--- title: Hillary Clinton Economic Speech Focuses on Wages description: Decoding a major economic address from the Democratic frontrunner canonical: https://time.com/3955764/hillary-clinton-economic-income/ author: Michael Scherer article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-13T17:21:21.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-05T08:29:09.221Z article:section: Politics og:title: Hillary Clinton's New Mantra: It's the Wages, Stupid og:description: Decoding a major economic address from the Democratic frontrunner og:url: https://time.com/3955764/hillary-clinton-economic-income/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt90cbd70a2bf411c0/69885aa5428a9e67e8cce23b/hillary-clinton-economy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4636 og:image:height: 2608 og:image:alt: HIllary Rodham Clinton og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Hillary Clinton's New Mantra: It's the Wages, Stupid twitter:description: Decoding a major economic address from the Democratic frontrunner twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt90cbd70a2bf411c0/69885aa5428a9e67e8cce23b/hillary-clinton-economy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Hillary Clinton's New Mantra: It's the Wages, Stupid > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=012bed92-88ea-4d69-929d-b038693572a8&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Hillary Clinton's Top 10 Political Moments [Watch (HLS stream): Hillary Clinton's Top 10 Political Moments](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/L3I0gpwt.m3u8) (1:49)  _Published 2015-04-09. Watch the top 10 moments from Hillary Clinton's career in politics._ by [Michael Scherer](https://time.com/author/michael-scherer/) ## Michael Scherer Jul 13, 2015 5:21 PM UTC Watch the top 10 moments from Hillary Clinton's career in politics. by [Michael Scherer](https://time.com/author/michael-scherer/) ## Michael Scherer Jul 13, 2015 5:21 PM UTC It’s the wages, stupid. That’s the magic sauce—in just four words—that Hillary Clinton believes will make her the next President of the United States. In [a speech Monday to lay out her approach](http://time.com/3955359/hillary-clinton-economy-2016-presidential-election/), she chose a more verbose version of the same message. “Wages need to rise to keep up with costs. Paychecks need to grow. Families who work hard and do their part deserve to get ahead and stay ahead,” she said. “The defining economic challenge of our time clear. We must raise incomes for hardworking Americans.” As a theme, the approach is not new. A [chart showing the divergence between median income growth and productivity growth](http://swampland.time.com/2013/02/04/the-most-important-chart-in-american-politics/) over the last decade sat at the heart of Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign for President. “‘I’m working harder and falling behind,'” David Simas, Obama’s political strategist, explained after the 2012 election. “That was the North Star. Everything we did and everything we said was derivative of that sentiment.” As she spoke Monday, Clinton’s campaign [tweeted out a version of the same chart](https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/620629922801807360) that once hung at Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters and now hangs in Simas’ West Wing office. The difference now is that Clinton inherits a situation that is even more dire for American voters than the one that Obama struggled with over his past two campaigns, both of which promised improvement for middle class incomes that has yet to arrive. Even as the labor market has tightened in recent years and the national economy has continued to grow, wages have remained flat or, in many cases, declined. A [recent analysis of Census data](http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2015/03/05-income-growth-decline-economic-prosperity-shapiro/shapirov3.pdf) by Democratic economist Robert J. Shapiro, whose work helped inform the Obama campaign’s approach, found that the economy shifted gears for American incomes after the 2001 recession. “Everybody declines from 2002 on relative to the 1980s and 1990s, and probably a majority of the country saw their incomes decline as they age,” he said, noting that unlike many economic indicators, this is one that voters feel directly. “It’s politically important because it’s people’s actual experience.” Shapiro found that the only two groups who saw their incomes increase on average between 2002 and 2013 were college graduates and households that were in their early 20s at the beginning of the decade. To counteract this shift, Clinton proposed a variety of policy buckets she plans to focus on, many of which she did not detail. These include tax changes that will encourage large companies to share profits with employees, tax increases for the wealthy and new regulations of the financial sector. “The truth is the current rules for our economy do reward some work, like financial trading, for example much more than other work, like actually building and selling things, the work that has always been the backbone of our economy,” she said. “To get all incomes rising again, we need to strike a better balance.” The focus on wages also gives a frame for Clinton to roll out a raft of other evergreen liberal policies, which could have indirect impacts on wage growth. These include better family leave policies to encourage more women to enter the workforce, lower health care costs, better early childhood education subsidies, more spending on infrastructure and “enhancing” Social Security. ### See Hillary Clinton's Evolution in 20 Photos  Teenager: Hillary Rodham poses in her 1965 senior class portrait from Park Ridge East High School in Illinois. AP  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  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  Campaign Companion: Clinton celebrates her husband's victory in a Democratic runoff in Little Rock, Ark. on June 8, 1982. AP  Arkansas First Lady: Clinton is seen in her inaugural ball gown in 1985. A. Lynn—AP  Political Wife: Clinton celebrates her husband's inauguration in Little Rock on Sept. 20, 1991. Danny Johnston—AP  Dignitary: Clinton receives an honorary law degree from Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., on May 30, 1992. Chris Ocken—AP  Campaigner: Clinton speaks at a meeting during the presidential campaign for her husband in Buffalo, N.Y., on April 4, 1992. Bill Sikes—AP  First Lady: Clinton appears at the MTV Inauguration Ball at the Washington Convention Center on Jan. 20, 1993. Shayna Brennan—AP  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  New York Senator: Clinton speaks at a press conference with female Democratic senators in Washington on June 21, 2006. