Clinton Vows She’s Safest of Democrats

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Addressing business leaders at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square this afternoon, Senator Clinton is hoping to position herself as the Democratic presidential candidate most likely to be able to protect Americans from the cold draft of a hesitant economy turning to recession.

Delivering what she is billing as “a major economic policy address,” she will attempt to convince business and money-market leaders that she is the candidate who can restore the American economy to the prosperity enjoyed during the administration of her husband, President Clinton.

Taking as her cue Mr. Clinton’s winning mantra that “it’s the economy, stupid” that decides elections, she also will attempt to reassure voters, who in polling now place financial worries at the top of their concerns, ranking them above the Iraq war and national security.

She will flesh out policies formulated with her chief economic adviser, Gene Sperling, who was Mr. Clinton’s top White House economic adviser. These include an aggressive assault upon the public expenditure deficit, a safety net for those facing foreclosure on their homes following the subprime mortgage collapse, and addressing soaring gas prices and stagnation in middle-income wages.

More contentiously, she will advocate a return to Keynesian economics by promoting a range of fiscal measures to pump money into the economy if it tips into recession, and she will rescind tax breaks for the rich enacted by President Bush.

“We will get back into control of our fiscal destiny and make the tough choices and do the hard work to get our economy back on the right track,” she told the Financial Times this week.

She believes she has a clear advantage over her main rivals — Senator Obama, who lacks economic experience, and Senator Edwards, who is perceived as hostile to business interests.

Mrs. Clinton is the favorite among Democrat-leaning businessmen in New York, and today’s speech will herald the beginning of a final month of fund raising in the city spearheaded by a former Treasury secretary and new chairman of Citigroup, Robert Rubin, who endorsed her candidacy last month. In announcing his support, Mr. Rubin said, through a spokesman, “Hillary is exceedingly well qualified, and I’d like to see her be the next president of the United States.”

Mr. Rubin, a self confessed “deficit hawk” who as Mr. Clinton’s economic adviser and then Treasury secretary presided over the balancing of the federal budget, believes the Bush administration has approached the faltering markets in the wrong way by plunging the country into deficit.

“You could have had surpluses that affected the savings rate and would have helped the trade balance. I think you would have had more confidence in the policy framework, and you would have had a better dollar. But we are where we are,” he told the Financial Times last month.

Among the other prominent market specialists who will support her presidential bid in her “Winter Summit: Grand Finale” forum on December 13 and 14 in Manhattan is a former deputy Treasury secretary, Roger Altman.

Mrs. Clinton has gained some praise already by advocating a bond-funded moratorium on repayments by subprime mortgage holders who face foreclosure on their homes, a policy similar to that advocated by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday.

Mr. Paulson urged the Democratic Congress to agree to tax-exempt state bonds to refinance the estimated 2 million subprime mortgage holders who will see their interest rates rise over the next two years.

“This is an excellent idea that the administration should have adopted two months ago when I proposed it,” Mrs. Clinton said in a press statement on Monday.

But business leaders will be listening for some reassurance that Mrs. Clinton will continue to support free trade, the policy championed by Mr. Clinton and that she has failed so far to endorse wholeheartedly.

Globalization “has certainly helped expand our prosperity here at home. … What we have to do in America today is figure out how to best harness the force of globalization to ensure a continuing quality of life and standard of living,” she told an audience of new technology workers in Silicon Valley, Calif., in May.

This would entail new jobs in federal programs researching new energy sources in health, broadband infrastructure, job training, and education. Mr. Sperling is known to favor relief for workers put out of their jobs by foreign competition, though he rejects trade tariffs.

No one expects Mrs. Clinton to advocate more tax cuts. “If there were a necessity for stimulus, I would strongly favor a broad-based stimulus, not [the deep tax cuts] we’ve seen in the last six or seven years that has been disproportionately aimed at the already well off,” she told the Financial Times.

Elsewhere, a Clinton adviser, Mark Penn, shrugged off criticism over her campaign’s suggestion that Senator Obama had harbored presidential ambitions since kindergarten. “Oh, that is so silly,” he told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough yesterday.


The New York Sun

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