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Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to provide
tax relief for 40 million working Americans. |
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Signing the Family and Medical Leave Act to enable workers
to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a sick family
member without fear of losing their jobs. |
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Giving parents greater control over what their children
watch on television by requiring the “V-chip” in all new
televisions. |
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Protecting our children's health by proposing targeted
measures to cut off children's access to tobacco products and to
reduce their appeal to children. |
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Signing the Health Insurance Reform Act
(Kassebaum-Kennedy Bill) which expands and protects access to
health insurance by limiting exclusions for pre-existing conditions
and 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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Establishing a Childhood Immunization Initiative to
increase vaccinations and help ensure healthier futures for all
children. In 1995, the immunization rate for children reached 75%, a
record high. |
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Strengthening laws to collect a record $11 billion in
child support in 1995 through tougher enforcement, almost a 40%
increase over 1992. President Clinton issued an Executive Order to
help track down federal workers who fail to pay child
support. |
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Expanding and improving Head Start. The President has
increased funding for Head Start by almost $800 million to serve tens
of thousands of additional children. |
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Investing in education. Through Goals 2000, President
Clinton supported developing standards of excellence for students
while encouraging grassroots local reforms to improve our
schools. |
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Making our communities and schools safer. President
Clinton won passage of the tough and smart Crime Bill, which is
putting 100,000 more police officers on the street. The President also
won passage of the Brady Bill, which has prevented more than 60,000
people with criminal records from buying handguns. He enacted the
Gun-Free Schools Act, which requires the immediate expulsion for one
year of any student who brings a gun to school. |
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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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Working with community, business, and religious leaders to
form the National Campaign to Reduce Teen Pregnancy, which will
marshal private resources across the country to reduce teen pregnancy
rates. |
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Challenging the media and entertainment industry to create
movies, CDs, and television shows more suitable for children. The
President has reached agreements with the television industry to
develop a voluntary ratings system and to broadcast at least three
hours per week of educational programming. |
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Increasing funding to improve and expand child care
services in every budget submitted to Congress. The Clinton
Administration has also streamlined management of four major child
care programs into a single Child Care Bureau -- to link services and
programs, reduce red tape, improve quality, and give states more
flexibility |
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Creating a National Child Care Information Center for the
public and highlighting solutions for including children with
disabilities in child care. |
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Creating the Healthy Child Care Campaign to create
partnerships between the health care and child care communities to
ensure safe and healthy environments for children. |
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Working to encourage adoption, including adoption of
children with special needs, and to reduce the amount of time children
spend in foster care. President Clinton strongly supports the adoption
tax credit. He enacted the Multiethnic Placement Act to remove
barriers to adoption so that more children live in loving and safe
homes. |
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Working with 48 state court systems to improve operations
so that children spend less time in foster care. |
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Standing firm throughout the budget debate to protect
funds for adoption, foster care, child abuse and neglect, Medicaid and
Social Security—programs that are critical for many adoptive families
and children. |
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Putting the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for
Women, Infants and Children (WIC) on a full funding path to reach 7.5
million participants by the end of fiscal year 1997. This program
works: Every dollar invested in WIC has saved up to $4.25 in
preventive health care costs. |
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Reforming the School Lunch Program to ensure healthy
school meals. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Team Nutrition—a
network of public-private partnerships—improves the health of children
by promoting food choices for a healthy diet through schools,
families, communities and the media. There are now more than 6,000
Team Nutrition Schools across the
nation. |