Were about to begin now. I want to thank all you for being here, i want to thank the Poor Peoples Campaign for moving the schedule because my airplane was delayed by 2 1 2 hours. And i want to thank all of you for fighting for what youre fighting for. In this country over the last 40 years, weve seen in economic mobility for 90 of the American People. We have the greatest income inequality we have had since 1928. 160 families that are the top. 1 in america control as much wealth as the bottom 90 , which is 200 million 290 million americans. Thats why the budget you put out today is so important. Let me tell you something, youre hitting the target right where it needs to be hit. Because its 2001 in washington, we have spent 5 trillion on tax cuts, almost all of which have gone to the wealthiest people in america. We spent 5. 6 trillion on wars in the middle east. Thats almost 11 trillion or 12 trillion. Did i say spend it . I meant borrowed it from the American People and our children. Tax cuts for rich people and for the middle east. If we had spent money differently, the way you think about spending that money, we could have put people to work fixing every road and bridge in america that needs to be fixed. We could have fixed every Water Treatment facility, not just in flint, michigan, but everywhere in america. We could have given every kid in im not making these numbers up. These are real numbers. With your budget we could have given every child living in poverty in this country who needs preschool, which sever child living in poverty in america the chance to have that free school. We could have raised the salary of every teach for the america by 50 . We could have funded housing vouchers in this country the way they should be funded. But we did none of that we need a completely different set of priorities, starting with reversing the terrible trump tax bill. And i would suggest passing my proposal that dramatically increases the Child Tax Credit with ry family in america a kid under 6 would get 300 a month. Every family in america with a kid over 6 would get 250 a month. Per kid. This would reduce poverty in americaing it would end 2 a bayday poverty in america for our children. It would cost less than trumps tax bill by far. And the only thing that is getting in our way is we got Mitch Mcconnell in washington. This isnt just about moving out donald trump. This is about moving out a group of people including Mitch Mcconnell and the Freedom Caucus who acted as tyrants for the last decade in our country. They have immobilized our country. The reason we dont have universal health care is because of them. The reason weve done nothing on climate is because of them. The reason weve done nothing on poverty is because of them. War on guns, because of them. Strump a eff or on guns is because of them. Trump is a symptom of the problem, hes not the cause of it. On the back end of it, i hope as your president to figure out how to govern this country for people who need our help. Thank you all for being here today. I look forward to questions. All right. Please have a seat. Do you want to get started . Thank you for coming, thank you for being here. Mr. Ben fete thank you. Im from the south, many people here are from the south, many people are not from the south but they understand how the south works. If you can control the 13 former confederate states, you can control 30 of the United States congress, 26 senators, and nearly 170 electoral votes. In the south, the seat belt from virginia up to texas, a large portion of politicians get elected through systemic racism. Racist Voter Suppression and gerrymandering. When they get elected, though, they pass policies that hurt mostly white people in raw numbers, not in concentration but in raw numbers because they are against living wages, against health care, against immigrant rights, against womens rights, against the lgbt community. Yet right now in this moment, with 40 of africanamericans living in the south if you connect those africanamericans to progressive whites, to latinos, you could fundamentally shift the electorate and fundamentally shift whats going on in the country. Too often, politicians, sometimes democrats, have tried to find a way around the south rather than through the south. How first of all, do you think its important to build these coalitions . Are you willing to take on that challenge . And how will you bring together your campaign, your administration, blacks, whites, browns, latinos, native people, to build a new coalition to transform the politics of this country. Mr. Bennett i dont think theres any other way to do it. I left a book for you back there, i finished writing, im not just making this up, thats what the book is about. I believe that is what we need to do we need to build a constituency for change in this country, a ligs for change. Washington is not going to change unless we force ashington to change. People can give you all the proposals they want, if theyre not building a coalition of a Broad Coalition across this country, that looks different than the coalition that we have seen up to this point, we will not succeed. I think the only way to succeed is by building that Broad Coalition, north and south, democrats, independents, and even some republicans who are going to need to be able to move, to really advance a progressive agenda. My wife is from a town called mariana, arkansas, in lee county, arkansas, in the poorest part of arkansas in the mississippi delta. Ive spent lots of my life in these parts of the country and i know how mistreated they are and represented they are by the people in washington. These guys come here, i sit on the finance committee. They come here and day after day after day they try to cut medicaid. That thats what they do