Bill Clinton on Families & Children President of the U.S., 1993-2001; Former Democratic Governor (AR)

Medical Leave Act made real difference in people's lives

Again and again, I heard stories from people who had decided to take advantage of the provisions of the FMLA and ended up having a truly life-altering experience. Often they would get emotional as they told me about the time they had spent being there for a close family member, or being at home with their wives and sharing a baby's first weeks of life in a way their fathers never experienced.

The FMLA was just one of the hundreds of programs enacted in the Clinton years that made a real, palpable difference in people's lives.

1990s: Doubled federal funding for child care

• Highest homeownership rate in history at 67.7 %
• Lowest poverty rate in 2 decades, down to 11.3 %
• Child poverty declined a record 28.7%
• Expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit, lifting 4.1 million out of poverty
• Created the FMLA, allowing nearly 9.1 million workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to deal with family medical crisis
• Doubled federal funding for child care
• Increased the hourly minimum wage for $4.25 to $5.15
• Created AmeriCorps, allowing 400,000 young people to serve their communities
• Largest investment in education in 30 years

A strong America requires strong community

Family and Medical Leave Act: pro-family & pro-work

New Initiatives to Collect more Child Support

Incentives for home ownership

[Accomplishments include]:
• Highest Homeownership Rate in History, 67.2% in the 2nd quarter of 2000.
• Lowering Interest Rates by Paying Off the National Debt.
• Record Levels of Homeownership Assistance via 1.3 million loans from the Federal Housing Administration.
• Helping Renters Buy Their First Home via homeownership vouchers for 50,000 families.
• Providing Incentives to Save for a Home via Individual Development Accounts, providing incentives through federal matching funds for low-income families to save for a first home, higher education, or to start a new business.

Parenthood makes you less self-absorbed

"Apart from the fact that it keeps civilization going--someone's got to do it-- I think the experience of putting someone else first, constantly in a way that is full of joy even in the tough times, makes you a better person, a fuller person, more whole. I mean, I can't imagine what my life would have been like if I'd never become a father. I'm certain that I will have been a better person, better husband, better governor, better president, for having been a father. Parenthood ties you to the rest of life in a way and makes you less self-absorbed."

No drive-through maternity; no drive-through mastectomy

Establish a national registry of sex offenders

Establishing a national registry would expand upon the state registries for sex offenders that were mandated by the Clinton Administration's 1994 Crime Bill.

Triple funding for battered women's shelters

• Violence Against Women Act. Provides new grants to bolster local law enforcement and prosecutors, and a multitude of victims' services: tripled funding for battered women's shelters; improved police and court response to domestic violence crimes; added lighting in public places; and required sex offenders to pay restitution.
• National Domestic Violence Hotline. Established this 24-hour hotline served (800-799-7233) to provide callers with immediate crisis information, counseling, and referrals. Operators offer information on domestic violence, emergency shelters, legal advocacy, assistance programs, and social services. The Hotline, which began operation in early 1996, has to date received more than 20,000 calls from victims of domestic violence. The issue of domestic violence cannot be fully addressed, Pres. Clinton stated, until the nation's "completely overburdened" 911 emergency number system is fixed.

Crack down on parents who avoid child support

STATUS: The Administration's child support enforcement program provides for the suspension of the deadbeat parent's driver's license, encourages states to adopt statewide new-hire reporting programs, and tracks delinquent parents across state lines. In its 1st national push to crack down on deadbeat parents, the Department of Justice filed 28 cases seeking over $1 million in overdue payments in Dec. 1994, and more than 200 cases are under review. Also, each of the 94 US attorneys has designated a child support enforcement coordinator, and prosecution guidelines have been developed to assist them in going after the most egregious violators.

Clinton's Work and Responsibility Act includes the toughest child support provisions ever. These provisions would double child support collections to $20 billion by 2000, and place more emphasis on the withholding of wages of those who do not regularly pay their child support.

Parents controlling what kids watch on TV is not censorship

I call on Congress to pass the requirement for a V-chip in TV sets so that parents can screen out programs they believe are inappropriate for their children. When parents control what their young children see, that is not censorship; that is enabling parents to assume more personal responsibility for their children's upbringing. And I urge them to do it.

To make the V-chip work, I challenge the broadcast industry to do what movies have done, to identify your program in ways that help parents to protect their children. And I invite the leaders of major media corporations in the entertainment industry to come to the White House next month to work with us in a positive way on concrete ways to improve what our children see on television. I am ready to work with you.

Get tough on youth violence and gangs

All our efforts are designed to rescue kids in trouble. At night, children belong at home, under a curfew, if necessary. During the day, they belong in school, not on the street. At any time, our children are our responsibility.

Favors parental choice in childcare & in education

They also parted company on the ABC child-care program, a proposal designed to encourage national standards, centralized service delivery, and credentialized care-givers. Hillary strongly supported the bill, which Bill opposed, and it was defeated in Congress in 1990. Bill Clinton's own Arkansas child-care bill, like his education reforms, includes elements of parental choice.

Give parents tools to balance work and family.

Strengthen America’s Families
While the steady reduction in the number of two-parent families of the last 40 years has slowed, more than one-third of our children still live in one- or no-parent families. There is a high correlation between a childhood spent with inadequate parental support and an adulthood spent in poverty or in prison.

To strengthen families, we must redouble efforts to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies, make work pay, eliminate tax policies that inadvertently penalize marriage, and require absent fathers to pay child support while offering them new opportunities to find work. Because every child needs the attention of at least one caring and competent adult, we should create an “extended family” of adult volunteer mentors.

Family breakdown is not the only challenge we face. As two-worker families have become the norm, harried parents have less time to spend on their most important job: raising their children. Moreover, parents and schools often find themselves contending with sex- and violence-saturated messages coming from an all-pervasive mass entertainment media.

We should continue public efforts to give parents tools to balance work and family and shield their children from harmful outside influences. For example, we should encourage employers to adopt family-friendly policies and practices such as parental leave, flex-time, and telecommuting. Public officials should speak out about violence in our culture and should press the entertainment media to adopt self-policing codes aimed at protecting children.

Goals for 2010
• Cut the rate of out-of-wedlock births in half.
• Recruit a million mentors for disadvantaged children without two parents.
• Provide affordable after-school programs at every public school.
• Make every workplace “family-friendly.”
• Promote policies that help parents shield their children from violence and sex in entertainment products.