Reply #56: accomplishments [View All]

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Longest Economic Expansion in U.S. History.

Moving From Record Deficits to Record Surplus.

Paying Off the National Debt

More Than 22 Million New Jobs

Fastest and Longest Real Wage Growth in Over Three Decades.

Household Income Breaks $40,000 for First Time in History.

Unemployment was the Lowest in Over Three Decades

Highest Homeownership Rate in History

Lowest Poverty Rate Since 1979

Largest One-Year Drop in Child Poverty in More than Three Decades

Improved Access to Affordable, Quality Child Care and Early Childhood Programs

Increased the Minimum Wage

Supported Community Service. In just five years, AmeriCorps has allowed 150,000 young people to serve in their communities while earning money for college or skills training

President Clinton proposed and enacted the HOPE Scholarships and Lifetime Learning tax credits, which in 1999 were claimed by an estimated 10 million American families struggling to pay for college

Expanded Work Study and Pell Grants

The Clinton-Gore Administration cut student fees and interest rates on all loans, expanded repayment options including income contingent repayment, and improved service through the Direct Loan Program. Students have saved $8.7 billion since 1993 through the reduction in loan fees and interest rates.

More High-Quality Teachers with Smaller Class Sizes. The Clinton-Gore Administration won a second installment of $1.3 billion for the President’s plan to hire an additional 100,000 well-prepared teachers to reduce class size in the early grades, when children learn to read and master the basic skills

Expanded Access to Technology. With the Vice President's leadership, the Clinton-Gore Administration made increasing access to technology a top priority. The President and Vice President created the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund to help connect every school to the Internet, increase the number of multimedia computers in the classroom and provide technology training for teachers.

Provided Early Education to Nearly 900,000 Children with Head Start. The President and Vice President expanded Head Start funding by 90 percent

Lowest Crime Rates in a Generation

Putting 100,000 More Police on the Streets. In 1999, ahead of schedule and under budget, the Clinton-Gore Administration met its commitment to fund an additional 100,000 police officers for our communities. As a part of the COPS Program, the President announced a distressed neighborhood grant program to increase community policing in high-crime and underserved neighborhoods.

More Than Half a Million Felons, Fugitives and Domestic Abusers Denied Guns. Since taking effect in 1994, the Brady Law has helped to prevent a total of more than 536,000 felons, fugitives, domestic abusers, and other prohibited purchasers from buying guns. In November 1998, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) took effect under the Brady Law, allowing access to a fuller set of records that law enforcement officials can use to conduct checks of all prospective gun purchases -- not just for handguns. As of March 2000, NICS has conducted over 10 million background checks on gun purchasers, and stopped an estimated 179,000 illegal gun sales.

Fighting Hate Crimes. The President enacted the Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act in 1994. He held the historic White House Conference on Hate Crimes, where he called for passage of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act -- bipartisan legislation which would strengthen hate crimes laws and make it clear that America will not tolerate acts of violence based on race, color, gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation or disability.

Teen Births Down to the Lowest Rate on Record. The teen birth rate has fallen eight years in a row, dropping 20 percent from 1991 to 1999 to the lowest rate in the 60 years data on teen births have been recorded. The teen pregnancy rate is also at the lowest rate on record. To build on this progress, the President's budget includes funding for "second chance homes" for teen parents.

Expanded Investment in Urban and Rural Areas. The Clinton-Gore Administration created 31 Empowerment Zones and more than 100 Enterprise Communities, including 50 rural ECs, which have created new jobs, new opportunities and stronger communities.

Encouraged Investment in Underserved Communities with the New Markets Initiative. President Clinton’s New Markets Initiative will help bring economic development and renewal to communities that have not benefited from the soaring economy by spurring more than $22 billion in new investment in urban and rural areas.

Enacted Single Largest Investment in Health Care for Children since 1965. The five year, $24 billion State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) will provide health care coverage for up to five million children. Two million children have already been enrolled, and in October 1999 President Clinton announced new outreach initiatives to enroll millions more uninsured, eligible children.

Raised Child Immunization Rates to All Time High. Childhood immunization coverage rates in 1998 were the highest ever recorded. 90 percent of toddlers in 1996, 1997 and 1998 received the most critical doses of each of the routinely recommended vaccines, surpassing the President’s 1993 goal.

Preserving Our National Treasures. The Clinton-Gore Administration has protected tens of millions of acres, from the red rock canyons of Utah to the Florida Everglades. The Administration reached agreements to protect Yellowstone from mining and save the ancient redwoods of California’s Headwaters Forest. In the FY 2000 budget, the President and Vice President won $651 million (a 42 percent increase) for Lands Legacy, a historic initiative to strengthen federal efforts to preserve national treasures and provides communities with new resources to protect local green spaces. This year, the President's budget includes a record $1.4 billion for Lands Legacy -- a 93 percent increase and the largest one-year investment ever requested for conserving America’s lands.

