Clinton Takes Bush to Task Over Unemployment Aid

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton led Democrats in making political hay out of the loss of federal aid for hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers.

As nearly 800,000 unemployed Americans saw their federal jobless benefits end Saturday, Clinton blamed their financial pain on President Bush and his fellow Republicans in Congress.

For the unemployed and their families, “this has been a holiday season filled with too much uncertainty and not enough joy,” Clinton said in the Democrats’ weekly radio address. “This year did not have to end on such a sad note for them.”

Since New Yorkers elected Clinton to the Senate two years ago, she has pursued a low-key agenda of promoting issues important to her state and of building relationships -- and thus her effectiveness -- in the clubby Senate. Saturday’s speech was another step onto the national stage for the former first lady, who might run for president.

Aides insist that Clinton does not plan to seek the presidency in 2004, and she has promised to serve her full term, which ends in 2006. But a poll of Democrats released last weekend found she would lead the field of likely candidates for the party’s 2004 presidential nomination.

Most speculation, however, has centered on a 2008 campaign for Clinton. Becoming chief advocate on an issue Democrats have targeted as a winner helps her build a new profile that would be necessary in any national run.

In the radio address, Clinton contrasted Bush’s record on unemployment benefits with the more generous policies of her husband’s administration.

In the waning days of the just-ended Congress, the Democratic-controlled Senate approved a $5-billion plan to extend benefits an additional 13 weeks for people then receiving them or who were newly eligible. The House passed a more modest $900-million plan of five extra weeks for workers in a few states with high unemployment rates.

With lawmakers at an impasse, Bush refused to lend his support to break the logjam while Congress was in session. On Dec. 14, more than three weeks after lawmakers left town, Bush asked Congress to enact a retroactive extension when it resumes work in January.

On Saturday, Clinton looked back to her husband’s record: “In the recession of the early 1990s, we increased benefits five times. Today, our unemployment rate has soared to 6%, and Congress and the president have extended benefits only once -- and once is not enough.”

In his radio address Saturday, Bush mentioned that one extension of federal benefits -- the one that expired Saturday -- as a success on his watch and asked again for another.