Hillary's experience. - Democratic Underground

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Fri Mar-07-08 08:45 AM
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Hillary's experience.

Hillary was the first student in Wellesley College history to deliver their commencement address. Her speech received a standing ovation lasting seven minutes.

She went to Yale Law School. In the summer of 1970, she was awarded a grant to work at Marian Wright Edelman's Washington Research Project, where she was assigned to Senator Walter Mondale's Subcommittee on Migratory Labor, researching migrant workers' problems in housing, sanitation, health and education.

Hillary was a staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During 1974 she was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C., advising the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal.

In August 1974, she became one of two female faculty members in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

Hillary maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977 and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979.

Hillary co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children's Defense Fund, in 1977. In late 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation, and she served in that capacity from 1978 until the end of 1981. For much of that time she served as the chair of that board, the first woman to do so. During her time as chair, funding for the Corporation was expanded from $90 million to $300 million, and she successfully battled against President Ronald Reagan's initial attempts to reduce the funding and change the nature of the organization.

As First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary successfully obtained federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas' poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees.

Hilllary also chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee from 1982 to 1992, where she sought to bring about reform in the state's court-sanctioned public education system. In one of the most important initiatives of the entire Clinton governorship, she fought a prolonged but ultimately successful battle against the Arkansas Education Association to put mandatory teacher testing as well as state standards for curriculum and classroom size in place. She introduced Arkansas' Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth in 1985, a program that helped parents work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy.

Hillary was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984.

From 1987 to 1991 Hillary chaired the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession, which addressed gender bias in the law profession and induced the association to adopt measures to combat it. She was twice named by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America, in 1988 and in 1991.

Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988–1992) and the Children's Defense Fund (as chair, 1986–1992).

Hillary was the first First Lady to hold a post-graduate degree and to have her own professional career up to the time of entering the White House. Hillary is regarded as the most openly empowered presidential wife in American history except for Eleanor Roosevelt.

Along with Senator Ted Kennedy, Hillary was the major force behind the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997, a federal effort that provided state support for children whose parents were unable to provide them with health coverage. She promoted nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses and encouraged older women to seek a mammogram to detect breast cancer, with coverage provided by Medicare. She successfully sought to increase research funding for prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health. The First Lady, Hillary Clinton, worked to investigate reports of an illness that affected veterans of the Gulf War, which became known as the Gulf War syndrome. Together with Attorney General Janet Reno, Hillary Clinton helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice. In 1997, Hillary initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which she regarded as her greatest accomplishment as First Lady.

Hillary Clinton traveled to 79 countries during this time,breaking the mark for most-travelled First Lady held by Pat Nixon. In a September 1995 speech before the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Hillary Clinton argued very forcefully against practices that abused women around the world and in China itself, declaring "that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights" and resisting Chinese pressure to soften her remarks. She was one of the most prominent international figures at the time to speak out against the treatment of Afghan women by the Islamist fundamentalist Taliban that had seized control of Afghanistan. She helped create Vital Voices, an international initiative sponsored by the United States to promote the participation of women in the political processes of their countries.

Regarding the Whitewater investigation lasting years and costing the American taxpayers millions of dollars, the 2000 final Independent Counsel report found no substantial or credible evidence that Hillary Clinton had any role or showed any misconduct in the matter.

Hillary Clinton is the first First Lady of the United States to be a candidate for elected office. Clinton won the election on November 7, 2000, with 55 percent of the vote to Lazio's 43 percent. She was sworn in as United States Senator on January 3, 2001.

Clinton has served on five Senate committees: Committee on Budget (2001–2002), Committee on Armed Services (since 2003), Committee on Environment and Public Works (since 2001), Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (since 2001) and Special Committee on Aging. She is also a Commissioner of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (since 2001).

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Clinton sought to obtain funding for the recovery efforts in New York City and security improvements in her state. Working with New York's senior senator, Charles Schumer, she was instrumental in quickly securing $21 billion in funding for the World Trade Center site's redevelopment. She subsequently took a leading role in investigating the health issues faced by 9/11 first responders.

Senator Clinton voted against the tax cuts introduced by President Bush, including the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, saying it was fiscally irresponsible to reopen the budget deficit.
Clinton voted in 2005 against the confirmation of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States, and in 2006 against the nomination of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court.

In July 2004 and June 2006, Clinton voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment that sought to prohibit same-sex marriage.

Clinton opposed the Iraq War troop surge of 2007 and supported a February 2007 non-binding Senate resolution against it, which failed to gain cloture.

In March 2007 she voted in favor of a war spending bill that required President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq within a certain deadline; it passed almost completely along party lines, but was subsequently vetoed by President Bush. In May 2007 a compromise war funding bill that removed withdrawal deadlines but tied funding to progress benchmarks for the Iraqi government passed the Senate by a vote of 80-14 and would be signed by Bush; Clinton was one of those who voted against it. Clinton responded to General David Petraeus's September 2007 Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq by saying, "I think that the reports that you provide to us really require a willing suspension of disbelief." In September 2007 she voted in favor of a Senate resolution calling on the State Department to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps "a foreign terrorist organization", which passed 76-22.

In March 2007, in response to the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, Clinton called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign, and launched an Internet campaign to gain petition signatures towards this end.