Clinton-Gore Administration Accomplishments:
Improving the Quality of Life for America's Working Families

Progress By The Numbers

Jobs & The Economy:

Jobs

21.2 million new jobs created since 1993 -- the most jobs ever created under a single administration, and more jobs than Presidents Reagan and Bush created during their three terms. Under President Clinton, the economy has added an average of 247,000 jobs per month, the highest of any President on record. This compares to 52,000 per month under President Bush and 167,000 per month under President Reagan. [National Economic Council, 4/7/00]

Unemployment

4.1 percent unemployment in March 2000 -- nearly the lowest rate in 30 years. The unemployment rate has stayed below 5 percent for 33 months in a row. The average unemployment rate in 1999 was 4.2 percent, the lowest since 1969. [National Economic Council, 4/7/00]

Income

Typical family income is up $5,046 since 1993. Median family income has increased from $41,051 in 1993 to $46,737 in 1998. [Money Income in the United States: 1998, Bureau of the Census, 9/99]

Wages

Under President Clinton and Vice President Gore, real wages have risen 6.8 percent compared to declining 4.3 percent during the Reagan and Bush years. Wages have increased five years in a row -- the longest consecutive increase since the 1960s. In the last 12 months, average hourly earnngs have increased 3.7 percent -- faster than the rate of inflation. [National Economic Council, 4/7/00]

Tax Cuts

15 million additional working families receive additional tax relief through the President’s expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. In 1998, the EITC lifted 4.3 million out of poverty -- double the number who were removed from poverty in 1993. Over half of the people removed from poverty by the EITC (2.3 million) were children under the age of 18. [National Economic Council, 1/12/00]

$500 per-child tax credit

27 million families with 45 million children receive the $500 per-child tax credit. [Treasury Department]

Minimum Wage

10 million Americans received an increase in wages thanks to the President’s leadership in raising the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15 per hour. [Good News for Low Income Families: Expansions in the EITC and Minimum Wage, CEA, 12/98]

New Businesses

More than 5.9 million new businesses have been created since 1993. [Small Business Administration, 1/00]

National Debt

There is $25,000 less debt for each family of four because the national debt was $1.7 trillion lower in fiscal year 1999 than was projected in 1993. [Internal calculations based on: FY 2000 Budget Mid-Session Review (Table 1); OMB (1993 internal projection); Bureau of the Census]

Home Ownership

In 1999, the homeownership rate was 66.8 percent -- the highest ever recorded. Minority homeownership rates were also the highest ever recorded. In contrast, the homeownership rate fell from 65.6 percent in the first quarter of 1981 to 63.7 percent in the first quarter of 1993. [Census Bureau, 1/27/00]

Expanding Educational Opportunity: Elementary and Secondary Schools

Teachers

Nearly 30,000 new, well-prepared teachers were hired for fall 1999 with funds from the first down payment on the President’s seven-year plan to reduce class size by hiring 100,000 teachers. President Clinton won $1.3 billion in the FY00 budget to support these teachers and continue hiring additional teachers to reach his goal. [Education Department, Local Success Stories - Reducing Class Size, 11/99]

After School Programs

675,000 school-age children in rural and urban communities will have safe and educational after-school opportunities in 2000 because of the expanded 21st Century Community Learning Centers program -- 375,000 more than last year. [Education Department]

Learning to High Standards

Communities in 50 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are using the flexibility of Goals 2000 funds to accelerate progress toward their own standards-based education improvements. These communities have set higher academic standards for public schools by adopting comprehensive Goals 2000 plans for education reform. [Education Department]

Education Technology

30 million children and up to 47,000 schools and libraries are being connected to the Internet though the education rate, or E-rate, created by the 1996 Telecommunications Act. In 1999, 95 percent of public schools were connected to the Internet -- up from 35 percent in 1994. In 1999, 63 percent of all public school classrooms were connected to the Internet -- up from just 3 percent in 1994. [FY 2000 Budget, p. 67; National Center for Education Statistics, Stats in Brief NCES 2000-086, 2/00]

Title I

11 million low-income students in 13,000 school districts now benefit from higher expectations and a challenging curriculum geared to higher standards. And through better targeting of federal funds, Title I funds now reach 95 percent of highest poverty schools, up from 79 percent in 1993-94. [Education Department, "Challenging the Status Quo: The Education Record, 1993-2000," 4/00]

