Bill Clinton flashed irritation at MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and other liberals Monday for failing to appreciate the successes of his presidency.
“One of the leading television commentators on one of our liberal cable channels said I was the best Republican president the country ever produced, which would come [as] quite a surprise to the Republicans, half of whom still think I’m a closet communist,” Clinton said during an appearance with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Clinton didn’t mention Maddow by name, but she made that comment on her March 31 show.
“What she meant by that was I didn’t necessarily follow their ‘conventional wisdom,’” he said. “I said, ‘What do you mean?!’”
Clinton said he accomplished more for the poor and middle class than traditional, New Deal-era liberalism ever could have. He touted his welfare-to-work program, which he said cut the rolls by 60 percent.
“We had 100 times as many people move out of poverty during those eight years [I was president] than the previous 12 years because we had an earned income tax credit, not because we had another traditional anti-poverty program hiring people,” he said.
Big Dog has a point. The man did balance the Federal budget and he did so in a fair manner. It doesn't mean however he didn't pull a few Republican-style things, especially the end of Glass-Steagall. That was all Clinton and Phil Gramm, and that on Clinton's way out created the bubbles that wrecked our economy over the last ten years, from dot-com madness to the housing bubble to the current meltdown. All of that came from banks being able to play Big Casino games starting in 2000.
The results from all that (plus Bush's additional spending, plus the spending Obama has started to try to pull us out of the mess) is a massive deficit hole and a national debt approaching $14 trillion now.
None of that would have been possible without Clinton's last year in office.
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