Governor Clinton began his two-year term in office with an ambitious agenda for one of America’s most impoverished states. He gained passage of the largest spending increase for public education in Arkansas history. He created a Department of Energy to subsidize research on conservation, alternative fuels, and solar power. He proposed a rural health policy that would bring physicians and medical care to low-income communities. And he set out to fix the state’s badly deteriorated highway system, promising infrastructure investments to create jobs and improve the lives of ordinary Arkansans.