Interpret improvements as you like. For me it’s any large scale reforms or legislative packages designed to improve the country for all or see to the material interests of the majority without overly benefiting the elite.
Any big consumer protection, environmental, infrastructure, or other legislation from Clinton onwards that materially improved the lives of all?
Obamacare and the medicaid expansion comes to my mind. It has obviously improved people’s lives but considering how broken the healthcare system remains, and that it was written by the insurance industry to undermine single-payer, it seems to me a mitigated win at best.
Gay marriage and marijuana legalisation but that was the courts and the states although i’m sure the federal government could’ve stood in the way had they chosen to.
I’ve only live here since the 2010s so that’s all I can think of.
Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010) - which among other things created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and put in place the Volcker Rule which forbids banks from making certain risky investments with depositors money. To give you an idea of the power of the Volcker Rule, when it went in place banks begged (and got) a 5 year delay to divest for investments that violate the rule. Yeah, banks were playing fast-and-loose with with the money you deposited in your checking and savings accounts for their own gain. The Volcker Rule stopped (most) of that.
Didn’t Dodd-Frank get gutted a bit in recent years?