In america we will guarantee every family three months of paid family and medical leave. [applause] [applause] we will guarantee those families twothirds of the income they were earning and we do that all for a cause cost of about 1. 38 a week. Not a bad price. 1. 38 a week. [applause] my hope is that every candidate for president , especially those who talk about family values will, on board and support that legislation. [applause] and when we talk about the economy, and when pollsters go out and call you up and say what is on the minds of the american people, always, always, always the answer is jobs and the economy because people understand how volatile the economy is. They understand if you are 55 years of age you go to work tomorrow and your boss could say thanks for 30 years of work joe but we are replacing you with somebody half your age and half your income, and they understand that if you are a College Graduate it is hard to get work commensurate with your education. [applause] and they understand if you are a high school kid, a graduate or High School Graduate or dropout is fine to hard any work in any wage so that is why in my view given the unemployment, the underemployment, the outrageous level of youth unemployment, the federal government must undertake a massive federal jobs program to put our people back to work. [applause] [applause] we should not be firing teachers and childcare workers. We should be hiring people. [applause] and when our infrastructure, our roads, bridges, wastewater plants our rail system, our airports in their levees and dams in many states are collapsing we can create millions of decent paying jobs rebuilding our infrastructure and thats what i intend to do. [applause] and by the way, and let me say this very clearly to folks in ohio. When we talk about jobs and creating decent paying jobs it is preventing the loss of goodpaying jobs because of disastrous trade policy. [applause] you are looking at a former congressman and a senator who will probably tell you he voted against nafta, against cafta, against trade relations. [applause] and i will help lead the effort to defeat this disastrous transpacific partnership. [applause] whether Corporate America likes it or not, they are going to have to start investing in the United States of america creating jobs here, not just in china and in vietnam. [applause] when we use words like greed and fraud and dishonesty and arrogance, these are just a few of the adjectives we can use to describe wall street. [applause] the simple truth of the matter is, everybody here knows the greed and the recklessness and the illegal behavior on wall street drove this country into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and what happened is that millions of people lost their jobs, and some of them have not found new jobs. Many of them lost their homes and many people lost their life savings making retirement that much more difficult. We need a Banking System in this country that is part of the productive economy that provides affordable loans to small and mediumsized businesses so they can create jobs. [applause] we do not need a Banking System in which the sixth largest Financial Institution in this country has assets equivalent to 58 of the gdp of america. Six Financial Institutions which issue twothirds of the credit cards, one third of the mortgages. When you have Financial Institutions in wall street that have so much economic power, so much political power during the effort to deregulate wall street which i help lead the opposition to, they spent wall street spent 5 billion over a 10 year period on lobbying and campaign contributions. When you have an entity like wall street which has so much economic and political power, which is making so Many Campaign contributions to super pacs, democrats and republicans, the answer for what we have to do is obvious and that is reestablished last eagle. [applause] if a Financial Institution, three out of the four largest Financial Institutions in this country today are bigger now than they were when we bailed them out because they were too big to fail. My view is that if a Financial Institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. [applause] now some of you may know that i recently introduced legislation to take marijuana out of the controlled substance list. [applause] now i did that, i did that for a number of reasons but most importantly over the last many many years, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people have been arrested for possessing marijuana and they have police records. And when you have got a police record, it makes life difficult. It makes it harder to go out and get a job. It makes it harder to find housing, to get decent credit and in some cases people ended up in jail. So i find it very interesting in terms of the broken criminal justice system, i find it interesting that hundreds of thousands of people have criminal records for possessing marijuana but not one ceo one wall street has a criminal record. [applause] [applause] that is why we have got to bring major major reform to a broken criminal justice system. We should not be a country in which we have banks too big to fail and bankers too big to jail [applause] i am often asked bernie which particular issue is the most important and id can never answer that because all of the issues are so terribly important that theres one issue, one issue which impacts all of the other issues and that is five years ago the Supreme Court in one of the worst decisions ever made in the history of the Supreme Court by a 54 vote on the Citizens United case. [applause] by a 54 vote the Supreme Court said the wealthiest people in this country, they said you already own much of the economy and now we are going to allow you to purchase the United States government and that is what they are trying to do right now. Now i am very proud to tell you im the former chairman of the u. S. Senate committee on Veterans Affairs and we worked very hard to protect the interests of our veterans. [applause] and as is a member of the Veterans Committee i have talked to some wonderful people who fought in world war ii, korea and vietnam all the way through iraq and afghanistan and these people are putting their lives on the line and of course many of our soldiers never came home. To defend american democracy. American democracy is not about billionaires buying elections. [applause] when you have a situation where the second wealthiest family in this country and the cup brothers and a few of their friends you have heard about the koch brothers. Okay. When a handful of families can spend some 900 billion in an election cycle, more money than either the democratic or Republican Party will spend, that is not democracy. That is all a and we are going to end that. [applause] so here is another promise that i make to you. No nominee of mine to the Supreme Court will get that position unless he or he is loud and clear in saying they will vote to