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The Chronicle welcomes you online! Please feel free to respond to these editorials or letters to the editor by sending your
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We condense letters; most, as published, won't exceed 300 words. A letter must include the writer's name and city, which will be published, and an address and telephone number for verification, which will not be published. Writers may be limited to one letter every 30 days. Open letters, letters to third parties and poetry are not considered. Letters from people living outside the Chronicle's circulation area usually are not considered.
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Web posted August 21, 2000
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IN PRESIDENT Bill Clinton's address to the Democratic Convention, he didn't talk about the initiatives he proposed - allowing homosexuals in the military and nationalizing our health care system - when he had a Democrat-controlled Congress.
Instead, he tried to pass off the accomplishments of the past six years, when Republicans controlled Congress, as his own. On issue after issue - balancing the budget, cutting taxes, saving Social Security and reforming welfare - he tried to take all the credit.
Balancing the budget - In Clinton's first two years in office, balancing the federal budget wasn't even discussed. The credit for balancing the budget goes to the Republicans in Congress who made the tough decisions and brought fiscal discipline to Washington. When we took control in 1995, we passed a budget that put Congress on a seven year glide path to a balanced budget - a proposal which President Clinton viciously attacked.
However, we have stayed the course and the hard work is paying off. For the past two years the federal government has run a surplus - an event that hasn't happened in decades.
Saving Social Security - For years, the Social Security Trust Fund was raided, with politicians using the Trust Fund as a slush fund. Last year, Republicans drew a line in the sand and stopped the raid on Social Security.
We passed lockbox legislation that takes Social Security funds and locks them away. Today, the Social Security Trust Fund is safe from backdoor raids.
Providing tax relief and tax fairness - Campaigning in 1992 on the promise of a middle class tax cut, Clinton turned around in 1993 and pushed through the largest tax increase in U.S. history.
When Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, we did the exact opposite. We passed the first tax relief in sixteen years into law. But we didn't stop there.
Last year we passed $792 billion over 10 years in additional tax relief for families. Our legislation reduced tax rates across the board, reduced the death tax, and took aim at the unfair marriage penalty. Democrats in Congress and Clinton fought us every inch of the way. President Clinton eventually vetoed our proposal.
This year we again passed legislation to eliminate the marriage penalty - a quirk in the tax code which punishes some married couples and causes them to pay more in taxes than they would if they were single. This was welcome relief for the 20 million married couples, about 435,000 in South Carolina, who pay an average of $1,400 in additional taxes each year. The only problem - Bill Clinton vetoed marriage penalty tax relief.
Welfare reform - During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton promised to ``end welfare as we know it.'' You sure wouldn't have known it by looking at his first two years in office when he didn't address the issue.
It wasn't until Republicans took control that the issue moved to the forefront.
In December 1995, Clinton vetoed the welfare reform bill included in a balanced budget package. On Jan. 9, 1996, Clinton got a second chance to sign welfare reform legislation into law. Instead, he again vetoed the legislation.
Finally, on Aug. 22, 1996, unable to veto welfare reform legislation a third time just months before re-election, Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 into law.
Republicans overwhelmingly supported the final welfare reform bill. Only 50 percent of Democrats in the House and Senate did the same. According to Dick Morris, Clinton's personal campaign adviser, he only signed the welfare reform bill to win the 1996 election.
``I told him flatly that a welfare veto would cost him the election. Mark Penn had designed a polling model that indicated that a welfare veto by itself would transform a 15-point win into a three-point loss. Of all the developments that could realistically happen to affect the race, a welfare veto and Powell as Dole's VP ranked the worst in their impact on the president's fortunes.
``But Clinton did win overwhelmingly, as he might not have done if he had vetoed the welfare bill.''
Without Clinton's tumultuous first two years in office, there would have been no Republican-controlled Congress. Without a Republican-controlled Congress, we would not have balanced the budget, lowered taxes, reformed welfare, and saved 100 percent of the Social Security payroll tax for Social Security.
IT SHOULDN'T surprise anyone that Clinton would try to take credit for the achievements of others. Too bad - for his sake - that the facts and his record keep getting in the way.
