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A more considered response came in a postelection speech to the Democratic Leadership Council, in which Clinton defended his record. He pointed out he was the first president since Harry Truman to cut the federal budget deficit, which had quadrupled during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Clinton also took credit for promoting free trade, which traditionally has been supported by Republicans, and for his anticrime bill, which provided funds for increasing the size of cities' police forces. Clinton pointed out that he had already reduced the size of the federal government by more than a quarter of a million employees. In other speeches, the president said that although he was willing to cooperate with the Republican Congress, he would not compromise on matters of principle. One such matter was the ban on certain kinds of assault weapons, which was enacted as part of the anticrime bill but which many Republicans wanted to repeal.

When the 104th Congress convened in January, 1995, the Republicans delivered on their promise of a dynamic hundred days. They succeeded in bringing all the major points in their Contract with America to a vote in the House of Representatives, and all but one measure passed there. Many Democrats voted with the Republicans. The one failure was the proposal for a constitutional amendment to mandate a federal balanced budget, which failed to secure the two-thirds majority required for a constitutional amendment. Although many of these proposals faced a much tougher fight in the Senate, it was clear that the Republicans had profoundly shifted the focus of political debate for a long time to come.

Bowing to the immediate reality, Clinton, who had campaigned in part on a promise to "end welfare as we know it," cooperated in 1996 with Republican majorities to produce the nation's first major welfare reform law since the inauguration of President Johnson's Great Society in the 1960's. The reform has been largely credited with reducing poverty and encouraging work among the poor. Moreover, the long-anticipated balanced budget became an actual fact within a few years, as government revenues surged with a healthy economy, generating large reductions in federal debt. For this development, both Clinton and the fiscally conservative Republicans claimed some credit. The Republican majority later successfully impeached Clinton, bringing charges of perjury against him in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but Clinton weathered that storm.