Improving the Quality of Life for America’s Working Families
Clinton-Gore Administration Accomplishments
Progress By The Numbers
Jobs & The Economy:
Jobs 20.422.5 million new jobs created since 1993 -- the most jobs ever created under a single Administration,Administration, and more jobs than Presidents Reagan and Bush created during their three terms. Under President Clinton, the economy has added an average of 245,000236,000 jobs per month, the highest of any President on record. This compares to 52,000 per month under President Bush and 167,000 per month under President Reagan. [Bureau of Labor Statistics]
Unemployment Down from 7.5 percent in 1992 to 4.0 percent in November, nearly the lowest in more than three decades. The unemployment rate has fallen for seven years in a row, and has remained below 5 percent for 41 months in a row -- over three full years. [Bureau of Labor Statistics]
Income Median family income has increased from $42,612 in 1993 to $48,950 in 1999 - an $6,338 increase. In contrast, median family income fell from $44,354 in 1988 to $42,490 in 1992. [Census Bureau, Money Income in the United States: 1999, 9/26/00]
Wages Real wages have risen 6.66.8 percent since 1993, compared to declining 4.3 percent during the Reagan and Bush years. Real wage growth in 1998 reached 2.6 percent -- the largest increase since 1972. Wages have increased five years in a row -- the longest consecutive increase since the 1960s. In the last 12 months, average hourly earnings have sustained growth since the early 1970s.increased 4.0 percent -- faster than the rate of inflation. [National Economic Council, 1/7/00]11/00]
Tax Cuts 15 million additional working families receive additional tax relief through the President’s expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. In 1999, the EITC lifted 4.1 million out of poverty -- nearly double the number who were removed from poverty in 1993. Over half of the people removed from poverty by the EITC (2.3 million) were children under the age of 18. [National Economic Council, 9/26/00]
$500 per-child tax credit 27 million families with 45 million children receive the $500 per-child tax credit. [Treasury Department]
Minimum Wage 10 million Americans received an increase in wages thanks to the President’s leadership in raising the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15 per hour. [Good News for Low Income Families: Expansions in the EITC and Minimum Wage, CEA, 12/98]
New Businesses More than 5.9 million new businesses have been created since 1993. [Small Business Administration]
National Debt Paid off $360 billion of the national debt over three years, and projected to pay off another $237 billion in 2001 – bringing the total 4-year debt paydown to $600 billion. Public debt is on track to be $2.4 trillion lower in 2000 than was projected in 1993. There is $25,000 less debt for each family of four than in 1993. We are on track to eliminate the nation’s publicly held debt by at least 2010.
Home Ownership Reached 67.7 percent in the third quarter of 2000 – the highest ever recorded. Minority homeownership rates were also the highest ever recorded. In contrast, the homeownership rate fell from 65.6 percent in the first quarter of 1981 to 63.7 percent in the first quarter of 1993. [Bureau of the Census, 9/28/99][Census Bureau, 10/26/00]
Expanding Educational Opportunity: Elementary and Secondary Schools
Teachers Nearly 30,000 new, well-prepared teachers were hired for fall 1999 with funds from the first down payment on the President’s seven-year plan to reduce class size, lowering class sizes for 1.7 million students. This year the President won $1.6 billion for this initiative to stay on track toward the goal of hiring 100,000 teachers. [Education Department, Local Success Stories - Reducing Class Size, 11/99]
After School Programs 1.3 million school-age children in rural and urban communities will have safe and educational after-school opportunities in 2001 because of the expanded 21st Century Community Learning Centers program – 450,000 more than last year. [Education Department]
Education Technology Increased our investment in education technology by more than 3,600 percent – from $23 million in FY 1993 to $872 million in FY 2001. 30 million children and up to 47,000 schools and libraries have access to the Internet though the E-rate. In 1999, 95 percent of public schools were connected to the Internet -- up from 35 percent in 1994. In 1999, 63 percent of all public school classrooms were connected to the Internet -- up from 3 percent in 1994. [FY 2000 Budget, p. 67; National Center for Education Statistics, Stats in Brief NCES 2000-086, 2/00]
Title I About 1113 million disadvantaged students in 14,000 school districts now benefit from higher expectations and a challenging curriculum geared to higher standards. And through better targeting of federal funds, Title I funds now reach 95 percent of America’s highest poverty schools, up from 79 percent in 1993-94. [Education Department, Challenging the Status Quo: The Education Record, 1993-2000, 4/00] [Statement of the Secretary of Education before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, 2/9/99]
Charter Schools Helped increase the number of charter schools from one in 1993 to over 2,000 today. More than 500,000 students nationwide are now enrolled in charter schools in 34 states and the District of Columbia. Won a $45 million increase in FY 2001 to support the start up of 450 new or redesigned schools. [Education Department, 8/28/99; White House Fact Sheet, 2/11/00]
Early Learning Head Start will reach approximately 936,000 low-income children in FY 2001, on track to reach the President’s goal of serving one million children and their families by 2002. Funding for the program has more than doubled since 1993, from $2.8 billion to $6.2 billion.
