Newly-minted Democratic candidate for president and multi-millionaire Hillary Clinton is testing a theme for her new campaign: A populist attack on the tax rates paid by fund managers and CEOs.
Clinton comes to the issue because various voices to her left, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, have made income inequality a staple of the Democrat Party political discussion. In an obvious effort to keep up with the Warrenses, Hillary is now going after CEOs.
“There is something wrong when hedge fund managers pay lower tax rates than nurses or the truckers that I saw on I-80 as I was driving here over the last two days,” Clinton said at an Iowa event on Tuesday.
Clinton’s address came on the same day that President Obama spoke out on “gender inequality” in pay, the so-called gap in pay between men and women. But a review of her records as Secretary of State shows that Clinton paid women in her office 72 cents for each dollar paid to men.
The claim that women always make less than men, though, is a “myth that won’t die” to many.
During her Iowa event, Clinton also touted an agenda that will focus on strengthening families, bolster the economy, improve national security and end the political feuding in Washington — themes similar to those Obama campaigned on when he ran in 2008.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter: @warnerthuston. Email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.