Hillary's New Deal

Hillary's New Deal: How a Clinton Presidency Could Transform America

This is the choice Americans face – between alternatives as starkly opposed to each other as in any election in our history, excepting the one in 1860, which led to the Civil War.

There on the convention stage was Sanders himself, railing against "the 40-year decline of our middle class" and "the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that we currently experience." There was Sen. Elizabeth Warren, explaining how the system is rigged for CEOs and predators like Trump. And there, too, was Hillary Clinton, proclaiming that "Democrats are the party of working people," but the party needed to show it better; then saying, "Our economy isn't working the way it should because our democracy isn't working the way it should"; and touting a government program funded by targeted tax hikes on the rich, the "biggest investment in new, good-paying jobs since World War II," to rebuild America's infrastructure.

Clinton's program for battling economic inequality is another series of reinventions in the broad New Deal tradition. Her proposals include middle-class tax credits to be covered by raising taxes on the very wealthiest Americans and by closing tax loopholes; raising the federal minimum wage by 66 percent to $12 an hour, while supporting a $15 minimum in individual cities and states; protecting labor unions' collective-bargaining rights; and reducing child-care costs. To address the problems of climate change unimaginable to earlier generations, she has called for the installation of half a billion solar panels by the end of her first term, with the goal of providing clean renewable energy to every household in the country by 2027.