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**Written by Doug Powers

Who’s up for a trip back to the 90′s? Earlier in the week, Newt Gingrich offered an updated Contract with America for the 21st Century, and now Bill Clinton’s jumping into the time machine to try and reel in extra credit for 15 year old legislation.

The normally extremely humble former president briefly shed his cloak of modesty yesterday and expressed frustration at an those who refuse to offer him full plaudits for welfare reform and the balanced budget:

“I go crazy every time I read the conventional wisdom,” he said Friday night at his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark. “So part of the Republican narrative is that I was ‘saved’ from myself by the election of the Republican Congress [in 1994] that ‘forced me’ to do welfare reform and ‘made the balanced budget possible.’”

Clinton said reporters and commentators “keep saying this, overlooking all relevant facts.”

The 42nd president said Arkansas had been a test case for reform during his governorship. At the federal level, he said 43 states received federal waivers to implement welfare reform before the GOP-controlled House passed the final bill.

“And yet I kept reading how this was ‘a Republican idea,’ just because President Reagan had a good story about a welfare queen and a Cadillac who didn’t exist,” Clinton said.

Is Clinton still ticked because of the time then-candidate Obama said he wasn’t a transformational president?

If memory serves, Clinton made welfare reform part of his ’92 campaign, but subsequently vetoed two welfare reform bills. Then, in an election year, he signed a third version which contained some changes in order to bring enough Democrats on board. At that point, an intern delivered a pizza and he got impeached for perjury — though I may be fuzzy on one or two of the above details.

Look for select members of the MSM to dutifully run with Bubba’s plea for more credit, especially at a time when Clinton nostalgia among Democrats is at an all time high now that Hope & Change is in a tailspin.

If Bill’s feeling under-appreciated I hope he knows all he’s got to do is schedule another interview with Matt Lauer.

**Written by Doug Powers

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