The Broken Promises
"[Bill Clinton] has kept the promises he meant to keep [emphasis added]."
--Clinton adviser George Stephanopolous
(CNN's Larry King Live, 2/15/96)
"Clinton's an unusually good liar. Unusually good. Do you realize that?" --Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.)(Esquire, January, 1996)
"I would present a five-year plan to balance the budget."
--Bill Clinton (CNN's Larry King Live, 6/4/92)
Clinton never submitted a five-year plan to balance the budget. Indeed, Republicans had to drag him kicking and screaming to the table to agree to a seven-year plan to balance the budget.
The first budget Clinton submitted in February of this year proposed an almost 50 percent increase in federal spending between now and 2002 and projected deficits of $200 billion to $300 billion and more, as far as the eye could see (Congressional Budget Office). It went down to defeat in the Senate on a vote of 99-0. Former Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.), co-chairman of the bipartisan anti-deficit Concord Coalition, said, "The budget which came from the president said, `I've given up; that as long as I am president of the United States, there will never be a balanced budget.' That is an astonishing statement." --Sen. Paul Tsongas, press conference, 2/7/95
In March, Clinton killed the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution by pressuring six Democrat senators who had previously voted for the amendment to switch their votes and vote against it.
Clinton submitted a new budget in June of 1995, just as Republicans were poised to pass the first balanced budget in 26 years. He claimed his new budget reached balance in 10 years, but the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said it didn't balance in 10 years, or ever. In fact, it would have produced a deficit of $209 billion in 2005 -- a deficit higher than we have today. Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska said the White House "cooked the numbers" (The Washington Times, 6/26/95), and The Washington Post editorialized on 6/20/95 that Clinton had "converted a fiscal problem into a credibility problem."
No Democrat would even introduce Clinton's so-called balanced budget for a vote, and when a Republican did, it was defeated in the Senate 96-0.
On November 20, 1995, the Republican-led Congress passed and sent to the president's desk the first balanced budget in 26 years. But on December 6, 1995, Bill Clinton -- the candidate who had promised a balanced budget -- vetoed it.
Clinton would submit a total of five different FY 96 budgets before he finally came up with one that balanced using honest numbers, according to CBO. But even it was a status-quo plan which contained the standard liberal fare of more taxes, more spending and no entitlement reform. The Washington Post (1/9/96) editorialized that the president's latest budget would "achieve all kinds of things, but a balanced budget is likely not among them."
"[I will] end the unlimited `soft' money contributions that are funneled through national, state, and local parties to presidential candidates."
--Bill Clinton (Putting People First, p. 46)
"[Clinton's] appearance at [a] Democratic National Committee dinner
was picketed by Common Cause. The group is upset that Clinton's performance
in pushing campaign reform has not matched his rhetoric and that his party
has outraised the GOP in the large `soft money' donations he promised to
end."
--The Washington Post, 6/24/94
"American politics is being held hostage by big money interests. ...[C]liques of $100,000 donors buy access to Congress and the White House. ...We believe it's long past time to clean up Washington."
--Bill Clinton (Putting People First, p. 45)
"The Democratic National Committee is offering to sell private
dinners with President Clinton ...and other forms of exclusive access to
senior officials to party donors willing to pony up $100,000 or more."
--Los Angeles Times, 7/7/95
When asked during the campaign if he would cut off Most Favored Nation
(MFN) status for China, Bill Clinton responded: "Absolutely. Most
Favored Nation status, I would. Look he let -- he let his friendship with
the leaders in China obscure our devotion to freedom and democracy when
those kids set up in Tiananmen Square, and I think it was wrong."
--Bill Clinton (NBC debate, 12/15/91)
In May 1993 Clinton "formally gave China a one-year extension of
MFN, but said it would be the last time unless China improves its human
rights record. `...I think standing up for American values, and values
in China, is the way to go.' "
--Bill Clinton (The Associated Press, 5/31/93)
In May 1994, Clinton extended MFN once again, saying "I am moving,
therefore, to delink human rights from the annual extension of Most Favored
Nation trading status for China."
