Hillary Clinton saw something — and now she’s saying something.
The Democratic presidential front-runner, during a wide-ranging sitdown with the Daily News editorial board, railed against a $90-million funding cut to federal anti-terror funding for New York.
TRANSCRIPT: HILLARY CLINTON MEETS WITH NEWS EDITORIAL BOARD
Her stance aligns her with city leaders, including Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, against a controversial proposal by President Obama that would adversely affect the ability of the city — the nation’s top terror target since 9/11 — to protect itself.
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“We need it, we need it! I want it!” Clinton said during a Saturday sitdown with reporters and editors from The News, referring to federal homeland security funding for New York. “I don’t agree with the Obama administration on that.”
She vowed to fight for the loot.
“I have a great confidence in and commitment to making sure that New York has all the homeland security funding that it needs from the federal government and I believe that its request is reasonable and I would very much want to see the Obama administration produce that $90 million it has otherwise decided to withhold,” she said.
The stinging rebuke of her former boss comes just months after the White House released a 2017 budget that called for slashing funding for the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) — which pays for anti-terror ventures in large U.S. cities like New York — from $600 million to $330 million.
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The potentially dangerous proposal was immediately blasted by a chorus of city leaders, including Bratton, who called the move “indefensible.” Mayor de Blasio traveled to Washington last month to testify that the city needed more anti-terror money. Clinton on Saturday urged Sen. Chuck Schumer to do whatever he could to get a bill through Congress that would restore previous funding levels.
De Blasio and Bratton have repeatedly said the cuts would put the city at risk. The money, they argue, is crucial to New York’s first responders and its Office of Emergency Management, as well as for spending on bomb-sniffing dogs, cameras, radiological and chemical sensors, active shooter training drills and the FDNY’s response training.
Clinton explained to The News on Saturday that she hadn’t spoken to the commander-in-chief about the funding question — or anything else, for that matter, in a long while.
“I haven’t talked to him in quite some time, but that’s a good thing to put on my list,” she said.
Clinton headed directly from the News offices back to the campaign trail, spending 15 minutes shaking hands and posing for selfies inside Brooklyn’s famed Junior’s restaurant.
She also turned down three slices of its signature cheesecake — strawberry, lemon and vanilla. “I learned early on not to eat in front of you all,” she told the assembled media.
Over the course of the 80-minute interview with New York’s Hometown Newspaper, Clinton, who represented New York in the Senate from 2001 to 2008, touched on a variety of issues pertinent to the Empire State — and the entire country — including economic growth, education and income inequality.
But throughout it all, she appeared to take multiple veiled shots at Obama, proposing ways — especially when it came to stimulating the U.S. economy — she felt she could do better.
“He did dig out of the ditch that he inherited. He got us standing again. We’re walking, but we need to be running,” she said about economic growth. “I don’t think we’re making the right investment in our most important asset, which happens to be the American people.”
Clinton, who resides in Chappaqua in Westchester County when she’s not on the campaign trail, also said she would do more to improve the nation’s infrastructure — with special emphasis on New York’s crumbling LaGuardia Airport.
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“Our infrastructure is below grade in so many ways, we don’t even have an airport in the top 25,” she said. “I’m glad at least that we’re looking at upgrades to LaGuardia, which we all know is an embarrassment.”
Clinton, who leads Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the delegate count for the Democratic presidential nomination, also saved a little subtle venom for her surging rival, who has won seven of the last eight contests — including Wyoming on Saturday — and is poised to give her a run for her money in New York on April 19.
In addition to ripping Sanders’ proposal to provide free college education for many middle class and poor Americans, the former secretary of state also went out of her way to explain in great detail the mechanisms that exist to break up big U.S. banks — a cornerstone proposal of Sanders’ campaign that the Vermont senator himself was unable to articulate during his visit to the The News’ editorial board earlier this month.
“There is authority to break up banks that pose a grave threat to financial stability,” she said. “Section 121, Section 165,” of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, “can be used by regulators to either require a bank to sell off businesses … or assets because of the finding that is made by two-thirds of financial regulators that … (they) pose a grave threat.”
But at times she also appeared to agree substantially with the leader of her party’s progressive wing, laying out past efforts, and future plans, to reduce income inequality and raise minimum wages.
“I support the increase in minimum wage, I supported the fight for $15 (an hour wage) and I think the way New York has done it makes a lot of sense,” she said, before emphasizing planned efforts to target the gender pay gap, if elected.
“We also have to guarantee equal pay for women,” she said. “People look at me when I say this, (and tell me), ‘Well that’s a luxury.'”
“It’s a necessity, it goes into the wage base,” Clinton said of her retort to that argument. “It goes into the pocketbook.”
“This is not just a women’s issue, it’s a family issue,” she continued passionately. “If you have a mother, a wife, a sister, daughter, who is not being paid fairly, she doesn’t get a gender discount when she’s checking out at the supermarket.”
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Clinton also touched on:
*Gun Violence: “The epidemic of gun violence has to be addressed, which is why I’m so determined to take on the gun lobby.”
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*Police reform: “We need to reform police practices so police don’t reach for their guns as the first choice,” she said. “We need to reinforce best policing practices…We’ve got to do more to demilitarize the police … Some of the issues that need to be addressed result from what we did predominantly after 9/11, where there was a lot of concern about homeland security and a lot of military equipment was shared with and sent to local police departments, including small places.”
*Israel: “Settlement expansion is not helpful,” she said. “I have a long history and personal commitment to Israel’s security and its future that I have been outspoken about, stalwart and strong in every way…I will continue … to do anything and everything I can for their security.”
With Kenneth Lovett, Chris Sommerfeldt