[applause] you for the introduction. christina for the introduction and thank you for all of the people that smacked hands on the way and, that was fun. it is good to see all of you and good for you to be here. i appreciate you being here on martin luther king day. it is really important. one of the things -- i was just doing another a vent but it is a chance to talk about how do we build a future? do we build a future by tearing each other down? or do we build a future by picking up each other's battles? dr. king said we work together and i am all in so thank you. thank you! [applause] sen. warren: it is good to be here in grimes. good, i actually brought family. i brought my husband with me, where are you, sweetie? bruce! back there. i thought what we would do today is i would tell you a little about myself, tell you why i'm in the race and then we will try to do as many questions as we can get you and then we will go to the most important part of democracy, selfies! [cheering and applause] sen. warren: ok, i was born and raised in oklahoma. just you and me, i mean, that's it. [laughter] that's ok, there aren't that many people in oklahoma. i have three much older brothers. i am what used to be called a late in life baby. my mother always just called me the surprise." my three older brothers live back in oklahoma now. they are all retired. to this day they are referred to collectively as "the boys." that is to distinguish them from "the surprise." my daddyre growing up, sold paint, carpets, housewares, fencing. he ended up as a janitor. my mom had been ace day at home mom that when my daddy had a severe heart attack and we had nothing, she started working atimal -- a minimum wage job sears. all three of my brothers went off enjoying the military, a chance for them to serve but also frankly, it was a path into america's middle class. maybe? e? i have known what i wanted to be since second grade and i have never wavered. i heard someone giggle over there. known what i wanted to be since second grade. i wanted to be a public school teacher. can we hear it for america's public school teachers? [cheering and applause] yes.warren: and i want you to know that i invested early. up andto line my dollies teach school. i had a reputation for being tough but fair. [laughter] sen. warren: so, all of my growing up years, i'm going to teach, i want to be a teacher. i the time i graduated from high school, my family did not have the money for college applications much less to send me off to four years of university. so, like a lot of americans, i don't have a straight path story. i have a story with a lot of twists and turns. here is how it goes. i was a high school debater and i got a scholarship to college. nerds! and then at 19, i fell in love, got married, and dropped out. woo hoo. not to that guy. bruce will be coming up in season two. [laughter] , a good life. one i had chosen for myself. no one forced me. but i thought i had given up on the dream. i was not going to be able to teach. we were living outside houston and that is when i found it. a computer -- a commuter college 45 minutes away that cost $50 a semester. price, i could pay for on a part-time waitressing job, i finished my for your diploma and i became a special education teacher. i was living my dream job. [cheers and applause] sen. warren: now, have we got any teachers in here? whoa, we have a bunch! ok, i'm going to need you to back me up on this. it is not a job, it is a calling. it is true. -- 4-6 yearsar-old old and i love to my babies. and i loved the work. would still be doing that work today but like i said, my story has twists and turns. here is the next twist and turn. we were living in new jersey and i am into my first year of teaching and i am visibly pregnant. and the principal did what principles did in those days, wish me luck and hired someone else for the job. i am at home and i have a baby and can't get a job. i have to do something. so, i will go to law school. [laughter] sen. warren: it was about that well thought out. school thatate law cost $450 a semester. baby on hip, i did three years visiblychool, graduate pregnant, you will discover a pattern to these stories. take the bar, pass the bar, and practiced law for 45 minutes. and then went back to my first love. teaching. i traded little ones for big ones and i spent pretty much my whole life teaching. other big changes in my life at one,time -- husband number never good when you have to number your husbands. husband number one and i parted ways. and i have bruce held onto him ever since. [cheers and applause] sen. warren: he is a strong man. [laughter] here i am, teaching in law school. and i don't know if it is because of how i grew up, we always worried about money that i taught money courses. that is where i always did my work. contract law. commercial law. payment systems. corporate finance. partnership finance. bankruptcy law. if it was about money, count me in but there was always one central question that i work on and that was --what is happening to working families in america? why is america's middle class being hollowed out? why is it that people that work as hard as my mom and dad were two generations ago today finding the path so much rockier and steeper? findingle of color are it even rockier and even steeper. and the answer has to do with who our government works for. the government in washington can -- think of it this way. it works great for giant drug companies, just not for people trying to get a prescription filled. it works great for folks that in privateest prisons and private detention centers, just not for the people whose lives are torn apart by those places. it works great for giant oil companies that want to drill everywhere. just not for the rest of us that see climate change bearing down upon us. and when you see a government that works great for those with money and not so great for everyone else, that is corruption, p or and simple -- pure and simple and we need to call it out for what it is. corruption! it is the influence of money in washington. and it is about campaign