Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders began the ninth democratic debate by attacking each other about who was most equipped to tackle Wall Street. Sanders argued that Clinton’s plans aren’t harsh enough. Clinton returned fire by saying Sanders isn’t educated enough on the issues.
Breaking up big banks has been a rallying cry of Sanders’ primary campaign. Clinton pointed out the Vermont Senator recently failed to detail exactly how he would do that when asked during an April 4th editorial board interview. She encouraged the crowd to “go and read” Sanders’ interview with the New York Daily News. He had “problems … answering a question about even his core issues. Breaking up the banks: when asked he could not explain how that would be done,” Clinton stated during the Thursday night CNN debate.
She followed up by attacking Sanders’ claims that her acceptance of money from big banks harms her judgement, calling such allegations “phony.”
“Make no mistake about it, this is not just an attack on me. It’s an attack on President Obama. You know, let me tell you why. You may not like the answer, but I’ll tell you why. President Obama had a Super PAC when he ran. President Obama took tens of millions from contributors, and President Obama was not at all influenced,” she said.
When asked to name an instance when Clinton’s acceptance of money from Wall Street affected her decision making, Sanders failed to produce a smoking gun, although he did accuse Clinton of not being proactive enough about breaking up big banks.
Clinton then countered that she had previously stood up to big banks as a New York senator, calling them out on their mortgage behavior and privileges under the tax code. Clinton also pointed to her support of the passage and implementation of the Dodd-Frank bill. Sanders was not impressed.
“She called them out. My goodness, they must have been really crushed by this! And was that before or after you received huge sums of money by giving speaking engagements? They must have been very, very upset by what you did,” Sanders responded.
The Vermont Senator continued, “Look, here is the difference and here is the clear difference: these banks in my view have too much power. They have shown themselves to be fraudulent organizations endangering the well-being of our economy. If elected president, I will break them up. We have legislation to do that, end of discussion.”
