BY NAOMI CRAINE
Just a few days after President William Clinton signed a package of bipartisan laws undercutting the basic social gains the working class has won over decades, unity was the theme as Democrats gathered for their convention in Chicago. Clinton's campaign was strengthened as a number of prominent Democrats, including Mario Cuomo and Jesse Jackson, promoted the arguments for "lesser-evilism" in calling for the president's reelection. The Democrats continue to face a challenge from the Republican contender, Robert Dole.

"Some of the president's choices have been more controversial than others," said former New York governor Cuomo in his speech the second night of the convention, August 27. "The welfare reform bill has been one of the most difficult. Many of us, and I among them, believe that the risk to children was too great to justify the action of signing that bill, no matter what its political benefits." The prominent liberal stated that he had spoken to Clinton and that he "is confident he can avert this risk by further legislation before children are actually harmed."

"We should all hope and pray that the president is right," Cuomo continued. "But we should do something more than hope and pray.... We need to give the president the strength of a Democratic Congress."

Speaking right before Cuomo, Jesse Jackson likewise called for party unity. He criticized Clinton's decision to sign the welfare bill, saying he and National Organization for Women president Patricia Ireland "even picketed the White House." Nevertheless, he said, Clinton "deserves four more years."

Sen. Daniel Moynihan told New York delegates at the convention not to expect a Democratic Congress to change the legislation. "It won't be reversed," he declared. "So we better learn to live with what is ahead of us. And it is going to be hell."

Unambiguously setting the framework for the Democratic convention, Clinton put his signature to legislation ending a piece of the 1935 Social Security Act, on August 22, days before the gathering opened in Chicago. The "welfare bill" ends Aid for Families with Dependent Children and sharply restricts eligibility for the Supplemental Security Income and food stamp programs. Earlier in the week he signed a so-called health reform bill that seeks to shift more responsibility for medical care onto individual workers, as well as legislation raising the minimum wage to $5.15 an hour over the next year. These measures were adopted as a package supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

In California, Republican governor Peter Wilson seized on the anti-immigrant provisions in the welfare law as justification to immediately sign an executive order barring undocumented immigrants from access to everything from public housing to prenatal care programs. A state ballot referendum aimed at doing this, Proposition 187, was passed in 1994, but its implementation has up to now been blocked by a court order.

The federal law allows states to extend aid to undocumented immigrants only by enacting a new state law "which affirmatively provides for such eligibility." In addition, the law gives states the option to cut off Medicaid coverage to most legal immigrants, a provision Wilson has previously said he supports.

Program for limits on health care
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the president's wife, addressed the convention to bolster the administration's social policies in a speech heavy on "family values." She praised the new health bill and laid out a program of legislation that, under the guise of helping working people, would codify limits on health care and attack the principle of overtime pay.

She promoted as a radical-sounding measure a new bill "that would prohibit the practice of forcing mothers and babies to leave the hospital in less than 48 hours" after birth, and called for another to help "unemployed Americans and their children keep health insurance for six months after losing their jobs." Such legislation would for the first time set time frames on these rights.

Hillary Clinton also pointed to a proposed "flex-time bill that would give parents the option to take overtime pay either in extra income or in extra time off depending on whichever is best for your family." The principle of extra pay for overtime work was an essential component of the labor movement's fight for the eight-hour day, which would be undercut by such a measure.

The line up at the Democratic Party convention was heavy on "law and order" and "family values," as Clinton pressed forward the ideological underpinnings of the bipartisan offensive.

The first night's speakers included a Chicago cop who had been shot, as well as Sarah and James Brady, major promoters of gun control laws. James Brady was an aide to Ronald Reagan who was shot during an assassination attempt on the former president. In his campaign stops on the way to the convention, Clinton promoted his administration's moves to increase the number of cops on the streets, and pledged to continue this course. Right before the convention the president announced plans to create a national FBI database of those convicted of "sex offenses."

Election campaign heats up
Clinton went into this convention with the Dole campaign gaining momentum. With the nomination of Jack Kemp as his running mate just before the Republican convention, Dole has so far succeeded in making economic growth a central issue in the election. When Clinton signed the welfare bill, Dole described it as similar to "my welfare reform proposal." He then proceeded to portray the Clinton administration as representing the current situation of economic stagnation, and the Dole-Kemp ticket as the promoters of more rapid growth and the protectors of Social Security.

