Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Hillary Clinton's Rich Imagination About a National Infrastructure Bank

Hillary Clinton on Infrastructure Bank Ideas

During a private fundraiser in  Greenwich Village New York City,  Democrat Presidential hopeful First Lady Senator Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D-NY) raised the prospect of establishing a national infrastructure bank modeled after the Clinton Foundation.




So it seems that Mrs. Clinton has more ideas than just "Vote for Me, I'm a Woman who married Bill". The trouble is that using the Clinton Foundation as a model raises all sorts of questions about crony capitalism, influence peddling, governmental waste and eviscerating the proper budgetary role of the legislative branch.

According to the Hillary 2016 campaign, such an infrastructure bank would “leverage public and private capital to invest in critically important infrastructure projects, including energy infrastructure projects.”  But hasn't this been tried already, like the $534 million given to Solyndra as part of President Obama's 2009 Porkulous? A lot of good that "shovel ready" pork barrel project did. 

Then there is the favoritism problem. What entities are allowed to draw from such a hypothetical infrastructure pot?  Conservatives railed against the Export-Import Bank as being crony capitalism which favors select international big businesses.  Why should the government be picking winners and losers and funding some of them?

Of course, there is the thorny issue about where the money comes from.  With the Clinton Foundation, people betting on getting access to a future power broker like Mrs. Clinton were happy to contribute millions of dollars.  Where would this pot of gold come from?  

But at least Hillary Clinton's rich imagination about a National Infrastructure Bank temporarily took away the public's focus on Hillary's E-mail irregularies. 

h/t: Washington Free Beacon 

1 comment:

  1. Great day to be a banker! The ones buying speeches, step right up to collect your prize: the privilege to make risk-free loans collateralized by the tax payers. You'll make billions. Interest earned may even be tax free if you make a really big donation. And contractors we didn't forget you! Make sure to overrun cost so that your banker buddies can lend more risk free money, so everyone's getting richer, except for those stupid tax payers.

    ReplyDelete