Hillary Clinton Offers Solutions for Indiana

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Sat Apr-26-08 01:37 PM
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Hillary Clinton Offers Solutions for Indiana

BLOOMINGTON | Sen. Hillary Clinton campaigned at Indiana University Friday afternoon.

Sen. Clinton compared the primary to a long job interview. She says the length of the campaign season means that more Americans get to be involved in the decision.

Clinton assured the excited crowd that while change is necessary, she is concerned with solutions.

"My campaign is about solutions. It's about what we will do together once we have a president who will get back into the Oval Office and wake up every morning actually worrying about what's happening in America. I think that would be a nice change."

"But once the election is over, once the rallies are done, the cameras are gone - we have a lot of work to do. And we have to pick a president who is ready, on day one, to begin that work. And to present the kind of solutions and answers that America is looking for. So my campaign admittedly is not about change. It is about solutions. It is about the hard work it takes to make change. Because I think that it is critical that our next president rebuild the relationships that should exist between our president and our people. That we, once again, restore accountability. And that's what I want you to do with me."

Sen Clinton promised to fight for the causes that she and her supporters believe in if she is elected. She recalled the 1990s, claiming that it wasn't long ago that the economy was doing well. She pointed a finger at President Bush and said he lost a balanced budget and a surplus in exchange for tax cuts for the rich and and a war that is being paid for with borrowed money.

GARY | Hillary Clinton was greeted by surprised diners and enthusiastic campaign supporters at the Bennigan's restaurant here.

The senator spent close to an hour shaking hands, signing autographs and chatting with supporters.

Betsy Cowan, of Schererville, a campaign volunteer, shook Clinton's hand and said, "We're working hard for you senator."

"Thank you, we're going to need it," Clinton told her.

Clinton was escorted into the restaurant by Gary Mayor Rudy Clay, the Lake County Democratic chairman who has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama.

"I thought it was appropriate to give her the respect," Clay said. "This presidential campaign is like nothing I've seen in my lifetime, and I don't think I'll see anything like it again."

The lively patrons lined up with camera phones and political paraphernalia in hopes of grabbing pictures and autographs of the presidential hopeful.

“She was gracious to talk to all of us, and she signed everything we had,” said Kimberly Konrady, a business owner from Crown Point who was there with three other friends.

Clinton was in and out of the restaurant in about half an hour, hurrying off the United Steelworkers McBride Hall in Gary to talk with members of the USW’s District 7. There, speaking to a small crowd of more than 100 people, Clinton spoke at length about the trade policies she would pursue to help boost the manufacturing sector of the economy.

“This is not a Republican or Democratic issue,” the senator said. “It’s about who gets it and who doesn’t get it. Because you can’t have an economy that doesn’t make anything and have it be strong for long.” Clinton said she would immediately begin pursuing legal actions against countries that violate trade rules, restitution for companies and workers hurt by unfair trade practices, and the creation of a federal “trade prosecutor” whom she’ll task with ensuring that America’s trade agreements are being followed. “(Americans) are about the nicest people you’ll find in the world, but we’re tired of being taken advantage of,” she said to a rousing ovation.

"You're dependent on foreign countries'' if you don't have a good steel industry, she said. ``This is not only about our economy, it's about our national security.''

GARY | Indiana produces the most steel of any state in the nation, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton said Friday.

Whether it will stay that way depends on the actions of next president, the Democratic presidential hopeful told the roomful of Northwest Indiana union steelworkers Friday.

"If you don't have an economy that makes things, you're not going to have a strong economy for long," Clinton said of the national economy. "I see the steel industry as a core industry, a base industry."

She vowed to fully investigate complaints filed over violations of international trade rules, and to impose "countervailing duties" to increase the price of goods from overseas when prices are artificially or illegally lowered. She also would create a "trade prosecutor" so her administration could enforce the rules of its agreements and laws.

Asked what she would do about the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which has lowered pensions for thousands of local steelworkers, Clinton said the problem was the industries.

