Yesterday on Rush's program - this transpired:
He played a clip of Clinton's comments and then his own comments and those of Chertoff.
CLINTON: We got an assurance from Secretary Chertoff that this would be a high priority, that it would be included when the president's budget came for homeland security. But the fact is, the president's budget calls for a $50 million cut in what we appropriated last year. Last year, although Chuck and I wanted more money and the Senate unanimously passed a bill for $570 million, we got $150 million out of the Congress.
RUSH: All right. So I just want to set this up. This is the day that al-Qaeda attacks London, and Hillary Clinton can't wait to race to the microphone to rip George W. Bush on the homeland security budget in this country.
Now, I understand she's got to run for reelection in New York in 2006, and this will play in New York. But this is not going to play in America. Yeah, I think it will play in New York, Mr. Snerdley. He's disagreeing with me.
Well, what did I see? A story the other day that some of the money -- I better not speculate. I can't remember. See, we gave somebody some money and they didn't spend it all and they came back. It was? Okay. It was New York. We gave them a whole bunch of money that they didn't spend, and we were threatening to take it back and we did take it back because they were not spending it.
But the point is, the day that al-Qaeda hits London, when ostensibly everybody is concerned about how they're dealing with the aftermath in London and trying to buck everybody up over there, what do the Democrats do but make a beeline for the microphones to just tar and feather George W. Bush.
Now, it may play in New York but this is not going to play in establishing Hillary Clinton as presidential. This is not what the American people want to hear. She can sit around and moan all day long about budget cuts in the homeland security department for New York and at the same time people can say there hasn't been an attack in New York since 9/11.
Now, Katie Couric had Chertoff on the program today, on the Today Show, and she took what Mrs. Clinton said and turned it around as a question to him. She said, "Is that appropriate, Mr. Secretary, a $50 million cut, given what happened in London yesterday and what happened in Madrid before that?"
CHERTOFF: I think that really understates the amount of money in the budget that's available for rail security. In fact, the president's budget talks about a dramatic increase in infrastructure protection, $600 million that would be available for rail security. It talks about billions of dollars in urban security initiatives, and part of that is available for rail security.
In fact, one of the big points of the president's budget has been to move to a risk-based funding effort, and that risk-based funding effort will take account of the vulnerability of mass transit, and consider our other vulnerabilities as well. So I think actually the president's budget is a very strong budget, not only on mass transit security, but on security across the board.
RUSH: So Chertoff has just explained why Hillary is wrong and he doesn't want anybody else complaining about it. Chertoff's good.