With Congress on the verge of approving Trade Promotion Authority for President Obama, free trade has become a big issue once again. Especially among Democrats, free trade is becoming something of a divisive issue between Obama and his party’s political base.
So what does Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee for president in 2016, think about the issue? Funny you should ask. While serving as secretary of state, Clinton was an enthusiastic supporter of free trade, and especially of the deal Obama is still negotiating with 11 other countries around the Pacific Rim. Lately, she has avoided taking a clear position on this issue, but the latest smoke signals out of her camp, from last month, came in the form of a statement from an aide that suggested a “wait-and-see” attitude.
Meanwhile, journalists have made a curious discovery in Secretary Clinton’s financial disclosure forms. Since January 2014, Clinton has been paid $2.7 million in speaking fees by at least 10 organizations that are specifically lobbying the Obama administration right now on the issue of trade.
Americans frequently question their elected leaders’ commitment to the public interest — in fact, roughly half of Americans can be counted on to question it at any given time, depending on which party the president represents. But whereas partisan disagreements are healthy, no one should have to wonder whether a president can be trusted to put the public first because she has filled her own personal bank account with money from interested parties.
And no, the important question is most certainly not whether the cash actually influenced the candidate’s position. By the time that question is asked, it’s already too late.
Peter Schweizer’s book, Clinton Cash, has already unearthed examples of Clinton’s husband, the former president, being paid large speaking fees by companies that were simultaneously courting his wife’s State Department. For example, TD Bank wanted to see the Keystone XL Pipeline approved at the time it paid him $1.8 million for a series of speeches. Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin, was pushing a major uranium deal involving a Russian government-run company at the same time it paid him $500,000 to give a single speech in Moscow.
But what about the more subtle problem of payments to Hillary after she left office? How is this not a classic case of “the revolving door?”
The revolving-door concept is simple: Today’s officeholders and bureaucrats, from the lowliest to the mightiest, make decisions in the knowledge that someday the people subject to their decisions today may well end up showing them some gratitude — perhaps in the form of a paycheck for lobbying or “consulting,” or perhaps in the form of one-time speaking fees.
Again, the question here is not whether money has changed, obscured or otherwise affected Clinton’s position. The question is whether Clinton has taken way too much easy money from people involved in this issue. The answer is yes.
