Bernie Sanders Attacks Hillary Clinton Over Wall Street Ties, Trade
By RT
Bernie Sanders has attacked Hillary Clinton over her record with corporate America and “disastrous trade agreements” destructive to the US economy, as well as multibillion bailouts that robbed the state of jobs – all at the expense of the US middle class.
Democratic contenders were debating in Flint, a Michigan city affected by heavy unemployment and water contamination with lead.
One of the questions from the audience was about getting the jobs back to the city. Unemployment in the city stands at over 9 percent, according to the bureau of labor statistics, which is almost double the national average.
Clinton attacked the companies that used help from the government in previous years and are moving their production outside the country, citing Nabisco that announced the move of 600 jobs from a Southside Nabisco plant to Mexico last week.
“I’m going to claw back those benefits. They’re going to have to pay back if they’re leaving a place that actually invested in them. I’m also going to go after companies like Johnson Controls in Wisconsin. They got part of the bailout … now they want to move some of their headquarters to Europe. They’re going to have to pay an exit fee.”
Sanders was quick to strike back. “I’m very glad, Anderson, that secretary Clinton discovered religion on this issue,” he said.
He also accused Clinton of supporting “disastrous trade agreements” such as NAFTA and TPP.
Clinton struck back noting that Sanders voted against bailing out the auto industry in 2008, in a move that ended up costing taxpayers $9.26 billion.
That’s when the exchanged started heating up, loosing the usual courtesy of Democratic Debates compared to Republican ones.
“Whoa, whoa,” Sanders said, calling it a Wall Street bailout where “some of your friends destroyed the economy.”
“I said let the billionaires bail themselves out. And let’s help the middle class,” he said.
Sanders moved to the subject of Clinton’s speeches given to Wall Street banks for which she got hundreds of thousands of dollars saying that if she was paid that much the speeches must have been “fantastic” and they should be released to the public.
Clinton tried to jumps in several times.
Sanders cut back “Excuse me, I’m talking.”
Clinton reiterated that she would have released the speeches if others released.
“Here it is!” Sanders shouted, throwing his hands up as if he is throwing papers. “There ain’t nothing! I don’t give speeches on Wall Street!”
Clinton gave an example of Barack Obama, who “took more money from Wall Street in the 2008 campaign”, but ended up being tough on Wall Street by signing the Dodd-Frank act.
“If you were going to be in some way distrusted or dismissed about whether you can take on Wall Street if you ever took money, President Obama took more money from Wall Street in the 2008 campaign than anybody ever had,” she said.
“And when it came time to stand up to Wall Street, he passed and signed the toughest regulation since the Great Depression with the Dodd-Frank regulations.”
Bernie Sanders’ trade position is misguided and will badly hurt the U.S. In an interconnected globalized world, it is fantasy that we have a Fortress America that can insulate itself from the larger economic forces. Obama is absolutely correct in wanting to establish a rule based trade with the fastest growing region in the world. Should the U.S opt out and Asia goes ahead with a free trade zone of its own, the U.S could be locked out of this very important market of almost 3 billion people and with fastest growing economy of the world. That would be counter productive and cause a lot of suffering.