Hillary’s Economic Plan: Obama 2.0
Clinton’s vision for recovery is just another four more years of Obama.
Hillary Clinton delivered a highly touted speech Thursday in Michigan outlining her economic plan. And Hillary, like Donald Trump in his economic speech on Monday, highlighted Michigan and Detroit in particular. Clearly, however, Clinton set out to make a sharp contrast between the economic outlook of Trump’s speech and her own. For Clinton, Detroit isn’t the model of failed Democrat policies and leadership, it’s a great comeback story. “The auto industry just had its best year ever,” she crowed.
The trouble is, everyone knows that the economy has not been good over these past eight years. Clinton’s explanation for the slowness of the recovery is that there remains “too much inequality.” But why was this inequality not addressed during eight years of Barack Obama’s “leadership”? Political gridlock, she says — that’s right, Republicans are to blame.
Clinton then went on to paint herself as the champion of the American middle class. She would be the candidate to listen to both sides and then forge ahead with a fair plan. She chastised Trump for his plan to cut taxes, claiming that it would only benefit the wealthy and lead to another recession.
Hillary then proceeded to outline her vision for America’s economic recovery, which consisted of the usual call for increasing taxes on the rich, increasing taxes on capital gains, a corporate exit tax and new taxes on financial transactions. This was followed by yet more commitments to increase a smorgasbord of government programs, such as free college, paid leave, higher minimum wage and the Paycheck Fairness Act to name a few. Of course, let’s not forget about the unions. Hillary said there is a need to “restore collective bargaining rights,” by which she likely means an assault on right-to-work laws.
Clinton is standing on the same economic platform as Obama eight years ago. She’s touting that same old failed socialist ideological pipe dream that bigger government leads to less inequality and greater economic growth. But who wants four more years of Obama’s economic malaise, where the only things that will increase are government regulations and the national debt?