Clinton defends Wall St. speaking fees

VINTON, Ia. — Hillary Clinton said Thursday that she has no regrets about taking lucrative speaking fees from national financial firms before she ran for president.

Clinton’s main Democratic rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, contends that Clinton’s promises to crack down on Wall Street abuses are undercut by the fact that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, accepted speaking fees ranging up to several hundred thousand dollars from Wall Street companies.

In an interview with The Des Moines Register Thursday, Clinton denied those payments would make her go easy on financial misdeeds if she’s elected president.

“Anybody who thinks they can buy me doesn’t know me,” she said after a campaign stop at a Vinton roller-skating rink.

Clinton said she did nothing wrong in accepting fees for speeches. “I have spoken to so many different groups,” she said. “… What they were interested in were my views on what was going on in the world. And whether you’re in health care, or you sell automobiles, or you’re in banking – there’s a lot of interest in getting advice and views about what you think is happening in the world."

Sanders, who rails against capitalist excesses, has repeatedly called out Clinton on the issue. He brought up the fees in Sunday's debate in South Carolina, then he alluded to the controversy Tuesday in Iowa.

“Goldman Sachs also provides very, very generous speaking fees to some unnamed candidates. Very generous," he told voters in Carroll. "Now I know that some of my opponents are very good speakers, very fine orators, smart people. But you gotta be really, really, really good to get $225,000 a speech. That’s all I’ll say."

Clinton dismissed the implication.

“I just don’t buy the argument. I get it. It makes a good sound bite and I hear him say it all the time,” she said. But she said Sanders voted in 2000 to deregulate the trading of credit default swaps and derivatives. Many experts say that change helped cause the 2008 financial crisis, she said.

“He’s never owned up to it, he never explained it,” she said, rapping her knuckles on a table for emphasis.

Sanders spokeswoman Rania Batrice responded to Clinton Thursday evening in an email to the Register. “Secretary Clinton has taken millions in speaking fees and contributions from Wall Street. As Senator Sanders has said, you can’t change a corrupt system by taking its money — this makes sense to Iowans.”

Clinton said President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign accepted many donations from people connected to financial firms.

“That did not stop him from doing what he was supposed to do,” she said. “He pushed through the Dodd-Frank bill, He signed it into law. He has defended it from constant Republican and special interest assault. And we got the consumer financial protection bureau passed, which is now recovering many billions of dollars for consumers.”

As she often has on the stump, Clinton said that Republican operative Karl Rove has been using money from the financial industry to run ads against her. He’s doing that, she said, because she is the candidate most likely to be tough with Wall Street. “I’ve got a very clear record of what I have done, and I’ve got a very clear plan about what I will do. And clearly the guys on the other side know it, because they’re trying to interfere in the Democratic caucus and primary system.”