contributions, you bet and more. lobbying. bought and paid for. experts. tilted think tanks. the money flows through washington. through congress. through the regulatory agencies. and here is the thing, it hits everything. whatever decision or issue really gets you up in the morning, whether it is gun violence or student loan debt or climate -- whatever issue gets you up, if there is a decision to be made in washington, i guarantee it has been influenced by money. it has been shaped by money. it has had exceptions created by money. money, money, money. and here is the thing -- so long as that happens, we have a government that keeps working better and better for those that can spend the money in washington and worse and worse for everyone else. so, we want to fix that. we cannot nibble around the edges. if we want to fix that come it will take big, structural change. are you up for that? [applause] sen. warren: big structural change and it starts with the biggest anticorruption plan since watergate. i am ready! [applause] sen. warren: and the end of lobbying as we know it, what do you say? stopping the revolving door between washington and wall street. enough. make the united states supreme rules of ethics. how about it? ok, i could do these all day. just one more. want to hunt out some real corruption in washington, make everyone that runs for federal office put their tax returns online. [applause] why i am in that is this fight. i believe that we get out there and fight back against the influence of money, we make our democracy work and we put money on its back foot and we get on our front foot in this fight. and then the possibilities open up for us. we make this government work for all of us and that works through everything. through our health care, climate, housing, education. we make the government work for everyone. that is why i am in this fight and that is why i am so honored to be here with you today. thank you! thank you! this is fun. [applause] ok, let us do some questions. ready to rumble. tell me your name. hello, sam. >> between the soybean allffs and as in waivers, what -- ethanol waivers, what will you do to help the farmers? the first one is how about we don't engage in this stupid trade wars that undercut our farmers? [applause] in fact, i believe that what we have to do is we have to take the amendments on nafta that are going to help support our farmers and develop your markets for them again. farmers, il help our want to be there. and we have to shut down this crazy business on the ethanol exceptions. we have billionaires with giant corporations exploiting loopholes. i know you're shocked to hear this. that were originally written to be the kind of tiny, ok we don't have to follow this down to every last inch, we can let some of the small producers get through but now they are making big money for themselves. one more per -- one more example of corruption in government. be willing to call that out which i'm willing to do. can i give you one more though? this one is really important. i hope we get a lot of chances today to talk about climate change. but i particularly want to talk about it in this context. we have the opportunity right now in america to invite farmers to lead us in the climate fight. to be able to change their farming practices. we can make that financially possible for wall street, sustainable farming, carbon capture. our farmers can be on the front line of saving our planet and that is a big part of what i want to do. thank you. thank you. that's good. >> my name is stephanie and i am resident. this is the largest professional organization of social studies teachers. i have seen no presidential candidate yet that has a plan around k12 specific education. that is one of the reasons why we are in this mess to start with. i want to ask you about your civic education and social studies and how we can turn the tide. sen. warren: a great question. i love social studies. i thought it was fun. except for the year it was taught by the football coach. [laughter] back and the boys in the -- it was a whole mess. other than that, i really did like my social studies classes. but, here is how i look at this question. when we think -- let's think a little bit about the role of federal government. what is the role of the federal government? i believe the federal government should not be demanding from the top. it should be there to be a good partner. but to be a good partner, you have to have the right person. going to start this. i will have a secretary of education who has taught in public school. [applause] did you like that? [applause] devos need not apply. i want a secretary of education that believes in public education. i think this is critical. , this is athink moment. i want to take your question and expand it. this is a moment for as to consider as a nation. how do we build a future? i know we talk a lot about trump and how we stop him and that is important but there is also a fundamental question -- how do we see our future? if you could think about --what is the investment we need to make in the future? and for me, it is about education. it is time, i believe, to make a federal investment, a federal commitment to helping educate everyone of our children. this is how we are going to build the future. the fastest version i have at this. i want to start when i have a big plan with how to pay for it. it is time for a wealth tax and america. [applause] sen. warren: here is my basic plan. your first 50 million dollars in accumulated assets, free and clear. says --in the front row this woman is not unreasonable. on your 50 millionth and first dollar, you have to pitch in two cents. and you hit a billion dollars, you will pitch in a couple more pennies. that is the basic idea. anyone in here have a home or a farm? you have been paying a wealth tax, right? it is called the property tax. what i am saying is different -- for this tiny little slice of really rich people, about 75,000 fortunes in this country. for them, the property tax ought andnclude the real estate the stock portfolio, the cash, the diamonds, and