498 CHApTEr 22 | a ConSerVatiVe tenor | period nine 1980 to the present TopIC^ I^ |^ an end to the twentieth Century^499499
most sophisticated technology. My mother is a nurse. I grew up around hospitals.
Doctors and nurses were the first professional people I ever knew or learned to
look up to. They are what is right with this health care system. But we also know
that we can no longer afford to continue to ignore what is wrong.
Millions of Americans are just a pink slip away from losing their health insur-
ance and one serious illness away from losing all their savings. Millions more are
locked into the jobs they have now just because they or someone in their family
has once been sick and they have what is called the preexisting condition. And on
any given day, over 37 million Americans, most of them working people and their
little children, have no health insurance at all....William J. Clinton, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, William J. Clinton:
1993, Book 2, August 1 to December 31, 1993 (Washington, DC: Government Printing
Office, 1994), 1557.prACTICIng Historical Thinking
Identify: What are Clinton’s reasons for wanting to improve health care?
Analyze: Compare Clinton’s tone with Jimmy Carter’s (Doc. 22.1) and with Ronald
Reagan’s (Docs. 22.4 and 22.5). How does each frame his tone to enforce an argument?
Evaluate: To what extent does Clinton’s story represent the ideology espoused by
Francis Fukuyama in Document 22.6?Document 22.8 rePuBliCan Party, Contract with america
1994In the 1994 midterm election, the Republican Party acquired a majority in the United
States House of Representatives for the first time since 1952. The House Republican vic-
tory was partially orchestrated by Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who offered
a “Contract with America” as a unified congressional conservative platform for economic
and social reforms. The contract included a vow to bring a collection of related bills to the
House floor for debate within the first hundred days of the 104th Congress with a hope to
“restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives.”- THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: A balanced budget/tax limitation
amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an
out-of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget con-
straints as families and businesses.
2. THE TAKING BACK OUR STREETS ACT: An anti-crime package includ-
ing stronger truth-in-sentencing, “good faith” exclusionary rule exemptions,
effective death penalty provisions, and cuts in social spending from this summer’s
“crime” bill to fund prison construction and additional law enforcement to keep
people secure in their neighborhoods and kids safe in their schools.
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