Clinton mocks Trump economic team as ‘six guys named Steve’

Hillary Clinton on Monday mocked Donald Trump’s team of economic advisers as billionaires who are beholden to special interests and “six guys named Steve.”

Speaking at a rally in St. Petersburg, Fla., just hours after the GOP presidential nominee delivered a speech laying out his economic agenda, Clinton accused Trump of reading warmed-over conservative talking points that she said had been repackaged by and for the wealthy elite.

{mosads}“He’s got … a dozen or so economic advisers he just named — hedge fund guys, billionaire guys, six guys named Steve, apparently,” Clinton said.

“They wrote him a speech and he delivered in Detroit,” she continued. “They tried to make his tired old ideas sound new, but here’s what we know: His tax plans will give super big tax breaks to large corporations and the really wealthy, just like him and the guys who wrote the speech. He wants to roll back regulations on Wall Street … He wants to basically repackage trickle-down economics.”

Trump rolled out an all-male panel of economic advisers on Friday.

The team included several bank CEOs and hedge fund managers — as well as five men named Steve or Stephen: Steve Roth, CEO of Vornado Realty Trust; Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s finance chairman; Stephen M. Calk, CEO of Federal Savings Bank; and Steve Feinberg, CEO of Cerberus Capital Management. And the team is led by national director of policy Stephen Miller.

“They are just playing the same old siren song,” Clinton said. “We’re not interested in economic plans that just help the top 1 percent.”

“It’s clear that Trump is scrambling to do damage control. That’s why he listed those economic advisers, three Wall Street money managers, an oil baron, one of the chief economists from the banks at the heart of the financial crisis,” she added. “He’s not only putting our national security at risk, he’s also putting our economy at risk.”

Trump on Monday delivered a speech at the Detroit Economic Club in which he promised tax cuts and blamed Democrats for the nation’s sluggish economic growth.

The GOP nominee said he’d allow businesses to immediately write off the costs of their investments, lower the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, repeal the estate tax, and allow U.S. companies to bring foreign earnings back to the U.S. at a tax rate of 10 percent.

He also used the speech to attack his Democratic rival for supporting the international trade deals that he said have destroyed the economy in Detroit and other Rust Belt cities by sending jobs overseas.

“Detroit is the living, breathing example of my opponent’s failed economic agenda,” Trump said. “Every policy that has failed this city and so many others is a policy supported by Hillary Clinton.”

“Detroit is still waiting for Hillary Clinton’s apology,” he added.
 
Clinton fired back at the rally in St. Petersburg, citing a study from a Moody’s analyst who formerly advised Republican Sen. John McCain (R-Az.). The analyst estimated that Trump’s economic plan would cost the U.S. 3.5 million jobs while Clinton’s would create over 10 million.

She also accused Trump of “stiffing” the contractors who helped him build his casino and hotel empire.

“It’s really outrageous to me that someone who claims to be so successful has done it by stiffing hard-working Americans — painters and plumbers and glass installers and marble installers and architects and even people who made drapery fabrics for his resort, his casino in Las Vegas, hundreds of hundreds of people so that he could avoid paying his fair bills,” she said. “That’s not how we do business in America. If you do your job, you’re supposed to be paid for the job that you do.”