Concordance: Black Lawmaking in the U.S. Congress from Carter to Obama

4. President Clinton and the New CBC

71 Chapter 4 President Clinton and the New CBC We want a first-class partnership. —CBC chairman Kweisi Mfume, referring to the CBC’s policymaking role with President Clinton The 1992 elections brought a Democrat back to the White House after a long hiatus of twelve years. Arkansas governor Bill Clinton defeated President George H. W. Bush in his reelection bid. The 1992 elections also increased Black political power in the U.S. Congress significantly, as 13 new Black lawmakers were elected along with the first Black female U.S. Senator , Carol Moseley Braun. This new Democratic president, coupled with the enhanced political power of African Americans in the U.S. Congress, in theory could have been used to restore the nation’s domestic policies that had been assaulted during the Reagan-Bush years. Clinton, however, was a “New Democrat,” one who had a distinctive policy agenda that combined conservative objectives with liberal ones. He sought comprehensive health insurance coverage along with conservative welfare reform that ended the federal entitlement to welfare for families in need. He favored increased spending on crime prevention along with “three strikes” legislation that mandated life imprisonment for those convicted of a third felony. As president, Bill Clinton was enormously popular among Black voters (Tate 1994). He criticized Black radicalism, which some attributed to Jesse Jackson’s activism within the Democratic Party, by denouncing Sister Souljah. Sister Souljah had made a racially insensitive statement about Whites in an interview about the 1992 Los Angeles riot. However, during the campaign, he promised Blacks that he would work to heal racial divi- 72 • concordance sions in the nation. He stated: “My whole career, my whole campaign, is about unity, not division” (Ayres 1992). Divisions on racial issues still were great in this country. Clinton delicately campaigned in soft support of affirmative action in 1992 by proclaiming “Mend it, don’t end it.” Ironically, as much as surveys show that the vast majority of Whites don’t like affirmative action programs, one 1995 poll revealed only 17 percent of Whites, Latinos,Asians, and other minorities responded that “it is time to eliminate all affirmative action programs for minorities and women” (Tate 2010). Thus, this moderate president spoke to Black voters while attempting to maintain a broad base of support within the White community. In 1997, President Clinton established a panel for a “national conversation on race” that was chaired the Black historian John Hope Franklin (Barker, Jones, and Tate 1999). Several changes worked especially in President Clinton’s favor. Black public opinion had grown more moderate and economic conditions within the Black community had improved. A majority of Blacks favored Clinton ’s welfare reform initiative that ended the federal guarantee of a welfare check for families in poverty. Majorities of Blacks also liked “three strikes” legislation, which laid down mandatory sentences of life for a third felony conviction (Tate 2010). Black unemployment and poverty rates fell sharply during the 1990s. In 1970, one-third of all Black families were in poverty. By 2001, roughly 23 percent of Black families resided below the poverty line. Figure 6 shows the national poverty rate and the Black poverty rate over time. Beginning in 1994, when the Black family poverty rate fell below 30 percent, there are steady decreases. In 1997, the percentage drops to 25.5 percent and by 2000 fell to 21.2 percent. The percentage of Black families in poverty increased slightly in 2002 through 2006, but remains lower than the rate during the 1980s when one-third of all Black families were in poverty. Moreover, the political style of the CBC was strikingly different than it was the last time a Democrat sat in the White House. The Caucus was less adversarial and more cooperative. Several reasons explain this change in style. First, with the addition of 13 Black lawmakers to the House, one could almost talk about a new CBC, one consisting of a new generation of Black legislators along with the old guard. David T. Canon (1999) documents the changes in the political style of Black lawmakers after the new post-1990s districts were constructed. The old guard did not back President Clinton as often as the new Black House members. But they were not as openly critical of Clinton as they had been of Carter. Conyers, for example, pledged support to Clinton especially in the aftermath of the Re- President Clinton and the...