overturn Citizens United [applause] and furthermore when we talk about democracy, together we are going to stand up and tell republican legislatures they will not get a way with suppressing the vote. [applause] they are not going to tell people of color, old people, young people that they cannot vote because they dont have the voter i. D. [applause] they are not going to force people to wait in line for hours in order to exercise their democratic right to vote. [applause] we are going through a constitutional amendment or some other way, we are going to reach the day when simply and straightforwardly anybody 18 years of age or older has the right to vote, and that discussion. [applause] [applause] and of republican governors dont have the guts to participate in free and fair elections, these cowards should get another job. [applause] our job is to create an america in which we have not one of the lowest voter turnouts in the industrialized world, but one of the highest. [applause] our job is to make it easier for people to participate in the political process, not harder. [applause] and when we talk about where we are in the nation, all of you know that we are living in a very competitive Global Economy and in that context it makes zero sense to me that we have hundreds of thousands of right and qualified young people who want to go to college, who should be in college but cant go to college for one reason and that is their families lack the income. [applause] that is not what america should be about and that is why i have introduced legislation and will make and as president , in which every Public College and university in america is tuition free. [applause] [applause] and what that is about, and i want you all to appreciate what that is about. Its telling every kid in cleveland and in burlington vermont that no matter what your income, the income of your family, if you study hard, if you do your schoolwork seriously, you will be able to get a college education. [applause] and we are also going to deal with the outrage of millions of people having high Interest Rates on their student debt. [applause] it makes no sense to me that people are paying six, eight, 10, 12 interest on student debt when you can refinance a home for three or 4 . [applause] and thats what we are going to do. We are going to allow people to get the lowest possible Interest Rate they can find. Now, providing free tuition to Public Colleges and universities at a lower Interest Rate is an expensive proposition. We are going to pay for that by imposing a tax on wall street speculation. [applause] when wall street is the result of their greed and recklessness clashed they came running to the congress and begging us to bail them out. Now it is their turn to help bail out the middle class. [applause] and when we talk about our responsibilities as adults, as citizens and parents, one of those responsibilities is to make sure that we leave future generations it planet that is healthy and habitable. [applause] now the debate is over. Climate change is real. [applause] Climate Change is already causing devastating problems and we have a moral responsibility to work with countries around the world to transform our Energy System away from fossil fuels to Energy Efficiency and sustainable energy. [applause] and if we do not do that what the scientists tell us is that ibm did this century, this planet will be up to five degrees warmer fahrenheit than it is today. More drought, more floods, we have a moral responsibility to make sure that does not happen. [applause] and when they talk about where we are as a nation we should also read nice that today the United States of america is the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as they write. [applause] now i was on the committee that wrote the Affordable Care act. [applause] but we can do better and we must do better. [applause] today in america, 29 Million People still have zero Health Insurance and many more are underinsured but with large deductibles and copayments. If every other major country on earth can guarantee health care to all of their people in a much more costeffective way than we do health care, the United States of america can do that also. [applause] let me jump to an issue which is also very much on our minds, and that is as a nation the understanding that we have got to put in and to institutional racism. [applause] [applause] and in that regard im not just talking about a very sick individual who months ago for example walked into a Church Bible Study class in charleston, South Carolina and killed nine people because of the color of their skin and im not talking about its always unbelievable to think about this that we have hundreds of organizations in this country whose sole function is to push forward hatred, hatred against africanamericans, hatred against immigrants, hatred against catholics, thats what they do but im not just talking about that. What im talking about is the fact that in this country we have seen much too often too many africanamericans unarmed, killed by the police when in custody. [applause] you know the names and as well as i do whether its sandra blander Michael Brown or walter scott or freddie gray or tamir rice or timothy russell. [applause] i do not want to read about and you did not want to read about children being shot because they have a toy gun. [applause] you and i do not want to continue to see over 100 ballots being 100 bullets being shot into a car. [applause] now some of you know i am the former mayor of the largest city in the state of vermont, burlington, vermont. [applause] and in that capacity i had the privilege of working with our Police Department and let me tell you what i think most of you know. Most Police Officers are honest and hardworking and do a very difficult job. [applause] the truth is, it is very hard to be a Police Officer today. Many of them are unpaid underpaid and they have crazy schedules, but that may also be very clear and that is when any Police Officer, like any other public official breaks the law must be held accountable. [applause] so my pledge to you tonight is that no president will work harder than i in ending institutional racism in this country and in reforming, reforming a very very broken criminal justice system. [applause] a lot to talk about and let me just mention a few of the things that happened. We have got to demilitarize our Police Departments. [applause] so that they do not look like, and if you watch television you say see local Police Officers that look like they are invading the people they are supposed to be serving. A good Police Department, and their many of them, are part of the community, are trusted by the community, are not seen as a foreign invading force. [applause] when he Police Departments that reflects the diversity of the communities they serve. [applause] we need new rules for the allowable use of force, lethal force is a last resort, not the first. [applause] we need to end the