Hillary Clinton’s Economic Vision Will Make Us Stronger Together
Hillary Clinton believes our economy is stronger when we grow together. But instead of growing together, we’re in danger of growing apart – with too few good-paying jobs, too much inequality and a lack of basic economic security and fairness for working families. Hillary knows we can meet these challenges. We can spur more economic growth, which will create more good-paying jobs and raise wages. And we can have more economic fairness, so the rewards are shared with everyone, not just those at the top.
Clinton has offered detailed and comprehensive plans to:
1. Break through Washington gridlock to make the boldest investment in good-paying jobs since World War II
2. Make debt-free college available to all Americans
3. Rewrite the rules to ensure that workers share in the profits they help create
4. Ensure that those at the top pay their fair share
5. Put families first by matching our policies to how families live, learn, and work in the 21st century economy
These are not new fights for Hillary Clinton:
• As Senator, Clinton backed legislation to improve national infrastructure.
• As Senator, Clinton introduced the Student Borrower Bill of Rights to help students struggling to go to college and worked to increase Pell Grants.
• As Senator, she co-sponsored or introduced bills to raise the minimum wage in every session of Congress from 2001 to 2008.
• As Senator, she championed the Paycheck Fairness Act and cosponsored the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in an effort to achieve equal pay and help close the wage gap.
• She also advocated for paid family leave by fighting for legislation to guarantee paid sick leave, and calling for paid parental leave for all federal workers.
• Clinton stood up for female-owned small businesses during her time in the Senate, and made clear she would help women-owned small businesses gain government contracts.
• In 2007, nearly a year before the crisis, she went to Wall Street to call directly for a moratorium of home foreclosures, to freeze adjustable loan rates, and to require accountability on Wall Street.
• In 2001 and 2003, as Senator, she opposed the Bush tax cuts, which disproportionately benefitted the top 1 percent.
• She introduced the Access to Employment and English Acquisition Act, which would have expanded job training opportunities for people who are Limited English Proficient.
And leading progressives, experts, business leaders, and analysts have praised her plan:
Moody’s Analytics: “During her presidency, the economy would create 10.4 million jobs, 3.2 million more than under current law. [...] The upshot of our analysis is that Secretary Clinton’s economic policies when taken together will result in a stronger U.S. economy under almost any scenario.”
Joseph Stiglitz: “Hillary Clinton began to offer the kind of comprehensive approach we need to tackle the enormous economic challenges we face.”
Paul Krugman: “In fact, Mrs. Clinton’s speech reflected major changes, deeply grounded in evidence, in our understanding of what determines wages.”
Michele Goldberg: “Hillary Clinton’s speech today was the most progressive address on economics by a major-party presidential candidate in a generation.”
Heather Boushey: Clinton is “laying out an agenda that looks at what inequality means for families up and down the income distribution, what we can do to fix it, and it's really exciting to see a politician take up a very serious set of research ideas and bring them into the public debate.”
Warren Buffett: Clinton “will make sure that those people who are having to work two jobs to barely get by will not have that kind of world for themselves and their children moving forward.”
E.J. Dionne: “Hillaryeconomics is a wager that voters across racial and ethnic lines, very much including members of the white working class, want a raise and better benefits. And it's a sharp challenge to Republicans. To be competitive in 2016, the GOP needs to make a plausible counter offer. It's the bidding war an economy mired in inequality and stalled mobility needs — and it's one Clinton thinks she can win.”
Alan Krueger: “This plan is a win-win. In the short-term it will create more middle-class jobs and in the long-term it will raise productivity, improve our competitiveness, and raise pay.”