Charter Schools

Increased the number of charter schools from one in 1993 to more than 1,700. More than 250,000 students nationwide are now enrolled in charter schools in 30 states and the District of Columbia. Won $145 million in the FY00 budget to provide startup funding to as many as 2,400 charter schools. Charter schools help expand choice and accountability in public schools. [Education Department, 8/28/99; White House at Work, 2/11/00]

America Reads

Challenge 1,400 colleges and universities joined the President's America Reads Challenge, and 26,700 college work-study students now serve as reading tutors to help every child to read well and independently by the third grade. [Education Department, "Challenging the Status Quo: The Education Record, 1993-2000," 4/00]

Mentoring

Won a 67 percent funding increase so that 482,000 middle school students will be prepared for college this year through expanded mentoring efforts as part of GEAR-UP. [Education Department]

Scores Are Up

Since 1992, average SAT scores have increased by 15 points. In 1998, students posted the highest math scores in 27 years on the SAT. And the number of high school students taking Advanced Placement exams tripled between 1984 and 1997. [College Board, 9/1/98; Center on Education Policy, Do You Know…The Good News About American Education?]

Expanding Educational Opportunity: Postsecondary Education and Training

HOPE Scholarships

5.9 million students are expected to benefit from the $1,500 HOPE Scholarship tuition tax credit. [Education Department, 4/2/99]

Lifetime Learning Tax Credit

7.2 million will benefit from the lifetime learning tax credit, which offers a 20 percent tax credit for the first $5,000 of tuition and fees paid by a student. [FY 2000 Budget, p. 69]

Pell Grants

3.9 million low-income students will receive a Pell Grant award to help them attend college. In the FY00 budget, the President increased the maximum Pell Grant award from $3,000 to $3,300 -- the largest maximum award ever. The maximum award has increased 43 percent since President Clinton and Vice President Gore took office in 1993. [Office of Student Financial Assistance, Department of Education: Interim Performance Objectives, Final Report FY99]

Direct Loan Program

More than 3.9 million student and parent borrowers have received direct loans since the program began. [Federal Direct Loan Program, Federal Office of Student Financial Assistance, Education Department, 1/31/99]

Reduced Loan Fees

Since 1993, students have saved $8.7 billion through lower student loan fees and interest rates. [Department of Education, Statement by Secretary Riley, 10/5/99]

Student Loan Default

The student loan default rate declined from 22.4 percent in 1990 to 8.8
Rate Declines percent in 1999, and collections on defaulted student loans increased from $1 billion in 1992 to $3 billion in 1999. [Education Department, "Challenging the Status Quo: The Education Record, 1993-2000," 4/00]

AmeriCorps

More than 150,000 volunteers have earned up to $4,725 for college by serving their communities and their country in the AmeriCorps program since the program began in 1994. [Corporation for National Service, Press Release, 10/16/99]

School-To-Work

470,000 high school students, 36,000 schools (K-12), and 136,000 employers, participated in school-to-work programs in 1997. [Progress Measures Survey 1997, National School-to-Work Office, Education Department]

Work Study

One million students will be able to work their way through college this year thanks to the President’s expansion of the Work Study Program. [Office of Student Financial Assistance, Department of Education: Interim Performance Objectives, Final Report FY99]

College Enrollment

Up 67 percent of high school graduates went on to college in 1997, compared to 53 percent in 1983. The number of African American high school graduates going on to college increased from 39 percent in 1983 to 60 percent in 1997 -- the highest number ever. [Center on Education Policy, "Do You Know…The Good News About American Education?"]

Retrained Workers

An estimated 689,000 American workers will benefit this year from the dislocated worker program. In the FY 2000 budget, President Clinton won a $190 million increase, bringing the total investment to $1.6 billion and allowing the program to serve more than three times as many dislocated workers. [National Economic Council, 11/18/99]

Crime and Public Safety

Declining Crime Rates

Under the Clinton-Gore Administration, America has experienced the longest continuous drop in crime on record. The violent crime victimization rate has dropped 27 percent since 1993 -- to the lowest level since 1973 (the year of the survey’s inception). The murder rate is down more than 25 percent since 1993, its lowest point since 1967. In 1998 alone the homicide rate dropped 7 percent – almost entirely due to a decrease in killings committed with guns. The overall crime rate is at the lowest point in 25 years. [1998 National Crime Victimizations Survey, Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 7/99; FBI's Uniform Crime Reports for the United States 1998, Justice Department]

