Hillary Clinton Stops Short of Calling for $15 Minimum Wage

Speak­ing to re­port­ers on Thursday, Hil­lary Clin­ton called for a high­er fed­er­al min­im­um wage — but stopped short of sup­port­ing the $15 min­im­um wage touted by some of her Demo­crat­ic nom­in­a­tion op­pon­ents.

Clin­ton praised the pro­pos­al in Con­gress, spear­headed by Wash­ing­ton Demo­crat­ic Sen. Patty Mur­ray and Vir­gin­ia Demo­crat­ic Rep. Bobby Scott, which would set the fed­er­al min­im­um wage at $12 with auto­mat­ic in­creases for in­fla­tion. At a brief press avail­ab­il­ity fol­low­ing her closed-door meet­ing with the AFL-CIO Ex­ec­ut­ive Coun­cil, Clin­ton said she thinks cit­ies can and should play with chan­ging those min­im­ums for them­selves.

“I think it’s go­ing to be im­port­ant that we set a na­tion­al min­im­um, but then we get out of the way of cit­ies and states that be­lieve that they can and should go high­er,” she said. “I’ve said be­fore that the cost of liv­ing is dif­fer­ent in vari­ous parts of the coun­try. I sup­por­ted what New York did, what L.A. did, what oth­er cit­ies are do­ing, and I think they should be ex­per­i­ment­ing with what that will do to help raise in­comes and cre­ate more op­por­tun­ity for people.”

When she was asked a fol­low-up ques­tions spe­cific­ally about the $15 fed­er­al min­im­um wage, however, Clin­ton sug­ges­ted that con­gres­sion­al Demo­crats should fo­cus on a pro­pos­al that has a real­ist­ic chance of be­com­ing law.

“Patty Mur­ray is one of the most ef­fect­ive le­gis­lat­ors in the Sen­ate, bar none. And whatever she ad­voc­ates, I pay a lot of at­ten­tion to be­cause she knows how to get it through the Con­gress,” she con­tin­ued. “And let’s not just do it for the sake of hav­ing a high­er num­ber out there, but let’s ac­tu­ally get be­hind a pro­pos­al that has a chance of suc­ceed­ing, and I have seen Patty over the years be able to do just that.”

The $15 min­im­um wage has been a key point for pro­gress­ives, and both Ver­mont in­de­pend­ent Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Mary­land Gov. Mar­tin O’Mal­ley have voiced their sup­port for the pro­pos­al.

Clin­ton also took a ques­tion about the delays in some of her top State De­part­ment aides turn­ing over emails to her former de­part­ment. On Wed­nes­day night, her former spokes­man and aide Phil­ippe Reines handed over 20 boxes of emails.

“I think we have been pro­ceed­ing in a timely fash­ion and in­deed the vast ma­jor­ity of the emails I’ve turned over were already in the State De­part­ment sys­tem,” she said. “This is really a ques­tion for the State De­part­ment, they’re the ones who are bear­ing the re­spons­ib­il­ity to sort through these thou­sands and thou­sands of emails and de­term­ine at what pace they can be re­leased.”

Clin­ton also blas­ted Re­pub­lic­ans for their ef­forts on the Hill to de­fund Planned Par­ent­hood.

“For more than a cen­tury, Planned Par­ent­hood has provided es­sen­tial ser­vices for wo­men in our coun­try,” she said. “And I think it is re­gret­table that Re­pub­lic­ans are once again try­ing to un­der­mine, even end, those ser­vices that so many wo­men have needed and taken ad­vant­age of. So I think that it’s an­oth­er ef­fort by the Re­pub­lic­ans to try to lim­it the health care op­tions for wo­men and we should not let them suc­ceed once again.”

As for a ques­tion about Don­ald Trump, Clin­ton wouldn’t take the bait. “I’m go­ing to let the Re­pub­lic­ans choose their nom­in­ee,” she said, smil­ing. “And then I will look for­ward to run­ning against and win­ning against who­ever that nom­in­ee is.”