"The Democratic Party has opposed everything we want to do," vice-presidential nominee Kemp told a rally in Watertown, South Dakota, August 24. "They are the party of the status quo; we are the party of change." Kemp's revitalization of the Dole presidential bid is precisely what he had been selected to do.

A July 23 "policy forum" hosted by Republican Congressional leaders, where former senator Kemp played a prominent role, foreshadowed his nomination. The Financial Times commented that the politicians there "feel that [Dole's] only hope of averting a landslide defeat in November, which could even see the Democrats regain control of Congress, lies in announcing an eye- catching economic growth package, including a substantial cut in tax rates." Kemp has long been an advocate of such moves, as well as schemes like a flat tax and return to the gold standard.

When Dole's running mate speaks now, he stands behind a podium that reads, "15 Percent = Jobs," referring to their vow to spur growth by cutting tax rates 15 percent.

While completely supporting the actual attacks on the foundations of the gains working people have fought for, Dole presents himself as a defender of Social Security. "We're going to balance the budget while cutting taxes," he said during a campaign stop in New Jersey. "And while we do this, we'll do this while preserving and strengthening Social Security and Medicare. Don't be scared by all the ads that are going to be coming at you from the Clinton campaign. They've got a lot of money."

When he addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars August 20, Dole also promised not to touch veterans' benefits, though an aide quickly explained the candidate meant they wouldn't be cut disproportionately to other budget items.

The Republican contenders are also trying to get more votes from Blacks. Dole and Kemp both addressed the National Association of Black Journalists August 23, calling for what they termed "a new civil rights agenda." The presidential candidate said he "missed an opportunity" by not attending the convention of the NAACP earlier this year. "Our candidate for President in 1964, Barry Goldwater, missed an opportunity by opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act," he added.

Dole spoke said he supported "aggressive, determined and persistent recruitment of minorities and women by business, government, and universities," but was against affirmative action "quotas and preferences and set-asides." He also said he did not support a plank in the platform adopted at the Republican convention that calls for ending automatic citizenship for children of immigrants who are born in the United States.

Meanwhile, Kemp appeared before an audience in the Black community of South-Central Los Angeles August 28, and declared, "This is not the Grand Old Party. This is a Grand New Party.... It's the Grand Opportunity Party.... Keep your eyes open, keep your ears open, keep your heart open to the possibility that if both parties are competing for every vote, it will be better for the Black community, the Hispanic community, the inner city community."

Since Clinton's signing of the recent social bills and the surge of the Dole-Kemp ticket, many who call themselves socialists have deepened their efforts to back Clinton. The People's Weekly World, newspaper of the Communist Party USA ran a front-page article by the party's chairman, Gus Hall, describing the Republican convention as a "four-day ultra-right ideological crusade" gathering with a "whiff of fascism." Actually both ultrarightist Patrick Buchanan and the Republican congressmen around Newt Gingrich were forced to take a back seat at the event.

Welfare bill wedge against social gains
Despite the protests by some prominent Democratic Party liberals, Clinton's signature on the welfare bill was simply what he had promised to do in his 1992 election campaign and earlier. During his term in office, the president signed waivers for 41 governors to restructure their state welfare systems.

The act ends most federal funding for welfare programs, instead turning over block grants to state governments to use within strict guidelines. These include limiting benefits to no more than five years for most workers forced to rely on welfare, and denying aid to immigrants in most cases, even those with legal documents. Childless workers who are unemployed will be allowed to receive food stamps for only three months in any three-year period. The Supplemental Security Income program for children will be cut, denying benefits to an estimated 315,000 disabled children over the next six years.

The welfare act also stipulates an increase in the already humiliating degree of means testing and intrusion into individuals' lives by the government. Women will be required to identify the father of their children, or see their benefits cut by at least 25 percent. For noncitizens who still may be allowed to receive some form of aid, their sponsors' income will be counted against their eligibility. Those who have been convicted of a drug felony will be ineligible for cash benefits.

Reflecting the views of some top officials of women's and civil rights organizations, National Organization for Women president Patricia Ireland told the Nation magazine she was "bitterly disappointed" that Clinton signed the bill. "I will not lift a finger to campaign for him," she declared. However, "I want Bill Clinton to win," she added. "He is head and shoulders above Bob Dole."

