Speaking on CNN, former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gushed about President Joe Biden’s first 100 days as president, “I’m thrilled that President Biden is taking advantage of this moment to try to push the agenda as far as possible.”
Clinton was prompted by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who asked, “I want to ask you about Biden’s 100 days. And I want to you ask something very specific about it which is, he has outlined a much more ambitious role for the government than people thought Democrats could or had the courage to. Your husband famously said when he was president, the era of big government is over. James Carville, who ran his campaign, said what I realized now is when I die I want to come back as the bond market because everybody here is so worried about any spending that would upset the bond market. Was that all wrong then or is it that Biden is in a new age?
“I really think it’s a new age and in part because what had to happen in the ’90s did happen,” Clinton replied. “There was a lot of, you know, positive economic growth that was aided and abetted by government policy and huge amounts of advancement for people up and down the income scale, minorities and others. In the Obama administration, the biggest expansion of health care that could happen.”
“But it wasn’t until the pandemic that I think a truly working majority of Americans, crossing party lines as we’ve seen, because of the approval that Republicans and independent voters are giving Biden, suddenly understood in a clear way that, you know what, there’s lots of times when we need the government, and we’ve been exposed as lacking in the kind of investments and support that we, as Americans, should be providing each other with the government as our partner,” she continued.
Clinon enthused, “And I’m thrilled that President Biden is taking advantage of this moment to try to push the agenda as far as possible. I think both, you know, Presidents Obama and Clinton did, too, but they were more constrained given what the climate was politically during their administrations. So, yes, I think it builds on a lot of what did happen in prior Democratic administrations. But it also goes further. And it can go further because people understand, guess what, you know, we kind of were failed by our government for four years when we confronted one of the worst health care crises, economic crises that our country has seen.”
Zakaria pointed out that former President Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary, Larry Summers, said the amount of spending the Biden administration favored was too much. He asked, “Are you worried if all of this goes through that it may just be too much?”
“I’m not worried yet,” Clinton said. “And really for a couple of reasons. We have seen signs of very robust economic growth. California, for example, given the existing tax structure, has seen a huge infusion of tax revenue because of stock market gains and then the capital gains that came with those. I think the same is beginning to happen elsewhere in the country. … I’m willing to look over the horizon and keep an eye out for any problems. But right now, I think we’re trying to right size the government to meet the challenges of today.”