America Reads Challenge 1,400 colleges and universities joined the President’s America Reads Challenge, and 27,000 college work-study students now serve as reading tutors to help children learn to read well and independently by the third grade. [Education Department, Challenging the Status Quo: The Education Record, 1993-2000, 4/00]
School-To-Work 516,000 high school students and nearly 178,000 employers participated in school-to-work programs in 1998. [Progress Measures Report, 1999, MPR Associates, National School-to-Work Office, Education Department]
Scores Are Up In 2000, students posted the highest math scores in 30 years on the SAT. And the number of high school students taking Advanced Placement exams tripled between 1984 and 1997, including a significant increase in minority students taking the exams. [College Board, 9/1/98; Center on Education Policy, Do You Know…The Good News About American Education?]
Expanding Educational Opportunity: Postsecondary Education and Training
Tuition Tax Credits In 1999, an estimated 10 million American families claimed $7 billion in Hope Scholarship and Lifetime Learning Tax Credits to help pay for college.
Pell Grants 3.9 million low-income students will receive a Pell Grant award to help them attend college. In the FY 2001 budget, the President increased the maximum Pell Grant award to $3,750 -- the largest maximum award ever. The maximum award has increased from $2,300 in 1993. [Office of Student Financial Assistance, Department of Education: Interim Performance Objectives, Final Report FY99]
Work-Study One million students will be able to work their way through college this year thanks to the President’s expansion of the Work-Study Program. [Office of Student Financial Assistance, Department of Education: Interim Performance Objectives, Final Report FY99]
Direct Loan Program More than 5 million student and parent borrowers have received direct loans since the program began. The program has improved service to students and schools, and saved taxpayers more than $4 billion so far.
Lower Loan Interest Rates Students have saved more than $9 billion since 1993 through the reduction in loan fees and interest rates; the average $10,000 loan costs a student $1,300 less now than it did in 1993.
Student Loan Default The student loan default rate declined from 22.4 percent when the President
Rate Declines took office to 6.9 percent today, the lowest rate ever. Collections on defaulted student loans have increased from $1 billion in 1993 to $4 billion last year. [Education Department Press Release, 10/2/00]
AmeriCorps Nearly 200,000 volunteers have earned money for college by serving their communities and their country in the AmeriCorps program since the program began in 1994. [Corporation for National Service, Press Release, 10/16/99]
College Preparation Won $295 million to help 1.2 million disadvantaged middle school students aspire to and prepare for college through expanded college preparation efforts including mentoring, tutoring and college counseling as part of GEAR UP. Also increased funding for the TRIO programs by 88 percent over the past eight years to $730 million. [Education Department]
College Enrollment Up 67 percent of high school graduates went on to college in 1998, compared to 62 percent in 1992. The percentage of African American high school graduates enrolling in college increased from 48 percent in 1992 to 59 percent in 1997 -- the highest number ever.
Retrained Workers An estimated 836,000 American workers will benefit this year from the dislocated worker program. President Clinton won a $190 million increase in FY 2000, bringing the total investment to $1.6 billion and allowing the program to serve nearly three times as many dislocated workers.