Juvenile Arrests Down

In 1998, the nation saw an 8 percent drop in the juvenile violent crime arrests. [FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports for the United States 1998, Justice Department]

Community Policing

The President’s goal of funding 100,000 more community police officers for our streets was reached in May 1999 -- meeting the pledge ahead of schedule and under budget. President Clinton won funding in the FY00 budget to begin hiring an additional 50,000 officers by 2005. [Justice Department, COPS program, 5/12/99]

Brady Bill

More than 500,000 felons, fugitives and stalkers have been stopped from buying guns since the Brady Law was enacted. [Department of Justice, 3/15/00]

“Zero-Tolerance” for Guns In Schools

3,930 students were expelled from public schools for bringing a firearm to school in the 1997-98 school year under zero tolerance policies. [Final Report on State Implementation of the Gun-Free Schools Act, School Year 1997-98, Department of Education, 5/99]

Domestic Violence Hotline

More than 420,000 calls have been received by the nationwide, 24-hour domestic violence hotline President Clinton established. [Domestic Violence Hotline, 1/00]

Strengthening Families

Family & Medical Leave

Nearly 91 million workers are covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act -- 71 percent of the American labor force. Millions of Americans have taken job-protected leave. [Five Years of Success: Report on FMLA, Department of Labor, 8/98 (updated number provided 7/99)]

Welfare to Work

7.2 million fewer people are receiving welfare benefits today than in 1993, a 51 percent decrease. The welfare rolls are the smallest since 1969, and millions of Americans have moved from welfare to work -- 1.3 million in 1998 alone. The percentage of adults still on welfare who were working reached 27 percent in 1998, a nearly fourfold increase since 1992. [HHS Administration for Children and Families, 12/4/99]

Head Start

Head Start will reach a total of 880,000 children in FY 2000 and will serve one million children and their families by the year 2002. The President and Vice President have expanded Head Start funding by 90 percent since 1993. [Head Start Fact Sheet; Administration of Children and Families, HHS; 1/99]

Child Care

Child care funding has more than doubled under the Clinton-Gore Administration, helping parents pay for the care of 1.75 million children and the1996 welfare reform law increased child care funding by $4 billion over six years to provide child care assistance to families moving from welfare to work. [FY 2001 Budget, p. 59]

Child Poverty

The child poverty rate has dropped from 22.7 percent in 1993 to 18.9 percent in 1998 -- the biggest five-year drop in nearly 30 years, and the first time the childhood poverty rate dropped below 20 percent since 1980. [Poverty in the United States: 1998, Bureau of the Census, 9/99]

Teen Pregnancy

The teen birth rate has fallen seven years in a row, by 18 percent from 1991 to 1998 . The teen pregnancy rate is now the lowest rate on record. [Centers for Disease Control, National Vital Statistics Report, 10/99]

Child Abuse

Child abuse has declined for five years in a row, down approximately 11 percent from a record 1,018,692 in 1993. [HHS Press Release, 4/10/99]

Child Support

Collections Federal and state child support programs broke new records in 1999, collecting $15.5 billion -- nearly double the amount collected in 1992. The number of paternities established rose to nearly 1.5 million in 1998 – more than triple the number from 516,000 in 1992. The number of child support cases with collections rose 59 percent, from 2.8 million 1992 to 4.5 million in 1998. [Department of Health and Human Services]

Improving Our Nation's Health

Patients’ Bill of Rights

85 million people covered by Federal health plans, and Medicare and Medicaid, received patient protections -- protections included in the President’s Patients’ Bill of Rights -- thanks to executive action taken by President Clinton. [FY 2000 Budget, p. 85]

Health Insurance Reform

As many as 25 million people will benefit from the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which helps millions of Americans who move from one job to another, are self-employed, or have pre-existing medical conditions keep their health insurance. [FY 2000 Budget, p. 83]

Eliminating Fraud

Convictions on health care fraud have gone up a full 410 percent, saving more than $50 billion in health care claims thanks to the Clinton-Gore Administration's efforts to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse. Since 1993, the Clinton-Gore Administration has assigned more federal prosecutors and FBI agents to fight health care fraud than ever before. [Domestic Policy Committee]

Children’s Health Care

As many as 5 million more children will receive health insurance under President Clinton’s State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Already 2 million uninsured children have enrolled in SCHIP, doubling the program's enrollment in less than a year. In October 1999, President Clinton announced new outreach initiatives to enroll millions of uninsured, eligible children. [White House Fact Sheet, 1/11/00]