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  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  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  Campaigner: Clinton speaks at a campaign stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Jan. 2, 2008. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  Secretary of State: Clinton kisses President Obama at a joint session of Congress in Washington on Feb. 24, 2009. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  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  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  Author: Clinton attends a signing memoir, "Hard Choices," at a Costco in Arlington, Va., on June 14, 2014. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  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  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 Overall, the rhetoric draws heavily on the work of the left wing of the Democratic Party, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Clinton Administration economist Joseph Stiglitz. Though Clinton stopped short of calling for redistribution of wealth to combat inequality, a constant theme of the left, she did embrace the notion that the current economic stagnation for many Americans is a policy choice. “The choices we make in the years ahead will set the stage for what American life in the middle class and our economy will be like in this century,” she said. At two points, Clinton contrasted her vision with the Obama Administration. First, she criticized the Justice Department and regulators for not being aggressive enough in prosecuting the misdeeds of financial firms. She also called for more financial regulation. “I will appoint and empower regulators who understand that too big to fail is still too big a problem,” she said, in a swipe at Obama, who has argued that the problem of too-big-to-fail was largely solved by financial reform in 2010. Perhaps most important, the speech set up a contrast with Republican frontrunner Jeb Bush, who has laid out an economic vision of rising prosperity based on growing the whole economy by 4% annually, a target that few economists think can be reached. Clinton’s argument is that total growth is not enough. There also needs to be a reshuffling of the rules that makes the gains from that growth more widely distributed. The question for Clinton is much the same as the challenge faced by Obama. She may have diagnosed the disease in a way that the American people have endorsed in the past, but can she deliver the antidote? Republicans, who have a dramatically different world view, have been able to block many of Obama’s reforms, and would likely have similar power under a Hillary Clinton Administration. There is also a skepticism, shared by many liberal economists, about just how much the reforms she laid out will impact incomes, which have been under pressure because technology and global competition have put a cap on prices and an increase in the unemployment rolls. But that is a question for a later time. The first jobs for Clinton are to win the nomination and then the White House. And by borrowing heavily from her successful predecessor, her team believes she has a winning formula. ## Transcript [00:00] You know, I'm not [00:04] sittin' here some little woman standing here by my man [00:06] like Tammy Wynette. I'm sittin' here because I love [00:09] him, and I respect him. Now is our chance [00:13] to beat the historical odds, and give the American [00:16] people the health security they need. If there is one [00:19] message that echoes forth from this. Let [00:24] it be that human rights are women's rights and [00:28] women's rights are human rights once and for all. [00:33] The great story here for anybody willing to find it and [00:36] write about it and explain it is this vast right- wing [00:40] conspiracy that has been conspiring. Against my [00:43] husband since the day he announced for president. I [00:45] would be happy to, when you give me the signed [00:47] letters. Well, right here. Right here. When you give me. [00:49] Right here. Sign it right now. We'll shake. We'll shake [00:50] on this, Ray. No, no, I want your signature, cause I [00:53] think that everybody wants to see you signing [00:55] something that you said you were for. You know, I have [00:58] so many opportunities from this country. I just don't [01:01] wanna see us fall backwards. Although we weren't able [01:03] to shatter that [01:08] highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, [01:12] it's got about 18 million cracks in it. The [01:19] battle to stop Al Qaeda and its affiliates. Does [01:23] not end with one death. What difference, at [01:27] this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what [01:31] happened and do everything we can to prevent it from [01:34] ever happening again, Senator. I took the [01:36] unprecedented step of asking that the state [01:39] department make all my work- related emails, [01:43] [ MUSIC ] Public for everyone to see. 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