It’s election season again: when one politician says something that sounds worse out of context, and the other won’t let it go.
Jeb Bush made controversial comments last week, saying that “people need to work longer hours” if our economy is going to grow.
Of course, Hillary gleefully pointed out that, while productivity has been on the rise for decades, wages have been stagnant:
“Anyone who believes Americans aren’t working hard enough hasn’t met enough American workers,” she tweeted.
She later worked a similar sentiment into her stump speech, saying: “[Bush] must not have met very many American workers… Let him tell that to the nurse who stands on her feet all day or the trucker who drives all night. Let him tell that to the fast food workers marching in the streets for better pay. They don’t need a lecture, they need a raise.”
Bush quickly fired back, claiming that his comments were taken out of context. He wasn’t arguing that full-time workers should work longer hours to make ends meet. He was talking about getting the millions of Americans, who are stuck in part-time jobs despite wanting full-time work, back into the workforce full-time.
Namely, he cited Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law as a primary driver of slashed work hours–as employers try to hire more part-time workers instead of full-time ones, so they don’t have to pay for their health insurance.
But, despite Bush reiterating the context, Hillary Clinton just wouldn’t let go of one of her top opponent’s gaffes. She made it a cornerstone of a speech in New York City, earlier this week, that she touted as a major economic policy address.
Among her laundry list of proposals–which pull directly from the liberal Left’s wish list, like raising the minimum wage and creating an infrastructure bank–was more thinly-veiled attacks at Jeb Bush and the Republican Party.
Bush, for his part, refused to concede–using this as a way to paint Hillary as callous and uncaring about the plight of everyday Americans.
“The main candidate on the other side believes that somehow it doesn’t matter that 6.5 million people are working part time that want to work full time,” he explained, to a crowd of supporters. “Mrs. Clinton just has it wrong.”
Hillary has not yet responded to Bush’s latest attack.
