APUSH Chapter 31 Flashcards
Contract with America
Platform proposing a sweeping reduction in the role and activities of the federal government on which many Republican candidates ran for Congress in 1994.
Welfare Reform Act
An act passed by Congress in 1996 that abolished the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) welfare program.
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
Agreement reached in 1993 by Canada, Mexico, & the United States to substantially reduce barriers to trade.
World Trade Organization (WTO)
International organization that sets standards and practices for global trade, and the focus of international protests over world economic policy in the late 1990s.
Bosnia
A nation in southeast Europe that split off from
Yugoslavia and became the site of a bitter civil & religious &, requiring NATO and U.S. intervention in the 1990s.
Kosovo
Province of Yugoslavia where the United States
and NATO intervened militarily in 1999 to protect ethnic Albanians from expulsion.
Internet
The system of interconnected computers and
servers that allows the exchange of e-mail, posting of Websites, and other means of instant communication.
Proposition 187
California legislation adopted by popular
vote in California in 1994, which cuts off state-funded health and education benefits to undocumented or illegal immigrants.
Multiculturalism
Movement that emphasized the unique
attributes and achievements of formerly marginal groups & recent immigrants.
USA PATRIOT Act
Federal legislation adopted in 2001 in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11 to
facilitate anti-terror actions by federal law enforcement & intelligence agencies.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Cabinet level department created by George Bush to manage U.S.
security.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Agency charged with providing assistance to communities hit by
natural disasters.
Clinton Presidency
- D majorities in the House & Senate
- “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”: allowed homosexual individuals to serve in the military as long as they remained closeted and did not disclose their sexual orientation.
- Many Americans couldn’t afford healthcare
- Appointed First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to battle heathcare
- Newt Gingrich proposed “Contract with America.”
- Clinton:
- Terminate the sixty-year-old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC)
- Welfare Reform Act
- Won the 1966 reelection vs. Robert Dole
-R majority worked with C to achieve a sweeping deregulation of the banking industry
- R managed to get sufficient bipartisan support to pass the controversial Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999.
- Repealed major sections of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 & allowed banking, securities, & insurance companies to combine and to consolidate services.
Clinton’s foreign policy
- C wanted to us foreign policy to promote humaniatiran goals
- 1989, Chinese government forces had brutally attacked pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
- Promoted free enterprise as a means to advance democracy in PRC, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, & Indonesia
- North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (1993)
- 1955: the World Trade Organization (WTO)
- October 1993: US took part in a UN mission to restore civil order in Somalia in East Africa.
- US & Somalia fights killed = US withdrawal of forces - Kosovo
- March 1999, C supported NATO air strikes = forced a settlement in June that depended on the installation of a huge number of peacekeeping troops.
- 1999 the Clinton Doctrine
- Acknowledged: US, as part of the global community, must share the blame for failing to intervene in Rwanda in 1994
- Important environmental issue the 1990s: climate change
- 1997 world summit held in Kyoto, US & Japan held out
Economy
Between 1991 & 2001, the U.S. economy experienced the longest continuous growth in modern American history
- Many jobs & low employment
- Gov spending down & economic growth increasing tax revenues
- Soaring stock market provided a great boost to C’s second term
- Downside of economic boom = income inequality
- Organized labor continue to decline such that by 2000 less than 15% of workers held union memberships
High Crimes & Misdemeanors
- Whitewater: Real estate deals involving both him and Hillary Rodham Clinton cause this scandal
- A former Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones, charged C with sexual harassment during his gubernatorial term.
- Fall of 1998: Starr instead delivered a report focusing on a sexual encounter with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky
- October 1998, the House of Representatives voted to open an inquiry into possible grounds for impeachment.
-December 19, 1998, the House voted, strictly along party lines, to impeach the president.
- In Senate, R lacked a 2/3 vote
- February 12, 1999, the Senate trial concluded with the president’s acquittal.
New Media & Virtual Communities
- New technology: pocket calculators, video games, personal computers, portable cellular telephones, digital watches
- Leads to new ecomny, work & home life
- Internet: the electronic means of linking computers and communications networks worldwide.
- 1970s to 2004: ARPANET, Google, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, & facebook
- Internet had grown to as many as 58 billion distinct Web pages
- Web groups, technology used at home & school, etc.
The New Immigrants
- 1990s: nations population grew by 32.7 million (greater than any other decade in US history)
- October 2006: US population hit 300 million
- ⅓ + of growth came from the influx of new immigrants, more than ½ Latin America
- Forgein workers a lot of the workforce
- By 2012 Asians surpassed Hispanics as the largest group of new immigrants.
- By 2012: Hispanics numbered 50.7 million as the nation’s largest minority group.