they come here an cut medicaid. In the states youre talking about 50rk of the live births are paid for by medicaid. In some cases its 70 . And the politicians who represent the people in these states are voting to cut that medicaid. Where do they expect people to have their babies . Or their children . These are the same people cutting rural hospitals all over america. And what i think is we need not just candidates to show up in these states but for a president to show up in these states. I think the next democratic president , i hope that its me, will go and sign the bill reversing the trump tax cuts in a county in the south where 70 of the people voted for donald trump, to be able to show them the math and say this is why you should be with us, not with him. Or with these other people that are, you know, in theory representing you but not doing it at all. I think this creates an enormous opportunity for us to change the politics in america which we have to do you cannot you cannot wish into existence, you cant hope into existence the changes that youre fighting for. Everybody in this room knows that. You have to fight for it. You have to struggle for it. And thats what youve been doing in North Carolina and thats what youre doing here and thats what we need build during the course of this campaign or all of these interests in washington will continue to defeat the will of the American People. Ok. Im a preacher, ive been engaged in antipoverty protesting for 25 years. Almost not a week goes by where the where somebody says, you know, the bible says the poor will be with you always to justify poverty. Can we just have everybody please sit and not talk. Just so we can all hear. Please. Thank you. Go on. As a way to say that we cant end poverty. We clearly have 140 Million People who are poor. Or one emergency away from poverty in this country right now. So what are your plans and proposals to immediately effect living wages, sanitation systems, Voting Rights, and all those Poverty Issues that are all interconnected just to say in fact that scarcity is a lie and we can actually end poverty. Mr. Bennett reverend, this is what ive been focused on. I was a superintendent of school for the Denver Public schools, a Large Urban School District in this country and this is what ve been saying. The American Family act which raises the Child Tax Credit up to 3,00 a year. Pays it out monthly not annually. The folk that was looked at it says it will cut childhood poverty in america by almost 40 and then as i said and end, as i said earlier, the 2 a day poverty. I think we have to make work pay again in this country. We have made it too hard for people to work. Theres a reason why our Labor Participation rates are so much lower than other countries in the world that have the kind of payments that im talking about doing and i think we can make the investments in infrastructure and other kinds of things. You talk about we shift the priorities away from 5 trillion for the wealthiest people in america and 5. 6 trillion for the wars in the middle east that would go a long way. Can i ask a quick followup, how would you do that . Youre in the United States senate, you know the way it is run currently by senator mcconnell and even when he was used aminority leader he filibuster to stop priorities that would have helped the American People. How would you get these priority foss actually become law . Mr. Bennett i dont think theres any escaping or any short cuts to what reverend barber and i were talking about. You can talk about whether its 51 or 6, 0 the real issue is can you build a coalition for change in this country . And can we build as strategic as Mitch Mcconnell. I wouldnt want any of us to be a malevolent or as cynical as Mitch Mcconnell but could we please be as strategic as he is . We have a climate denier in the white house. The majority of the American People believe that Climate Change is real, that humans are contributing to it and that we should deal it with deal with it urgently but we have a climate denier in there. Who ran proudly on that and the senate is full of climate deniers as well. And the only way were going to change that is by outorganizing them and by creating a set of policy proposals including antipoverty proposals, including climate proposals that build this kind of unusual coalition. So if you look at my climate plan, for example, what youll see is that it is it is directly tied to the issue of conservation in this country. And what that puts at in the conversation, what can our farmers and ranchers do to contribute to a solution on Climate Change. There are a lot of people who would look at this and say those people are all republicans, theres no reason to talk to them. But tuck figure out how to pay farmers and ranchers to sequester carbon that could be an important step forward to building a coalition that can overcome Mitch Mcconnell. I do not believe and i just want to be honest about it, i do not believe we can change all this in one election. I think this is going to take the rest of my lifetime, election after election after election, starting with the defeat of donald trump, who should never have been elected president to begin with. Manifestly unqualified for this job. And he won because we were too careless with our democracy. We cant make that mistake again. Lets bring up Ellen Barfield. Where are you, ellen . Ok, ellen, you have the microphone. Im Ellen Barfield from baltimore. Im a u. S. Army veteran and member of of veterans for peace. As you can see from my shirt. [applause] thank you. Veterans dont deserve any more thanks than anybody else but thank you. And my friend here, vicki ryder is the wife of a vietnam veteran and she, he, and i all believe that working to end war is what service to this