A Washington Post examination of Hillary Clinton’s Senate record revealed little net employment gains for Upstate New York during her eight years in the legislature, despite initial campaign promises of mass job creation for the region.
The Post also noted that while her upstate initiatives failed to stem last decade’s tide of manufacturing job losses, Sen. Clinton did eventually see those behind “pet economic projects” become patrons of the Clinton Foundation and clients on her lucrative speaking circuit.
“Clinton’s self-styled role as economic promoter….showcases an operating style that has come to define the political and money-making machine known to some critics of the former first couple as Clinton Inc,” the paper said.
The Post also noted that the Clinton campaign has “cited her Upstate New York work as a blueprint for a Clinton presidency.”
According to the Post, that “blueprint” includes: legislative reform that helped a glass-making company called Corning; the brokering of a deal with an Indian consulting conglomerate, Tata, and the launching of $1 million non-profit called “New Jobs for New York.” The latter was geared toward promoting cooperation between upstate and Wall Street.
The ventures were all, however, largely failures or otherwise unimpressive. Corning told the paper that legislation co-sponsored in 2005 by Sen. Clinton helped create 300 jobs upstate, but that the initiative was introduced by a Republican colleague and backed by almost two dozen senators.
The Post could also find only 10 paid positions created by “New Jobs,” which became practically inactive by 2007 and then fully-defunct in 2011. A Buffalo-based Tata software development center did open after Clinton’s made personal efforts, but it was shuttered in 2009, amid the recession, with only eight to 10 workers on staff at the time of its closure.
Despite the lack of success, those behind the deals have remained loyal to Clinton. A Corning executive co-hosted a fundraiser for the presidential candidate in 2015. The company also paid her almost a quarter-million dollars to speak to its executives in 2014, and has given the Clinton Foundation over $100,000.
New Jobs board members and their partners have also given $115,000 to Clinton campaigns since the group was established in 2003. And Tata has given between $25,000-$50,000 to the Clinton Foundation. In 2010, then-chair of the company, Ratan Tata, spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative conference.
When Clinton first campaigned to represent New York in the senate, she promised to create 200,000 new jobs upstate.
In response to the Post’s story on her record, the Clinton team pointed to New York State Department of Labor data, which reportedly shows “Upstate New York” netting 117,000 jobs during her first senate term. But the newspaper wasn’t able to confirm that claim.
“[T]he state agency does not use Upstate New York as a specific regional area to measure employment,” the paper noted. The Post said that “multiple analyses” of US Bureau of Labor Statistics data demonstrate that “upstate actually lost jobs during Clinton’s first term.” As many as 31,000 paid positions vanished in the region in that time frame, according to the Public Policy Institute in Albany.
“During her overall Senate tenure, according to the institute, upstate jobs rose 0.2 percent overall, but manufacturing jobs fell 24.1 percent,” the paper also noted.
The Clinton campaign also defended Sen. Clinton’s record by saying she “worked hard” to create jobs and was “facing the stiff head winds of the [George W.] Bush economy.” Indeed, manufacturing job losses occurred throughout the US during Clinton’s first senatorial term. They were not unique to Upstate New York.
A President Hillary Clinton also might have a more effective plan to address the needs of the deindustralized parts of the country–at least more so than Sen. Clinton.
Before the Democratic Primary, Clinton came out in opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a sweeping multilateral trade liberalization deal, not unlike those that preceded the offshoring of American jobs over the past few decades.
And while there are doubts about the sincerity of that opposition, the Clinton campaign reiterated its position on Sunday, through Vice Presidential nominee, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
“Companies were given rights to enforce provisions, but the labor and environmental provisions could not be effectively enforced,” Kaine said on Sunday, referring to so-called investor-state dispute resolution tribunals.
“I’ve asked again and again to understand this piece of the TPP, and I’ve never gotten a good answer,” he added. “We can’t have a deal that cannot be enforced.”
