Chelsea Clinton campaigns at CMU

Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton, rolled into Carnegie Mellon… Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton, rolled into Carnegie Mellon University on a Chateau RV to talk to students and local supporters about “why [her] mom is the strongest, most progressive” presidential candidate.

CMU was the first stop on Clinton’s “Your Future. It’s Bright” campaign bus tour of Pennsylvania, which has stops scheduled in Waynesburg, Johnstown and Chambersburg.

Clinton answered questions from the audience and focused mainly on health care and education yesterday.

“It really matters to me that my mom stood up for universal health care in ’93 and ’94 before it was fashionable,” Clinton said.

She explained that when her mom advocated universal health care, pharmaceutical companies and the health insurance industry spent $300 million to counter the effort, which Congress did not pass.

Clinton stressed that her mother fought to pass legislation that insured 6 million children, including 140,000 in Pennsylvania.

She said that women, minorities, single parents and those with a pre-existing health conditions or those whose income is in the bottom 25 percent are less likely to afford health insurance.

“I think that is immoral in the United States of America in the 21st century,” she said.

As for higher education, Clinton said her mother plans to double the Pell Grant and expand its eligibility, build on the AmeriCorps program, reduce debt for public interest workers and make direct student lending a federal initiative.

Clinton said her mother wants to replace FAFSA forms with a checkbox on tax returns, which she said would reduce the multi-billion-dollar cost of printing and administering the applications, as well as making financial aid more accessible.

When Clinton began to talk about the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act, the crowd booed.

“My mother feels the same way,” she said.

Clinton said the act, an unfunded federal mandate, allows states to set their own standards for education, which ultimately gives incentive to lower standards. She said the United States ranks No. 27 in the world for its math scores and No. 21 for its reading scores.

Hillary plans to pay teachers to work in troubled school districts and change the system so public education starts at age 3, Chelsea said.

She said these reforms would be paid for by higher tax rates for people earning more than $250,000 per year.

One audience member asked Chelsea how her mother viewed the Bush administration’s decision not to join the International Criminal Court, which was established in 2002 as a tribunal for crimes against humanity.

Chelsea mentioned the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement for reducing greenhouse-gas production, and the National Convention on the Rights of the Child – both of which lacked U.S. representation.

She said that the only two U.N. member states absent from the NCRC were the United States and Sudan and that Hillary wants to re-enter agreements “that help us articulate our views.”

Sean Astin, who played Samwise Gamgee in “Lord of the Rings,” and Erika Alexander, who played Pam on “The Cosby Show,” joined Clinton on her tour.

She called on young people to “dismiss the gossip” that has defined Hillary’s personality and judge upon the content of character instead of gender or skin color.

“Our young people have got to do it,” Alexander said. “They have a responsibility to continue Dr. Martin Luther King’s aspirations and create their own legacy.”