This Strikes Us …

Hillary Clinton – A Woman of Substance – Part 2

“I have to confess that I didn’t see the special qualities that she had. But when she came over to give her first brief to a number of senators on health care, it was a tour de force. And I thought to myself, ‘How did you get so attracted to this Bill Clinton guy that you missed Hillary Rodham Clinton.” Sen. Charles Robb
 

In 1992, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States, defeating incumbent President George H.W. Bush. Hillary Clinton joined him in the White House in an arrangement that the incoming president had called, during and after the campaign, getting “two for the price of one.” It was an arrangement that was immediately apparent.

Hillary established an office in the West Wing of the White House – the first time a first lady had done so – in order to be an integral part of the administration in matters of appointments and policy.

The first lady was appointed to head the President’s Task Force on National Health Care Insurance and set about to bring universal health care to America. It was a massive undertaking that required her to coordinate the activities of a number of disparate groups, gain an encyclopedic knowledge of health care information and policy and convince Congress and the American people that it was time for a comprehensive universal health care plan.

Hillary Clinton had no problem with the first two parts of that task. Congress, however, was a different matter.  The 1,342-page bill, the “Health Security Act,” was a massive command and control system that would have governed virtually every aspect of the delivery and financing of health care. Congress rejected the plan.
 

The Clintons – new to the ways of Washington, inexperienced in dealing with Congress, the insurance and health care industries and obstructed by Republicans who could not have wanted a Democrat to succeed in such a project under any circumstances – never really had a chance to pass such legislation.
 

While the passage of a universal health care act would have to wait until another Democratic president took office 16 years later, the failure of that initial attempt was not the end of Hillary’s efforts to make access to health care more convenient and more affordable to more Americans. She worked with members of Congress – Edward Kennedy (Dem. Mass) and Orrin Hatch (Rep. Utah) – to pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the largest expansion of taxpayer funded health insurance coverage for children since President Johnson’s Medicaid in 1965.
 

CHIP, which provides health insurance to eligible children from low-income families, had expanded to cover over two million children by the time the Clintons left the White House and had reached a coverage of 8.4 million children by 2015.

Hillary kept her focus on the well-being of women and children in numerous other ways as well. During a  trip to Beijing in 1995, Hillary addressed a women’s rights conference, after overcoming State Department resistance, and forcefully argued that “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.”

“Tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated. Even now, in the late 20^th century, the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed conflict. Women and children make up a large majority of the world’s refugees. And when women are excluded from the political process, they become even more vulnerable to abuse … it is time to break the silence. It is time … for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.”

Those words resonated around the world and became a key moment in the empowerment of women.

At the same time, Hillary expressed her concern for the well-being of children by writing a book titled It Takes a Village – the title taken from various African proverbs. The premise of the book is that groups and members of society – those outside of the immediate family – have a shared responsibility to successfully raise a child.

Hillary’s prescription for such success is a combination of government-driven social reforms coupled with traditional conservative values. The book was on the New York Times Best Seller list for 18 weeks and Hillary was ultimately awarded a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album.

Clinton was always involved in policy issues within the administration on matters affecting children, women and families. Along with Attorney General Janet Reno, Hillary helped to create the Office on Violence Against Women in the Department of Justice. In 1997 she led the effort to push through Congress the “Adoption and Safe Families Act” and in 1999, she was critical to the legislative success of the “Foster Care Independence Act,” which greatly increased federal funds for teenagers aging out of foster care.

In 2000, the Clintons were preparing to leave the White House and move to New York, primarily because a group of prominent New York Democrats had approached the first lady about running for the U.S. Senate there. She would be the first woman to serve the State of New York as senator and the first former first lady to seek elective office.

“Back in the fall of 1998, I asked Hillary Clinton if she would consider running for the Senate from New York state. I knew it would be a boon for New York, but I was as shocked as anyone when she actually decided to do it.” U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel  

Hillary Clinton – A Woman of Substance Part 1

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Revised: 08/16/18 14:12:40 -0700.

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Hillary Clinton – A Woman of Substance – Part 2

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