Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton both lay claim to the 1990s record of balanced budgets. Newt, Clinton battle over '90s legacy

Newt Gingrich is running for president on a dazzling record of success in the 1990s — a record that encompasses a booming economy, balanced budgets and a historic welfare reform law.

It just so happens there’s someone else who lays claim to that record: Bill Clinton.


Now, as the former House speaker — whose rocky relationship with Clinton when both were in office is the stuff of legend — steals some of the ex-president’s thunder and touts the ’90s as a Newt Gingrich production, former Clinton aides are crying foul.

“Newt Gingrich running on President Clinton’s record is like the coal delivery man stealing Santa’s sleigh,” said Joe Andrew, a former Democratic National Committee chairman from 1999 to 2001.

“The then-speaker was not only an impediment to the president’s policies that resulted in years of record-setting growth, the speaker nearly derailed the very constitutional system he swore to uphold and now claims as the basis of his radical policies. His only success is in making news — bad news.”

Longtime Clinton adviser James Carville was equally blunt and equally apoplectic about the claims of Gingrich, who was once lampooned on the cover of the New York Daily News as a “crybaby” for his response to a perceived Clinton snub.

“The idea that he had anything to do with balancing the budget is ludicrous,” he said, accusing Gingrich of doing little other than creating partisan obstructions at the time. “There’s so many people claiming paternity here. There’s only one that passes the DNA test and that’s the president.”

“Newt Gingrich trying to claim credit for the Clinton economy is like Johnny Ringo claiming credit for the gunfight at the OK Corral” was the take of former Clinton adviser Paul Begala. “He was involved in it — just on the losing side. Newt opposed President Clinton’s economic plan with all the bombast, bitterness and bloviating for which he’s famous. … What’s next? Is Newt going to claim credit for President Clinton’s weight loss?”

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond shot back, “It takes two. A bill is just a bill, but working with Newt, bills became welfare reform, tax cuts and balanced budgets.”

On the 2012 campaign trail, Gingrich has laid out what he describes as his signature accomplishments. They’re familiar bullet points from the boom-time 1990s — a balanced budget, the push for substantive welfare reform — that earned Clinton the enmity of the liberals in his party and a reputation as Triangulator-in-Chief, but also cemented his legacy.

Gingrich has painted those efforts as the achievements of a rosier era of bipartisanship, ignoring the government shutdown in which he played a pivotal role. He lauds his former adversary Clinton’s leadership style at campaign events and even credits the former president with playing a role in welfare reform — though he makes clear that he doesn’t consider it a starring one.

The 1990s jobs numbers have also been a key pitch for Gingrich: At one point, his campaign issued a press release outlining “The Obama-Gingrich jobs gap,” comparing the number of new jobs created under the president to the number created during the Gingrich speakership.

“When I was speaker, our budget was balanced and 11 million jobs were created,” he declared in a recent campaign ad.

Gingrich’s reliance on ’90s-era stats prompted mockery from Mitt Romney adviser Stuart Stevens in Sioux City recently, in the post-debate spin room.

“‘Look at all these great things that happened when President Clinton was there.’ … I’d say President Clinton had an awfully good night, listening to Newt Gingrich,” Stevens said. “I mean, Clinton’s the one who ran on ending welfare as we know it, not Newt Gingrich. He’s balanced budgets — these were all things that were done under President Clinton.”

Begala argued there’s proof that Gingrich was late to the budget-balancing party, and cited a quote from the former congressman in February 1993, saying, according to the Congressional Record, “We have all too many people in the Democratic administration who are talking about bigger government, bigger bureaucracy, more programs and higher taxes. I believe that that will in fact kill the current recovery and put us back in a recession. It might take 1½ or 2 years, but it will happen.”

“Gingrich was, of course, wrong,” Begala said. “Yes, he was around two years later to reap the benefits, including a balanced budget, but he not only didn’t plant the seeds, he was trying to kill the seedlings. In fact, the Clinton boom began before Newt became speaker. The American economy generated 6 million jobs in [President] Clinton’s first two years, interest rates dropped, the deficit shrank and productivity rose — all because of the Clinton policies that Gingrich opposed.”

Gingrich’s claims, however, ring true to some Republicans. New Hampshire Speaker of the House Bill O’Brien said it’s “revisionist historians” who want to credit Clinton for the healthier economic times of the 1990s.

“All Bill Clinton had to show before Newt Gingrich’s leadership in the House was a failed stimulus, a failed attempt at national health care … and of course, midnight basketball,” O’Brien said this week. “It was not Bill Clinton who crafted the welfare reform that lifted millions out of poverty. … It was only the dogged determination of Newt Gingrich’s House of Representatives.”

Ralph Reed, the head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition who, as head of the Christian Coalition, played a key role in helping Republicans take back the House in 1994, also defended Gingrich.

“Anytime you have those kinds of public policy victories, there’s obviously plenty of credit to go around,” said Reed, a longtime Gingrich friend who is neutral in the 2012 race. “But the fact is on the seminal achievements of the ’90s, especially a tax cut, balanced budget and welfare reform, Clinton was dragged kicking and screaming to the altar. And it was only after multiple vetoes, including vetoes that led to a government shutdown, that those changes in public policy were achieved.”

Told of Carville’s and Begala’s comments, Gingrich friend and Citizens United head David Bossie replied, “They need to go back and read the Constitution because the executive and legislative branches are separate but equal. … It’s so hypocritical that on one hand, [people say] Newt could not be the nominee because he’s so partisan, yet in a time when he and Bill Clinton were in charge, things actually got done.”

The Clinton record is one that has been leveraged before in a national election: Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Democratic primary campaign against Barack Obama. It did not meet with a good end then, a time when liberals in the party showed signs of Clinton fatigue and a desire for the hope and change that Obama talked about.

Stevens argued last week that Gingrich is going to encounter the same tough sell with voters that Hillary Clinton did.

“I just don’t think anybody likes to go back,” he said. “It’s not a rear-view mirror election. It’s always a windshield election. You want to look forward.”

Alexander Burns contributed to this report.