Infant Mortality

There has been a 15.2 percent decrease in the infant mortality rate -- to the lowest level in history -- from 8.5 in 1992 to 7.2 in 1997. [America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, NIH, 7/8/99]

Immunization

Childhood immunization coverage rates in 1998 were the highest ever recorded. Over 90 percent of America’s toddlers received the most critical doses of each of the routinely recommended vaccines in 1996, 1997, and again in 1998 -- surpassing the President’s childhood vaccination goal. Because childhood vaccination levels in the United States are at an all-time high, disease and death from diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella and Hib are at or near record lows. There was only one reported case of diphtheria, 100 reported cases of measles, and no reported cases of wild poliovirus for 1998. [HHS Fact Sheet, 9/23/99; HHS Fact Sheet 12/31/99]

WIC

7.3 million women, infants, and children -- 1.4 million more than in 1993 -- have access to health care, supplemental foods, nutrition and breastfeeding education thanks to WIC. [Food and Nutrition Service, USDA, 9/99]

Biomedical Research

Two years ago, the President called for an increase of almost 50 percent over 5 years in the NIH budget as part of his Research for America Fund. Since then, the NIH budget has increased by over $4.3 billion and with the funding proposed by the President this year, the Administration will be one year ahead of schedule in reaching the 50 percent goal. This funding has enabled scientists to pursue a wide range of cutting edge research from cancer to AIDS, and accelerated the pace of genetic mapping, leading to a more rapid discovery of ways to prevent and treat diseases. [Domestic Policy Council]

Food Safety

Two years after President Clinton's meat and poultry inspection system went into place, the number of Americans stricken by the most common forms of foodborne illness has declined by almost 20 percent. Overall, 855,000 fewer Americans became ill from bacteria in their food in 1999 than two years before. [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]

Government That Works Better

Less Regulation

16,000 pages of Federal regulations have been eliminated by President Clinton and Vice President Gore as part of the Vice President’s National Performance Review. [Accomplishments fact sheet, National Performance Review]

Smaller Government

There are 375,000 fewer employees in the Federal government workforce than in 1993 -- giving us the smallest Federal workforce since the Kennedy Administration. [Budget of the U.S. Government FY 2000, “Historical Tables” (table 17.1); Budget of the U.S. Government FY 2000, “Analytical Perspectives,” (table 10-1) p. 248]

Lower Government

At 18.7 percent, Federal Government spending as a share of the
Spending Gross Domestic Product is at its lowest level since 1974. [The FY 1999 Historical Tables of the Budget (table 1.2); Treasury Department, FY99 Final Monthly Treasury Statement]

Motor Voter

28 million new voters registered to vote -- and voting was made easier for millions more Americans -- since 1995 because of the National Voter Registration Act. [FEC, 6/99; FEC, 6/97]

Environment

Toxic Waste Sites

Completed cleanup at 525 Superfund sites, more than three times as many as completed in the previous twelve years. Cleanup of 91 percent of all sites either completed or in progress. The Clinton-Gore Administration has also leveraged nearly $1 billion in private sector investment for brownfields redevelopment.

National Parks

The National Park System has increased by about 4.56 million acres during the Clinton-Gore Administration. The President has also created 13 new national park areas and has significantly expanded others, like Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks in California. [Protecting Our National Treasures, Department of Interior]

Preserving Our National Treasures

Protected tens of millions of acres, from the red rock canyons of Utah to the Florida Everglades. Reached historic agreements to protect Yellowstone from mining and save the ancient redwoods of California’s Headwaters Forest. [Protecting Our National Treasures, Department of Interior]

Safe Drinking Water

Since 1993, 17.5 million more Americans receive drinking water that meets all federal health standards. Ninety-one percent of America’s tap water from community drinking water systems meets all federal standards. [Environmental Protection Agency, Summary of the 2001 Budget, p. 33]

Clean Air

Since 1993, the number of Americans living in communities that meet federal air quality standards has grown by 43 million. [White House, Council on Environmental Quality, 5/1/99]

Encouraging Recycling

Americans recycle 22 million tons more material than in 1992 -- thanks to that effort, the United States will discard less waste in 2000 than in 1992. We recycle more of our municipal waste than any major country in the world. [White House, Council on Environmental Quality]

April 2000