Created Nine New National Monuments. The Clinton-Gore Administration has created nine new national monuments: Grand Staircase-Escalante, protecting spectacular red rock canyonlands in Utah; Grand Canyon-Parashant, protecting deep canyons, mountains and buttes on the north rim of the Grand Canyon; Agua Fria, protecting extensive prehistoric ruins in Arizona; the California Coastal monument, protecting thousands of islands, rocks and reefs along the California coast; Giant Sequoia National Monument in California's Sierra Nevada, protecting 34 groves of ancient sequoias, the largest trees on earth; Canyons of the Ancients National Monument protecting America’s highest density of archeological sites in southwest Colorado; Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument protecting unmatched biological diversity in the Cascade Range in southern Oregon; Hanford Reach National Monument protecting critical habitat for salmon spawning along one of the last free-flowing stretches of the Columbia River in south central Washington; Ironwood Forest National Monument protecting rich stands of ironwood trees – known to live more than 800 years -- in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The Administration also expanded Pinnacles National Monument in California to better protect the area's unusual rock formations, and designated Anderson Cottage, which served as Abraham Lincoln’s summer home while he was president, a national monument.

Preserving Our National Forests. The President directed the National Forest Service to develop and propose regulations to provide long-term protection for 40 million acres of roadless areas within national forests and ensure that future generations will be able to enjoy the pristine wilderness. The proposed regulations would ban road building in these areas and could also prohibit logging or other activities that harm their unique ecological value.

Accelerating Toxic Cleanups and Brownfields Redevelopment. The Clinton-Gore Administration has completed clean up at more than 530 Superfund sites, more than three times as many as completed in the previous twelve years. Clean up of more than 91 percent of all sites is either completed or in progress. The Administration's brownfields redevelopment initiative has leveraged over $2.3 billion in private sector investment and generated 6,400 jobs.

Keeping Our Drinking Water Safe. The President proposed and signed legislation to strengthen the Safe Drinking Water Act to ensure that our families have healthy, clean tap water. The Clinton-Gore Administration has required America’s 55,000 water utilities to provide regular reports to their customers on the quality of their drinking water. The Administration significantly tightened the arsenic standard, providing additional protection to at least 22.5 million Americans from cancer and other health problems. The Administration has adopted or proposed new standards to provide the first-ever protection against waterborne illness like Cryptosporidium, potentially preventing more than half a million illnesses each year. The Administration also proposed new rule to reduce dirty runoff and strengthen protections for 20,000 rivers, lakes and other waterways too polluted for swimming and fishing. Ninety-one percent of America’s tap water from community drinking water systems now meets all federal standards.

Clearing the Air of Unhealthy Pollution. The President and Vice President have adopted the toughest standards ever on soot and smog. They proposed significant reductions in tailpipe emissions from cars, light trucks and SUVs, and launched long-term effort to restore pristine skies over our national parks and wilderness areas. Since 1993, the number of Americans living in communities that meet federal air quality standards has grown by 43 million.

Reducing the Threat of Global Warming. The Clinton-Gore Administration negotiated an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an environmentally strong and economically sound way. The President and Vice President secured $1.1 billion in FY 2000 for research and development of energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, and set a goal of tripling U.S. use of bio-energy and bio-products by 2010. The President issued several Executive Orders. The first order directs agencies to dramatically improve energy efficiency in federal buildings, saving taxpayers over $750 million a year when fully implemented. The second order improves fuel efficiency by requiring the Federal government to reduce fuel use in its vehicle fleets by 20 percent in five years. The third order offers federal workers incentives to use public transportation, cutting fuel use and the pollution that contributes to climate change.

Protecting Oceans and Coasts. The Clinton-Gore Administration has extended the moratorium on new oil leasing off most of the U.S. coast through 2012, and permanently barred new leasing in national marine sanctuaries. They directed the development of key recommendations for strengthening federal oceans policy for the 21st century and appointed a high-level task force to oversee the implementation of those recommendations and launched a new era of ocean exploration where federal researchers will collaborate with marine research institutions and universities for ocean exploration. The President and Vice President secured a funding increase of over 100 percent to better support national marine sanctuaries, and have led the world in calling for a global ban on ocean dumping of low-level radioactive waste.

Helped broker the Good Friday Peace Accord in Northern Ireland, ending decades of bloodshed and empowering the people of Northern Ireland to determine their future.

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http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/Accomplishments/additional.html