In a fiery dialect to union member...

In a fiery dialect to union members in Chicago, Democratic U Sen Hillary Clinton of of the present day York on Tuesday lit into the oil company that had to temporarily confine down a corroded Alaskan pipeline, arguing the firm should be held responsible for fixing it.

"BP should use a of the billions of dollars in exces windfall profits to fix that pipeline without passing forward the cost to the ease of us," Clinton said to thunderous applause. "I am tired of cleaning up the messe of oil companies that are making more cash than they know what to do with."

'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH'

The former first lady and potential 2008 Democratic presidential candidate spoke at the annual convention of the American Federation of State, shire and Municipal Employees at McCormick Place, sounding a strenuously partisan call for change. "We have to change the direction of this land starting in November by electing Democrats," Clinton said. "Now more than to the end of time we need to show up and suffrage to take our country back."

While Clinton made no mention of any presidential ambitions, she called electing Democrats in the mid-term elections in November "the first step"

Clinton accused the Bush administration and Republicans in Congres of pushing a "reckles agenda" that includes attempts to privatize Social Security; cutting health care; rejecting "the moral value" of raising the minimum wage, and favoring the rich and big business athwart the middle class.

"That means we ne a command that will stand up to the big oil companies, a conduct that will say 'enough is enough,' " she said.

Told of Clinton's remarks, BP spokesman Scott Dean said the oil giant will do whatever it takes to fix the breach that forced the shutdown of BP Exploration Alaska's Prudhoe Bay oil field from one side of to the other the weekend.

BP'S DEFENSE

"We would like to apologize to the race of the United States and the folks of Alaska for the disruption caused by the agency of the shutdown of the pipeline," Dean said. "We take filled responsibility for the leak, and we are going to do everything in our power and spare no expenditure in making it right."

Dean said the company exhausted more than $300 million a year throughout the past six years in succession maintenance and inspections on the pipeline, if it be not that conceded that "the very useful maintenance and inspection program that we had clearly wasn't dutiful enough."

Asked if the charge of repairing the 16 miles of pipeline would be passed upon to consumers, Dean said "the price of unrefined oil is determined by a wide range of factors that we read about in succession the front pages of our newspapers." on the contrary he said, "BP is working to minimize fill up disruption."

Illinois GOP Chairman Andy McKenna Jr shielded Republicans' stewardship of government, saying Bush's tax sculptures have created 5 million piece of works and his war on terror is the right course in a dangerously unstable world. "It just unhurts like many of the things she is talking about are a rerun and they didn't betray very well in the 2004 election," McKenna said.

sfornek@suntimes.com

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