MANCHESTER, N.H.—Hillary Rodham Clinton is promising hundreds of billions of dollars in new federal spending in an effort to compete with the liberal economic policies of her presidential primary challengers.
The first piece of a new jobs agenda, a $275 billion infrastructure plan unveiled Sunday, falls short of the $1 trillion pledged by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to rebuild the nation’s crumbling bridges, ports, highways and airports. But it marks an effort by Clinton to fulfill her party’s desire to use national programs to boost the middle class without alienating independent voters more concerned with increasing the federal deficit.
“Some candidates may be running to make a point,” Clinton told New Hampshire Democrats, in a veiled criticism of Sanders. “I am running to make a difference.”
The state Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner in New Hampshire is an annual fundraiser that offers an opportunity for the presidential candidates — former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley among them — to woo influential activists in the early voting state.
“I’m not a former socialist. I’m not a former Republican. I’m a life-long Democrat,” O'Malley said, taking subtle digs at Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, and Clinton, who identified as a Republican in high school.
Already Clinton has proposed an array of new federal programs, including a $350 billion college affordability plan. Other new policies, like universal pre-K, combating substance abuse and expanding family leave, could add hundreds of billions in spending.
Clinton aides say her economic initiatives will be the most expensive of her campaign and plan to roll out proposals for new investments in manufacturing and research in the coming weeks. On Sunday, she added a pledge to give all American households access to high-speed Internet by 2020.
So far, she’s offered few specifics about how she'd fund her plans. Her campaign said that her infrastructure proposal would be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes but didn’t detail which breaks would be targeted.
Republicans have seized on her spending, with the Republican National Committee accusing her of treating American tax dollars like “every day is Black Friday.”
At the same time, Clinton has pledged to roll out hundreds of billions of dollars in middle-class tax cuts, saying she'd increase taxes on the wealthy to fund the new breaks. She’s vowed not to raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 a year, using that pledge to draw a contrast with Sanders.
Clinton says Sanders would require middle-class Americans to pay higher taxes to fund his single-payer health care plan, a charge his campaign disputes.