the rembrandt, and the yacht, right? that is the basic idea. there are some billionaires that really don't like this. you may have seen -- some have gone on tv and cried. [laughter] others have run for president. [laughter] figuring it was cheaper than a two cent wealth tax. haveere is a thing, we worked hard and so on. and i say -- yes, you did. good for you. you had a great idea and worked hard, good for you. but here is the deal -- you build a great fortune in america? i guarantee that you built it at least in part using workers -- all of us have helped to pay to educate them. build at least in part getting your goods to market on roads and bridges that all of us helped pay for. protectedeast in part by police and firefighters -- all of us helped pay the salaries for them. and here is the thing -- we are americans. we are glad to do it. inlike investing opportunity. we want people to be able to grow things. all we are saying is that when you make it big, i mean really big, i mean top 1/10 of 1% big, pitch and two cents so everyone else gets a chance to make it in this country. that is the basic idea. [applause] sen. warren: here comes the fun part. what do we do with two cents? there is a lot we can do but the iort version of this is -- want to talk for a minute about what we can do in our public schools for two cents. we can make a historic investment. we can add to the money that is are ready there that comes in from the local and the state. some of the money is uneven. poor communities cannot put as much into their schools. the money that is often squeezed aren some schools there ceiling tiles falling down, textbooks that are too old, teachers managing 40 kids at once. a lot of pressure is on our schools because we do not put enough resources and. as an with two cents say federal government, as a country, our children are our most precious resource. we can put 800 billion dollars of new federal money into our public schools for the two cent wealth tax. [applause] there is a lot we can do with that but i have to mention one thing. it would mean for the first time ever in history we would fully the children with disabilities would get the full educational opportunity they need. and we could put enough money into our public schools -- teachers, new textbooks and bringing our teachers together to create new curriculum. that is it for me. i want you to have more money in the public schools and i want you to have a secretary of education that has your back. that is how we are going to and everyl education part of our educational system. thank you. thank you. that is great. hello. time for some more. wow. have at it. >> we have time for a couple more so i will take four market. please get into line and ask your questions. yell.er to stand up and the last four of this one are 8655. anika whenr to you are called. number two, 8651. sen. warren: do we have somebody? good. >> don't put that back in. sen. warren: ok. >> 8657. sen. warren: were those all stuck together? anybody? this will be like in iowa city. >> we will pick another one. -- she said, pause i think i have that number but i put my used gum into it. [laughter] >> instead of that one, we will do 8674. that was three. one more. 8659. sen. warren: ok. let's do some more, then. thank you. hello. >> hello, my name is jonathan. sen. warren: you can call me elizabeth. >> my question has to do with the wealth tax that you just brought up so that segues nicely. it is unlikely we will have a super majority in the senate. i guess -- i have a two-part question. are we going to be able to pass the wealth tax using budget reconciliation? if thend question is -- conservative leaning supreme court decides to strike down a wealth tax because we've never had one, what is your backup plan? sen. warren: let's do the first part -- i think we can do it through budget reconciliation but here is the thing. i think that time has come. if mitch mcconnell tries to do what he did to president obama and that is basically block anything the president tried to pass through the filibuster. remember, we have gun safety .egislation through and it had the majority in the senate but a filibuster over and over. on just regular things you are trying to get done. out of 100 people come it takes escape instead of 50. so i'm willing to take the fight over the filibuster and say -- if mitch mcconnell again tries to block everything we try to get done, we get rid of the filibuster and get things done on 50. that is what it is going to take. i knowond part -- and you don't want to get down a rabbit hole of cost additional notbut you talked about doing this because we haven't had the wealth tax before but we have. late 1700s and a tax on carriage. -- on carriages. in which the united states supreme court unanimously said, yes, the federal government can put a tax on carriages which is a way to tax rich people. rich people had carriages and poor people did not. the supreme court said yes, you can do this. and if you are an original in mind that, keep all nine of the supreme court justices at that point had all been part of the constitutional convention. so i think they knew what they were talking about so i feel good about this one. thank you. thank you. hello. , i'm ao, i'm katie senior in political science at iowa state. my question is -- what are your thoughts on voting rights for felons especially during the time they are still incarcerated? sen. warren: i think this is an important issue. i'm not there while they are still incarcerated but i am once they have served their time. my view is -- you get out of prison and you are expected to abide by the law and pay taxes and yourrt yourself family if you have a family. you have got to do all of the acts of citizenship. and that means you ought to have the right to vote. and so, i'm all in. i'm putting my energy behind this. i think florida, when it voted on this, overwhelmingly, 60% said let us restore voting rights to people after they have been in prison. and now, the republicans are trying to find ways ineffective capable from getting their voting rights