Sen. Clinton’s office changes funding request Web page

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) office changed its website page on funding requests Tuesday after attracting criticism for seeking more than $2 billion in special projects.

After reviewing the senator’s website and consulting Clinton’s office, The Hill reported on Tuesday that Clinton asked for nearly $2.3 billion in earmarks. But Clinton is now dividing the requests into two categories and two Web pages.

{mosads}One is headlined as “Sen. Clinton’s funding requests for New York projects in Fiscal Year 2009 appropriations bills.”

The second page is titled, “Sen. Clinton has expressed strong support for needed funding for the following national programs critical to New York.” It then lists the programs in this category.

Clinton’s presidential campaign and Senate office have criticized The Hill’s article, claiming it was inaccurate.  Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines did not dispute the $2.3 billion figure on Monday.

In an e-mail Wednesday, Reines said the website alteration was made to clarify the two categories of funding requests that the New York Democrat has made this year — one for local projects, the other for national programs.

“On the Web page, we made it clearer so that people wouldn’t make the same mistakes The Hill made …” Reines said.

Described as “funding requests made by Sen. Clinton for Fiscal Year 2009 appropriations bills,” the list on Monday included small and large projects, ranging from $6.6 million in funds for a Fort Drum, N.Y., fire station to $231 million for health programs to help those affected by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

On one of the revised website pages, most projects are now listed under the new national heading.

Clinton’s presidential campaign says these national programs should not have been included in the overall count of the senator’s earmark requests this year. Instead, $22 million would have been the accurate count. Reines did not make that distinction on Monday.

“The rest of her requests are to increase funding for national programs, most involving health and public safety. These are not earmarks, just as someone who requests an increase in Medicaid funding is not requesting an earmark,” says a statement on the Fact Hub of Clinton’s campaign website.

On Monday, Reines said a calculation that the requests totaled $3.9 billion was wrong because it seemed “to be counting the program’s entire cost as requested by the White House in their budget, not the additional amount requested” by Clinton.

 The Hill indicated it would remove $200 million — the president’s budget request — from the $950 million listed on Clinton’s website for the State Homeland Security Grant Program.

Reines answered, “Yes, correct, 700 something million. You need to do that for each.”

After being told that the revised tally came in at nearly $2.3 billion, Reines did not dispute it.

In e-mails Wednesday, Reines demanded that his earlier warning about The Hill’s methodology be included in this article. Reines said he would “gladly make [the] complete [e-mail] exchange over the last days available to other media.”

Like Clinton’s campaign, Reines also said national programs should not have been included in the count for the senator’s earmark requests.

Following The Hill’s article, the conservative Club for Growth criticized Clinton, stating, “Hillary Clinton talks about changing Washington, but it is clear the New York senator has no intention of making good on her word. When it comes to keeping the congressional pork factory churning, Sen. Clinton is one of Washington’s biggest culprits.”

Asked for comment on Clinton’s earmark request earlier this week, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), said, “That’s a lot of money … I guess if you’re going to go, go big. It’s one of those ‘you really can’t be half-pregnant’ [situations] with earmarks, so I think you either need to swear them off or, obviously, she’s going to go for it with gusto.”

Obama, meanwhile, is not seeking earmarks this year.

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group, said by changing her website, Clinton was now differentiating between the two categories.

“Essentially, with this change, she has separated out what are the pure earmark requests from what are national, programmatic funding requests,” said Ellis.

Ellis said such national grant programs are typically not considered earmarks. But members of Congress could divvy up the programs for constituents back home as the appropriations process moves on.

“We will not know until we see the spending bills on whether they retained a formulaic grant process or directed certain earmarked funds to members’ districts,” said Ellis.

Manu Raju contributed to this article.