Clinton backpedals on claim
By Brianna Keilar, Senior Political Correspondent
updated 10:34 AM EDT, Tue October 28, 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- Three days after Hillary Clinton said businesses don't create jobs, she cleaned up the remark, part of a critique of trickle-down economics, explaining she had "shorthanded this point the other day."
Friday at a campaign rally for Massachusetts Democratic gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley, the former secretary of state told the crowd, "Don't let anybody tell you that it's corporations and businesses that create jobs," going on to say trickle-down economics "has failed rather spectacularly."
Republicans seized on the sentence, seemingly made for an anti-Hillary Clinton campaign ad. America Rising, the main anti-Clinton super-PAC, is featuring it on the header of its website.
On Monday at a campaign event for New York Rep. Sean Maloney, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, Clinton went for a do-over, saying, "Let me be absolutely clear about what I've been saying for a couple of decades: Our economy grows when businesses and entrepreneurs create good-paying jobs here in an America where workers and families are empowered to build from the bottom up and the middle out -- not when we hand out tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs or stash their profits overseas."
It's the second time Clinton has struggled to speak fluently in the economic vernacular of her party.
In early June, during her book tour, Clinton made a major gaffe when she said, "We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt," a comment that critics cited as evidence she is out of touch with everyday Americans.
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Clinton backpedals on claim