Hillary Clinton has been rolling out plan after plan over the past month.Friday, October 12th 2007, 4:00 AM
WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton has been rolling out plan after plan over the past month, striving to hit the sweet spot for middle-class American voters - with college tuition help tumbling out Thursday.
The $8 billion-a-year idea would give working families $3,500 tax breaks on college tuition and beef up Pell grants.
"I believe that college shouldn't just be a privilege for the wealthy - but an opportunity for anyone with the talent, determination and ambition to learn," Clinton said in New Hampshire on Day Five of her "Middle Class Express" bus tour.
The day before, Clinton unpacked an "innovation agenda" to rebuild "the road to the middle class." On Monday, it was a $20 billion to $25 billion proposal to pad retirement accounts.
And let's not forget the $5,000 baby savings bond she floated - for every newborn in America - then quickly backed away from after it was derided by many.
Clinton launched her campaign declaring she was born to a middle-class family in the middle of America in the middle of the century, so it's no surprise she's taking this tack. But it picked up steam in the middle of last month, when she unveiled her $110billion-a-year health care reform in Iowa.
The push is no accident, said campaign spokesman Blake Zeff, who said Clinton was basically pledging to rescue middle-income America from George Bush.
"For six long years, it's like America's middle class and working families have been invisible to our President," Zeff said. "When Hillary is in the White House, no American will be invisible to the President."
Clinton's efforts appear to be paying off. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll showed that Clinton is the Democratic darling among households making less than $75,000.
Still, one politician's plan to help the middle class is another's laundry list of pork and pandering. While analysts said Clinton's effort was appealing to Democrats, it could hurt in a general election.
"In the Democratic primary, it is absolutely a winner," said the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato. "But she may have to pay the piper in the general election. A Republican is bound to say this is returning to the bad old days of tax-and-spend liberals."
In fact, the piper started playing yesterday, as the Republican National Committee gleefully launched a "Spend-o-Meter" to tally the price tag for Clinton's plans: $723 billion, according to them.
Camp Clinton didn't think much of the ploy, pointing out that the current Republican President started office with surpluses and quickly ran up record debts.
"One of the changes Sen. Clinton will deliver as President will be to lead us back on a path to fiscal responsibility like we had in the '90s," zinged Zeff. "Unlike George Bush, Sen. Clinton actually details how she'll pay for her initiatives."
Clinton's strategy won praise from Sen. Chuck Schumer, the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who wrote a book on the middle-class strategy.
"Hillary's focus on the middle class bodes well for her and her presidency," Schumer said.
It also speaks volumes that Clinton can roll out major economic ideas - and get media coverage of them - while her rivals are struggling to compete with her just on Iraq.
"I'm not sure what they think they're doing," said Sabato. "It's like they're playing tiddlywinks."
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