restored. i think that is fundamentally wrong. we want more people in this country to vote. we do not have a problem in this country because too many people vote. we have a problem because not enough people vote. [applause] because katie is here, that lets me do a quick commercial for the importance of protecting our democracy. we do not talk about this enough. i would like to see a constitutional amendment to protect the right of every american citizen to vote and get that vote to count. [applause] sen. warren: i would like to see a federal law, and i will lead the effort on this, to outlaw political gerrymandering all across this country. [cheering and applause] sen. warren: and another federal law to roll back every racist voter suppression law in this country. [applause] and just one more while we are on democracy -- it is time to overturn citizens united, democracy is not for sale. so, i'm annotating. thank you. thank you. hello. i am a technology architect, a software architect. the goal isis, if unity, to bring this country ,ogether and to beat trump why not you can have a good, logical republican as running mate? thinkarren: you know, i this should be less about political parties and more about who you are fighting for. and i want to be clear that my running mate is fighting for the same people i am fighting for. because i see this as a chance together and change the partisan way that we have described the world and describe it in ways of the things that we care about. remember i mentioned my three older brothers, the boys? one is a democrat. do the math. two are republicans. there are a lot of things that we disagree on. here is the thing -- when we get a chance to talk and we start talking about amazon, halliburton, companies that reported last year billions of dollars in profits and paid zero all threemy brothers, of my brothers, are furious. because they understand that happened because of money. "ney spent in washington that tax loopholes for those corporations. anyone in here that paid even one dollar in taxes paid more than those corporations put together who made the lien's of dollars in profit. and as my brothers say to me, someone has to keep this country running. someone has to make sure that the roads are paved and safe and someone has to provide for defense. those giant corporations think that should all fall on you. the way that i see it is that this is our chance in 2020 to say, we get it. people throughout this country have been cheated for long enough. you have gotten the short end of ick for long enough. it is time to hold this government accountable and that is something that we agree on. something we can pull together on. we can pass an anticorruption bill because democrats and republicans both like it. if we do that for sky-mobi we knock back the influence of money and then we can start making this country work for everyone else. so that is my plan. thank you. thank you. good questions. hello. >> hello, senator warren, my name is andrea. sen. warren: you are a teacher? what do you teach? >> six grade language arts. with respect behind the intention of no child left behind, you said earlier that -- iearners need to be met want to put something in your back pocket. and that is to advocate for gifted learners because they are the new left behind group. sen. warren: thank you. [applause] sen. warren: but i love your main point. we have to meet all of our lunar -- learners where they are. teachercial education come you speak to my heart. when it be fun to have a teacher in the white house? someone from a public school? we are quite have some fun. we can have some fun. but thank you, that was lovely. thank you. erica and i name is am a public defender. [applause] i am very supportive of your plan to increase education. i think there is a very strong connection between the people i see and our education system. my question is how do we protect our courts against that? how do we help the people that end up trapped in the cycle of poverty and jail so they can't be there for their kids and they can't -- how do we keep that bias in politics out of our courts? a greatren: that is question and you find it in a great way. we have a criminal justice deeply, badly flawed in this country. i mean deep. we have to it knowledge upfront race runs right through the center of it. issues about race. we have to acknowledge that. in fact -- [applause] sen. warren: let us do some basic facts on this. study after study after study shows that for the exact same price, african-americans are more likely than whites to be detained, to be arrested, to be taken to trial, to be wrongfully convict it, and to receive harsher sentences. that is a criminal justice system that is criminalizing race as well as breaking everything about our values in this country. we have got to rework the criminal justice system from the front and cared what we make illegal all the way through the system, policing, the court system, the jail system, incarceration, and helping people reintegrate into their communities. it is a long process and a lot that we need to do. but, it is about i want to give you some pieces that directly go to the part here. talked about it is important that we stop poverty.zing [applause] senator warren: arresting people not like ssness, it's hey have a two bedroom, two bathroom condo here and they are here.onry they are suffering. lock people up not by the threat they pose but by how little money they have. that is wrong. and we just need to call it out. [applause] put one arren: i'll more in because it's so relevant where you are in this part of is justice nd that is not free. ou know, i talk to public prosecutors and defenders who tell me, it is better to be and rich than poor and innocent. want to have justice in this country. we need to put money into the defender system so that the idea that everyone is lawyer is by a meaningful. we just got to have more money this. so thank you. lots of things we need to do ere, but those will get us started. that's it. no more questions? all right. ok. tell you one more story and then we can get to