Bill Clinton's pact with Newt Gingrich to Privatize OUR Social Security
Did You Know THIS? "The Pact: "Clinton, Gingrich, Bowles"
(How Many Knew This? ...I was too busy Defending Bill and Hillary against the RW CRAZIES to notice this at the time. I was new to the Internet and Clinton was MY and OTHERS...OBAMA!...I couldn't believe the Crap the RW Threw Against Him! I lost Friends defending him
NOW ....I'm Rethinking what I used to think about Clinton...when I was a Loyalist to him...)
------------
How Monica Lewinsky Saved Social Security: Clinton, Gingrich, Bowles and “The Pact”
Please welcome Steven Gillon, author of The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation
Gillon writes:
In private conversations with Gingrich and with Texas Republican Bill Archer, powerful head of the House Ways and Means Committee, the president promised to “provide political cover” for Democrats and Republicans by announcing his support for raising the minimum age required for Social Security and for changing the COLA formula. The president was willing to oppose the leadership of his own party and support the Republican demand for private accounts.
According to Gingrich:
“I understood that I would have to fight some of my old guard,” Gingrich recalled. “He understood that he would have to fight his hard left. Together we could shape about a 60 to 65 percent majority. I was happy for him to be a successful president. He was comfortable with us being a successful Republican congress.”
It looked like they had a path to success. Clinton would take the heat from Democrats and work through “centrist” Democrats and Republicans, as he had when he passed NAFTA and welfare reform.
And then Monica Lewinsky broke into the headlines:
Politically, it forced Clinton to seek refuge in the liberal wing of his party, the same group he had agreed to abandon a few months earlier. “All opportunities for accomplishment were killed once the story came out,” reflected a senior White House official. “If we cut a deal with the Republicans on Social Security there was every possibility that the Democrats, who were the only people defending him in Congress against these charges, could easily get angry and abandon him.” With conservatives in an uproar, Gingrich lost his political wiggle room and was forced to appease his right-wing base. If Gingrich did not “feed the conservative beast,” recalled a colleague, he would have been removed from his job as Speaker.
As Erskine Bowles himself said, “Monica changed everything.”
http://firedoglake.com/2010/05/18/how-monica-lewinsky-saved-social-security-clinton-gingrich-bowles-and-the-pact/
***********************
Don't think Hillary will save it...
= new reply since forum marked as read
