Clinton Urges President To Select Next Supreme Court Nominee By Consensus
October 28, 2005
As the president prepares to select a new nominee for the Supreme Court, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton released a statement urging the president to select the next nominee carefully.
“I urge the president to take seriously the Constitution’s charge and to engage the U.S. Senate – both Republicans and Democrats – in a process of genuine consultation in order to identify and ultimately confirm a consensus nominee,” the New York senator said in a statement Thursday.
Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to the Supreme Court Thursday amid escalating criticism about her qualifications for the job.
The president said he reluctantly accepted Miers’ decision to withdraw.
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Senator Clinton calls for a windfall profits tax on “big oil” to fund energy research
October 26, 2005
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton urged the government to collect billions of dollars in new fees from major oil companies and use the money to fund energy research and help consumers cope with the high price of heating this winter.
Clinton, D-N.Y., told a group of clean energy investors and advocates that a major new push toward efficient use of oil, gas, wind, and solar energy was needed to confront a looming energy crisis.
The recent spikes in gas and oil prices following storms in the Gulf Coast ” have exposed the administration’s policy for what it is: using an umbrella to fend off a hurricane,” she said.
The senator pushed a “strategic energy fund” which she said could bring in as much as $20 billion a year for new research and give rebates or tax breaks to those straining to pay rising heating bills.
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Hillary Clinton Proposes Massive Energy Tax
October 26, 2005
2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said yesterday that she backs a plan to hike gasoline taxes through the roof.
Speaking to a group of alternative energy investors in Washington, D.C., Clinton proposed to sock oil companies with $20 billion in new fees that would be used to fund research on clean energy - driving up costs for oil producers that they would inevitably pass along to consumers.
he top Democrat said her goal is to get “oil companies that have experienced these amazing profits either to reinvest them in our energy future to reduce our dependence on oil or to contribute to a strategic energy fund that will provide incentives for companies and consumers who want to be part of an energy solution.”
Mrs. Clinton’s whopping tax hike proposal comes just as prices at the pump are beginning to decline from records highs in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which caused a bump in energy inflation that experts warned could tip the economy into recession.
Hillary’s Chest Gets Bigger As ’08 Gets Closer
October 25, 2005
When asked if she has decided to run for President, Senator Hillary Clinton has a stock response: She’s focused on her re-election fight here in New York in 2006.
But on Oct. 14, when Mrs. Clinton revealed her early 32-to-1 financial edge over her likely rival next year, another unspoken answer crystallized: Mrs. Clinton is already running for President, and next year’s election is just part of that campaign.
Campaign-finance regulations encourage members of Congress to store up money in Congressional accounts for use in a Presidential race. From Mrs. Clinton’s perspective, then, her prospective Republican opponent, Jeanine Pirro, is looking less like a threat and more like a fund-raising gimmick. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, spread between New York and Washington, is staffed with veterans of Presidential campaigns and of the White House. And Mrs. Clinton’s national agenda is making no compromises with New York’s parochial needs.
“Hillary isn’t raising this money for a Senate race—let’s be honest,†said a Democratic political consultant who advised Senator John Kerry in his Presidential run last year. “The 2006 election is an excuse to develop the infrastructure of a Presidential campaign—to raise the money, do the thinking, do the planning, and do the work that’s involved in laying the groundwork for a Presidential run.â€
Read More at the New York Observer
Dick Morris: Hillary’s ‘Paltry’ Senate Record
October 25, 2005
New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has been a great Senator for New York - at least according to her fans in the media, who regularly note how hard she works while insisting she’s done much for adopted home state.
Baloney, says Dick Morris and Eileen McGann. In their new book “Condi vs Hillary,” they blow the lid off Hillary’s pathetic Senate performance - a list of accomplishments that are so meager her supporters ought to be embarrassed.
Morris and McGann note: “Hillary has had a total of twenty bills passed since she entered the Senate. Of those, fifteen have been purely symbolic in nature.”
Lest they be dismissed as Hillary-haters who don’t want to give the former first lady the credit she deserves, “Condi vs Hillary” itemizes Mrs. Clinton’s legislative “achievements” (such as they are).
In five years as the most influential Democrat in the Senate, Hillary has managed to get the following laws and resolutions enacted:
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