Political Memes

To compare - many of my friends are immigrants too (from the former Soviet Union) and grew up poor in the states. And they don’t understand why others who had more opportunities than them weren’t able to “make it”. They view being poor a choice and they don’t want to subsidize people who made the “wrong” choice.

ACA was a huge success in the millions of additional people with healthcare. This saved lives. Lots of lives.

The possibility of Universal Healthcare was dropped: this was not a goal of ACA. Most of us expected a follow up to ACA that would do that, but too many people voted for politicians fighting against it. Despite ACA being overwhelmingly popular, it hurt Dems in elections and they really haven’t had an opportunity to do much since

In theory you don't, in practice you do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_Bill_Clinton_administration

President Clinton oversaw a healthy economy during his tenure. The U.S. had strong economic growth (around 4% annually) and record job creation (22.7 million). He raised taxes on higher income taxpayers early in his first term and cut defense spending and welfare, which contributed to a rise in revenue and decline in spending relative to the size of the economy. These factors helped bring the United States federal budget into surplus from fiscal years 1998 to 2001

raising taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of Americans.[5] It also imposed a new energy tax on all Americans and subjected about a quarter of those receiving Social Security payments to higher taxes on their benefits.

The 28% rate for capital gains was lowered to 20%. The 15% rate was lowered to 10%. In 1980, a tax credit was put into place based on the number of individuals under the age of 17 in a household. In 1998, it was $400 per child and in 1999, it was raised to $500. This Act removed from taxation profits on the sale of a house of up to $500,000 for individuals who are married, and $250,000 for single individuals. Educational savings and retirement funds were given tax relief. Some of the expiring tax provisions were extended for selected businesses.

Clinton signed the bipartisan Financial Services Modernization Act or GLBA in 1999.[41] It allowed banks, insurance companies and investment houses to merge and thus repealed the Glass-Steagall Act which had been in place since 1932. It also prevented further regulation of risky financial derivatives. His deregulation of finance (both tacit and overt through GLBA) was criticized as a contributing factor to the Great Recession.[citation needed] While he disputes that claim, he expressed regret and conceded that in hindsight he would have vetoed the bill, mainly because it excluded risky financial derivatives from regulation, not because it removed the long-standing Glass-Steagall barrier between investment and depository banking. In his view, even if he had vetoed the bill, the Congress would have overridden the veto, as it had nearly unanimous support.[2]

What Clinton did was disadvantage income against capital gains further, thus preventing more people from the middle class and upper middle class to become rich through work, while making it easier for rich people to become even richer. Add to that the deregulation of banks so more "too big to fail" casino players could play in a more deregulated casino which then needed to be bailed out a few years later. By slashing and taxing social security benefits he also made it so that less people could lift themselves out of poverty, which would not only lead to more poverty but also increase spending long term as people kept relying on insufficient benefits instead of getting the means to gain self sustainability and subsequently contribute more to taxes than they needed in temporary aid.

tldr: Clinton fucked the poor and middle class and benefited the rich. He just was more clever about it.

And cutting the social safety net.