Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke at a "Fight The Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here' town hall in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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NewsTranscript
00:00This is a great turnout. I've been to Las Vegas a number of times. This is by far the largest turnout. Thank you very much.
00:11I want to thank Alexandria for being here with us. She mentioned when she was a kid she cleaned houses with her mom in order to help pay the family bills.
00:29She has not forgotten where she came from. I want to thank Steve Horsford who worked for the Culinary Workers Union, former chairman of the Black Caucus and doing a great job in the Congress.
00:46Steve, thanks very much for being here. So why are Alexandria and I here in Las Vegas and we're heading to Colorado and we're heading to Arizona?
01:02We're doing that because this country faces enormous crises and how we respond to these crises today will impact not only our lives but the lives of our kids, future generations and in terms of climate change, the very well-being of the planet.
01:29So today we are here to say very loudly and clearly, no we will not accept an oligarchic form of society where a handful of billionaires run the government.
01:50No we will not accept an authoritarian form of society with a president who undermines the Constitution every day and is working aggressively to take away our freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
02:17No we will not accept a society of massive economic inequalities where the very rich are becoming much richer while working families across the country struggle to put food on the table.
02:39And what we're saying today as clearly as we can, that in the richest country in the history of the world, we demand and will achieve an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the 1%.
03:07It seems to me that before we can effectively determine the best way forward, it's important to do what is very rarely done in Congress or in the corporate media, and that is to have a frank discussion about the economic and political realities facing our country.
03:31So let's do something really radical. You ready? Let's tell the truth.
03:47In our country today, we have two very different Americas. In one of those Americas, the wealthiest people have never ever in the history of our country had it so good.
04:05People on top are doing extraordinarily well today. We have more income and wealth inequality in our country than we have ever had. The three wealthiest people in America, Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, Mr. Zuckerberg, you know those guys.
04:30Those three people alone own more wealth than the bottom half of American society, 170 million people.
04:43Three people, 170 million people. The top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 90%, and CEOs of major corporations now make 300 times what their average workers make.
05:14But it's not just income and wealth inequality. Today we have more concentration of ownership than we have ever had.
05:25While the profits on Wall Street and corporate America saw a handful of giant corporations dominate sector after sector, whether it's agriculture, transportation, media, financial services, a small number of very, very large international corporations dominate.
05:47And they charge us outrageously high prices for the products they sell us.
05:57If you could believe it, three Wall Street firms, three firms, BlackRock, Bangalore, and State Street combined are the major stockholders of 95% of American corporations.
06:14And let me say this, the 1% live completely and isolated lives from the rest of this country.
06:26They have no clue what is going on in the real world.
06:31They live in their mansions in their gated communities. They fly around the world in the private jets or the helicopters that they own.
06:44They have well-trained nannies taking care of their babies. They send their kids to the best private schools and colleges.
06:53Sometimes they take vacations not in a Motel 6, not in a national park, but in their very own islands that they own.
07:05And for the very, very richest, they have fun flying off into outer space on their very own spaceships.
07:17And maybe they should stay there.
07:22And that is one America, an America where people live with tremendous wealth and tremendous luxury.
07:34They have it all. But there is another America, the America that you know and the America you live in.
07:42And in that America, 60%, 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck and millions of workers are trying to get by on starvation wages.
07:59Unlike Donald Trump, I grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck.
08:07And I know, as you know, something about that reality.
08:12And it is a reality that I will never forget.
08:16And I have a feeling as I look out at you today that many of you know that reality.
08:23Now here's something that we don't talk about too much. What does it mean?
08:30What does it mean to live paycheck to paycheck? Tell me. What does it mean?
08:35Well, I mean Peter to pay Paul.
08:38Oh, raise your hand. Let me get some people. Yes.
08:45Going without. Yes.
08:48Yes.
08:50Knowing how to figure out your how to pay your credit card when interest rates are 20% if you're delinquent, right?
09:00Yes, sir.
09:02How to put one's kids through college. Yes.
09:06Wanting to buy a house. How are you going to figure that one out?
09:10Yes, sir.
09:12Paying whether or not you're going to buy your prescription drugs or you pay your rent.
09:23Yes, sir.
09:25Going hungry in America.
09:28Way in the back there. Yeah.
09:31Wanting to go to college. Not having the money to do that. Yeah.
09:35Okay. Yeah. Yes, sir.
09:41Okay. Stress every day to pay the rent. That's what it's about.
09:47All right. We go. Look, I know we can go to everybody in the thousands here who will give me a different answer.
09:53But here is the bottom line.
09:55It means that millions of Americans worry every day.
10:00We just heard it. How are they going to pay their rent? How are they going to pay their mortgage?
10:04And as Alexandria mentioned a moment ago, all over this country, the cost of housing is soaring.
10:11So what do you do if you live paycheck to paycheck and your landlord raises your rent 30%?
10:18You've got to figure out where you're going to go.
10:21If you have a kid, you've got to find another school. It is a disaster.
10:25How do you live if you're a single mom paying $20,000 a year for child care?
10:32When you're making $40,000 or $50,000 a year?
10:36People want to feed their kids well, want decent food for their kids.
10:42How do you provide decent food for kids when the prices at the grocery store are soaring?
10:49If you get sick, your kid gets sick, your mom or your dad gets sick,
10:56How do you afford to go to the doctor if you have no health insurance or you have a $10,000 a year deductible?
11:06How do you pay your credit card bill? People have credit card bills here?
11:13If you don't pay it, Wall Street gets 20%, 30% interest rates.
