Domestic Bill Clinton Failures

During President Clinton’s presidency he had many successes and failures domestically and foreign like the success of Clinton’s welfare-reform bill and his North American Free Trade Agreement or the failure of his health care plan and the refusal to sign an agreement to end a hazardous problem of landmines. However, President Clinton was impeached and not convicted because many people did not believe it was true and it was only a target of Republican zealots. In the year 2050, I think that historians will rank President Clinton a mediocre president because he had many failures during his presidency and the impeachment scandal under his belt as well. Clinton was pretty successful in his domestic policy, but he did have some failures that caused

a lot of conflict. Along with domestic policy, Clinton also had many successes in foreign policy as well with a few failures. In the end of Clinton’s presidency, he wasn’t impeached because no one really cared about it and tolerated his personal flaws.

In the domestic policy angle, Clinton had many successes and failures. A success that he had was the Clinton welfare-reform bill which put a two year limit on payments from the federal welfare program also known as Aid to families with Dependent Children (AFDC). This allowed able-bodied recipients to have to find work, and it included job training and child-care provisions. Forcing absent fathers to support their offspring, the procedures to bar unmarried welfare mothers who had more babies from automatically receiving increased payments. However the AFDC can also be looked at a failure as well because with 14.2 million women and children on its rolls it costed about $125 billion in 1994 with the direct payments, food stamps, and Medicaid benefits. Critics also contended that the welfare system encouraged irresponsible social behavior and trapped recipients in a multi-genera rate of out-of-wedlock births to AFDC policies that paid mothers higher benefits for each child. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 was also another success of President Clinton’s. This reversed 60 years of welfare policy and it replaced the AFDC with block grants to states to develop their own programs within funding limits and

guidelines restricting recipients to two years of continuous coverage with a five year lifetime total. From 1996 to 2005, the number of families on welfare fell by 57%, and the birthrate among unmarried women leveled off. The tobacco regulation, a major public health issue, debate made its way to Washington when the tobacco industry agreed to pay some $368 billion in settlement. The Clinton administration backed a bill imposing tougher penalties, higher cigarette taxes, and stronger antismoking measures which was a major success. However on the other hand, President Clinton also had a major failure during his campaign with healthcare. The Clinton administration created a plan for universal health insurance with cost containment provisions including healthcare purchasing cooperatives, caps on insurance premiums, and limits on Medicare/Medicaid payments to physicians. Except in 1994 the plan was dead because Clinton had misread public complaints about the existing system as support for radical change.
In the foreign policy angle, once again Clinton had many successes and failures. One of Clinton’s successes in foreign policy was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This pact admitted Mexico to the US- Canadian free-trade zone created earlier. Most economists predicted a net job gain as Mexican markets opened to US products. The globalization that was going on during the time was also a major success of Clinton's. International trade and finance increasingly shaped America’s foreign-policy interests. However, globalization can also take a negative stance as well because it caused a widening chasm that divided the prosperous, comparatively stable industrialized world from societies marked by poverty, disease, illiteracy, and explosive population growth. American supported was still strong during the global problems and America’s continued role in a troubled world was acknowledged. Even Though, some US citizens simply gave up with the troubles and in a 1997 poll only 20% of Americans said they followed foreign news. Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America largely ignored foreign policy, and key Republican legislators pushed isolationist views. Jesse Helms, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, denounced the United Nations, criticized environmental treaties, and belittled UN peacekeeping efforts and America’s foreign-aid program. Bending to the pressures of the Congressional Republicans refusing to pay $1 billion in past UN dues, Clinton in 1998 declined to sign a multinational treaty banning land mines, even though these mines remain deadly for years that often killed or maimed children.
During Clinton’s presidency he was impeached for perjury, influencing others to commit perjury, ad obstructing justice by coaching his secretary on his version of events.

He had committed this perjury in his Paula Jones testimony and he persuaded Monica Lewinsky to lie under oath about their sexual affairs. Lewinsky admitted the affair after a promise of immunity to a grand jury. The Judiciary COmmittee forwarded four articles of impeachment to the House of Representatives. However, Clinton wasn’t convicted because the public felt that the president’s actions didn’t meet the Constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” standard removal from office. Voters appeared willing to tolerate his personal flaws and they saw him as a target of Republican

zealots.
In the end, Clinton had many successes in foreign and domestic policy. Clinton was very successful in his welfare programs, but failed at his creation of a universal health care program. Clinton was also successful with his NAFTA agreement, but failed to realize the big deal with the global problems like the lack of signing a treaty to ban dangerous landmines. During his impeachment, he failed to be convicted because of the lack of caring by the public due to Clinton’s popular rates. However, at the end of Clinton’s term he rates dropped significantly.