Hillary Clinton, the Economy, and North Carolina

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Hillary Clinton, the Economy, and North Carolina

March 27, 2008

RALEIGH, N.C. – Attention White House operator: The 3 a.m. phone is ringing again.

In her first campaign visit to North Carolina today, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton reprised the line about a middle-of-the-night telephone call to the president. This time, the topic was the economy – not national security – and the target of discussion was Senator John McCain. (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/economic-crisis-on-line-2/)

“It’s time for a president who is ready on Day One to be the commander in chief of our economy,” Mrs. Clinton said, speaking at at Wake Tech Community College here. “Sometimes the phone rings at 3 a.m. in the White House and it’s an economic crisis and we need a president who is ready and willing and able to answer that call.”

Mrs. Clinton paid little attention to her Democratic rival – Senator Barack Obama, who she faces on the ticket in the state’s May 6 primary here – and focused on the presumptive Republican nominee.

“I read the speech that Senator McCain gave the other day which set forth his plan which does virtually nothing to ease the credit crisis or the housing crisis,” Mrs. Clinton said. “It seems like if the phone were ringing, he would just let it ring and ring and ring.”

"He'd rather ignore the mortgage crisis or blame middle-class families instead of offering solutions," she said. "I think we've had enough of a president who didn't know enough about economics and didn't do enough for the American middle class. I don't think we can afford four years of that kind of inaction."

She said that in terms of the economy, the Republicans had been steering the country in the wrong direction. Comparing running for office like `"driving a car", Clinton said that if you want to go forward put the car in "D" but if you want to go backwards, put the car in "R", signifying abbreviations for each party.

She blamed President Bush for his handling of the economy and said that the country lacked leadership in that regard.

"We need a Commander In Chief of the economy," she said.

Mrs. Clinton brought up many references to North Carolina, including one of the state`s most well-known events -- the first flight by the Wright Brothers on the coast of North Carolina in 1903.

Citing the "lesson of the Wright Brothers," Clinton said that despite many setbacks and the fact that they only had a high-school education, the two brothers persevered and finally succeeded, changing the world in the process.

Americans should do the same and continue to push for changes in their government, she said.

"We have never let challenges stop us," said Clinton about the American people.

After detailing her own housing plan earlier this week – which includes a $30 billion "housing stimulus package" and other steps to help homeowners avoid foreclosure - Clinton focused almost exclusively on job creation today. (http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/03/hillary_clinton_get_the_phone.html#more)

At the Wake Technical Community College, Clinton proposed a $2.5 billion annual workforce training program, which would expand help for dislocated workers and new "pre-emptive on-the-job training."

"You shouldn't have to produce a pink slip to get help training for a higher-paying job," Clinton said.

Clinton reiterated several of her core economic proposals in language – harsh on drug and oil companies and heavy on praise for the middle class - that often sounded a lot like native son John Edwards.

Nearly 1,000 supporters, many of them students, packed into a third-floor, windowless room where the temperature rose steadily throughout the morning. They cheered loudly when Clinton took the stage, an hour behind schedule, after apparently leaving late from Washington this morning.

from the campaign:

In North Carolina today, Hillary launched a six-day tour to discuss her solutions to ensure shared prosperity in these tough economic times. Hillary will travel to North Carolina, Indiana, and Pennsylvania as part of the “Solutions For The American Economy” tour and will highlight ways that state and local leaders have found solutions to economic challenges. The first event of the tour took place at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh where Clinton gave a speech outlining her plan to revive the economy and announced a new plan to invest $2.5 billion per year – or $12.5 billion over 5 years –to strengthen the nation’s workforce development efforts. Her plan would make job retraining universally available to all dislocated workers, provide new Pell Grants to workers, and support on-the-job training opportunities.

During her remarks, she noted that North Carolina Governor Mike Easley has made workforce development and job retraining a major priority. In fact, he increased funding for community colleges by 15.8 percent above 2005-06 levels. He has also expanded the “Learn and Earn” initiative, which allows high schools students to obtain a high school diploma and an associate’s degree or two years of university credit in five years.

At Wake Technical Community College, she was joined by several students and faculty members, including Bud Burton, an instructor in architecture and landscape architecture, who is working with his students on green building design, as well as Susanne Mistric, a married mom of two, who always wanted to go to college and is a double major in graphic design and web technology. Clinton also met with Shenise Gilyard, a senior at Southeast Raleigh High School and participant in Wake Tech’s dual enrollment program. When she graduates from high school this year, she will have her diploma and an EMT certificate.

“We are competing in a new global economy, but our policies to equip American worker for the twenty-first century are stuck back in the twentieth. When it comes to retraining assistance, our government is more focused on how you lost your job than how you can find a new one,” said Clinton. “And while we have been rightly focused on trying to help people who are out of work, there’s been too little thought and effort to help people gain new skills while they still have their existing jobs – so they can move up or move on to higher-wage positions.”