will-hillarys-promise-put-her-husband-back-charge-economy-terrifying

2016 has been a wild political season. This year, despite the unnerving presidential freak show the Republicans are putting on, Hillary Clinton is the one who recently stunned me. Attempting to convince very wary working class families that she will stand against the abuses of her Wall Street financial backers, while also lifting up the poor and shoring up the middle class, Clinton made this horrifying, spine-tingling declaration: She'll Bring Back Bill! Specifically, Hillary promises that her former-president husband will be put "in charge of revitalizing the economy."

Good grief! Isn't Bill the big galoot who turned his economic policy over to Wall Street's Machiavellian, Robert Rubin? Yes. And didn't Bill break his 1992 campaign promise to raise the minimum wage in his first year, putting it off until his fourth year, and even then providing only a token increase that still left the working poor mired in poverty? Yes, again. And didn't he push into law a "welfare reform" bill that has shredded the safety net for America's poorest, most-vulnerable people? Afraid so.

So let's flash back only two decades ago to that defining achievement of President Bill Clinton's presidency: &quot The) end of welfare as we know it." What sounded good in theory was detrimental to millions of Americans. Bill was awfully proud of teaming up with Republican ideologues to reverse FDR's historic commitment of providing "Aid to Families With Dependent Children." While there were some problems and some abuses with this poverty-alleviation program, Clinton signed-on to the right wing's fantasy that simply gutting it would magically make welfare recipients self-sufficient through "the dignity, the power, and the ethic of work."

But his faith in the work ethic lacked any actual ethics. Where were the jobs -- much less decent-paying jobs -- that were supposed to empower poor people? Bill had no plans for that, except a feeble request that major corporations commit to hiring a number of former-welfare recipients. Surprise -- they didn't!

[Armstead]

1. Yep. I'd rather we leave the 90's back in the 90's

[Miles Archer]

2. Hightower rules.

I've read a couple of his books.

Talk is cheap...we can say all we want about "lifting up" the poor and "putting them back to work."

Then we actually have to do it, or not.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Yeah, he is brilliant!

[snot]

4. He also signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which made the 2008 crash possible,

along with the loss of 1/4 of my life's savings.