Hillary Clinton has now “clarified” remarks she made Friday stumping in Massachusetts for gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley. Here’s what she told the crowd:
“Don’t let anybody tell you .?.?.?that, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs. You know that old theory, trickle-down economics. That has been tried. That has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.”
Monday, she backtracked. Clinton said she “shorthanded the point,” which was to oppose “tax breaks” and “trickle-down” economics. In other words, her critics are guilty of taking her words out of context.
We’re not so sure. For one thing, her comments echoed those of her former boss, President Obama, when he told entrepreneurs, “You didn’t build that.”
The context doesn’t help her case much, either. Right before the jobs crack, she said raising minimum wages — which only makes workers more expensive to hire — creates jobs.
Right after, she complained about tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas, apparently without realizing that one reason businesses go overseas is because high taxes and regulations drive them out.
If Hillary were right, the president’s $830 billion stimulus should have been just the fix. Instead, we’re living in a nation where a record number of Americans have dropped out of the work force entirely.
Truth is, the real practitioners of trickle-down economics are folks like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who believe jobs will grow at the bottom the more government intervenes from the top.