Hillary: I Don't Mean What I Said About Job Creation

Hillary Clinton says she "short-handed" a point last week when stating that businesses and corporations don't create jobs, Politico reports. "Trickle down economics has failed," she explains today while campaigning with Rep. Sean Maloney in Somers, New York. "I short-handed this point the other day, so let me be absolutely clear about what I’ve been saying for a couple of decades." She adds that a strong economy is based on businesses and corporations creating "good-paying jobs," not on corporations getting tax breaks while outsourcing jobs and "stash[ing] their profits overseas." Her utterance last week? "Don’t let anybody tell you that corporations and businesses create jobs."

A Clinton aide says she meant to criticize trickle-down economics, and Politico seems sympathetic: "The overall context was clear that she had left words out of a sentence; the comment made little sense without it," the site says. But other Democrats say Clinton was just sounding the liberal trumpet too hard while campaigning in Boston alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren for gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley. Either way, Republicans have jumped on the remark as a pre-campaign gaffe (a super PAC opposed to a Clinton presidential run put the Boston video at the top of its website, the Wall Street Journal reports). Some liken her slip-up to President Obama's remark at a 2012 campaign stop when, commenting on businesses' effect on city infrastructure, he said, "You didn't build that." (More Hillary Clinton stories.)