Hillary Clinton in Decorah: "Our economy does better when we have a Democrat in office"

Former Secretary of State and U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton outlined her qualifications to become President during a speech Monday afternoon at the Center for the Fine Arts at Luther College in Decorah.

Clinton told a crowd of around 500 people that the choice in 2106 is between continuing the policies that have made progress in the country or doing "a U-turn to failed policies that are out of date."

Clinton said she had a first-hand view of policies that turned around the American economy when she was First Lady to her husband, Bill, in the 1990s and when she was Secretary of State to Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013.  "Incomes rose for everybody," she told the Luther College crowd, contrasting that with the supply-side economics favored by Republicans--policies she said have proven to have failed.

But Clinton noted that even though she supported the policies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, "I'm running for my first term."

She told her audience she would work for equal pay for women; for refinancing student debt; for combating climate change and for turning America into "a clean energy superpower."

While most of her speech discussed domestic issues such as campaign finance reform and the need for universal pre-K education, Clinton did discuss foreign affairs issues at the end.  She said it was a mistake to go to war in Iraq--but not in Afghanistan.  She pointed out to the crowd that she was one of the people in the room when President Obama made the decision to send a Special Forces unit into Pakistan on a mission to kill Osama Bin Laden.  "I understand a lot more than anybody else running," she concluded, coming back to a theme that was stressed throughout the speech.