-Boom of US economy in 1990s was a “pull” to these newcomers
- Before 2000: nearly half of all Hispanic immigrants arrived in the United States without legal documentation.
-1997: federal court ruled the CA law unconstitutional on the grounds that it breached the federal government’s exclusive jurisdiction over immigration
- Number of undocumented immigrants peaked in 2007, then began to decline
- Social life was mixed with native born/other racial groups
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
strengthened the patrols along the border with Mexico & simultaneously offered amnesty to all undocumented workers who had entered the country since 1982.
Growing Social Disparities
- 1991: Rodney King, a black motorist, had been pulled from his vehicle and severely beaten by four white police officers.
- Many riots, people died, wounded, & buildings destroyed
- The poverty rate was 30.3%, more than twice the national average.
- The unemployment rate for adult black males hovered around 40%, & a quarter of the population was on welfare.
- Drug dealing & gang escalated
-Segregation was happening not just inlarge cities but in surrounding suburbs as well
- Despite the increasing racial and ethnic diversity of the nation’s youth, segregation was most pronounced in grades K–12.
- Huge increase in prison population
- By 2000: the US had outstripped 16 other developed countries in terms of income inequality
- US had the highest poverty rate
- Women asa group made few gains, earning 53 cents to each dollar earned by men
-By 2012 more than 75% of all poor households were headed by women
The Culture Wars
- 21st century politics focused on issues like reproductive rights & technology, homosexuality & gay rights, the curriculum in public schools, gun control, & scientific developments
- “Multiculturalism” movement:
- On college campuses, this marked the high point of the curricular reform that had been ongoing since the late 1960s & early 1970s, when women’s & ethnic studies programs were launched
- 1996: President C signed the Defense of Marriage Act: for federal purposes defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
- Operation Rescue launched a well publicized & illegal blockade of three abortion clinics in Wichita, Kansas, in September l991.
- Anti-Abortion protests ceased to a violent level - 1994: with the support of President C, Congress enacted the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrance Act
- Provides protection to any abortion clinic requesting it.
- Number of violent incidents declined
1960s: scientists documented the ability of these microscopic clusters of cells to grow into any tissue in the body.
1990s: following advances in biotechnology, researchers at the University of Wisconsin established the first human embryonic stem cell line
The Election of 2000
- Victory for the D candidate, Clinton’s VP Al Gore
- Next morning George W. Bush won
- Florida’s electoral votes
- The 2000 campaign resulted in the first disputed presidential election since 1876.
-U.S. Supreme Court determined the outcome, voting 5 to 4 along partisan lines against a complete count of votes in Florida.
- December 12, Gore conceded defeat.
-Bush & Dick Cheney, the new VP, took the oath of office in January 2001.
Terrorist Attack on America
9/11: hijackers crashed 2 jetliners into NY’s World Trade Center towers, while a 3rd jetliner slammed into the Pentagon in Virginia, 4th plane, diverted from its terrorist mission by courageous passengers, hurtled to the ground near Pittsburgh.
- attacks killed 2,977 people
9/11 attacks sparked a massive response: Bush declared deadly attacks an act of war & vowed to hunt down those responsible
- Congress, with only one dissenting vote, granted him power to take whatever steps necessary.
- NATO invoked the mutual defense clause in its founding treaty, which in effect supported any U.S. military action.
-Osama bin Laden as the prime suspect & linked the airline hijackers, all presumed to be Islamic fundamentalists, to his al-Qaeda network
.
1998: bin Laden had decreed religious legitimacy to all efforts to expel the United States from the lands of Islam in the Middle East.
With a network spread across the Middle East, bin Laden based al-Qaeda’s operations in Afghanistan, where he enjoyed the protection of a government run by the Taliban, a radical Islamist group.
Reshaping U.S. Foreign Policy
- With UN Security Council resolution, US delivered an ultimatum to the Taliban-dominated government of Afghanistan
- October 7: after the Taliban had refused to comply, President Bush announced the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom
- 2 months later the Taliban government was toppled but bin Laden & others had escaped
January 2002 State of the Union address, Bush argued that the US now faced danger no just from al-Qaeda terrorist also from nation-states seeking to develop chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
- = reformation of American foreign policy
Months after 9/11: thousands of Muslims, some US citizens, werre arrested & detained, although few of these suspects were actually charged with crimes related to terrorism
Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act II in 2003: further enlarging the grounds for surveillance & secret arrests.
- Created: Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
October 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act
Expanded the government’s surveillance & law enforcement powers to combat terrorism
Invasion of Iraq
- Bush came to believe that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by U.S. military action was necessary
- Most of Iraq people would support US lead campaign to get rid of the brutal dictator, ensuring a Swift & fairly painless victory
- February 15, 2003: demonstrators staged the largest antiwar protest in history
- Turning out in more than 300 cities in sixty countries, including 500,000 in NY, 2 million in London, & 3 million in Rome.
