Hillary fires up Billings

By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer

BILLINGS - This year’s presidential election is the most important in the last 50 years of American history, Democratic contender Hillary Clinton told about 1,000 enthusiastic supporters Tuesday.

SEAN SPERRY/CHRONICLE Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton D-N.Y., greets supporters at a campaign rally in Billings on Tuesday. Because it’s so important, she said, she wants people to look at it “in a slightly different way.”

“I want you to think about this as if you personally were hiring the president,” she said. “Talk to your friends and neighbors and tell them why you would hire me.”

And then she made her case.

“It took a Clinton to clean up the after the first Bush and it will take a Clinton to clean up after the second Bush,” she said. “But I can’t do that without your help.”

She said she has the experience, the track record, the ability to fight, the willingness to take on oil companies and the skills to install universal health care and bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end.

“Who do you believe can walk into the oval office on Day One and start making those hard decisions?” she asked the cheering crowd.

She promised a prompt and orderly withdrawal from Iraq and victory in Afghanistan.

The nation is involved in both “a war we have to end and a war we have to win,” she said.

She promised to hold the Chinese accountable in trade practices and trademark infringements and to stand up to OPEC and Saudi Arabia.

She called President Bush’s plea for lower oil prices “embarrassing” and said anti-trust laws might be used against the cartel.

“You won’t see me holding hands with the Saudis,” she said. “You’ll see me holding them accountable.”

The nation is now more dependent on foreign oil than it was on Sept. 11, she said.

“That’s one of the cruelest and saddest facts that we can face,” she said.

She said she will close what she calls the “Enron loophole” that allows speculators to drive up the cost of oil.

“I think a federal investigation would get their attention,” she said of commodity traders, and prices would start to drop.

“Our economy cannot stand $135 a barrel oil, going up to $200 a barrel,” she said.

She didn’t mention her earlier call for a summer vacation from federal gasoline taxes, but said she wants to see 10 clean coal plants built in the country.

“I want one of them to be in Montana,” she said.

She wants to see $10,000 tax credits for buyers of fuel efficient cars when they enter the market. She wants to install a strategic energy fund and focus on biomass n and not just from corn - for fuel.

“But we’re not going to make any of these long-term investments until we get those two oil men out of the country,” she said.

Clinton maintained she is the only candidate who still has a comprehensive plan for universal health care. She said it will allow the insurance companies to continue making money while providing better preventative health care, giving the whole nation an insurance plan equal to what Congress enjoys.

And higher education has become much too expensive, she said.

“We’re slamming the doors of college on too many young Americans,” she said, adding that she financed her law school years with federal loans at affordable rates and wants to see the return of those programs.

“I want that for every one of the young people here in Montana,” she said. “Every single one of you.”

And students should be able to work off their debt with public service like teaching and nursing and law enforcement.

Many of her programs would be financed by eliminating tax breaks, she said, citing $55 billion worth of “special interest” tax breaks given by the Bush Administration.

People earning more than $250,000 a year would see their tax rates revert to what they were in the 1990s, she said.

And, for the country’s problems to be fixed, other Americans will have to make changes, she said.

“Everbody’s going to have to be more energy efficient,” she said. “Everybody’s going to have to start taking better care of themselves, especially their kids.”

Montanans will vote in the June 3 primary, and Clinton stressed several times that the state’s voters still have a voice.

She urged people to use it carefully, to focus on “not speeches but solutions. Not rhetoric but results. Everybody needs to think really carefully about their decision.”

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