--Bill Clinton (The Associated Press, 5/26/94)
Clinton also extended MFN to China in 1995.
"I'll...send a budget that will cut congressional staffs the same [25 percent]."
--Bill Clinton, speech to the National Association of Manufacturers, Washington, D.C., 6/24/92
Within days after Clinton's election as president, the Democratic congressional
leadership convinced Clinton to back away from this pledge. Clinton explained
his back tracking by saying: "...the Congress took a cut last year...
I'm going to ...continue to work with Congress. I hope we can keep the
downward trend... But they did take a cut last year..."
--Bill Clinton, news conference, Little Rock, Ark., 11/16/92
On 10/3/95 Clinton vetoed a bill passed by the Republican Congress that cut the overall congressional budget nearly 10 percent and cut committee staff budgets up to 30 percent.
"[I will] fight crime by putting 100,000 new police officers on the streets."
--Bill Clinton (Putting People First, p. 72)
Clinton claims his crime bill puts 100,000 new police offices on the streets, but the reality is quite different:
"The program would never have supplied enough to pay salary, benefits, pensions and other costs, so the cities would have had to come up with a lot of upfront money many say they don't have."
--The Washington Post, 2/14/95
"It's not 100,000 fully funded police officers. It never has been that."
--Former House Speaker Tom Foley (CNN's Evans & Novak, 8/27/94)
"[T]he `100,000 cops' provision of the 1994 crime bill is riddled with phony cost estimates. Simple math shows that the $8.8 billion would fully fund 100,000 cops but only for little more than one year. Nor is there any guarantee that the cops would actually be on the streets."
--John J. DiIulio Jr., professor of politics at Princeton and director of the Brookings Institution's Center for Public Management (The Wall Street Journal, 2/15/95)
These predictions have come true. A recent General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation found that 58 percent of law enforcement jurisdictions did not even apply for the COPS program. "Cost factors were the primary reason jurisdictions chose not to apply" (GAO report, 10/25/95).
"Our [administration's] cut is $60 billion more over five years than the Cold War budget the Bush administration still advocates."
--Bill Clinton (Putting People First, pp. 133-134)
"Although President Bush's present plans for defense reductions do reduce our conventional force structure, I believe we can go further without undermining our core capabilities."
--Bill Clinton, speech at Georgetown University, 12/12/91
Clinton didn't just cut $60 billion. He cut at least $127 billion. Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio) noted: "It has become evident that there are really two Clinton defense budgets. The Clinton campaign budget called for about $60 billion in cuts... The second Clinton defense budget is a far more radical proposal that is before us now."
--Columbus Dispatch, 4/5/93
The Clinton administration reduced defense spending to the point where
even Clinton's own Department of Defense had to admit there was a defense
budget gap. Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch testified before Congress
that the Department was short at least $40 billion in funds needed to implement
its mission, as set by Clinton in his 1993 "Bottom-Up Review"
(The Associated Press, 9/21/94). Independent studies by both the General
Accounting Office (GAO) and CBO placed the shortfall at $65 billion to
$150 billion.
--National Security Revitalization Act, 2/9/95
One month before the new Republican Congress took over vowing to reverse
Clinton's draconian cuts, Clinton reversed course and asked Congress to
"add an additional $25 billion to our planned defense budgets over
the next six years."
--Bill Clinton, speech at the Rose Garden, 12/1/94
"[I promise] the most ethical administration in the history of the Republic."
--Bill Clinton, as quoted by Mary McGrory (The Washington Post, 1/24/93)
The most ethical administration in the history of the Republic?
The fired Travel Office director, Billy Dale, was acquitted of the trumped up charges after only two hours of jury deliberation. But the two-year ordeal to clear his name cost him a half-million dollars in legal fees (House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, 1/4/96).
"During the 1980s the White House staff routinely took taxpayers for a ride to play golf or bid on rare stamps -- This betrayal of democracy must stop."
--Bill Clinton (Putting People First, p. 24)