Word: minimum
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes. "The first order of business," says a top Clinton aide, "is to make sure we don't have a primary opponent." To that end, Clinton has been turning to traditional party constituencies with public offerings. Among them: his proposal to increase the minimum wage, a move favored by unions, and his effort to turn the fight for the Henry Foster nomination into a defense of a woman's right to an abortion...
Open any fashion magazine and you're bound to find a full-page layout of some super-skinny woman, or muscle-rippling man clad in only the bare minimum. According to these magazines, it's no longer be fashionable to wear the flower-or paisley-print underwear that comes in a six pack. Underwear has fallen into the same label-conscious category of jeans; most of them look the same, but everyone wants to have the right name stitched across their waist...
...uncharacteristically, the federal government adopted a flawed policy. In 1984, a national minimum drinking age was indirectly set by Congress at 21 by threatening the states. If that restriction on drinking did not become law, the U.S. would withhold highway construction and maintenance funding: five percent the first year, 10 percent each year afterward. Thus the current drinking age was induced, rather than ordered upon states. Not surprisingly, all 50 states have a drinking age of 21. Money talks...
Second, a national minimum drinking age has become necessary. A condition not envisioned by those who ended prohibition, returning control of alcohol policy back to the states in the process, was people driving while intoxicated. This is a problem of the greatest magnitude. It has been lessened by the national minimum drinking age by ensuring consistency among the states' laws. Those between 18 and 21, therefore, now gain no advantage by crossing state boundaries to drink--they only get to drive home later that night...
Should we lower the drinking age to 18? Most definitely. Can we? The answer is a decided no. There is no easy answer. Abandoning the national minimum drinking age would cause a tremendous trade-off in human lives that just is not worth the cost. In the final analysis, American society is destined to suffer from its own immaturity...