brackets for high-gross incorporated businesses beginning at that number. According to the Clinton Foundation, the revised brackets and categories increased taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of taxpayers within these new brackets, while cutting taxes on 15 million low-income families and making tax cuts available to 90% of small businesses. "Small businesses" and taxpayer classifications were reconfigured by these new tax brackets. Again, according to the Clinton Foundation, these brackets raised the top marginal tax rate from 31% to 40%. Additionally, it mandated that the budget be balanced over a number of years through the implementation of spending restraints. Bill Clinton's promise of welfare reform was passed in the form of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. Prior to 2018, critics such as Yascha Mounk contended that Clinton's arguments for the virtues of "negative" notions of "personal responsibility [New Orleans Declaration: 'individual responsibility']," propounded within DLC circles during the 1980s, stemmed more from Ronald Reagan's and Peggy Noonan's specific conception of "accountability" than any "positive notion of responsibility" or even multifarious approaches to "accountability." Additional critics distinguish the New Democrat idea of "personal responsibility" from arguments over the extent of limitations on government, if any, in platforms that advance social responsibility. The 1996 United States presidential election, the temporary relegation of Hillary Clinton to the global promotion of microcredit, partisan compromises over this act, conflicts within the Democratic Party, as well as the act's multivalent consequences, all contributed to deliberations over passage and execution of the PRWORA. Presidency of Barack Obama In March 2009, Barack Obama, said in a meeting with the New Democrat Coalition that he was a "New Democrat" and a "pro-growth Democrat", that he "supports free and fair trade" and that he was "very concerned about a return to protectionism". Throughout the Obama administration, a "free and fair trade" attitude was espoused, including in a 2015 trade report entitled The Economic Benefits of U.S. Trade that noted that free trade "help[s] developing countries lift people out of poverty" and "expand[s] markets for U.S. exports". Throughout Obama's tenure, approximately 1,000 Democrats lost their seats across all levels of government. Specifically, 958 state legislature seats, 62 house seats, 11 Senate seats, and 12 governorships, with a majority of these elected officials identifying as New Democrats. Some analysts such as Henry Eten at FiveThirtyEight, believe this was due to the changing demographic shift, as more Democrats identified as