by James Knapke
In the history of this great country only two United States Presidents have ever been impeached, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. While the two cases are greatly different it is staggering to think that a president in our lifetime has been impeached and not many people are aware of it. As I continued to read about the circumstances that put President Clinton in this situation it is hard to believe that someone of that much power and fame could get so caught up in lies and misleading an entire country.
In November of 1995 Bill Clinton allegedly began an affair with a 21-year-old intern, Monica Lewinsky. This affair lasted for over a year and a half before Lewinsky was eventually transferred to the Pentagon. Lewinsky then began to tell a coworker about her encounters with the President. President Clinton then performed a four-hour closed-door testimony in the Map Room to a grand jury. Clinton then became the first sitting president to testify to a grand jury that was investigating his personal behavior and conduct. On September 9th a report was released outlining a case for Clinton’s impeachment, including perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and abuse of power as well as details about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. On December 19th the House impeached Clinton.
Following this impeachment, on February 12th, the Senate conducted a vote on whether to remove President Clinton from his office. Clinton was then acquitted on both articles of impeachment, failing to gain a two-thirds majority vote.
I had never previously known much about the “Contract with America” before doing more research. In 1994 the Republicans won majority in Congress for the first time in close to forty years. These House Republicans put together a plan promising to reshape the government. This plan included decentralizing the federal authority, deregulation, tax cuts, reform of social programs, increased power for sates, and a balanced federal budget. The House Speaker Newt Gengrich was quoted as saying this plan was the most important political reform of the twentieth century. President Bill Clinton threatened to veto it and all of its most radical provisions.
This contract concentrated on three “core” ideas and opened by explaining them and how they apply to the American people, accountability, responsibility, and opportunity. The Contract with America also made two promises, “to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives”. It would work to change how Congress worked by requiring that lawmakers follow the same workplace laws as the rest of the country and strictly reforming the sluggish committee process in the House of Representatives. The second promise was that the House would vote on the ten key ideas of the contract within the first 100 days of the new Congress. These planks included ideas like, federal deficit, crime, welfare reform, middle-class tax cuts, family values, national defense, social security, federal deregulation, capital gains tax cuts, legal reform, civil law and product liability, and term limits for federal lawmakers.
As President Clinton had warned, his plan to veto far-ranging welfare and budgetary proposals slowed down this process. By November of 1995, this slow process of the Senate being cautious and Clinton threatening to veto the federal government was closed temporarily. Not out of all the proposals and ideas that had been discussed, three actually became a law. The Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, Mandates Reform Act of 1995, and the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 were put into law. After learning more about the Clinton impeachment and the Contract of America, it is clear to see that there was much uncertainty in the Presidential position during the early 90’s. I enjoyed doing more research on the Contract with America as I had not known much about it compared to the now infamous Monica Lewinsky story that everyone has hear of.
Sources:
"Contract with America." West's Encyclopedia of American Law. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. 7
Feb. 2016<http://www.encyclopedia.com.
"President Clinton Impeached." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 9 Mar. 2011. Web.
07 Feb. 2016.
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