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player ready...John Edwards in Chicago, Sept. 17, 2007. baiduhai photo by Michael Tercha.
by John McCormick
John Edwards aggressively attacked Hillary Clinton during an appearance this morning in Chicago, as Democratic presidential candidates sought to gain the upper hand in the health care debate.
In his address to a union group, the former North Carolina senator repeatedly pointed to Clinton’s failed efforts to win health care reform in the 1990s during her husband administration.
“The cost of that failure 14 years ago is not just somebody’s political fortune or their scars,” he said. “It’s the millions of Americans who have now gone for almost 15 years without health care.”
Clinton, a New York Democrat, unveiled her health care plan in Iowa just a few hours after speaking earlier in Chicago to the same group, the Laborers’ International Union of North America.
With the number of uninsured Americans growing dramatically since the early 1990s, Edwards pointed to a proposal passed by the Clinton White House that remains unpopular with unions.
“We didn’t get universal health care, but we got [the North American Free Trade Agreement],” he said. “We need universal health care. We didn’t need NAFTA.”
Edwards suggested Clinton is unable to reform the health care industry because she has failed to accept his challenge not to accept any contributions from federal lobbyists.
“I don’t believe you can sit down with lobbyists, take their money and cut a deal,” he said. “If you defended the system that defeated health care, I don’t think you can be the president who brings health care,”
Edwards said he was proud to have been the “first presidential candidate, seven months ago now, to come out with a specific, universal health care plan.” He said he would pay for his plan, in part, by eliminating “George Bush’s tax cuts for people who make over $200,000 a year.”
Speaking later to reporters, Edwards reiterated a new pledge he is making today: to strip healthcare coverage from the president, all members of Congress and all political appointees by July 2009 – six months after he hopes to be in the White House – unless universal health care is passed by then.
“When their health care is personally at stake, they will respond,” he said.
Clinton also pledged her commitment to universal health care and to the union movement when she spoke to the roughly 1,000 union leaders, all wearing orange T-shirts.
“There is hardly a square foot of America that doesn’t have your fingerprints on it,” she said. “You have built the infrastructure, and now we are going to have to build some more.”
Clinton was the first of three presidential candidates who spoke today at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers. Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware followed Edwards and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is on Tuesday’s schedule.
Sen. Barack Obama, meanwhile, bypassed the audience in his home city, instead traveling to Wall Street today to deliver an economic speech. The Illinois Democrat said last month that he would skip most candidate forums because they were getting in the way of his speaking directly to voters.
After appearing there Sunday afternoon with five other Democratic presidential candidates, Clinton immediately returned to Iowa to unveil her health care plan in the first-in-the-nation caucus state.
“We need to get to a point where health care is a right, not a privilege,” she first told the construction union members. “We have to take on the special interests to get this done.”
Clinton said she has lengthy experience in taking on Republicans, one of several lines she offered that drew a standing ovation.
“I have been in their gun sites more than 15 years,” she said. “But guess what, I’m still standing.”
Clinton hammered at President Bush, saying he has run the country in a way reminiscent of the robber barons of the industrial age.
“They call it the ownership society,” she said. “I call it the you’re on your own society.”
Clinton pledged more work for the construction workers if she is elected president.
“We all saw the tragedy in Minnesota, but the fact is that one bridge is one of 60,000 that are in need of serious repair,” she said. “We don’t need any more warnings. We don’t need any more commission reports. We just need an infrastructure policy that is fully funded in America.”
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Clinton repeatedly stressed her experience for the job, saying she knew “a little bit about how hard” it is to be president.
“Following George Bush and Dick Cheney, oh my goodness,” she said. “I’ll tell you what, I’m not sure we know all the damage that has been done. It’s going to be a huge clean up effort. I’m going to put out the word: laborers, come to Washington. Bring all your tools.”
Clinton also confronted a question that might have been on the minds of the almost entirely male audience.
“There may be a few people that say, ‘Well, are we ready for a woman president?'” she said. “All I can tell you is I think we are ready for this woman to be president.”
Last to speak was Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, who gave a speech that started in a soft-spoken way that eventually turned fiery.
“It is time we have a president who can pronounce the word union,” he said.
Many white-collar workers are starting to reconsider the benefits of unions, Biden said, now that they are facing reduced benefits and layoffs. “All of a sudden, they are having an altar call,” he said.
Biden said the next president needs to help rebuild the union movement in “a different and bigger way,” by helping to add white-collar workers.
“Unions are the key to our competitive advantage in the world,” he said. “The future of America’s economic growth grows out of organized labor.”
Biden also called for greater investment in America’s infrastructure, saying world competitors are investing more in that area and that it would “return 10-fold” to the nation’s economy.
On health care, Biden said universal health care is needed so that companies can compete in the world economy.
“Every major country we compete against has universal health care, or some version of it,” he said.
The union is not expected to endorse any of the candidates for some time, but hopes instead to mobilize and educate its half million members about the issues and candidates.