At his blog Political Punch, ABC News reporter Jake Tapper stirred up angry Hillary supporters by suggesting Sen. Clinton was exaggerating when she claimed in Thursday’s Democratic debate that "I passed" a law requiring the head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) to have emergency experience. "But knowledgeable Senate sources say that is not what happened," Tapper reported. "Clinton never ‘passed’ the legislation to do this."
His post began:
One of the knocks on Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, by her opponents is that she takes credit for things she shouldn't -- say, the myriad successes of her husband's administration (and few of its failures).
Those inclined to wonder about this quality may have gotten more fuel for the fire yesterday.
Late in the debate, moderator Carolyn Washburn asked Hillary about how she would make signing statements, where presidents try to clarify or interpret the law that they’re signing. Liberals have been furious with President Bush, claiming he used the signing statements to ignore or mangle the law he was signing. Here was Hillary’s answer:
I would use them the way presidents before this president used them. They were used to clarify the law to perhaps make it more coherent with other laws that have been passed. And along came President Bush. He's used them as essentially a form of veto. He did it through a piece of legislation I passed, where it was pretty simple. I said: If you're going to have a FEMA director, it should be somebody with experience handling emergencies [Laughter]...We actually had to pass it through the Congress. And when George Bush signed the bill it was part of, he specifically used a signing statement to say, 'I don't have to follow that, unless I choose to.
In his blog, Tapper left out the very next line: "So let's quit with all the of the perversion of the Constitution and the rule of law, let's get back to what presidents did in both parties and hopefully remove the legacy of George W. Bush." It’s always amusing when Hillary Clinton blames some other president for "perverting" anything.
Tapper went into more detail:
But did Clinton "pass" this provision? How much can she credibly claim credit for it?
Myriad knowledgeable Senate sources say she did not pass this provision, and she cannot claim credit for any of it. She's not on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, for one.
In September 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Clinton introduced a bill (S 1615) that among other things would have required "The Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency shall have significant experience, knowledge, training, and expertise in the area of emergency preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation as related to natural disasters and other national cataclysmic events."
The bill would also have established FEMA as its own Cabinet-level agency.
That bill went nowhere.
In November 2005, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, introduced "The Department of Homeland Security Qualified Leaders Act" which would have required top officials of the Department of Homeland Security have "(A) at least 5 years of executive leadership and management experience in the public or private sector; (B) at least 5 years of significant experience in a field relevant to the position for which the individual is nominated."
Akaka's bill, too, went nowhere.
In May 2006, Clinton introduced a bill (S. 1427) containing the same language as her previous one. On July 11, 2006, Clinton's bill failed overwhelmingly -- by a vote of 32 to 66.
Tapper allowed Team Hillary to respond, and then Tapper also received e-mails from Sen. Akaka and Sen. Frank Lautenberg trying to spin on Hillary's behalf, claiming that her bill "informed" what eventually passed. But that's still different from "Legislation I passed." Tapper still found it to be "a very questionable claim."
