NEW YORK — Hillary Clinton delivered her first major economic speech of the 2016 race on Monday — an attempt to address the threat posed by Bernie Sanders’ populist crusade without being pinned to a set of liberal proposals that will hurt her in a general election.

The 45-minute speech at Manhattan’s New School — among the most liberal schools in the country — was billed as a major policy address, but it was an unmistakably political broadside that hit on the major points of Clinton’s announcement speech and didn’t match Sanders’ own specificity on key issues like hiking tax rates for the rich or opposing the Obama administration’s Pacific trade deal negotiations.


Instead, she laid out an economic agenda for the country focused on increasing wages for the middle class, while drawing specific contrasts with the top contenders in the Republican field — calling out former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio by name. She made no mention of Sanders.

And she took an indirect swipe at her ally President Barack Obama, saying she would explore new ways to hold individuals accountable for shenanigans on Wall Street that lead to economic crises — a clear reference to the dearth of criminal prosecutions of financial-sector executives under Obama’s longtime attorney general Eric Holder.

Clinton said she would not hesitate to prosecute individuals in the finance sector who commit fraud, while also instituting incentives for companies to share profits with their workers, and creating an economy that works for “the struggling, the striving, and the successful.”

Clinton said that raising incomes for Americans to afford a middle-class life was the “defining economic challenge of our time. … The evidence is in,” she said later in the speech. “Inequality is a drag on our entire economy. This is the problem we need to tackle.”

In laying out proposals to encourage both “growth and fairness” in the economy — encouraging small business growth and setting up an infrastructure bank, while also talking about increasing the minimum wage and profit-sharing — Clinton’s speech appeared to be an attempt to unite the centrist and populist economic wings of her own party.

But she avoided some of the most controversial populist ideas, such as increasing the federal minimum wage to $15, significantly raising corporate tax rates or expanding Social Security for all.

She reiterated her support for the Warren Buffett rule, “to make sure millionaires don’t pay lower rates than their secretaries.” She said she supports closing the carried interest loophole, which allows wealthy financiers to pay a lower tax rate.

“While institutions have paid large fines, too often it seems that the human beings responsible get off with limited consequences, or none at all, even when they have pocketed the gains,” she said about Wall Street prosecutions. “This is wrong. On my watch, this will change.” She said she would rein in excessive risks on Wall Street and make sure the stock market works for “everyday investors,” not just high-frequency traders.

She said the country needs to go beyond Dodd-Frank regulations of major financial institutions and warned that “serious risks are emerging from institutions in the so-called shadow banking system,” including hedge funds, high-frequency traders and nonbank financial companies.

In terms of profit-sharing, she said: “I’m not talking about charity, I’m talking about clear-eyed capitalism. Many companies have prospered by improving wages and training their workers.”

On trade, Clinton did not get more specific than she has in the past, saying “we do need to set a high bar for trade agreements.”

Creating a contrast with the Republican field, Clinton criticized Bush for his comment that Americans need to work longer hours (Bush later clarified he was talking about the amount of part-time workers seeking full-time work). “Well, he must not have met very many American workers,” she said. “Let him tell that to the nurse who stands on her feet all day, or the teacher in the classroom, 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.”

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She called out Rubio for cutting taxes for the super-wealthy, saying his plan is to “cut taxes for households making around $3 million a year by almost $240,000, which is way more than three times the earnings of a typical family.” She said a priority is reforming the country’s Tax Code.

And she blasted Walker — who officially entered the 2016 contest Monday morning — for “stomping on workers’ rights.” She said she will fight back against “these mean-spirited and misguided attacks.”

Clinton’s speech was interrupted toward the end by a heckler who called out to her, “Sen. Clinton, will you restore Glass-Steagall,” a reference to legislation that creates distance between traditional banks and investments banks that was repealed by the Clinton administration in the 1990s. The heckler was escorted out of the auditorium by security, while the audience stood and applauded to drown out the disruption.