Passed & signed into law by Clinton in 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act threw millions of low-income moms into the labor market by instituting a mandatory work requirement.
It's a result of unchecked global capitalism. It had a significant impact on the political climate & created an atmosphere of austerity in the US.
As Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich often used coded messages and stereotypical descriptions of welfare recipients to attack the welfare system.
To demonstrate that he was a new kind of Democrat, Clinton distanced himself from his political party’s image of being soft on crime, he emphasized responsibility over personal rights, and he emphasized universal polices over race- specific or targeted ones.
Clinton’s crime control bill expanded the death penalty for federal crimes, limited appeals for death row inmates, and implemented a clause that would compel a life sentence for anyone convicted of three serious felonies under federal law.
This Republican plan introduced spending reductions in social services such as education, job training, employment, housing and antipoverty programs.
NAFTA resulted in a $181 billion U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada and the related loss of 1 million U.S. jobs, growing income inequality, displacement of more than one million Mexican campesino farmers and a doubling of desperate immigration from Mexico.
Initially they openly opposed Clinton’s crime control bill, but then they decided to negotiate with the Clinton administration rather than mobilize mass support against it. This decision caused a division between them and other Black interest groups.
At a National Rainbow Coalition leadership summer conference Clinton publicly criticized her about her comments regarding the Los Angeles uprising after the Rodney King verdict.
In the summer of 1994, before the Republican victory, they anticipated obtaining additional seats in both the Senate and the House and intentionally delayed any consideration of welfare reform until the next congressional hearing.