Crime and Public Safety
Declining Crime Rates Overall crime rates has dropped every year under President Clinton and Vice President Gore, the longest continuous drop on record and crime is now at a 26-year low. The violent crime rate fell 30 percent since 1993 and is at the lowest level in two decades. Since 1993, the murder rate is down more than 38 percent to its lowest point since 1966, and gun violence has declined by 40 percent. [Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998 National Crime Victimization Survey; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports for the United States 1998, 1999]
Juvenile Gun Crimes Down The number of juvenile homicide gun offenders has dropped 57 percent since 1993. [FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports for the United States 1999]
Community Policing Reached the President’s goal of funding 100,000 more community police officers for our streets in May 1999 – ahead of schedule and under budget. Won over $1 billion in 2000 to help communities take the next step toward hiring up to 50,000 more police officers by FY 2005. [Justice Department, COPS program, 5/12/99]
Brady Bill More than 470,000611,000 felons, fugitives and stalkers have been stopped from buying guns since the Brady Law was enacted. [Bureau of Justice Statistics, Background Checks for Firearm Transfers, 1999, 6/00]
Improving Officer Safety To date, the Bulletproof Vest Partnership Grant Act has helped fund over 100,000 bulletproof vests for state and local law enforcement. [1/01]
"Zero-Tolerance" for Over 13,500 students have been expelled from public schools for bringing
Guns In Schools weapons to school under zero tolerance policies established by the Gun Free Schools Act, which was passed in 1994. [Dept. of Education, Report on State Implementation of the Gun-Free Schools Act, 1998-99]
Domestic Violence Hotline More than 558,000 calls have been received by the nationwide, 24-hour domestic violence hotline President Clinton established. [Domestic Violence Hotline, as of 1/8/01]
Strengthening Families
Family & Medical Leave Nearly 91 million workers are covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act -- 71 percent of the American labor force. 35 million working Americans have taken leave for family and medical reasons since the law was passed in 1993. [Department of Labor]
Welfare to Work 8.3 million fewer people are receiving welfare benefits today than in 1993, a nearly 60 percent decrease. The percentage of Americans on welfare is the lowest since 1963, and millions of Americans have moved from welfare to work -- 1.2 million in 1999 alone. The percentage of adults on welfare who were working reached an all-time high of 33 percent in 1999, nearly five times the percent in 1992. [HHS Press Release, 8/22/00 and 12/15/00]
Child Care Child care funding has increased by 80 percentmore than doubled under the Clinton-Gore Administration, helping parents pay for the care ofmore than one million children. An average of 1.25 million children were served by states under the child care block grant in FY 1997 -- a 25 percent increase from the estimated 1 million children served in FY 1996. The 1996 welfare1.5 million children and the1996 welfare reform law increased child care funding by $4 billion over six years to provide child care assistance to families moving from welfare to years. [FY 2000work. [FY 2001 Budget, p. 76]59]
Child Poverty The child poverty rate has dropped from 22.7 percent in 1993 to 16.9 percent in 1999 -- the biggest six-year drop in nearly 30 years, and the lowest child poverty rate since 1979. [Census Bureau, Poverty in the United States: 1999, 9/26/00]
Increasing Adoptions In 1999, 46,000 foster care children were adopted – more than a 64 percent increase since 1996 and well on the way to meeting the President's goal of doubling the number of adoptions from 28,000 in 1996 to 56,000 by 2002. [HHS Press Release, 9/20/00]
Teen Pregnancy The teen birth rate has fallen eight years in a row, dropping by 20 percent from 1991 to 1999 to the lowest rate ever recorded in the 60 years this data has been collected. The teen pregnancy rate is also at a record low. [Centers for Disease Control, National Vital Statistics Report, 8/8/00]
Child Abuse Child abuse has declined for five years in a row, down approximately 11 percent from a record 1,018,692 in 1993. [HHS Press Release, 4/10/00]
Child Support Collections Federal and state child support programs broke new records in 1999, collecting nearly $18 billion – more than double the amount collected in 1992. The number of child support cases with collections more than doubled during the Clinton Administration, from 2.8 million in 1992 to 4.5 million in 1999. [Child Support Enforcement FY 1999 Preliminary Data Report, 10/00; HHS press release, 1/01]]
support payments -- more than double the number found during the previous year. [HHS]
Improving Our Nation’s Health
Patients’ Bill of Rights 85 million people covered by Federal health plans, and Medicare and Medicaid, received patient protections -- protections included in the Patients’ Bill of Rights -- thanks to executive action taken by President Clinton. [FY 2000 Budget, p. 85]
More Americans Have From 1998 to 1999, the number of Americans with health insurance rose by
Health Insurance 1.7 million -- two-thirds of them children. This is the first decline in the number of uninsured in 12 years. [Census Bureau, Health Insurance Coverage: 1999, 9/28/00]
Health Insurance Reform As many as 25 million people will benefit from the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which helps millions of Americans who move from one job to another, are self-employed, or have pre-existing medical conditions keep their health insurance. [FY 2000 Budget, p. 83]
