GREAT MOMENTS IN THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

DAVID MORRIS, ALTERNET - Clinton himself summed up the principle guiding
his initiatives in his famous declaration, "The era of big government is
over."

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of
United States telecommunications law in nearly 62 years. The
broadcasting industry couldn't get the legislation through under Reagan
or George H.W. Bush, but it succeeded under Clinton. . . The Act removed
the legal barriers to local and long distance phone companies acquiring
each other. . .

Prior to this law, tightly regulated broadcasters could own just 40
stations nationally, and only two in a given market. Suddenly, without
the FCC's input or any public hearings, ownership limits on radio
stations was eliminated and a feeding frenzy took place. By 2001, there
were 10,000 radio station transactions worth approximately $100 billion.
As a result, 1,100 fewer station owners were in the business, down
nearly 30 percent since 1996. . .

In 1999, the Financial Services Modernization Act overturned the
Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The Act effectively barred banks, brokerages
and insurance companies from entering each others' industries, and
separated investment banking and commercial banking. The law was enacted
in response to revelations of gross corruption and manipulation of the
market by giant banking houses that organized huge corporate mergers for
their own profit, leading to the collapse of the stock market in 1929.
The Wall Street Journal celebrated the agreement to end such
restrictions with an editorial declaring that the banks had been
unfairly scapegoated for the Great Depression. The headline of one
Journal article declared, "Finally, 1929 Begins to Fade.". . .

Clintonism never saw a sector it didn't want to deregulate. Wholesale
electricity deregulation began under George H.W. Bush, but Clinton
worked relentlessly to extend it and bring it to the retail level. We
forget that Ken Lay, the founder of Enron and the driving force behind
electricity deregulation was a friend of and mentor to Clinton as well
as George W. Bush. . .

And then there was welfare reform. During his 1992 presidential
campaign, Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it." . . .  A 2002
report by the Chicago, Ill.-based Joyce Foundation found that while
hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients in the Midwest went to work
since 1996, most had "taken jobs that pay low wages, are part-time, or
don't last ... As a result, most of those who have made the transition
from welfare to work remain poor.". . .

There is no question that welfare reform has succeeded in reducing
welfare rolls in the states. But 10 years into welfare reform, "the
number of people living in poverty had not," noted Robert Wharton,
president and CEO of the Community Economic Development Administration.
"At the same time, the safety net of services and support that once
protected the poor lies in tatters.". . .

And of course there is NAFTA. . . NAFTA was enacted despite the
opposition of Clinton's own party. Two-thirds of House Republicans voted
in favor while 60 percent of House Democrats voted against. In the
Senate, Republicans voted 4-1 in favor while a slim majority of
Democrats voted against. . .

Real wages for most Mexicans are lower than when NAFTA took . . . As
NAFTA intended, Mexico became an export-dependent economy. . . The only
thing that saved Mexico from collapsing into economic and social chaos
was the massive emigration of Mexicans across their northern border.
Illegal migration has camouflaged Mexico's economic weakness. Between
1994 and 2004, Mexico's working-age population increased by a little
over 1 million per year, but the number of jobs expanded by only half as
much. The annual exodus of 500,000 to 1 million Mexicans kept
unemployment at least to manageable levels. . .

It was Hillary who concluded that it was politically impossible even to
argue for a single-payer system. Whether a single payer initiative would
have won is unclear, although the national educational effort around it
would have been of unparalleled value. But as it was, Hillary's
political miscalculation led not only to the idea of universal health
care coverage being taken off the table for the next 13 years, but the
loss of the House of Representatives and the coming to power of Newt
Gingrich and the Republican right.

http://www.alternet.org/story/72336/

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||