Bernie Sanders sharpened his criticism of Hillary Clinton’s ties to Wall Street Sunday night, arguing in the Democratic presidential debate that she has received too much support politically and personally from banks to crack down on them.
“I don’t take money from big banks, I don’t get personal speaking fees from Goldman Sachs,” he said, referencing one of the largest bank holding companies in the country.
Later in the exchange, he again drew attention to Clinton’s ties to the bank. “You’ve received over $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in one year,” he said. He noted that last week Goldman Sachs settled a government investigation over faulty mortgage securities for over $5 billion, and claimed that the bank’s CEO is one of the billionaires who has lobbied Congress to cut safety net spending.
“You’ve got to break up these huge financial institutions,” the Vermont senator said. “They have too much economic power and they have too much financial power over our entire economy.”
Clinton, the front-runner who has seen Sanders gain on her in the polls, responded that she shares his agenda. “There’s no daylight on the basic premise that there should be no bank to big to bail and no individual shuld be too powerful to jail,” she said.
Clinton tried to parry Sander’s line of attack by arguing that Sanders had placed himself in opposition to President Obama by criticizing the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law that he signed in an effort to prevent banking activities that could lead to taxpayer bailouts.
She also drew attention to a vote he cast in 2000 for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, a law that blocked some regulation of financial products that many liberals later blamed for the financial crisis.
Yet Sanders resumed the attack, focusing on the fact that financial institutions are among the largest political donors to Clinton over her career.
“Can you really reform Wall Street when they are spending millions and millions of dollars on campaign contributions and when they are providing speaker fees to individuals?” he asked.
“It’s easy to say, ‘I’m going to do this, and do that,’ but I have doubts when people receive amounts of money from Wall Street,” he said. “I don’t want Wall Street’s money. I’ll rely on the middle class and working families.”
Since stepping down as Secretary of State, according to the New York Times, Clinton has been paid over $3 million by financial firms, including banks, for speeches.
During the exchange, Clinton repeated the argument that her campaign plan for financial reform is tougher than Sanders, because it includes specific measures to tackle the financial risks posed by “shadow banks,” which are non-bank financial institutions.
At that point, Sanders received help from Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor. “That’s not true,” he interjected when Clinton claimed her plan was stricter.
“The truth of the matter is you do not go as far in reining in Wall Street as I would,” he said. “The people of America deserve to have a president that’s on their side, protecting the main street from excesses on Wall Street — and we’re just as vulnerable today.”