- March 19: President Bush announced the beginning of war
- Iraq: widespread looting & disruption about electricity, water, & food, 4.5 million refugees fled their homes, roughly half whom left Iraq
- 2004: American resistance occupation gained strength
- 2004: graphic images & descriptions of Iraqi detainees abused & tortured by American guards in the Abu Ghraib prison were broadcast around the world = international outrage and protest.
- January 2005: Iraq conducted its first national elections for an assembly charged with writing a new constitution.
- December 2006: after an Iraqi Special Tribunal found Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity, the ruthless dictator of Iraq since 1979 was executed.
Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatism”
- Bush won reelection over John Kerry of MA
-Domestic: tax cuts, strong military defense, & the overhaul of Social Security and&Medicare, refused to seek new taxes to finance the 2 wars the nation was fighting
- The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (passed during 1st term): lowered tax rates, disproportionately for the wealthy, and gave most Americans a small rebate from the IRS.
- No Child Left Behind Act: Passed by Congress in 2001
- Aimed to improve education by setting high standards, holding schools accountable for student achievement, and expanding parental choice. - Hurricane Katrina (Bush responded bad)
- Late August, 2005: 3rd strongest hurricane to make landfall in the US made its way through FL
- Killed 6 people
- Went to Gulf of Mexico & destroyed much of New Orleans
- Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA
- 2006 midterm elections, post Katrina, returned D to the control of both the House (233–202) & the Senate (51–49) for the first time since 1992.
- Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) became the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House.
- Bush loosing support for Iraq war but pushed on
- US operation continued to take a heavy toll on US forces
- The Iraq war also put a heavy strain on the federal budget.
- To fund the wars in Afghanistan. Iraq, & the open-ended war on terror, Bush pushed the deficit to record levels, an estimated $1.3 trillion.
The Great Recession
- By late 2007 the global economy was at a notable economic decline
- By 2008 sinking into recession, maybe depression FAST!
- Immediate cause was burst of the “real estate bubble”
- Hundreds of thousands defaulted on their loans and let the lending agencies take over their property.
- Fall of 2008, the bankruptcy of Bear Stearns & Lehman Brothers (big investment banks) shocked international financial markets
- Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) allowed the Dept. of Treasury to buy or insure up to $700 billion in bad loans & other “toxic” assets held by financial institutions.
- Businesses quickly responded by cutting payrolls.
- Increase in unemployment (11 million Americans)
- People disliked him for Iraq & the way he governed his 2 terms
-Well into 2012, the majority of Americans still blame Bush for causing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The Election of 2008
- January 20, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama took the oath as the nation’s first African American president.
- Got attention from his vocal opposition for Iraq war
- Campaign focused on:
- Registering new voters, especially among the young and people of color.
- Reform of health care, more funding for education, new public investment in infrastructure
- carefully framed his appeals to attract independent voters & even R disgruntled with the Bush presidency. - Went against Hillary Clinton
-R chose Sen. John McCain (R-AZ): his choice for VP made him lose support
- In November, Obama won the election with the biggest margin in 20 years.
- Reversed long-standing trends in voters: young, latinos, unmarried women,& suburbanites
- But the nation’s broken economy also contributed greatly to Obama’s victory
Obama Takes Office
- Obama pushed through Congress in February 2009 the largest stimulus package in U.S. history.
- Ealry 2010 many Americans found themselves “underwater”
- The stock market crash had wiped out large portions of retirement savings, & many older Americans put off retirement.
- Many colleges and universities, their endowments cut by ⅓ or more, raised tuition, putting higher education out of reach for many Americans.
- Automobile industry teetered on the brink of bankruptcy
-Unemployment rate topped 10%
- Obama faced R opposition
- O ordered the closing of the notorious Guantanamo Bay Naval Camp prison & the relocation of its 250 terror suspects.
- Caused congessional opposition = remained open - To reach his goals to end Bush’s actions, named his toughest rival, Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state.
- Clinton supported O’s boldest moves in foreign policy - made less of a break with B-era policies than anticipated
- Cairo Speech (June 2009): Called for “a new beginning” between the U.S. and Muslims worldwide, emphasizing mutual interest & respect, and rejecting competition between America and Islam. The speech received positive reactions globally.
- Iraq War: Announced a gradual troop withdrawal; by summer 2010, all combat troops were removed, leaving 50,000 for training. The last U.S. troops exited Iraq in December 2011, ending the nine-year war.
