Hillary Clinton's Attacks on Business are Harmful, Hollow, and Political

The 2016 Presidential contest is in full swing as the party primaries enter the final stages before the summer conventions. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) believes that all candidates should be talking about comprehensive tax reform, reducing spending, reforming the Pentagon, and fixing the broken process on how spending is authorized in Washington. The lack of regular order has led to billions in earmarks (which are technically illegal), and continuous stopgap measures to fund the government. Unfortunately, much of this discussion is missing real substance. One candidate in particular, Hillary Clinton, has been taking a harsh tone on the private sector, going so far as to single out specific companies purely for political points.

Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State, and current Democrat frontrunner for her party’s nomination Hillary Clinton has been increasingly using her campaign to level dishonest attacks on the business community. The tactics from Sec. Clinton show a clear unnerving by her campaign, which continues to fend off the insurgent campaign of Vermont’s Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. Her campaign is struggling not just because her lack of energy, her attacks on the private sector are full of hypocrisy and dishonesty.

The specific issue here is the current talks between Johnson Controls, Inc. and TYCO as they move towards a merger that could be beneficial to consumers, employees, and shareholders of the two companies. Sec. Clinton asserts that the merger is nothing more than greedy corporate America hurting the middle class. Shortly after the deal was announced, Sec. Clinton said:

“I will do everything I can to prevent this from happening, because I don’t want to see companies that thrive, use the tax code, the gimmicks, the shenanigans…to evade their responsibility to support our country.”

Instead of using innuendo and rhetoric while talking about punishing and forcing businesses to continue to pay the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, maybe voters would be better served by hearing a sane tax policy that overhauls the complicated code for everyone, including the business community.  Reforming the corporate tax code will help keep business in the United States, not drive them away with a high corporate tax rate and an overly-complicated system.

There is also a major credibility problem that Sec. Clinton has when using the JCI/TYCO deal as a punching bag to energize her supporters and it makes the attacks look and sound like the ravings of a desperate politician throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks. Johnson Controls, Inc., in direct contrast to what Clinton has said, never received a single dime of bailout funds given by the government in 2008 and 2009 during the financial crisis.

The attacks being leveled by the Clinton campaign against Johnson Controls Inc. and the potential merger on the table are part of what’s wrong with politics today. The national frontrunner for a major party ticket at the Presidential level is going after a single company and a single potential transaction in order to score cheap political points as she struggles to fend off a legitimate challenge from within her own ranks. What makes it all the more worse is that the attack is based on falsehoods.

TPA believes that any transaction such as the JCI and TYCO merger should go through the normal review process, but that government shouldn’t impede deals that will benefit consumers and businesses. These companies excel in different areas and combining them could bring new opportunities for innovation that will benefit a wide range of consumers in the marketplace.

TPA encourages the Clinton campaign and Sec. Clinton to stick to the facts, and move the conversation towards a more productive discussion on key issues like tax reform. The American people deserve a debate on fixing the broken tax code so that individuals and businesses can reinvest and innovate while increasing productivity. That is how to improve the economy, not cheap and dishonest political attacks on the private sector.