The PBGC was created to fund pensions after companies could no longer afford them, and it has had trouble because of government funding. But the bigger issue is that companies are too often relying on the organization, she said.

"We've got to make sure the PBGC is funded, but we've also got to make sure companies don't dump their pensions onto it," she said.

EAST CHICAGO | U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton received a rock star welcome from a gymnasium of supporters Friday night as she made her third swing through the region in four weeks.

Talking about issues like foreign currency manipulation and universal health insurance, the New York Democrat was interrupted several times by chants of adoration from supporters.

"I will remember this night in this gymnasium in East Chicago, Indiana," Clinton told the crowd of more than 3,000 at East Chicago Central High. "And we will look back at this night and say, this is where it began."

Clinton urged the crowd in East Chicago to ``think about this decision of May 6 as if it were a hiring decision.''

"You are hiring the next president of the United States of America. The job description is pretty simple -- it's the toughest job in the world,'' she said.

FORT WAYNE, Ind — Senator Hillary Clinton took Indiana voters on a biographical tour in downtown Ft Wayne — relating her own middle class midwestern origins in the hopes that middle class midwesterners here might see her as one of their own. (http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/04/26/clinton-embraces-midwestern-values-will-midwest-embrace-her/)

Clinton said Midwestern values are “really at the root of who we are in this country and what makes America so special. We are a compassionate and caring nation, but we also are a country of people who want to go as far as their hard work and their motivation and vision will take them.”

“I want you to know. I was raised by parents who said actions speak louder than words. Don’t tell me, show me,” she said. “I want you to know what I will do based on what I have done and what I know we can do together.”

Nothing embodies simple midwestern values like the Boy Scout Law, which instructs scouts to be “Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Clean, and Brave.” During his introduction, Ft Wayne mayor Tom Henry asked the crowd whether Clinton would follow each individual tenet of the creed. He was met with cheers of “Yes!” after each one — until he got to Obedient, when Senator Clinton shrugged her shoulders to loud laughs and applause.

‘I don’t know about that,” said the mayor, laughing. “certainly to the taxpayers.”

Sen. Clinton channeled her middle class upbringing in order to relate directly with voters, recounting tales of potluck dinners at her church and painting drapes in her father’s business when she was a child.

“I was born in Chicago and my dad was a small business man – I mean a small business man – he had a small drapery business where he would actually print drapery fabrics and travel around and sell them and he usually enlisted my mother, my brothers, and me,” Clinton said. “You take a squeegee and you do the paint and you pick it up and you move it down the table, it was pretty labor intensive work. But it was one of the many experiences that really taught me the values I had my entire life: hard work, self reliance, individual responsibility good Midwestern values that we were raised with.”

She spoke of her father, who served in the navy during World War II, settling his family down in the Chicago suburbs. “That’s where we grew up, so we went to the schools in walking distance, we went to the church in walking distance,” Clinton told the large crowd that braved intense wind and chilly temperatures to listen to her speak.

“We were at church about three times a week,” she continued. “To go to Sunday school, to go back for youth fellowship, to go back for the potluck dinner in the middle of the week and see all kinds of molded salads of every sort that one could imagine.”

Clinton’s promise to end the war “in a responsible way” brought one of the loudest responses from the crowd. It had particular meaning for Tammy and Dave Long of Auburn, whose two children who served in Iraq.

“They come home and got out just like they should have. They should have never got in,” Dave Long said.

“One of them can’t even get a job,” Tammy Long said.

Clinton alluded to her husband’s eight years in the White House, saying she wants an economy “that will be generating jobs like we did in the 1990s – 22.7 million new jobs.… We can do that again.”

She said her economic platform includes changing the tax code so working-class people don’t pay a higher percentage of income tax than rich people and that businesses that export jobs don’t get tax breaks; a moratorium on trade agreements; insisting that China live by the same trade rules as the U.S.; and investing in clean-energy technology to create 5 million jobs.

“If you will vote for me on May 6, I will never forget you,” Sen. Clinton said. “I will work my heart out for you.”