Progressives (Liberals)

I'll say. Heck, one time, I simply wrote...
Quote:
Ommmmmmmmm

and the critics pounced.

nul

Sen. Warren has been shoring up her credibility with the public and making the right kind of enemies in Washington, D.C. She has championed economic issues such as student loan debt and increased banking regulations as part of her mission to bring those who caused the Great Recession to justice. Her failed fight to stop student interest rates from rising brought her press and public attention, even if she was unable to garner political support in getting it passed. Her persistence in protecting the financial rights of the middle class has provided her with an invaluable reserve of legitimacy in the public at a time when the economy is reeling from the mistakes of Wall Street insiders and politicians who are loyal to them, such as Larry Summers.

Summers' nomination for chairman of the Fed was undone by Sen. Warren and her allies in the Senate because of Summers' well-documented chauvinism and support for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act as treasury secretary under President Clinton. (In fairness, current Fed chairman front-runner Janet Yellen also supported the repeal.) However, Sen. Warren played a perfectly shrewd political hand in Summers' removal from the running as well. When President Obama tasked Elizabeth Warren to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau it was assumed she would be appointed to run it as well. Enter Larry Summers. As an economic adviser to President Obama, Summers campaigned against her nomination on behalf of major players in the finance industry who were afraid of her power. Now, Sen. Warren just secured her payback by forcing Summers out of the running for Fed chairman. Liberals are feeling very empowered by Summers' defeat and are crediting it to Warren's politicking.
Democrats have not had a leader who is both charismatic and morally authoritative in quite some time, but Sen. Warren is about to change that. She has not even completed a full year in her tenure as senator but has already emerged with a clear legislative and political agenda that she is forthright about and sticking to. Since President Obama's first inauguration, D.C. politics have been hijacked by the loud and unruly Tea Partiers who have done everything to derail any legislative agenda put forth by the White House. Sen. Warren emerges from this mess as a Democrat who is unwilling to be overwhelmed by power or threatened by politics as usual.

FULL QUESTION

I was wondering if FactCheck can provide me with answers to the question, “To what extent were Bill Clinton’s policies responsible for economic growth in the 1990s?”

FULL ANSWER

What we can say with certainty is that Clinton served as president during the last eight years of a decade-long economic expansion that stands as the longest boom in U.S. history. Clinton saw a gain of nearly 21 million jobs during his tenure (January 1993 – January 2001).Certainly Clinton deserves some credit for that remarkable economic growth, but just as certainly he can’t claim all the credit. How much he deserves is a matter of opinion that will probably be debated for years to come. By the time he left office, the economy was slowing rapidly, and it slipped into recession in March 2001, just weeks after George W. Bush was sworn in.

linton’s major contribution was pushing through the 1993 budget bill, which began to reduce what had become a chronic string of federal deficits. Republicans denounced it as the “largest tax increase in history,” though in fact it was not a record and also contained some cuts in projected spending. Republican Rep. Newt Gingrich predicted: “The tax increase will kill jobs and lead to a recession, and the recession will force people off of work and onto unemployment and will actually increase the deficit.” But just the opposite happened. Fears of inflation waned and interest rates fell, making money cheaper to borrow for homes, cars and investment. What had been a slow economic recovery turned into a roaring boom, bringing in so much unanticipated tax revenue from rising incomes and stock-market gains that the government actually was running record surpluses by the time Clinton left office.
Clinton can also be given credit for reappointing Alan Greenspan as head of the Federal Reserve, where the economist was widely credited with a masterly performance in handling interest rates. This was an unusual move for a Democratic president, as Greenspan is a libertarian Republican who had been a close economic adviser to Republican Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. Greenspan and Clinton worked closely, and in 2007 Greenspan praised Clinton’s handling of the federal deficit and his support for liberalized trade, calling him “the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.”

But many other factors, having little or nothing to do with government, also were at work during the Clinton years. Personal computers and the Internet came of age, bringing a revolution in the efficiency of processing information and making workers more productive. Manufacturing companies embraced more efficient production methods. A massive reduction in military spending, begun during the George H.W. Bush administration following the collapse of the former Soviet Union, allowed capital to be deployed to more economically productive ends. No major war disrupted the world’s rapidly growing trade.

Good luck also played a role. Oil prices declined during much of Clinton’s presidency, partly because of squabbling and cheating among the OPEC oil-producing nations. As late as 1999 crude oil was selling for less than $10 per barrel and gasoline hit a low of 95 cents per gallon at the pump, a price that included the 4.3-cent-per-gallon tax increase that Clinton had supported and Republicans had denounced.

Ross Perot cost George Bush the election in 1992 and stuck us with Slick Willy.

I don't trust her at all.

Anyone in Congress who supports the BDS is anti-Semitic.

Say what you will in response (plenty from the left and right); however, facts are during the Bill Clinton years we had a long span of economic growth and paid down the debt.

I refuse to be held to what I expected that long ago. I have gone beyond what was available then.