Hillary Clinton called for the reauthorization of the Export-Import bank at the Politics and Eggs forum in New Hampshire on Wednesday, subtly taking a dig at her primary opponent Bernie Sanders.
“I was also relieved yesterday to see that the House finally voted to reauthorize the Export-Import bank, now the Senate needs to do exactly the same,” Clinton said “For the life of me I don’t understand the argument [against the bank], I’ve traveled to 112 other countries, I know what the countries do to support their businesses … and the Export-Import bank’s sole purpose is to promote U.S. interests abroad.”
The former secretary of state went on to speak of the thousands of New Hampshire businesses that have been exporting their products overseas, bolstering the state’s economy by $29 million.
“So you think it would be a no-brainer. Republicans and Democrats have worked together on this for decades and it actually returns a profit to the Treasury … So it’s not one of those projects where money’s going in and nothing’s coming out. It actually has a surplus,” Clinton argued.
“Whether for ideological or political reasons there are people in Washington against it and that makes absolutely no sense,” she concluded.
One such person is Sanders, the senator from Vermont who also happens to be Clinton’s main competitor for the Democratic nomination. Sanders calls Ex-Im “corporate welfare to multinational corporations.”
Clinton also took a question on the death penalty, saying that while she wouldn’t abolish it capital punishment is “too frequently applied.”
The Politics and Eggs forum at St. Anselm’s College has previously been visited by Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Ben Carson, Scott Walker and Jeb Bush.