Eliminating Fraud Since 1993, the Clinton-Gore Administration has assigned more federal prosecutors and FBI agents to fight health care fraud than ever before. As a result, convictions have gone up a full 410 percent, saving more than $50 billion in health care claims. [HHS Fact Sheet, 2/22/00]
Children’s Health Care As many as 5 million more children will receive health insurance under President Clinton’s State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). As of January 2001, 3.3 million children nationwide were enrolled in SCHIP. [HHS Press Release, 1/6/01]
Infant Mortality There has been a 15.2 percent decrease in the infant mortality rate -- to the lowest level in history -- from 8.5 in 1992 to 7.2 in 1997. [America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, NIH, 7/8/99]
Immunization Childhood immunization coverage rates in 1998 were the highest ever recorded. Over 90 percent of America’s toddlers received the most critical doses of each of the routinely recommended vaccines in 1996, 1997, and again in 1998. With childhood vaccination levels at an all-time high, disease and death from diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella and Hib are at or near record lows. [HHS Fact Sheet, 9/23/99, 12/31/99]
WIC 7.3 million women, infants, and children -- 1.4 million more than in 1993 -- have access to health care, supplemental foods, nutrition and breastfeeding education thanks to WIC. [Food and Nutrition Service, USDA, 9/99]
Biomedical Research Resources for the National Institutes of Health have doubled under the Clinton Administration, from $10.3 billion in FY 1993 to $20.3 billion in FY 2001. NIH now supports the highest levels of research ever on nearly all types of disease and health conditions, making new breakthroughs possible in vaccine development and use, the treatment of chronic disease, and prevention and treatment of diseases such as diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease, cancer, and neurological diseases like Alzheimers and Parkinsons.
Food Safety Two years after President Clinton’s meat and poultry inspection system was put into place and other food safety measures were implemented, the number of Americans sickened by the most common forms of bacterial foodborne pathogens has declined by almost 20 percent. Overall, almost a million fewer Americans became ill from bacteria in their food in 1999 than two years before. [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]
Government That Works Better
Reinventing Government The Vice President’s National Performance Review recommended and Congress adopted savings of about $136 billion since 1993. [National Performance Review, Accomplishments Fact Sheet]
Smaller Government There are 377,000 fewer employees in the Federal government workforce than in 1993 -- nearly a fifth -- giving us the smallest Federal workforce since 1960. [National Partnership for Reinventing Government, Accomplishments Fact Sheet; National Economic Council, 6/26/00]
Lower Government At 18.5 percent, Federal Government spending as a share of the
Spending Gross Domestic Product is at its lowest level since 1966. [National Economic Council, 6/26/00]
Motor Voter 28 million new voters registered to vote -- and voting was made easier for millions more Americans -- since 1995 because of the National Voter Registration Act. [FEC, 6/99; FEC, 6/97]
Improving the
Environment
Toxic Waste Sites Completed cleanup at 608 Superfund sites, more than fourthree times as many as completed in the previous two Administrations.twelve years. Cleanup of more than 9091 percent of all sites either completed or in progress. The Administration’s brownfields redevelopment initiative has leveraged over $2.8 billion in private sector investment and generated 7,300 jobs. For every dollar the federal, state and local governments put into revitalizing brownfields, almost $2.50 in private investment is attracted. [[Environmental Protection Agency, Superfund NPL Construction Completions Since 1/20/93 to 6/22/99]EPA, Construction Completions at National Priorities List Sites, as of 7/27/00; EPA, www.epa.gov, 8/24/00]
National Parks The National Park System has increased by about 4.56 million acres during the Clinton-Gore Administration. The President has also created 13 new national park areas and has significantly expanded others, like Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks in California. [Protecting Our National Treasures, Department of Interior]
Preserving Our Protected tens of millions of acres, from the red rock canyons of Utah to the
National Treasures Florida Everglades. Reached historic agreements to protect Yellowstone from mining and save the ancient redwoods of California’s Headwaters Forest. [Protecting Our National Treasures, Department of Interior]
Safe Drinking Water Since 1993, 22.5 million more Americans receive drinking water that meets all federal health standards. Eighty-nine percent of America’s tap water from community drinking water systems meets all federal standards. [EPA, Summary of the 20002001 Budget, p. 30]33]
Clean Air Since 1993, the number of Americans living in communities that meet federal air quality standards has grown by 43 million. [White House, Council on Environmental Quality, 5/1/99]
Encouraging Recycling
Americans recycle 22 million tons more material than in 1992 -- thanks to that effort, the United States will discard less waste in 2000 than in 1992. We recycle more of our municipal waste than any major country in the world. [White House, Council on Environmental Quality]
1/00January 2001