Missile Defense.
After an attempted shoulder-held missile assault against an Israeli passenger plane, Sen. Clinton said that this specific threat needs to be addressed by U.S. officials immediately. Hillary said that the attack "has raised serious concerns about the vulnerability of U.S. airlines to a similar attack." She told reporters, "These shoulder-fired missiles are ubiquitous. They are easily stolen. . . . [T]hey can be obtained by terrorists, and therefore we’ve got to take the possibility of them being available very seriously." Hillary also sent a letter to the Office of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration urging officials to develop a plan to thwart such attacks on U.S. airline passengers. In her letter, she wrote that "with the holiday season upon us, large numbers of Americans will be traveling by air to visit their loved ones. These air travelers need to have confidence that our government is doing everything possible to protect them." She also suggests steps such as routine sweeps around major airports, rather than more costly reactionary measures like equipping commercial planes to deflect possible assaults. In addition to contacting the federal authorities with her concerns, Sen. Clinton urged New York Gov. George Pataki to consider calling up the National Guard to patrol the grounds of the state’s airports to deter terrorists from using these shoulder-fired missiles. However, Gov. Pataki’s counterterrorism team said that dispatching the National Guard to New York’s airports would not be an effective deterrent, and that the state would rely largely on local police and federal airport security officials to look out for such weapons.
Hillary’s Strategy.
Sen. Clinton told the New York Post that she has vowed to voice her differences with President Bush, and be "outspoken" in her criticism of his administration. In the interview, she also said that Democrats needed to voice the differences they have "in philosophy and vision" with the president and the new GOP majority. "I’m not going to be shy about speaking out. . . where I think a proposal from the President is not in the best interests of New York or our country, I will be outspoken in my opposition," she added. Hillary especially wants to emphasize her and her party’s differences with the Bush Administration’s economic plan: "If I thought the economic policy of the administration would work, I’d be the first on board. But I don’t think it will work. I think it will work for a very small percentage of people who will have short-term benefits at the expenses of long-term investments and reforms that would have benefited the entire population." The senator also suggested that Democrats erred in the past election campaign by straying from the Clinton political path. "If people followed the ideas that he worked on, and a lot of us worked on, for more than 20 years, we would have done a much better job" in last month’s elections.
NY vs. NJ.
New York is battling New Jersey for power in the next Congress, with Hillary fighting Sen. Jon Corzine over who will lose powerful committee spots. Both senators have donated and raised cash for their colleagues, and both are angling for important positions in their party: Hillary on the Steering Committee and Corzine to head the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee. But as a result of the GOP victories in November, Democrats will most likely have to eliminate at least one senator from 16 committees to give the Republicans a majority. Sen. Clinton, however, is reluctant to give up her seat on any of her three committees: Budget, Environment and Public Works, or Education, Health and Labor, while Sen. Corzine is equally attached to his committee assignments on the Budget, Environment, and Banking. Since both senators came to office after the 2000 elections and therefore have the same seniority, representing New York, which is more populous than New Jersey, gives Hillary has a slight edge over Corzine. For her part, Hillary has said she is confident she will not suffer in the reorganization. "I’m not the junior member on two of the committees," and the death of Sen. Paul Wellstone (D.-Minn.) makes it more likely that she will stay on the Education Committee. "I may be all right," she said.
