Subject: ICYMI: Hillary Clinton's Fair Growth Gambit [LA Times]
From: Adrienne Elrod <[email-masked]>
To: Adrienne Elrod <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2015 13:56:31 -0400
List-Id: <toptalkers.hillaryclinton.com>

Friends -

Flagging for all of you the following column that ran in the LA Times over
the weekend, highlighting Hillary Clinton's economic policy.

*Key Quote: “**The details will be important, of course. But Clinton has
managed not only to find a sensible starting point in the middle of the
Democratic Party; she's introduced some useful new ideas to the campaign
and launched a debate that will force rivals in both parties to respond.”*

*Hillary Clinton's fair growth gambit*

By:​ ​Doyle McManus​ ​- LA Times

July 19, 2015

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0719-mcmanus-hillary-clinton-economics-20150719-column.html

For most of a generation, Democrats have divided into two broad camps on
economic policy. There are "growth Democrats," who argue that a rising tide
will lift all boats; that was the reigning view during the Bill Clinton
administration under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence H.
Summers. And there are "fairness Democrats," who argue that the central
problem is inequality. That's the view of the party's progressive wing, led
today by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Bernie Sanders of
Vermont.

As she began spelling out her views for the 2016 presidential campaign,
Hillary Rodham Clinton faced a choice: Which Democrat was she going to be?

Her answer: She wants to be both. "I believe we have to build a growth and
fairness economy," she said last week. "You can't have one without the
other."

Politically, that put Clinton exactly where she wants to be: to the left of
her husband's long-ago administration, which progressives think was too
solicitous toward Wall Street, but to the right of Sanders, who's running
as the scourge of the billionaire class.

So her economic policy speech included a dose of the pro-worker Hillary,
calling for stronger union bargaining power and demanding equal pay for
equal work, but also the pro-business Hillary, extolling entrepreneurs and
promising to be "the small-business president."

There was recycled Obama administration policy too: a higher minimum wage,
an infrastructure bank, investment in education and renewable energy. In
economic policy a Hillary Clinton presidency would look more like a third
Obama term than a third Bill Clinton term.

But she offered some intriguing new elements as well — policies that could
not only help her bridge the gaps between her party's wings but also make
her pitch more than just a warmed-over version of the last eight years.

She promised proposals to promote long-term investment by businesses
instead of a chase for quarterly results — a problem she called
"short-termism." (It may be the first time any presidential candidate has
ever used that word.)

Clinton offered ... policies that could ... bridge the gaps between her
party's wings, but also make her pitch ... more than just a warmed-over
version of the last eight years.-

"Too many pressures in our economy push us toward short-termism," Clinton
said. "Everything is focused on the next earnings report or the short-term
share price, and the result is too little attention to the sources of
long-term growth: research and development, physical capital and talent."

She promised proposals for "making sure stock buybacks aren't used only for
an immediate boost in share prices," a practice economists fear is soaking
up funds that might go to more productive investments. And she said she
wants to make sure stock markets "work for everyday investors, not just
high-frequency traders."

Clinton hasn't spelled out any details yet. But it sounded as though she
may propose changing Securities and Exchange Commission rules to make it
harder for companies to buy back their own stock, an idea Warren and other
progressives have championed.

Aides said Clinton also plans to propose changes in the tax treatment of
capital gains — income from investments — to reward long-term investors.
Laurence Fink, chairman of the investment firm BlackRock, has proposed
lengthening the holding period for long-term capital gains (which benefit
from a low tax rate) from one year to three years, and perhaps making all
gains tax-free after 10 years.

"U.S. tax policy, as it stands, incentivizes short-term behavior," Fink
wrote. "Tax reform that promotes long-term investment will benefit both the
companies who rely on capital markets and the hundreds of millions of
people saving for retirement."

Finally, Clinton called for a broader shift in the way American businesses
behave. "We need to get businesses back looking after their employees and
their customers and their communities and our country, not just their
executives and their shareholders," she said in New Hampshire on Thursday.

In effect, she was arguing for abandoning a principle many U.S. firms have
followed since the 1970s: the idea that the sole duty of a corporation is
to maximize shareholder value.

"There's increasing debate in the business community over a fundamental
question: What's the purpose of a corporation?" Judith Samuelson, director
of the Aspen Institute's Business and Society Program, told me. "We've been
in thrall to a very simplistic idea — that the purpose is to maximize
shareholder value. But that's not the only purpose, and it doesn't need to
be."

Some of these ideas, intriguingly, appeal not only to Democratic business
leaders but to some Republicans. too. Conservative writer James Pethokoukis
of the American Enterprise Institute warned: "Arguing against short-termism
should be a natural fit for Republicans…. Hillary Clinton just stole a
potentially powerful theme right from under them."

The details will be important, of course. But Clinton has managed not only
to find a sensible starting point in the middle of the Democratic Party;
she's introduced some useful new ideas to the campaign and launched a
debate that will force rivals in both parties to respond.

-- 

Adrienne K. Elrod
Spokesperson
Hillary For America
*www.hillaryclinton.com <http://www.hillaryclinton.com>*
@adrienneelrod

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