At the February 3, 2016 Democratic town hall, Anderson Cooper
asked Hillary about the $675,000 she received from Goldman Sachs for three
speeches.
She shrugged her shoulders and said “That’s what they offered.” She
then went on to say “Anybody who knows me, who thinks that they can influence
me, name anything that they’ve influenced me on. Just name one thing.”
Elizabeth Warren did name one thing back in 2003, before the
Goldman Sachs speeches. She wrote about it in her book, “The Two Income Trap” and
she talked about it in a 2004 interview with Bill Moyers.
Warren said that Hillary was influenced by campaign contributions from banking interests. When Hillary was the first
lady, she was opposed to a bankruptcy bill that favored credit card companies
and hurt single mothers. She called it an “awful bill”. According to Warren,
Hillary successfully influenced President Clinton to veto the bill.
After Hillary began her run for
the U.S. Senate, she received $140,000 in campaign contributions from the
banking industry.
According to Elizabeth Warren,
those contributions influenced Hillary. After she was elected to the Senate,
the bankruptcy bill was re-introduced and she voted in favor of it.
Warren wrote about it in her 2003
book, The Two Income Trap:
Warren: “In the spring of 2001,
the bankruptcy bill was reintroduced in the Senate, essentially unchanged from
the version President Clinton had vetoed the previous year. This time freshman
Senator Hillary Clinton voted in favor of the bill. Had the bill been
transformed to get rid of all those awful provisions that had so concerned
First Lady Hillary Clinton? The bill was essentially the same, but Hillary
Rodham Clinton was not. As First Lady, Mrs. Clinton had been persuaded that the
bill was bad for families, and she was willing to fight for her beliefs. Her
husband was a lame duck at the time he vetoed the bill; he could afford to
forgo future campaign contributions. As New York’s newest senator, however, it
seems that Hillary Clinton could not afford such a principled position.
Campaigns cost money, and that money wasn’t coming from families in financial
trouble. Senator Clinton received $140,000 in campaign contributions from
banking industry executives in a single year, making her one of the top two
recipients in the Senate. Big banks were now part of Senator Clinton’s
constituency. She wanted their support, and they wanted hers—including a vote
in favor of ‘that awful bill.’”
In the 2004 interview with Bill
Moyers, Warren said that Hillary had taken money from the credit card
companies. Warren said “more to the point, she worries about them as a
constituency.”
The definition of constituency
is “a body of voters in a specified area who elect a representative to a
legislative body.”
Elizabeth Warren said that
Hillary worries about the credit card companies as a constituency.
There was one question and
answer in the interview that stood out.
Moyers: “But what does this mean
though to these people, these millions of people out there whom the politicians
cavort in front of as favoring the middle class, and then are beholden to the
powerful interests that undermine the middle class? What does this say about
politics today?”
Warren: “You know this is the scary part about democracy today.
It’s… We’re talking again about the impact of money. The credit industry on
this bankruptcy bill has spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying, and as
their profits grow, they just throw more into lobbying for how they can get
laws that will make it easier and easier and easier to drain money out of the
pockets of middle class families.”
Here is a video of the Bill Moyers interview with Elizabeth
Warren.
Hillary responded to the Elizabeth Warren story on February 7,
2016 when she appeared on ABCs “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”. She
blamed the story on Bernie Sanders, even though Warren’s allegations were made
back in 2003, years before Bernie Sanders even considered running for president.
She called the charges “innuendos and insinuations that the Sanders campaign is
engaging in”.
Hillary gave a long explanation for her flip on the bankruptcy
bill. Stephanopoulos tried to interrupt her a couple of times, saying “but
that’s not what...” and “but Senator Warren...”. Toward the end of her
explanation, she again blamed the Sanders campaign for the allegation.
Here is the video.
Whether you believe Hillary’s explanation or not, it is
significant that Elizabeth Warren had her own very different explanation in
2003. Warren was voted into the Senate in 2012 and is considered very liberal.
She is certainly not part of a “right wing conspiracy”.
Hillary has blamed a right wing conspiracy for being behind many
other allegations. It didn’t fit as an explanation for this allegation, so she
blamed the Bernie Sanders campaign, even though they couldn’t have had anything
to do with it.
A Sanders supporter may have reminded everyone of Warren’s
critique of Hillary, but Warren certainly had no connection to Bernie Sanders
or his supporters back in 2003 and 2004.
In Elizabeth Warren’s 2014 book, A Fighting Chance, she told only
half of the story. She left out all of her previous criticism of Hillary. Warren
wrote: “The industry-supported bankruptcy bill passed the House and Senate by
sizable margins. Fortunately, one last warrior held out against the banks and
the credit card companies: President Clinton. In 1998, I had met with First
Lady Hillary Clinton to discuss the proposed bankruptcy legislation, and after
our meeting she had declared that she would fight on behalf of working
families, against “that awful bill.” Now the president was under enormous
pressure from the banks to sign the bill, but in the last days of his
presidency, urged on by his wife, President Clinton stood strong with
struggling families. With no public fanfare, he vetoed the industry’s bill.”
The New Republic published an article in 2014 titled: “Warren's
New Book Whitewashes Some Awkward Hillary History”. The New Republic is a
liberal American magazine of commentary on politics and the arts published
since 1914.
In her 2014 book, Elizabeth Warren didn’t denounce her earlier
criticism of Hillary. She just didn’t mention it.
Another article that discusses this issue is the Washington
Post’s “Elizabeth Warren’s up-and-down relationship with Hillary Clinton began
with a 1998 op-ed.”
Elizabeth Warren knows all about the events of the past. She
knows Hillary’s history. She knows that Hillary’s decisions are influenced by big
money donors.
History is constant. It never changes. It might be whitewashed,
though.
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