Health care for those who can pay
The health bill - introduced in Congress by Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy and Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum and approved overwhelmingly in Congress - has been touted as a measure that would give at least a little more security to workers in need of medical care. Its main provisions, however, reinforce the idea of health care as an individual responsibility, not a social right.

The most publicized aspect of the legislation is so-called portable health insurance coverage for people who change jobs. There are a lot of ifs, though. If a worker has health insurance and changes jobs, the insurance company will be obligated to offer him or her an individual policy. There are no regulations on what the company can charge for this policy however. And the guarantee doesn't apply at all to the more than 40 million people who don't have health coverage to begin with.

Another major element is an "experiment" under which 750,000 people will buy catastrophic health insurance and set up tax- free individual accounts to cover routine medical expenses instead of buying into traditional health insurance plans. Such a plan can only benefit those who are in relatively good health and have thousands of dollars to pour into the savings accounts.

Furthermore, this measure comes in the context of bipartisan probes toward the privatization of Medicare and Social Security. A bipartisan Advisory Council on Social Security, appointed by the Clinton administration two years ago, is supposed to issue a report soon suggesting three options, all of which include putting hundreds of billions of dollars in Social Security taxes into the stock market. Two of the three plans would have individuals invest some or all of their social security taxes directly in individual accounts. This is the opposite of the conquest of the labor movement codified in the Social Security Act - of some measure of social entitlements as a right to all.

Dole's top Social Security advisor, Carolyn Weaver, is one of the members of this panel. She compared the proposal to the "privatization" of the social security system in Chile, which was carried out under the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. There "ordinary working men and women in huge, huge numbers have taken on that risk, and they're not at all terrified," she declared. A similar probe against Medicare was part of a bill vetoed by Clinton last year.

While the U.S. rulers are nowhere near carrying out a "Chileanization" of Social Security and Medicare, the new health bill is part of laying the political foundations for doing so.

The third piece of legislation signed by Clinton was a bill raising the minimum wage by 90 cents an hour over a year's time. This will be the first minimum wage raise in more than five years.

When the first 50 cents of the raise goes into effect in September, it will bring the minimum wage up from 35 percent of the average manufacturing wage to about 40 percent. This is still extremely low, considering that throughout the 1960s the minimum was at least 50 percent of average wages, and in the 1970s it hovered around 45 percent.

Employers are allowed to exempt whole categories of workers from the new minimum wage as well. Employers will be allowed to pay $4.25 an hour to youth under 20 for the first 90 days on the job. And workers who receive tips will still see a minimum wage of just $2.13 an hour, unless they can show they don't collect enough gratuities to bring them up to the new wage.

Capitalists' safety valve
Ross Perot, the billionaire who took 19 percent of the vote in the 1992 presidential race, announced August 18 he's in the running again. This year Perot will be the candidate of the Reform Party, which he organized following his last campaign, after a noncontest with former Colorado governor Richard Lamm for the party's nomination.

Perot's campaign has been pretty muted so far. He received a lukewarm response at the convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. One of his main points of appeal is that he presents himself as an alternative to the two parties, though his right- wing chauvinist rhetoric is entirely in the framework of defending the capitalist system. Clinton and Dole are "bought and paid for by these companies who want to take the jobs out of the U.S.A. and take it over to child labor in Thailand, make tennis shoes for $5, pay 22 cents to ship them across the Pacific, sell them to our kids for 150 bucks and they kill one another on the street to get them," Perot told the veterans. "Is that what you fought for?" Ralph Nader also officially accepted nomination for president, as the candidate of the Green Party, though he says he will not join the party or run on its platform. His bourgeois reformist campaign is focused on nationalist opposition to "multinational corporations" and trade agreements such as NAFTA and GATT. In an interview in the July/August issue of Mother Jones magazine, Nader described the role he sees for his campaign. "Historically, the two parties have always been nudged into better directions by third and fourth parties, but right now we have a two-party convergence - one might call it a collaboration or a conspiracy - against the broader political wishes of the American people. The difference between the two parties continually narrows and moves toward being indentured to big business."

- N.C.  
 
 
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