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Hillary Clinton Will Set Out a Progressive Economic Vision and Focus on Income

4 minute read

Hillary Clinton will lay out a vision for the economy on Monday that focuses on boosting the middle class and addressing income inequality, a central part of her progressive vision of the presidency as her party tacks further to the left.

In a speech at the New School in New York, the Democratic frontrunner for the presidency will seek to play a part in redefining the meaning of economic success in the U.S., saying she would focus primarily on growing middle class incomes instead of gross domestic product, the traditional metric of an economy’s value.

“The measure of our economic success should be how much incomes rise for middle-class households, not an arbitrary growth figure,” an aide said, summarizing Clinton’s thinking about the economy and her coming speech on Monday.

She will call rising incomes “the defining economic challenge of our time,” added the aide.

Clinton’s speech on Monday comes amid a surge of support for progressive candidate Bernie Sanders, who speaks passionately about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour—a figure Clinton has yet to embrace—paid family leave, increasing taxes on the wealthy and breaking up the large Wall Street banks.

See Hillary Clinton's Evolution in 20 Photos

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Teenager: Hillary Rodham poses in her 1965 senior class portrait from Park Ridge East High School in Illinois. AP
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Law School Student: Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham pose for a snapshot at Yale Law School in 1972. They married in 1975.Clinton Presidential Library
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Mother: Clinton poses with her husband, Bill, then in his first term as governor, with their week-old daughter, Chelsea, on March 5, 1980.Donald R. Broyles—AP
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Campaign Companion: Clinton celebrates her husband's victory in a Democratic runoff in Little Rock, Ark. on June 8, 1982.AP
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Arkansas First Lady: Clinton is seen in her inaugural ball gown in 1985. A. Lynn—AP
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Political Wife: Clinton celebrates her husband's inauguration in Little Rock on Sept. 20, 1991.Danny Johnston—AP
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Dignitary: Clinton receives an honorary law degree from Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., on May 30, 1992.Chris Ocken—AP
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Campaigner: Clinton speaks at a meeting during the presidential campaign for her husband in Buffalo, N.Y., on April 4, 1992.Bill Sikes—AP
Hillary Rodham Clinton
First Lady: Clinton appears at the MTV Inauguration Ball at the Washington Convention Center on Jan. 20, 1993. Shayna Brennan—AP
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Second-Term First Lady: Clinton attends the Inaugural Ball after her husband was sworn in to a second term on Jan. 20, 1997. Brooks Kraft—Corbis
Hillary Rodham Clinton
New York Senator: Clinton speaks at a press conference with female Democratic senators in Washington on June 21, 2006. Brooks Kraft—Corbis
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Committee Member: Clinton listens to the testimony of Lt. General David Petraeus to the Senate Armed Forces Committee at a hearing on Capital Hill in Washington on Jan. 23, 2007. Brooks Kraft—Corbis
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Candidate: Clinton holds a a campaign event in Portsmouth, N.H., while running for the Democratic presidential nomination on Sept. 2, 2007. Brooks Kraft—Corbis
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Campaigner: Clinton speaks at a campaign stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Jan. 2, 2008. Brooks Kraft—Corbis
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State: Clinton kisses President Obama at a joint session of Congress in Washington on Feb. 24, 2009. Brooks Kraft—Corbis
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Witness: Clinton joins Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Dec. 3, 2009. Brooks Kraft—Corbis
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Witness: Clinton testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Jan. 23, 2013.J. Scott Applewhite—AP
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Author: Clinton attends a signing memoir, "Hard Choices," at a Costco in Arlington, Va., on June 14, 2014. Brooks Kraft—Corbis
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Grandmother: Clinton holds her granddaughter Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City on Sept. 27, 2014.Office of President Clinton/AP
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Once and Future Candidate: Clinton speaks at Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's annual Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa, on Sept. 14, 2014. Brooks Kraft—Corbis

With the economy growing at about 2% a year since 2000, and real incomes largely unchanged over the same period as the gap between rich and poor grows, populist views have become the spirit of the times for many voters.

Many of those progressive tenets, which are increasingly become the prevailing views of the Democratic party, are part of Clinton’s speech on Monday.

The speech will present a marked contrast between her ideas, and those of Republicans, whom she will accuse of offering a top-down, outdated and Reagan-era approach that only fuels the growth of wealth for the richest Americans through tax cuts and worsens income inequality. She will say that her own plans involve a conscious focus on middle class incomes.

Specifically, Clinton will call for raising the minimum wage, fighting wage theft, supporting unions and collective bargaining, and increasing taxes on the wealthy in order to address income inequality, her aide said.

In order to create more jobs, Clinton’s campaign said, the candidate will call for tax breaks for small businesses, expanding America’s clean energy sector and creating an infrastructure bank.

The economy, she will say, is flawed for favoring financial trading and the banking industry over the production of goods and trade. Clinton will discuss an economy that favors more durable middle class economic growth.

She’ll also likely delve into a wonkier approach, previewing new rules on shareholder activism and taxes to counter overly short-term thinking about the economy, as well as call for more research and development, and infrastructure rebuilding.

Clinton’s economic plan was formulated through conversations with more than 200 domestic policy experts over the last several months, the aide said, and Clinton herself consulted with dozens of economists and other thinkers.

Among the advisers that helped shape Clinton’s vision are some of the giants in progressive economics, including Joseph Stiglitz, Alan Blinder, Alan Krueger, Neera Tanden and many others. Management of the policy formulation was handled by her longtime aide at the State Department, Jake Sullivan, and Ann O’Leary and Maya Harris.

Her speech on Monday, however, may not include many of the small-bore specifics that her competitors for the Democratic nomination, Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, have already begun laying out. Sanders has called for 12 weeks of paid family leave, for example, and O’Malley has endorsed a $15 minimum wage as well.

Clinton will continue to unveil specific policy ideas over the summer and the fall on a rolling basis with a series of individualized announcements on wage growth, college affordability and corporate accountability.

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