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Bill Clinton On The Issues 1996 - Strengthening America's Families: African Americans Bill Clinton 1996 On The Issues

Strengthening America's Families: African Americans

"Our challenge is twofold: first, to restore the American Dream of opportunity and the American value of responsibility; and second, to bring our country together amid all our diversity into a stronger community, so that we can find common ground and move forward as one”

—President Bill Clinton

America's racial diversity makes us uniquely positioned to succeed in the 21st century. President Clinton is committed to ensuring that African Americans have the same opportunities to win as all Americans.  He is expanding access to education, fighting crime, and helping families and children. President Clinton has taken the lead on issues important to African Americans by:

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Winning enactment of the largest deficit-cutting plan in history with his 1993 economic package. The President's policies have cut the deficit by more than half, and our growing economy has created 10.5 million new jobs. We have the lowest combined rate of unemployment, inflation, and mortgage rates since 1968 and the highest level of home ownership in 15 years. Unemployment among adult African Americans has dropped to one of the lowest rates in 20 years and incomes of African-American households are up 5 percent.
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Providing incentives to create over 100,000 new African-American businesses. The Clinton Administration has made new tax cuts available to 90 percent of all small businesses.
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Appointing the most diverse Cabinet and Administration in history. Members of the Clinton Cabinet include two African Americans. Fourteen percent of all Administration appointees are African American. More African Americans (45) serve in the White House now than at any time in history. The President has nominated 42 African Americans to the federal bench -- over 18 percent of his total federal bench nominations.
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Signing the Health Insurance Reform Act (Kassebaum-Kennedy Bill) to expand and protect access to health insurance by limiting exclusions for pre-existing conditions and by allowing individuals to take their health insurance with them when they change or lose their jobs.
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Fighting for and signing into law the first increase in the minimum wage in five years to reward work and responsibility.
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Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to provide tax relief for 15 million working families. In 1994, the EITC lifted over 350,000 African Americans out of poverty.
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Increasing Head Start funding by almost $800 million, providing early education to tens of thousands of additional children.
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Reforming the student loan program, making college more affordable this year for millions of students by giving them access to flexible repayment options.
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Creating AmeriCorps, the President's national service initiative, to give young people the opportunity to earn money for college by serving their communities -- African Americans comprise one-third of all participants.
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Increasing funding for Historically Black Colleges by nearly 25%.
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Signing into law the Goals 2000 Act, which supports the development of standards of excellence for students and encourages grassroots reforms to improve our schools.
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Implementing the School-to-Work Act to broaden educational, career, and economic opportunities for students not immediately bound for four-year colleges.
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Helping connect every American classroom to the Information Superhighway by the year 2000.
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Ordering a review of the government's affirmative action programs that concluded that affirmative action remains an effective and important tool to expand educational and economic opportunity.
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Filing more cases in three years to enforce fair housing laws than ever before -- a record 457 cases.
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Signing into law the toughest, most comprehensive Crime Bill ever, putting 100,000 new police on the street and banning 19 different kinds of assault weapons. The Brady Bill has kept more than 60,000 fugitives, felons, and other criminals from buying guns.
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Establishing a Childhood Immunization Initiative to ensure vaccinations and healthier futures for children.
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Fighting for full funding for the Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC).
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Creating nine Economic Empowerment Zones and 95 Enterprise Communities. The President has also signed the Community Development Banking Bill to create community banks in low- and moderate-income communities. He made permanent the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and Mortgage Revenue Bond Program.
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Collecting a record $11 billion in child support through enforcement in 1995 -- an increase of nearly 40 percent since 1992.
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Increasing adoption and foster care funds by almost $600 million from 1994 to 1995.
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Reforming the Community Reinvestment Act, helping increase the number of mortgage loans to African Americans by 55 percent from 1993 to 1994.
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Ending welfare as we know it by signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. This bill includes time-limits and work requirements, gives states incentives to create jobs for welfare recipients, increases funding for child care, strengthens child support enforcement, and maintains the federal guarantee of nutrition programs and Medicaid coverage for pregnant women, children, and the disabled. Even before signing national welfare reform, the President granted waivers to 43 states to reform welfare on their own -- making work and responsibility a way of life for 75 percent of all welfare recipients.
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Signing the National Voter Registration Act ("Motor-Voter" Law). This expands voting rights for all, including the poor and the young, by creating new, more accessible voter registration locations.
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Issuing an Executive Order on Environmental Justice, ensuring that low-income citizens and minorities do not suffer a disproportionate burden of industrial pollution.
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Introducing Operation Safe Home to fight crime in public housing.
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Restoring democracy to Haiti.
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Hosting the first ever White House Conference on Africa.


Building on Our Progress

The Clinton Administration is committed to working with African Americans to build a better future for all of our children. We are working to provide greater opportunities for African Americans by:

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Arguing in federal court to expand interpretation of the Voting Rights Act.
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Arguing in federal court to expand interpretation of the Voting Rights Act.
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Working with communities to enforce a "zero tolerance" gun policy in schools and to develop community policing programs.
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Expanding education and economic opportunities, giving our young people a future they can say "yes" to and the ability to make wise personal decisions about their lives.
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Proposing his "America Reads" Challenge to ensure that every child in American can read independently by the end of the third grade. The President's new initiative helps parents, as their children's first teachers, and the entire community, to invest in reading success.
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Redeveloping contaminated sites in low-income communities and turning them into usable space, creating jobs and enhancing community development.

Source: Bill Clinton for President 1996 Web Site

 

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