country really means. [applause] i was part of the massive and massively expensive overseas u. S. Troop presence caused in caused and continues to cause a devastating human toll, here at home ive also come to recognize that there is a war being waged against the poor. Ive seen poor people funneled into the military and back out with no job prospects, incomplete and lessening health care at the v. A. And elsewhere, and a rate of over 20 veteran suicides a day. Including frinds of mine. What is your plan, sir, to address the deep crisis in poverty facing our veterans and their families and the larger communities that are so damaged y militarism and militarized police . Mr. Bennett thank you for your question. [applause] mr. Bennett im very sorry for your loss as well. We have had lots of veteran suicides in colorado, colorado is a place where veterans like to come after the after theyve theyre out of their service. Ive often said we want to try to make our state the best state in the country to be a veteran. By the way, whether youre living in rural or urban area, whether youre living in poverty or not, and theres so much more for us to do on health care, you know, you said that you dont deserve special privileges but on health care youve done everything weve asked you to do and we do not have for the people that have survived these battles, who would never have survived in prior battles but have because our Battlefield Medicine is so good, were not prepared for them when they come hemo. Were not taking care of them. The addiction, the Mental Health issues that we are all confronting are critical ones you pointed to something very important. The certifications that people get while they are in the service ought to be used by they should be able to use those certifications to get jobs in the private sector. And all over the country, not only can they not do that but every states licensing requirements are different. That would be one thing we could do to make sure people are back into the work force more quickly. On the question of the wars, if i could just say, you know, if youre born, if youre 20 years old now, basically, youve never known a time when the United States was not at war, in a war. If were in afghanistan two more years well have been there for 20 years. And i was here. I had a great privilege to have debate and vote on the iraq deal that president obama put together. Which for once, for once was an attempt by washington to actually try to stall the solve a problem, not go to war with it in the middle east. And donald trump, by the way, i was up for reelection in a swing state when i voted for that. That was not an easy vote but i was glad to cast the vote because it was the right thing to do. Donald trump comes to office and all the things we hoped for about the deal but didnt know would be true turned out to be true. And iran was more than a year away from breaking out the Nuclear Weapons and now hes stripped ripped us away from that deal and is beginning to, you know, put us in a position to have to go back there again which would be an unbelievable tragedy. I am very grateful for your advocacy for our vets and also for your observations about where we are in terms of our trajectory in involvements in other countries. Can i ask you a question, you used to be superintendent of the Denver Public schools. I used to go there. Mr. Bennett where did you go . I went to montebello. The schools used to open in the summer to feed us lunch. We could go to my local Elementary School, shut out to mcgloin Elementary School and you could get a meal in the summer. That was a huge antipoverty meal program that allowed kids to eat. Kids who had and those who didnt we all gathered in the school. What ways could the federal department of Education Impact poverty in this country . We know how good your school is often depends on your zip code, depends on the tax base where you live. Are there ways that federal education policy could help to alleviate that . Mr. Bennett first of all, i think the School Lunch Program should be available during the summer. Ive worked hard actually with a republican from arkansas to expand it for the summer and also to make it available for distribution outside of schools as well because for a lot of kids in rural parts of the country, theyre not living near a school and the food needs to be near the kid for the kid to have lunch. Thats an important point you raise. Out of what we spend on k12 education in this country, 9 of it is federal dollars. Theres a limit to what we can do from the federal government but i think theres some very important responsibilities the federal government has. You know, we have a hugely important civil rights function. Thats why there is a department of education. And thats something that we have to enforce. And betsy devos has done exactly the opposite. I could never have imagined as horrible an education secretary as her but we need an education secretary who is actually focused on how to make it better. So title 1 money which has never been spent properly in this country. Never been spent properly because its based on average budgets in schools rather than actual budgets in schools which is why weve ended up with this massive subsidy in american schools, running from wealthy from poor kids to wealthy kids in america, we need to change that and ive been trying to change it for the last 10 years or so. But theres more work to do there so that the money we are spending actually goes to the purpose its intended in that case for high priority schools. Let me say one last thing about your neighborhood if i can. There were many years, my mayor, mayor hancock, ran an ad the first time he said, why sit, he lives in montebello, why sit my son has to travel across town to go to a Decent