Clinton wanted to restore confidence in government as a force for good while not alienating antigovernment voters. The huge budget deficit that he inherited — $4.4 trillion in 1993 — precluded substantial federal initiatives. Moreover, Clinton failed to win a majority of the popular vote in both 1992 and 1996, and the Republicans controlled Congress after 1994. Throughout his presidency, Clinton was burdened by investigations into past financial activities and private indiscretions.

Despite these obstacles, Clinton achieved a number of incremental reforms. He issued executive orders easing restrictions on abortion and signed several bills that Republicans had previously blocked. Most significantly, Clinton pushed through a substantial increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low-wage earners. Begun in 1975, the EITC gave tax breaks to people who worked full-time at meager wages or, if they owed no taxes, a subsidy to lift their family income above the poverty line. By 2003, some fifteen million low-income families were benefiting from the EITC, almost half of them minorities. One expert called it “the largest antipoverty program since the Great Society.”

Shortly before Clinton took office, the economy had begun to rebound. Economic expansion, along with spending cuts, tax increases, and declining unemployment, produced in 1998 the first budget surplus since 1969. Despite a substantial tax cut in 1997 that reduced levies on estates and capital gains and that provided tax credits for families with children and for higher education, the surplus grew. Clinton failed, however, to provide universal health insurance and to curb skyrocketing medical costs. Under the direction of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and with little congressional consultation, the administration proposed a complicated plan that drew criticism from all sides. Liberals wanted a single-payer plan similar to Medicare, while conservatives charged that the proposal would increase taxes and government interference in medical decisions. Congress enacted smaller reforms, such as underwriting health care for 5 million uninsured children, yet 40 million Americans remained uninsured.

Pledging to change the face of government to one that “looked like America,” Clinton built on the gradual progress women and minorities had made since the 1960s. For example, African Americans and women had become mayors in major cities from New York to San Francisco. Virginia had elected the first black governor since Reconstruction, and Florida the first Latino. Clinton’s cabinet appointments included six women, three African Americans, two Latinos, and an Asian American. Clinton’s judicial appointments had a similar cast, and in 1993 he named the second woman to the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose arguments as an attorney had won key women’s rights rulings from that Court.