Hillary Clinton in Wednesday night’s debate once again went out of her way to highlight one difference between her and Bernie Sanders — her support for corporate welfare and bailouts in contrast to Sanders’ opposition.
Clinton brought up the votes in which she supported the Troubled Asset Relief Program — the Wall Street bailout — while Sanders voted no. Clinton mentioned the vote because TARP money was eventually used to bail out the automakers. Sanders pointed out that he voted with her on the only vote that was explicitly about the Detroit bailout, and so she ultimately was highlighting only her TARP vote.
A few moments later — after deflecting questions about her six-figure speaking fees from Wall Street — Clinton again brought up the Export-Import Bank, a corporate-welfare agency that subsidizes U.S. manufacturers (mostly Boeing) and U.S. and foreign banks. Wall Street lobby groups pushed hard for Ex-Im renewal last year because Ex-Im provides taxpayer backing for major-bank loans. “It’s free money,” one Wall Streeter told me at an Ex-Im conference. As Sanders pointed out, Ex-Im is known as “The Bank of Boeing,” because it provides twice as much financing to Boeing exports as to exports by all small businesses combined.
Her dedication to corporate welfare suggests that if somehow Ted Cruz is the GOP nominee, the lines would be pretty clear: Free-market Republicans against corporate welfare and bailouts, and big-government Democrats for corporate welfare and bailouts.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
