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North American Free Trade Act
President Bill Clinton oversaw the ratification of the North American Free Trade Act, NAFTA in 1992. It was an act that allowed free trade throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. This allowed trade to occur across the borders with no taxes. NAFTA was a bipartisan win for President Clinton (Kruse and Zeiler 208-209). -
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Authorization Act of 1994
This act called for harsher new rules for sentencing those convicted and provided new spending for prisons. Minimum sentences for many federal drug crimes were now mandated. Life imprisonment for criminals convicted for a violent crime after two prior convictions. It was $30 billion measure. This is significant because a lot of money was put into reform. (Kruse and Zeiler 237). -
Oklahoma City Bombing
The Oklahoma City bombing took place on April 19, 1995. A truck bomb destroyed the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. 168 people were killed and over 600 people were injured. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, two members of white nationalist groups, were the perpetrators. (Kruse and Zeiler 221). -
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
A year after the Oklahoma City attacks, terrorism was made a federal crime. It also pushed the government to stop fundraising by groups that were associated with terrorists. This law also allowed illegal immigrants to be deported without judicial review. (Kruse and Zeiler 221). This was significant because terrorism was becoming a reality that the United States had to face and prepare for. -
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reform Act of 1996
President Clinton enacted a law that forced families off of the welfare rolls. This occurred by cutting off their benefits after two years of enrollment, changing their lifetime benefits to five years, and allowing people without children to receive food stamps for only three months in a three-year period. The 1996 Welfare reform took away benefits from legal immigrants. (Kruse and Zeiler 219). -
Defense of Marriage Act
The Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, was passed in 1996. Congressman Bob Barr from Georgia was the main sponsor of DOMA. This act allowed states the right not to recognize same-sex marriages and it also created a legal definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman. President Bill Clinton signed this act into law during a midnight ceremony, at hopes of drawing as little attention from the media as possible (Kruse and Zeiler 219). -
Bill Clinton’s Path to Impeachment
President Clinton had an affair with a young White House Intern, Monica Lewinsky. The Drudge Report, a gossip website, reported the affair in 1997. The President lied about the affair while he was under oath during a grand jury disposition. The President did not only have the charges about Lewinsky but other women too. In 1998, President Clinton was impeached (Kruse and Zeiler 227). -
9/11
On September 11 2001, 19 members of an Islamic terrorist organization al-Queda boarded four commercial airplanes in American cities, armed with box cutters. They took control of the planes and flew them into the Twin Towers and another plane into the Pentagon out of Washington, DC. The passengers on the fourth plane managed to take control of the terrorists and crashed the plane. These attacks killed thousands of people and it was an extreme tragedy for the Country. (Kruse and Zeiler 249-250) -
Operation Enduring Freedom
On October 7 2001, the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom which was a coordinated series of massive airstrikes and special operations on the ground in Afghanistan. (Kruse and Zeiler 255). This is significant because this was the beginning of the War on Terrorism. -
USA PATRIOT Act
This act was passed by the House by a vote of 357 to 66 on October 24, 2001. This law expanded the ability of the government to conduct wiretaps that traced phones without subpoenas, to monitor emails and business records to have more authority of undocumented immigrants (Kruse and Zeiler 257). This is significant because it was an invasion of privacy to people without a United States citizenship.