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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDid 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...)
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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:
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/
Cleita
(75,480 posts)Their triangulating with the conservative corporatists, and they were both involved, left a sour taste in my mouth.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)I learned bits and pieces here...but, I was very blind to Clinton's Triangulation until stuff that was posted here and there here on DU in the EARLY DAYS.
I thought that it was the RW that Brought Down the Clinton Presidency with the hideous STARR Commission...and the stuff with Limbaugh promoting some Senate or House Member STAGING some shooting of a Watermelon as to how Hillary shot Vince Foster or whatever else garbage the RW was throwing up against the Clintons.
I was as Star Struck over Bill and Hillary then...as I fear others are these days about their Successors. Bits and Pieces came forward but there was always some NEW OUTRAGE...so I kept trying to put pieces of a puzzle together. I somehow missed this PIECE... AND...to see that Obama picked the same Clinton People who tried to destroy SS for us in a post that went to DU Archives today, gave a link back to what was going on then and how Clinton colluded with the SAME PEOPLE that OBAMA put on his "Cat FOOD COMMISSION" was an eye-opener that I missed while I was so busy defending Clinton Legacy for so long into around 2003 or 04
that I was blinded.
WHY are the SAME CHARACTERS who tried to Destroy SS in Clinton Administration...still so Prominent in the Obama Administration? In fact one of Obama's first Commission Appointments was the "Bowles-Simpson Commission" to make Recommendations for "Entitlement Programs."
Cleita
(75,480 posts)They try to throw us a few bones now and then so that we don't try to eat them.
krawhitham
(4,634 posts)I judge her for being a DINO, she suppressed unions while working for Walmart and was a Goldwater girl
Cleita
(75,480 posts)Remember he said the country would get two for one when he was elected, so I'm sure she was on the same page as him. She also attended cabinet meetings.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)FOB and BCCI
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm
Oh. And Friend Of Bush.
Nite Owl
(11,303 posts)There were quite a few issues I had to break ranks with Clinton though like NAFTA and Glass Steigle.
When Obama started his first term I knew we were in trouble with his appointments especially Rahm Emmanuel. Not a liberal in sight.
This whole thing with SShas been in the works for a l o n g time.
Sometimes I get the feeling that it is all planned out and what we see is no more than theatre. The actors all know the script.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)De Reg, NAFTA, etc. was my first clue...but then all that other stuff started and like Obama supporters, these days, I tried to "wish away the first sign" with NAFTA and then the stuff started against Hillary,(health care reform) and the crazy stuff with Ken Starr and then Monica. So the whole Administration was FILLED WITH Scandal and RW and it was hard to see the Forest for the Trees!
But, this article revealing that Obama put in so many of the Same People as Clinton did...to Destroy SS by starting with Chained CPI which will penalize Seniors and (first step to "Privatize" which will destroy it) put in another piece of the puzzle that was almost complete about what went on then. And the article listing the SAME FOLKS Obama Put into his Commission really was an incredible piece of "History Repeating Itself."
So...yeah...I'm like you.. This was an eye opener as to "similarities" and I think there are many DU'ers like you and myself...who were upset with a lot of what Clinton did...but to see it come back and have the names and documentation about how Clinton's "Reform" of entitlements is the same as Obama's was frustrating to read in detail the way it's laid out in that book.
Nite Owl
(11,303 posts)'reform'. How could I forget that. I was really upset about that one.
Seeing all this and what is happening now is like watching a puzzle all fall into place. There it is and can't deny it. It is painful.
DURHAM D
(32,595 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)Be thankful to Jane Hamsher...she was First to Expose the "Cat Food Commission."
Also the "New America Foundation" (Democratic) did a Roundtable Discussion with the Author. It's on You Tube if you want to Google it.
Nevertheless Clinton did do this and there are You Tubes of him going after "Entitlements" (THAT WE AND YOU PAY FOR) in the You Tubes...if you Google those, also.
This article is for REAL...and that's why Rahm and others sent folks after Jane... It's easy to find many articles about this...but, that it didn't get much media exposure... Well think about WHO OWNS the MSM...and how much influence the Petersen Foundation (which Bill Clinton has spoken for and been quoted as Praising) NOW has on Legislation after Supremes gave us "Citizens United" which means Corporations (Conglomerate Business Organizations) can control our Legislative Agenda and FUND our US ELECTIONS.
So take your "Hamster Crap" Elsewhere.
DURHAM D
(32,595 posts)You posted this drivel so deal with it.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)denial bubble. Why are you even here if you cant stand the truth? Why dont you put her on ignore???
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)DURHAM D
(32,595 posts)Beacool
(30,244 posts)I wouldn't rust Gingrich if he said that the sun rises in the morning.