politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
I didn't see anything in the Wikipedia article mentioning Clinton other than him signing the bill. But it does mention that the bill was introduced by a Republican senator and as you mentioned, had support from 97% of Congress which is well above the presidential veto threshold. Was this something specifically that Clinton was pushing for at the time that wasn't mentioned in the Wikipedia article? I was too young to be paying attention to politics in 96 so I don't know the historical context.
The historical context in this case is the date on the article, which is during the 2016 Democratic Primary. It's a tortured attempt to cast a bad light on Hillary Clinton by proxy by casting Bill Clinton in a bad light by blaming him for something that, as you've pointed out, would have happened without him.
It's the president's fault as much as anything is the president's fault during their administration. He didn't send it back, he didn't hinder its progress, he didn't sway congress to not support it. More over, it seems, he or his administration or whomever he friends were in congress didn't have the foresight to consider how damaging the law would be. The reason it got so much support was because Clinton was promoting it as if to be one of his greatest achievements; and because the telecom industry was lobbying the fuck out of Washington at the time and has only continued to grow larger and larger year over year thanks in part to the Citizen's United ruling (to be clear, not Clinton's fault). The internet likes to bash Reagan for the Fairness Doctrine but (1) that was limited to broadcast television and (2) they forget how impactful the Telecommunications Act was on consolidating media ownership.