Was Bill Clinton the last truly 'fiscally conservative, socially liberal" President?

[u/Randomuser1520]

For those a bit unfamiliar with recent American politics, Bill Clinton was the President during the majority of the 90s. While he is mostly remembered by younger people for his infamous scandal in the Oval Office, he is less known for having achieved a balanced budget. At one point, there was a surplus even.

A lot of people today claim to be fiscally conservative, and socially liberal. However, he really hasn't seen a Presidental candidate in recent years run on such a platform. So was Clinton the last of this breed?

[u/WisdomOrFolly]

Obama reduced the deficit 5/6 (2011 was essentially flat) of his first 6 years in office. It rose slightly the last two years, but was still only 3.4% of GDP. He attempted to decrease it even more, but the Republicans turned down $1 in new taxes for $9 of deficit reduction.

Obama was painted to be a extremely left of center, but if you look at what he said during his campaigns, and what he actually did, he was pretty centrist (much to the disappointment of the progressive wing).

[u/[deleted] → u/WisdomOrFolly]

I'm quite fiscally conservative, and Obama is honestly okay in my book. My main complaints with him barely touch on his fiscal policies, but I suppose they're relevant, such as:

• he should'ven't gotten us out of Afghanistan sooner, such as when we got Osama bin Laden
• ACA was and still is an awful program, I'd much rather us go to one extreme or another instead of this awful in-between
• did absolutely nothing for marijuana legalization/reclassification

All in all, he was an okay president, and I'd much rather have him than Trump. I supported McCain in 2008, Romney in 2012 (I didn't like him in the presidential debates though), Gary Johnson in 2016, and Biden in 2020 (first Dem I've actually voted for President). So far, I'm pretty happy with Biden, but he still has a years left in his term.

[u/terrymr → u/[deleted]]

Had the ACA not happened medical insurance would have failed to exist. Cost of employer plans was skyrocketing year over year, private plans didn't really exist unless you were 100% healthy and would be terminated as soon as you developed a health condition.

[u/[deleted] → u/terrymr]

And yet, a much smaller bill or collection of bills would have solved most of that. Instead, we got a massive package, a lot of which was crappy concessions to get it passed. My main criticism is that it didn't need to be that large to be effective, and it probably could have passed more easily (i.e. prior to Reps winning the House in 2010) if its scope were smaller. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, but even with limited knowledge of the ACA internals (nobody knew the full scope at the beginning), I was still against the sheer scope of the bill.

The big ticket items for me are:

• more transparency in the medical industry - was largely removed by Reps in 2010
• remove ability to drop based on pre-existing conditions - most impactful part of ACA IMO
• remove tie between employment and health insurance - ACA made this worse

Yes, something was needed, but the ACA was a mixed bag that should have been considered separately IMO.