Democrat William Jefferson Clinton ran on his record in his first presidential election debate against Republican candidate Robert Dole. The U.S. president bragged that in his four years in office he has done a good job at what the U.S. rulers are pushing to carry out - from cutting welfare entitlements and restricting the rights of immigrants to tightening Washington's squeeze on the Cuban revolution. Dole failed to boost his electoral prospects through the October 6 debate. Ross Perot, who is running as the Reform Party candidate, was iced out of the debate and remains in single digits in the polls.

From his opening statement to closing remarks, Clinton pointed several times to his support for measures expanding the death penalty and putting more cops on the street. The Clinton White House has "reduced more regulations, eliminated more programs than my two Republican predecessors," he declared.

In answer to Dole's characterization of Clinton as a liberal, the former Arkansas governor replied, "We've got 10 and a half million new jobs. We've got record numbers of those new small business. We made everyone of them eligible for a tax cut. We've got declining crime rates, two million fewer people on welfare rolls before the welfare reform passed, and a 50 percent increase in child support, and a crime bill with 60 death penalties, 100,000 police and the assault weapons ban.... Liberal, conservative, you put whatever label you want on it." He promised to keep pushing along this course in a second term.

As the candidates debated in Hartford, Connecticut, the bipartisan Welfare Reform Law signed by Clinton in August had just gone into effect. The law ends the 60-year-old federal Aid for Families with Dependent Children program, one of the social gains of the labor battles of the 1930s and the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s. Instead, the new law allows states to set their own policies on what type of assistance unemployed workers can receive. These benefits must be limited to no more than five years, and states are mandated to cut their welfare rolls in half by the year 2002, supposedly by getting recipients to work - usually for minimum wage. This accelerates a process already well advanced under the Clinton administration of state governments getting waivers to implement various schemes to reduce workers' entitlements.

In the debate, Dole said, "The sooner the better off we'll be if you put tougher sanctions on [Cuban president Fidel] Castro, not try to make it easier for him." Clinton touts anti-Castro credentials
Clinton responded by rattling off his credentials as the standard bearer of Washington's cold war against the Cuban revolution. "For the last four years we have worked hard to put more and more pressure on the Castro government," Clinton said. "In 1992, before I became president, Congress passed the Cuban Democracy Act and I enforced it vigorously." This year he signed the equally misnamed Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, or Helms-Burton bill, which further tightens Washington's economic noose on the Caribbean country.

When Dole said that Clinton "deployed more troops than any president in history around the world" and accused his Democratic opponent of undermining U.S. superiority by placing some of these troops under United Nations command, the president repeated his record confidently.

Clinton touted his many foreign policy "accomplishments" - the invasions of Haiti and Somalia, the 20,000 U.S. troops occupying Bosnia, Washington's role in attempting to quell national liberation struggles through the Mideast and Irish peace talks, and the recent bombing of Iraq. The president pointed out that U.S. forces in Somalia and elsewhere were under an "American commander." Dole gave a weak rebuttal, including the acknowledgment, "Eve supported the president on Bosnia."

The day after the debate, at a meeting with business executives in Stamford, Connecticut, Clinton released a list of more than 2,500 prominent businessmen who have endorsed his campaign nationwide.

In fact, Clinton has been leading a bipartisan government that has presided over an agenda on which there is broad agreement among the capitalist rulers - both in pushing the interests of U.S. big business abroad and at home. The latest piece of this assault on working people was the "omnibus spending bill" negotiated right before Congress adjourned and signed by Clinton Sept. 30.

The 1997 budget, which passed 370 to 37 in the House of Representatives and 84 to 15 in the Senate, includes major inroads against immigrants. It provides for doubling the Border Patrol over the next five years and adding 1,200 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) investigators. The legislation makes it easier to deport undocumented immigrants without legal recourse, and allots $12 million for a new fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Attacks on immigrants
A couple of the most blatant provisions in an earlier version of the bill were removed, such as denying public health care to legal immigrants with AIDS. But the new law includes stiffer requirements for U.S. residents sponsoring a relative's immigration. Sponsors will now be required to earn at least 125 percent of the poverty level and sign a legally binding affidavit of support for 10 years, or until the new immigrant becomes a U.S. citizen.

Under the spending bill, more money will go to the cops in the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Funding for the Pentagon is increased. And nearly $400 million is allotted for prison construction, including building a new high-security prison in the mid- Atlantic region. The budget also expands funding for undemocratic "antiterrorism" measures Clinton has been pushing. Demise of `Republican revolution'
"Spending pact marks major retreat by GOP leaders," was how the Wall Street Journal headlined its September 30 article on the budget pact. (GOP stands for Grand Old Party, a common reference to the Republican Party.) "104th Congress falls short of revolution," read the New York Times the same day. These news items reflected a common assessment in the big-business press that the so-called Republican revolution, led by House speaker Newton Gingrich, has fallen flat.

The budget "will secure the Republicans who ran the 104th Congress a place in history as one of the most frugal majorities ever to rule Capitol Hill, but leave them well short of the goal they set when they marched into Washington behind Speaker Newt Gingrich and his revolution," the Times article said. "Despite its cost-cutting zeal, the 104th Congress could not even dent the greatest redoubts of Federal spending - the huge entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security."

Besides the new spending bill, major legislation signed by Clinton over the last two years include the welfare act, which for the first time ended a piece of the 1935 Social Security Act; various packages curtailing rights of immigrants, including the "antiterrorism" bill; and the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of homosexual marriages and denies equal benefits to gay spouses. These measures have gone further in attacking labor's social gains than Clinton's Republican predecessors had even tried to achieve. But deeper cuts in social programs, such as education, that were part of the Republican "Contract with America," were not approved.

Clinton's "aids now say they expect to face a centrist Congress no matter which party prevails in November," said one article in the September 23 New York Times. The same article noted that Clinton has called for bipartisan commissions to make recommendations on Medicare and Social Security, and has "suggested that he is open to ideas like raising the retirement age or lowering the automatic cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security."

Days before the budget vote, the House ethics committee leveled new charges against Gingrich in a unanimous decision by the five Democrats and five Republicans on that body. The champion of the "Contract with America" was accused September 26 of misleading the panel's months-long investigation that he improperly used tax-exempt funds for political purposes.

At this point, Clinton appears poised to win the presidency by a sizable margin. But it is not clear that he is eager to see Democrats win a majority in Congress.

"The loss of Congress [in 1994] liberated Clinton to govern across party lines, claiming the common ground that unites a majority of America," wrote Susan Estrich in a syndicated column printed in the September 29 Washington Post. She pointed that the Clinton campaign is weighing carefully how much money to spend campaigning to pick votes for the national ticket compared to using funds in areas where it could help elect Democrats to Congress.  
 
 
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