Nicole Goeser and John Lott pour through Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s legislative record during her eight years in the U.S. Senate. The writers share the paltry results with National Review Online.
Hillary wasn’t much of a change-maker in the U.S. Senate. Sure, being president is different from being a senator, but both jobs require making deals. Both offices require drawing up proposals and winning the support of others. Given all of the insight she must have gained as first lady, one might have expected her to be better at pushing legislation. She intimately knew all of the players, had Bill by her side, and had access to the tremendous wealth of the Clinton Foundation.
Yet, Hillary’s Senate career is defined by safe, noncontroversial bills, most of which were essentially pure fluff and yet she couldn’t get them passed.
In her eight years in the Senate, just one of Hillary’s bills got enacted into law. This bill designated the U.S. courthouse at 40 Centre Street in New York City as the “Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse.”
Hillary had eleven other bills that were passed by the Senate, but none made it through the House. Four of those bills were to rename U.S. Postal Service offices. Then there was another courthouse renaming, a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, and another commemoration for the 225th Anniversary of the American Revolution.
Talk about safe, inconsequential bills. Who would oppose a bill honoring wounded veterans? Amazingly, she couldn’t even get her feel-good, Purple Heart bill passed. At the end of the day, her legislation didn’t really do much to help everyday Americans.