- Afghanistan War: Expanded the war with a “surge” of 30,000 troops in December 2009 but began scaling down by 2012 due to waning public support. Announced plans to withdraw all troops by 2014.
- Bin Laden Operation: Ordered the covert mission that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on May 2, 2011.
- Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (2009): First law signed, extending the time workers had to sue for unequal pay.
- Stem Cell Research: Overturned bans on federal funding & increased research funding for diseases like Parkinson’s.
- Auto Industry Bailout: Supported $30 billion in bridge loans to help General Motors and Chrysler emerge from bankruptcy.
- Supreme Court Appointments: Nominated Sonia Sotomayor (first Latina justice) in 2009 & Elena Kagan in 2010.
Obama & healthcare
- O’s biggest legislative challenge was health care reform.
- Oppositoin in Congress stalled his efforts - Compromise bill that Obama signed in March 2010 would give some 32 million uninsured Americans coverage, many with the help of government subsidized
- Insurers could no longer deny coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions or place lifetime dollar limits on policies. - Legislation cell focus more on reforming insurance industry practices & on overhauling how patient care was delivered & paid for
- The extremely contentious debate over health care reform epitomized how sharply the two parties, & Americans, were divided.
Republican Resurgence 2010
- House Control & Opposition: Republicans gained 63 seats in the 2010 midterms, taking control of the House and opposing Obama’s agenda aggressively.
- McConnell’s Strategy: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated his party’s goal was to make Obama a one-term president, employing tactics to obstruct his policies.
- Tea Party Influence: The Tea Party movement, advocating limited government and lower taxes, pushed Republicans to adopt uncompromising conservative stances.
- Legislative Obstruction: Congress voted 33 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s key legislative achievement.
- Tax Policy Conflict: Republicans signed Grover Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” opposing all tax increases for individuals and businesses.
- Unproductive Congress: The 112th Congress became the most unproductive in U.S. history, with bipartisan cooperation failing due to partisan gridlock.
- Fiscal Challenges: Obama appointed a commission to address the federal deficit, but its plan combining spending cuts and revenue increases failed to gain support. Instead, Congress passed the Tax Relief Act of 2010, temporarily extending Bush-era tax cuts and setting up automatic tax increases and spending cuts by 2012 if no new plan emerged
- Debt surge: Tax cuts, wars, and economic recovery efforts drove public debt from $6.4 trillion to $11 trillion.
- Budget crises: Partisan gridlock nearly caused a 2011 government shutdown, contributing to Congress’s lowest approval ratings.
- Foreign policy: Obama withdrew combat troops from Iraq by 2011, fulfilling a campaign promise.
Republican resurgence:
- 2010 midterms: Republicans gained 17 governorships and a record number of state legislative seats.
- State policies: Austerity measures cut education/social spending, restricted unions, and limited reproductive rights (“war on women”).
- Conservative agenda: States rejected federal funds (e.g., high-speed rail), banned same-sex marriage, and targeted public-sector unions.
Mass protests:
- Occupy Wall Street (2011): Highlighted income inequality, spreading globally before encampments were disbanded.
- Anti-austerity rallies: Hundreds of thousands protested Republican-led state measures.
The 2012 Election
- The economy & federal deficit dominated the 2012 election.
- Family incomes had declined, unemployment remained near 9%, poverty rose to 16% (exceeding 30% in Rust Belt cities like Detroit), and union jobs dwindled despite modest recovery efforts
- Obama/Biden (D): Defended stimulus policies, healthcare reform (Affordable Care Act), and investments in infrastructure/clean energy.
- Romney/Ryan (R): Advocated tax cuts, deregulation, repealing the ACA, and austerity measures tied to Ryan’s controversial budget proposals
- Obama: Young voters, unmarried people, women, African Americans, Latinos, urban residents, and union members.
- Romney: Men, independents, suburbanites, Southerners, and white evangelical Christians
- A leaked video of Romney dismissing 47% of Americans as dependent on government and “paying no income tax” eroded his support among moderates
- Results: Obama won 332 electoral votes (51.1% popular vote); Democrats expanded Senate control (55–45), while Republicans held the House.
Post-election crises:
- Superstorm Sandy (Katrina) relief efforts
- the Sandy Hook shooting (spurring gun reform debates), and the “fiscal cliff” tax/budget stalemate
The 2012 Election Goverment Shifts
- Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) became the first openly gay U.S. senator.
- Vermont became the first state with women in all congressional seats.
- Romney was the first Mormon presidential nominee
- Republican House obstruction led to legislative gridlock, blocking Obama’s agenda on gun control, immigration, and climate change. The 2014 midterms further solidified GOP control.
- Not since the 1920s did the Republicans enjoy as much political power as they did at the opening of the 114th Congress in 2015.