the selfies. story about the toaster. you did not see that coming. story about a toaster. a young woman, oasters could catch houses on fire. it's true. you know those toaster ovens with the trays that slide out? they didn't have automatic shutoff switches. tray, could pull out the put four slices of bread on it, flick the thing on, hear the down to the other end of the house, spend longer down there than you thought you come back the u flames would be leaping off the toast six to eight inches. the curtains on fire and the cabinets on fire. i know.ow here's the part i'll at least confess to. so upset about this with me. one year for christmas he bought extinguisher and hung t in the -- man knows how to party. along came a federal agency, safety product commission, and said enough, you toasters in america that has a chance of burning down people's houses and that was it. shutoff things and they would turn off after three minutes or four minutes and the fire stopped. by the early 2000's in america, become so ges had dangerous, they had a one in five chance of their home mily through foreclosure. think about that. the federal e government, our federal government was on the side of the banks. fact, they were so deep in the pockets of the banks they they ly helped consumers, told the banks, just keep selling those things, right ntil they crashed the economy in 2008. and then the banks had to be bailed out. so i had an idea. after the crash i thought, wait. agency for --o an like the toaster agency. one would be banks don't get to boost their profits mortgages, people on credit cards, payday loans, student loans. right. you got to make this stuff clear so people understand what they're getting into it. i had this idea for this agency. i am not an elected official at this point. go down to washington multiple times and basically doors.ock on i'll talk to anybody who will' talk to me. democrat, republican. i don't care. i'll pitch my idea in congress. so i'm doing this time after to notice, i'm getting the same two answers everybody. first answer is, huh, that is a idea. you could actually make a difference. structural change, right? you can do this. second thing is, don't even try. don't try because you'll be up big money, you'll be up against wall street, you'll be all the republicans and almost half the democrats. don't even try because you can't done. i get it. hard.ructural change is but it was also the right thing to do. so we got in this fight. we took on the big money. and the n the banks republicans, and in 2010, president obama signed that law.y into we won! we won! applause]d won and that : we agency has already forced banks to return country more than $12 billion directly cheated. they we can make government work for the people. [applause] senator warren: so what did i learn from this? i learned that even if big money is against it, even if big donors don't like it, we need ideas to match the big problems in our country. we need big ideas to inspire out and caucus and get out and vote. we need big ideas to tell people who and what democrats will ideasfor, and we need big to take back the senate and put out of a job!l [applause] senator warren: we need big and we need to be willing to fight for them. know -- yeah! you bet! [laughter] senator warren: that's the idea. it is so easy to back say oh, a big idea, to too hard, and this problem might problem, anden that make yourself sound so sophisticated. understand this, when we back off from big ideas, we back off ideas e people those would have helped. and those people are already in a fight. people struggling to pay their medical bills are already in a fight. crushed by ng student loan debt are already in a fight. by the etting stopped police or denied the right to vote because of the color of are already in a fight. fights.e fights are our [cheers and applause] yep.or warren: a crisis.y is in and media pundits and washington insiders and even folks in our own party don't want to talk about it. think that running a vague campaign that sort of ibbles around the edges of these problems is somehow the safe strategy. they are wrong. if the best democrats can offer s business as usual after donald trump, democrats will lose. big ideas toe have solve big problems! [cheers and applause] yep.or warren: now, you may have noticed i am ot running a campaign that's been shaped by a bunch of consultants. it would look very different. running a campaign with proposals that have been carefully designed not to offend donors. stop sign a long time ago. i am running a campaign from the believe that i 020 is a unique moment in history. i believe that 2020 is our time, to take on these fights and our time to win, our time to for a green ight new deal and save our planet. [applause] to takewarren: our time on the fight for medicare for people!save our [applause] to takewarren: our time on the fight for a two cent in a wholeand invest generation of young people. [cheers and applause] senator warren: 2020 is our time and if you believe hat this is the moment, then i ask you, today, commit to caucus for me. elizabethwarren.com and pitch in $5. volunteer an hour. some phone banking or some door knocking, but get because this moment n history will not come back again. this moment is our moment in history. moment to dream big, fight hard, and win. [cheers and applause] ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] to be right, we are going doing a selfie line. where is ryan? the line behind ryan. [indiscernible] >> campaign 20, watch our continuing coverage of the presidential candidates on the campaign trail and make up your own mind. as the voting begins next month, watch our live coverage of the iowa caucuses on monday, february 3. c-span campaign 2020, your unfiltered view of politics. for the third time in history, a president is on trial in the u.s. senate. watch today at 1:00 eastern on c-span two. you can watch online or listen on our free radio at. -- app. next, senator bernie sanders holds a rally in des moines. listed atop several recent polls ahead of i was february 3 caucuses. -- iowa's