Desidero, don't speak for all of us on TPM. I value posts backed up with facts. If the spouse of a president helps get legislation passed, I think it's admirable.

See, I'm an avid Obama supporter and I'm impressed with her health care advocacy.

Although I was never under the impression that she had nothing to do with SCHIP.

thanks for the post.

Informative article. I see Ted Kennedy is putting a damper on his praise of Hillary's involvement, but otherwise its difficult to say that he is disavowing her involvement. Its really a pretty innocuous statement.

That being said, although I sometimes questioned Hillary's methology, I have never doubted her passion for healthcare issues, especially for children. Give credit where credit is due.

I second TPMgary - while there are surely those who only seek to throw about accusations without any regard for facts, on both sides, I think most of us are capable as recognizing that some of the claims made against Clinton are utter bullshit. Kennedy shouldn't have said what he said.

But you know who else we have to criticize here - and they've been complicit in pushing crap about all the candidates - the press. The original article states, "But the Clinton White House, while supportive of the idea of expanding children's health, fought the first SCHIP effort, spearheaded by Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, because of fears that it would derail a bigger budget bill."

And they back that statement up with nothing. Horrible journalism. Then go on to quote Hatch's statements as gospel? I can't see any reason whatsoever why a Republican supporting McCain might have cause to degrade a Democrat. Horrible journalism.

In fact, more people are cited in the article agreeing that she played a prominent role in SCHIP, and yet the whole tilt of the article implies that she's lying. Horrible journalism.

"Many members of Congress said they believe Hillary Clinton has a deep and sincere commitment to children's health issues. She has sponsored numerous bills and amendments dealing with a plethora of healthcare matters.
But privately, some lawmakers and staff members are fuming over what they see as Clinton's exaggeration of her role in developing SCHIP, including her campaign ads claiming she "helped create" the program."

Who? Privately? How can you make that claim without any actual sources? Horrible journalism, that's how.

The fact is, places like factcheck shouldn't have to do fact checking for journalists. If Factcheck was capable of reviewing the record and determining what was true, then the damn journalists are just as capable.

Thanks for this information. I'm glad to hear good things about Senator Clinton and I feel that this information is consistent with what I have observed of her total commitment to children and their welfare.

Sure, Clinton deserves some credit for this and, to my knowledge, she's traditionally gotten it (sometimes making it sound like she did it almost single-handedly), but if all you're really wondering is why Teddy is pissed off then I think I can give you a clue in the form of a quote that I've re-written:

"Hillary Clinton's dream began to be realized when the Senate passed S-CHIP. It took a Senator to get it done."

To use one of my favorite quotes of all time, you could sum up by saying "The editor who let it come out ...is garbage." I agree, the journalistic integrity of taking claims made on face value is questionable at best.

I think she can rightly claim she supported SCHIP and "helped" in it's passage. The question for me on many of her accomplishments is the level of her involvement. This one may be accurate and I think the factchecker site is fairly unbiased.

But it is getting harder and harder to know what to believe with her, not something I would have said 6 months ago.

If she were the nominee in the general, she's going to get lamblasted with her various exaggerations. Look what they did to Gore with the "invented the internet" theme. It's hard to imagine what they'd do to her.

Despite Desidero feeling the need to post an insult to Obama supporters adn TPM, good for all the supporters who have chimed in to acknowledge the factual basis of the post.

I think this is her strongest claim of the ones that have been disputed.

But, nevertheless, Go Obama.

Actually, I would add another seemingly significant quote from the factchecker piece:

Washington Times, Aug. 6, 1997:

. . .

One of the co-authors of the plan, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, credited Mrs. Clinton for her "invaluable help, both in the fashioning and the shaping of the program."

This represents the "fashioning and the shaping" as a direct quote from Kennedy, and suggests a degree of authorship (or, at least, influential advisory input), which goes even further than effective advocacy.

I think it's reasonable to speculate about Kennedy's possible political motivation for making these statements at the time, but it's a reach to disallow this as a defense of Hillary based on those speculations.

There might still have been some exaggeration on Hillary's part, but this is a pretty strong defense of her claims on this one, in my opinion. And the post is valuable information when assessing those claims. Recommending.

Obama '08

Links to the actually articles where these are quoted please?

Simply copying and pasting from Hillaryhub.com, or what is starting to become incredibly Hillary leaning, factcheck.org, doesnt cut it.

Some of us bloggers would like to actually weigh the veracity of the quotes you are attributing to Sen Kennedy.

This doesn't look like a vindication to me.

Factcheck sums it up best: "Despite disparagement from political rivals, we find she deserves ample credit for expanding children's health insurance."

The word here is 'expanding'. She got Kennedy to write more money into a bill he wrote; I doubt she had to twist his arm to do it. On her website, Hillary is claiming she helped 'create' SCHIP. She didn't write the bill, Kennedy and Hatch did that. She didn't help it through congress, since it had bipartisan support. Her role in this was to convince Bill to sign it instead of veto it, which he had pledged to do for Trent Lott.

It's wrong for Kennedy to downplay her role now, but it's also wrong for her to claim to be one of the creators of SCHIP.