Hillary Clinton outlined her economy approach Monday, noting that she will present
more detailed proposals in the near future.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton provided an outline Monday morning for economic policies she will flesh out in the weeks and months ahead. Her soft-spoken speech—emphasizing "strong growth, fair growth and long-term growth"—was delivered at The New School in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. She said her mission every day as president would be to find and adopt policies for the "defining economic issue" of our time: steady growth that "lifts up families" with better wages.
Here is a transcript.
Clinton said the policies she seeks would help "the struggling, the striving and the successful." The United States cannot go back to the old policies "that failed us before," she said, or even to those that succeeded. Among other things, she emphasized that Social Security should be defended and enhanced.
A key element of policy in her administration, according to Clinton, would be finding ways to solve problems created by major changes in the economy that didn't begin with the Great Recession and won't end with the recovery: "We don't hide from change, we harness it." The nation needs more growth, more jobs and more businesses, especially small businesses, to create jobs and bring us closer to the full employment that is crucial to raising wages. She voiced criticisms of big business:
"Corporate profits are at near-record highs and Americans are working as hard as ever but paychecks have barely budged in real terms. Families today are stretched in so many directions and so are their budgets."
Making the economy fairer, she said, means breaking down barriers for more Americans to participate in the work force, especially women. "We are in a global comptetiton" and "can't afford to leave talent on the sidelines." Doing so shortchanges the dreams of Americans and the nation. Women have made progress in the workforce, she said, but the United States used to rank seventh in the number of women in the workforce in developed nations. Now it is 19th. Why? Because other nations are "expanding family friendly polices and we are not."
It is time to end the situation of women getting paid less on the job and women of color making even less, she said. There needs to be fair pay, fair scheduling, earned time off and child care. Clinton said she would "fight to put families first just as I have my entire career."
Income inequality is a "drag on our entire economy," she said, with a sneer directed at Jeb Bush, the Republican many odds-makers are giving the best chance of winning the GOP nomination, who remarked last week that Americans must work longer hours and increase their wages by being more productive. "Let him tell that to the nurse who is on her feet all day," she said, noting also the hard work of teachers, fast-food workers and truckers. "They don't need a lecture, they need a raise."
You can read more about Clinton's speech below the fold.
She pointed out that many companies misclassify workers as contractors and steal their wages. New rules designed to curtail Wall Street are under assault from Republicans, she said, and must be resisted. She said the nation must go beyond Dodd-Frank, the financial reform act that emerged from the Great Recession. There should be no tolerance for corporate criminal behavior, she said. And not only should institutions that engage in such behavior be punished, so also should individuals who now often "get off with no punishment at all even when they have pocketed the gains. [...] We will prosecute individuals when they commit fraud and other wrong-doing."
Tax reform is crucial, too, in Clinton's view. Not the kind of tax reform that, like GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio has set forth—cut levies by a couple of hundred thousand dollars a years for people bringing in more than $3 million a year—but rather "tax relief and simplification for hardworking families." She said she supports the Buffett Rule, which would ensure that a wealthy CEO does not pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. She supports eliminating the carried interest loophole, which lets the wealthy pay an artificially low tax rate.
"We must," Clinton said, "stand up to efforts across the country that undermine workers' bargaining power." The Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, and other Republicans have attacked workers by attacking their ability to bargain collectively. The evidence shows, she said, that the decline of unions may be responsible for a third of the income inequality among men, therefore the nation must get serious about supporting union workers.
Helping Americans stay in the middle class or find a pathway out of poverty into the middle class is essential. That has been made more difficult by the changes coming as a result of globalization. The key to that are policies that create full employment. Currently, she said, a quarter of young Black men and 15 percent of Latino youth cannot find a job.
Also key is better schooling, starting from the earliest years, Clinton said. High-quality pre-kindergarten education should be available to all. Such programs, according to her, can raise lifetime incomes by as much as 25 percent. In addition to these programs, she said we need to find ways to make college more affordable and "for Americans to refinance their student debt."
Clinton brought up a decades-old refrain regarding the shortsightedness of American business, with what she called a focus on the next day instead of the next decade, a focus on short-term share price or "quarterly capitalism" as one businessman she spoke with has called it. That should be replaced with "clear-eyed capitalism," according to Clinton. The decline in net business investment needs to be reversed. Companies that spend most of their profits on stock buybacks and dividends don't leave much to pay for workers' wage hikes and investment in new technology. Workers are assets, she said, and investing in them pays off. In that light, she plans to push for a $1,500 tax credit for every worker businesses train and hire and policies that reward longer-term investments.
Clinton also backed a proposal that's long been on the agenda of many Democrats, the establishment of a national infrastructure bank. The nation needs to invest in world-class airports, railroads, bridges and roads, and faster broadband networks with greater diversity of providers. Greater investments should also be made in cleaner newer energy to "make America the world's clean energy superpower." This will create millions of jobs, she said, just as will funding scientific and medical research that creates new industries.
Clinton said she will "seek out and welcome any good idea that is actually based on reality," and put forth "prinicpled, pragmatic and progressive policies that move us forward."
As president, she said, she would "convene, connect and collaborate" to "break out of poisonous partisan gridlock." The discussion should not be about "left, right or center" and about the future rather than the past." An "America for tomorrow, not yesterday ... an America where if you do your part, you will be rewarded ... an America where we don't leave anyone behind."