Help me with Clinton/Gore history please

[Killarney]

I'm debating with a friend who used to be a Republican but would consider supporting a moderate Dem. He thinks Dems are unable to be fiscally responsible and I'm bringing up all the success the Clinton/Gore administration had with this. His response:

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Clinton/Gore had nothing to do with welfare reform. That was part of the Contract With America that the Repubs ran on in '94 that helped bring them into power. Clinton signed that begrudgingly. In fact, the surpluses started a couple years after the Repubs took over Congress and were responsible for the budgets and appropriations, so you can't give the credit to Clinton/Gore.
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I'm thinking his logic isn't correct, but I'm not sure I have the facts. I thought that Clinton passed welfare reform without any Republican votes. I know Republicans had their own version of welfare reform but it was crazy and the dems passed a more moderate version of the bill. Is this correct?

[hughee99]

1. Speaking on the welfare reform bill specifically,

it was called the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996", and when Clinton signed it, the repukes gave him a hard time. They say it was almost identical to 2 previous welfare bills that Clinton had vetoed, and he was just signing this one because it was an election year. IIRC, the repukes were overwhelmingly for it, while Democrats were split.

[WinkyDink]

2. You can tell him this simple fact about his own country:

Presidents get the credit or blame for what happens during their tenure. Period.

If you want to throw in words such as "surplus" and "peace" it couldn't hurt your argument.
Sounds to me, though, like this guy wants a Republican in Democratic clothing. Tell him forget it; he's stuck with the Greedy Oligarchical Pedophile Party.

[ellacott]

3. Clinton actually campaigned on Welfare Reform

There were hopes that the legislation would have been changed before it was signed into law. This was not a popular policy among many liberals and an example of Clinton governing from the center.

http://www.welfareacademy.org/pubs/welfare/welfare-1195.shtml

[BootinUp]

4. Heres a site you can use for reference

http://liberalslikechrist.org/about/Clinton.html

Your debate opponent knows not what he talks about. Clinton campaigned on Welfare reform big time in '92.

[jpwhite]

5. raise taxes on wealthy, and cut spending

The reason we had surpluses under Clinton is simple: he cut spending and raised taxes on the most wealthiest of Americans. Sounds like a good strategy to me. Some of what happened in the 1990's is due to the tech boom, but the bottom line is the 90's were great in terms of how America was doing economically, and Bill Clinton deserves some if not most of the credit.

James
[e-mail]

[On the Road]

6. As Far as Fiscal Responsibility Goes,

just show this picture: