BY NAOMI CRAINE
U.S. president Bill Clinton used his annual "State of the Union" speech to further Washington's bipartisan effort to make deep cuts in Medicare, welfare, and other entitlements working people have won. In the nationally televised hour-long address before a joint session of Congress January 23, he also vowed to step up the use of the cops and restrict democratic rights in the name of fighting against drugs and "terrorism," and proposed further attacks on immigrants. It was one of the first major campaign speeches of the 1996 presidential race.
Clinton echoed many of the themes from his 1992 election campaign. After praising the U.S. troops recently sent to Yugoslavia, he stated, "We are gaining ground in restoring our fundamental values." He cited fewer people receiving welfare and food stamps as one example.
The president asserted that the U.S. "economy is the healthiest it has been in three decades." Later in his speech, Clinton boasted he had cut the federal payroll by 200,000 so far during his tenure.
The official unemployment rate - which only includes those workers whose jobless benefits have not yet run out - held at 5.6 percent in December. In New Jersey, unemployment rose from 6.1 percent to 7.3 percent, and in New York City it climbed over 8 percent that month. Arguing that figures for individual states are often erratic, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics has decided not to include state figures in its monthly employment reports anymore.
In this supposedly robust economy, even Clinton had to admit that many people "are working harder just to keep up." He suggested the minimum wage should be increased from the current $4.25 an hour, but made no proposal as to when or by how much. Clinton said exactly the same thing in last year's State of the Union address, and the minimum wage remains the same.
Referring to the ongoing wrangle over the federal budget, the president stressed how close his proposals are to those of Republicans in Congress. "The era of big government is over," he declared. Clinton urged the legislature to move ahead in adopting large portions of his plan, which includes slashing Medicare and Medicaid - programs for the elderly, disabled, and impoverished - by a total of more than $150 billion.
"The Congress and I are near agreement on sweeping welfare reform," Clinton continued. "We agree on time limits, tough work requirements, and the toughest possible child-support enforcement."
Senate majority leader Bob Dole, currently the lead contender for the Republican presidential nomination, responded that the difference was not in the figures but in "values." He accused Clinton of "defending the status quo" in welfare, Medicare, and other programs. "In every generation, Americans made...sacrifices," Dole said. "Now we have to do that in this generation."
This exchange got to the heart of the "budget" dispute between Clinton and many of the Republicans - how far to take their ideological campaign to demand that workers tighten their belts and sacrifice. The "values" Dole cited included "personal responsibility" and "self-reliance." In other words, trying to convince working people that they are the problem in society.
The latest episode in the budget debate is the negotiations between the White House and Congress over raising the national debt ceiling, currently $4.9 trillion. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said that $5.8 billion due to bondholders on February 29 could put the U.S. government debt over that limit. Before then, White House officials say, Social Security checks and other payments due to workers may be delayed. On March 1, a $30 billion payment for Social Security and other benefits is due. Until now, Rubin has kept up payments to the bondholders and stayed below the debt ceiling by juggling government employees' pension funds.
Like other temporary spending agreements over the last couple months, a bill to raise the debt ceiling will most likely include many other measures that are part of the package of social cuts.
A short-term spending bill currently in Congress, dubbed the "Balanced Budget Down Payment Act," would continue monies for government agencies whose funding expires January 26, at as little as 75 percent of last year's levels. This measure would eliminate a provision in the previous interim agreement that had protected federal employees from being laid off without pay. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston declared January 23, "If we're going to get serious" about cutting spending "then furloughs and rifs [reductions in force] will have to take place."
`War on crime'
Clinton devoted a substantial portion of his State of
the Union speech to the so-called war on crime. He
announced plans to have the FBI investigate youth gangs;
to prosecute more teenagers as adults; to evict anyone
convicted of selling drugs from public housing; and to
urge states to require inmates to serve at least 85
percent of their sentences. The president nominated Gen.
Barry McCaffrey, currently the chief of the U.S. Southern
Command in Panama, as the new "drug czar."
One of the "special Americans" Clinton chose to point to in his address was Jennifer Rodgers, an Oklahoma City cop who was part of the response to the April 1995 bombing of the federal building there.
Clinton highlighted these special guests as part of his virulent "antiterrorism" rhetoric. He reiterated his call for Congress to pass legislation he proposed after the Oklahoma City blast, which would restrict democratic rights.
The president also vowed to "sign an executive order to deny Federal contracts to businesses that hire illegal immigrants."
Another special guest who sat in the front row of the House gallery along with the president's wife was Aaron Feuerstein, the owner of Malden Mills, a Massachusetts textile plant that burned to the ground in December. Feuerstein has been held up as a hero by the big-business press and politicians for agreeing to pay his employees for a few weeks after the fire and reopening the operation very rapidly - again under dangerous conditions.
Whitewater doesn't go away
In what London's Financial Times described as an
"unwelcome backdrop" to the State of the Union speech, the
president's wife, Hillary Clinton, was subpoenaed to
testify before a federal grand jury. On January 26 she
will answer questions about documents related to the
"Whitewater" scandal that were recently found in the White
House. They were under subpoena and had supposedly been
missing for two years.
"Whitewater" has come to stand for a conglomeration of accusations of improper financial and business dealings by the Clintons - fairly mild ones within the range of what businessmen and bourgeois politicians normally do. The affair has dogged the Clinton administration on and off throughout his tenure. Like all political scandals, how far it goes from here will depend in large part in how well the president does in carrying out the interests of the capitalist class.