Renewing the Clinton-Gingrich Partnership

Floor Speech

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I was deeply saddened to see the President begin the sixth year of our Nation's economic malaise by renewing his partisan name-calling and finger-pointing on Monday.

Fortunately, we have a model for bipartisan economic cooperation. In 1995, when President Clinton realized that his policies weren't working, he reached across the aisle to work with the Republican House; and despite their political differences, they did some amazing things:

They reduced Federal spending by a miraculous 40 percent of GDP;

They produced the largest capital gains tax cut in American history;

They reformed entitlement spending by abolishing the open-ended welfare system we had at the time;

They delivered 4 years of budget surpluses.

These bipartisan policies produced a period of prolonged economic expansion and unprecedented prosperity for America's middle and working classes.

Republicans have been eager to repeat these successful bipartisan policies of the Clinton years. Why isn't the President?

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