WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton's campaign went on the offensive Monday against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump's financial policy positions, arguing he would put the system at risk if elected president.
"Mr. Trump is a candidate who literally wants to repeal financial regulation on Wall Street, wants to repeal Dodd-Frank," Jake Sullivan, a top policy adviser for the Democratic presidential front-runner, said during a call with reporters. "Mr. Trump's proposals are about taking all the rules off of Wall Street, which will increase the risk that there is another financial crisis, and giving massive tax cuts to hedge fund millionaires and others on Wall Street who will benefit from his tax plan."
Clinton has laid out a plan to continue to implement and defend the Dodd-Frank Act, saying she would expand on it by targeting hedge funds and assets managers. Trump's policy positions have been short on specifics, but he has said he would repeal and replace the financial reform law.
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Presumptive GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's pledge to replace Fed Chair Janet Yellen with a Republican is a break from recent presidential tradition and might further politicize the central bank, observers said.
May 5 -
Just six months out from the general election, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps positions on banking issues remain a complete mystery aside from a general pledge to roll back the Dodd-Frank Act.
May 4 -
If the general election comes down to Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump, many community bankers are uncertain whom they will back. They fear Clinton will continue the regulatory crackdown against the industry, but are unsure what plans Trump would put in motion.
March 29
"We frankly think that Mr. Trump's economic plans have not received the scrutiny they deserve and we fully intend to hold them up to scrutiny and ask that everyone else do the same … this is not a matter of anticipating what he would do in the future," Sullivan said.
Gene Sperling, a former economic adviser to the Clinton administration and President Obama, said the policy differences between the two presidential front-runners are "night and day."
"That is not going to be difficult to show if people focus on the actual facts of the policies each is proposing," he said.
One area where Trump has been more forthcoming is his tax plan, which the Clinton advisers characterized as the opposite of his campaign pledge to help the middle class.
"Mr. Trump's priorities lie and they lie with giving eye-popping, massive tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the middle class and the priorities that this country really needs to be pursuing," Sperling said.
"It is not just that his tax policy would be an enormous boon for the people most well-off people on Wall Street at the expense of the middle class," Sperling said. "He is affirmatively signaling that he would unravel the Dodd-Frank protections."
