BroDeal said:
Yeah, sure they are not...unless it is being doled out by the Department of Defense at $530B a year, dwarfing any other form of corporate welfare. The "modern" conservatives had their chance to stand against Bush. They did no just stand by, they backed him to the hilt as he bankrupted the country. They said nothing. They did nothing. The only time they came out in protest was at the end of his term, and that was so they could put pictures of monkeys on their signs and march against the scary black man with the foreign name.
I am sure you and Scott are different. I am sure both of you supported
Clinton since he is the only president in modern times to have balanced the budget.
Hmmm... Well there was a budget surplus produced during the Clinton Admin. It's a good thing conservatives blocked Hillarycare or the memory-short left would have nothing to hang their hat on.
"The Administration currently projects its plan to cost $331 billion from 1994 through 2000, including new spending for tax subsidies to businesses and low-income families, a new Medicare drug benefit, new long-term care services, and new public health initiatives. The White House also claims that it will achieve "savings" through new cost controls and greater efficiency. Increased "sin" taxes, in the form of a new levy of 75 cents on a pack of cigarettes, also are to be imposed. And the Administration still assumes it can cut both the rate of growth of Medicare spending by S124 billion and the growth of Medicaid spending by S65 billion over the next few years (including Medicare cuts already legislated in this year's budget package) without reducing the quality or availability of medical services to the poor and the elderly.
Among others, David Shulman, an economist with Solomon Brothers, Inc. of New York, does not expect the Clinton reform proposal to achieve its fiscal constraints: "Make no mistake about it. President Clinton is proposing an entitlement program, and if its substance survives, it will inevitably expand in budget and regulatory control. Of course, if the Administration miscalculates on the cost of its huge reform program, or fails to cut "waste," or its latest financing efforts fail to achieve the promised savings in the system, its only resort is to cut care. The alternative is a huge tax increase."
Now, I'm going to go ahead with this and not post the source because that's the way you roll. The Internet is a big place, but I'm not totally heartless. Just key-word search 'Hillarycare' on Google.
The old saying "there's no such thing as a new idea" was never truer.
Then, of course for the memory-deficient left the was welafare reform (that heartless Pres. Clinton, SOB),
Welfare reform has been a huge success. Starting with state government innovations and culminating with a Republican-led federal effort to give states more flexibility, America has taken the first step toward ending the cycle of dependency and providing true assistance to struggling Americans.
In January 1995, when the Republican Congress arrived, there were almost 14 million welfare recipients. By March 1999, that number had shrunk to 7.3 million.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia have met all the work participation rates for welfare recipients set by the 1996 welfare reform law.
According to the Clinton administration, four times as many welfare recipients are working now than in 1992.
According to a study by the Urban Institute, "The majority of women who left welfare between 1995 and 1997 are working. Their rates of employment are higher than other low-income mothers," and they hold similar jobs with similar or higher wages.
President Clinton is eager to be portrayed as the father of this success. Though he eventually did sign welfare reform, Bill Clinton is a man who does what's right only after exhausting every alternative. Considering his years of vetoes, flip-flopping, and obstructionism, for Bill Clinton to take credit for welfare reform is shameless -- even for him. Here's a refresher.
Clinton vowed to "end welfare as we know it," then waited a year and a half before he proposed legislation that would have increased welfare spending $14 billion over five years (source: CBO).
In a 1995 phone conversation with Clinton, columnist Ben Wattenberg called the president's welfare reform bill "soft and weak." Wattenberg wrote, "He [Clinton] agreed, saying, 'I wasn't pleased with it either.'" (The Times Union, 11/3/95)
President Clinton then vetoed welfare reform twice -- first on December 6, 1995, and again in the dark of night on January 9, 1996 -- before finally signing on July 31, 1996, under the spotlight of a re-election campaign. "'If it were 14 weeks after the election, he'd say no,' Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York said of Clinton." (U.S. News & World Report, 8/12/96). Clinton also promised to undo many of the reforms.
"At a meeting of the nation's governors, President Clinton promised to approve welfare waivers in 90 days or less, whether he agreed with the changes or not. In California, we sought a federal waiver for one reform we wanted to make to reduce welfare grants and make work more attractive than welfare. That was over a year ago, and the Clinton Administration continues to delay it at a cost to taxpayers of $3 million a week." (California Governor Pete Wilson, 9/6/95)
After his second welfare reform veto, Clinton praised Wisconsin's welfare reform plan and promised a federal waiver. Here's what that plan's architect, Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, had to say about Clinton: "Four years after promising to end welfare, the president is bragging about a piecemeal, Washington-knows-best waiver process. We can't end the 50-year social disaster called welfare by handing out one waiver at a time." (5/18/96)
South Carolina Governor David Beasley: "We said if you get caught [using drugs] while on welfare, you get put in treatment. If you get caught a second time, we're cutting you off. The Clinton Administration said no to that proposal."
Despite Clinton's many promises, welfare reform did not happen until Republicans took over the Congress. The last person who should be taking credit for welfare reform is Bill Clinton.
I'm not sourcing this one either. I leave it to you to guess at how many billions of dollars were saved by getting folks who should be working to actully provide for themselves. Yes, yes I know, it's just so heartless and bigoted on my part to actually ask people to work instead of suckle at the public teat.
But for conservatives during the Clinton admin you could brag about NOTHING. The truth sucks sometimes.