Rising Hope, Raging Discontent, 1992-2020
The leader with the more amenable cadences and hopeful vision was William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton, who defeated George H. W. Bush in 1992 and won reelection (against Republican nominee Robert Dole) in 1996. Clinton caught the economy rising on a tide of technological innovation and did much to abet a favorable trend. He negotiated a responsible budget deal with Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich in 1994 and actually produced a balanced budget in 1996. Clinton firmly supported the key entitlement programs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicare, which got consistent COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) boosts; and he prevailed upon Congress to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for the working poor. But Clinton also made strategic budgetary cuts and streamlined the governmental bureaucracy.
And he Clinton made a significant change in the character of welfare. Clinton superintended, and cooperated with Republicans in Congress on, the termination of AFDC in favor of a new program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). This program put a five year time-limit on the receipt of welfare payments, inducing women who had stayed at home to seek additional education and employment for the long-term support of their families. The goal was to move the key welfare delivery system from long-term assistance that could be a dependent way of life, toward a system that encouraged work and sought to end cycles of poverty.
In the context of expansion of EIC, a booming economy in which people of all economic classes were faring better, an unprecedented number of appointments of African Americans to federal government positions of both greater and lesser status, and the image of a president who spoke a language that radiated warmth and concern--- welfare reform moved through Congress and came law without very much opposition from the people of the inner city most affected by the dramatic change.
George W. Bush was hit with the bombing of the World Trade Center Twin Towers in 2001, making the response to terrorism the chief focus of his presidency, which he gained with victory in 2000 over Democratic candidate Al Gore and again in 2004, this time of over Democratic nominee John Kerry. The Bush response to terrorism led him to make troop commitments in Iraq and
Afghanistan that were costly and produced very slim results at a huge cost of lives. Bush did, though, superintend one promising initiative, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Program that promoted the disaggregation of data to determine educational outcomes for a bevy of demographic categories, including those pertinent to ethnicity and economic status. But the program was eventually undermined by forces of both the Democratic left and the Republican right, entailing a catering to teachers unions in the former case and a retreat to rhetoric advocating local control in the latter.
In 2008 came the striking event of the election of the first African American president and the entry into the residential halls of the White House an African American family. Barack Obama achieved a formidable task in significantly altering the nation’s health care system, securing passage of the Affordable Health Care Act. This law most notably made denial of health care insurance coverage for previously existing conditions illegal; established insurance exchanges (to be run by states or, upon the inaction of a state, by the federal government) at which consumers could select insurance plans and companies, with costs on a sliding scale according to economic means; expanding coverage for offspring to the age of 25; raising the income limitations and therefore expanding coverage under Medicaid; and establishing penalties for not having insurance. The expansion of Medicaid and the elimination of coverage denial for preexisting conditions especially helped African Americans of the impoverished inner city, so that the terms and availability of health coverage for blacks and others living at the urban core improved.
Obama’s foreign policy has been conducted with the expressed goals of extracting troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. This has been done in Iraq, with mixed results and calls in many quarters for reentry to stabilize the nation amidst sectarian Sunni-Shi’ite division and the regional threat of the ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria]). And in Afghanistan, the central government seems inept in formulating a plan for quelling the threat from the Taliban, so that some presence of United States troops and advisers seems likely. But Obama has maintained considerable focus on domestic policy even amidst grave foreign policy concerns, thereby leaving a domestic policy legacy that George Bush cannot claim.
Obama’s education initiative, Race to the Top, gained priority over the eviscerated No Child Left Behind Program , offering waivers from NCLB requirement to states that could gain approval for alternative programs for the achievement of educational equity. None of these, though, have yet had the projected favorable impact, and education in the K-12 systems of the inner city is still as wretched as it has been for at least 35 years.
But Barack Obama, with a redefinition of marriage that includes same-sex unions, an immigration policy that offers a route to citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants, and the appointment of many African Americans and other people of color to both major and minor government posts--- communicates a spirit of cultural inclusion that has captured the affective support of most African American people. And for African Americans, the symbolism of seeing someone at the pinnacle of power whose looks are recognizably those of their own ethnicity is huge and a historical occurrence with permanently favorable prospects.
No comments:
Post a Comment