11:21People all over this country just worry about what happens if you live paycheck to paycheck and your car breaks down.
11:30And the guy at the repair shop says it's costing $1,000 to get it fixed.
11:36Well, what happens if you don't have that $1,000?
11:39How do you get to work? And what happens if you don't get to work?
11:44What happens if you get fired? How are you going to take care of your family?
11:49Those are the stresses that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing.
11:56Let me tell you something that is almost never, ever talked about.
12:01In America today, our life expectancy, how long we live on average, is about four years shorter than people in most other wealthy countries.
12:13But what is even more embarrassing is that working-class Americans are living seven years shorter lives than the wealthy.
12:28Why is that? Why is that? Raise your hands. Yes, ma'am.
12:38All right, this will hit right on the head.
12:41The answer is stress.
12:43What doctors will tell you, it's not a new medical fact, is that when you live under stress every day,
12:52trying to figure out how you're going to feed your kids, how you're going to pay your rent,
12:56how you deal with a boss who is not very pleasant.
13:00All right, dealing with Trump.
13:04All of that stress has an impact on your body and your mind.
13:11And in the richest country in the world, working-class people should not have to die unnaturally young.
13:21They should be able to live long and productive lives.
13:24The issue that we're dealing with in America now is not just income and wealth inequality,
13:35and it's not just the stress that working people are feeling.
13:39Today in America, we are the only major nation on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a human right.
13:50Despite spending twice as much per capita, you've got to accept that we're not spending enough money.
14:01We're spending a fortune, $14,000 for every man, woman, and child.
14:05Despite that, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured.
14:12All right, raise your hand if you have a high deductible.
14:17Ha! There it is.
14:19In America today, 60,000 people die because they don't get to a doctor on time. Got it?
14:28And the reason is that I talk to doctors.
14:31People walk in much sicker than they should be.
14:34And they say, doctors say, well, why didn't you come in here when you first felt your symptoms?
14:38Answer is, I had no health insurance or I had a high deductible.
14:45Health care is a human right.
14:50And together we are going to stand up and finally pass a Medicare for All single-payer program.
15:04Today, because of the greed of the pharmaceutical industry,
15:09anybody here having a hard time paying for prescription drugs?
15:14One out of four Americans can't afford to fill the prescriptions their doctors write
15:22because in some cases we pay ten times more for the same drugs as sold abroad.
15:30There is no reason why we should pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.
15:37Let us stand together and demand that Congress lower the cost of prescription drugs by at least 50%.
15:50All over this country we've got a housing crisis.
15:53Got a housing crisis here in Las Vegas?
15:58It's not just that we have 800,000 people who are homeless. That's bad enough.
16:03But you've got 20 million people in America paying 50% of their limited incomes for housing.
16:12We've got an education crisis. Child care, dysfunctional.
16:17Very expensive, the workers there make low wages.
16:21Public education doesn't have enough money to attract the teachers that we need.
16:28And millions of young people are struggling to figure out how they are going to get a higher education.
16:36And in terms of climate change, we now embarrassingly have a president who believes that climate change is a hoax.
16:49Which means that we're going to fall further and further behind in trying to save the planet.
16:55So why is all of this stuff happening?
16:58Why are we the only country that doesn't guarantee health care?
17:01Why are the rich getting richer and working paying full-time?
17:06Boy, it's a smart audience.
17:09You got it. You know, we all know, it's true in Vermont and I'm sure it's true here.
17:15We all know people who are dealing with addiction, right?
17:20Drug addiction is a horrendous problem. I think we lost 100,000 people because of drug overdoses.
17:27We know people who are alcoholic, who need more and more to drink.
17:31We know people who can't control themselves with food or tobacco.
17:35But I will tell you that the worst addiction in this country today is the greed of the oligarchy.
17:49They are like heroin addicts. They need more and more and more.
17:54And if they destroy Social Security and Medicaid to get what they want, that is what they will do.
18:05And right now, as Alexandria mentioned, they are in the process of dismembering the federal government
18:12and cutting programs that low-income and working families desperately need.
18:18So they can give themselves over a trillion dollars in huge tax breaks.
18:29And in order to get those tax breaks, they want to cut Medicaid by $880 billion.
18:40They want to destroy our Social Security system.
18:44At a time when 22% of seniors are trying to get by on $15,000 a year or less.
18:53What they are trying to do is to discredit Social Security, lie about Social Security.
19:00Some of you heard Trump say, oh all these people 150, 200 years of age getting Social Security.
19:08Total, total, absolute lie.
19:12Well over 99% of the people in this country who get those Social Security checks, paid for those checks.
19:19We got any veterans here today? Thank you veterans.
19:25While Musk and Trump are going after the VA, they want to lay off over 80,000 employees at the Veterans Administration.
19:38That will result in lower quality health care and delays in veterans getting the benefits to which they are entitled.
19:51Trump and Musk, right now, today, they are trying to dismantle the Department of Education.
19:58That means public schools in working class areas could lose money.
20:05It means the people on health grants are going to have a harder time getting those grants.
20:11And it means that kids with disabilities, who are now getting the support they need, may lose that support.
20:21Now the way you destroy the government is by laying off hundreds of thousands of employees.
20:31And that is precisely what they are doing right now.
20:35I want you all to think about this for a moment.
20:38I know we all feel badly for those federal employees, people who have worked for the government for years, devoted their lives to public service.
20:47And you have Musk coming along and saying, oh we've determined your performance is poor, you're out of here, goodbye.
20:53Now I know a lot of people feel sympathy for those employees, but I want you to think about something.
21:02If Musk and his friends can treat federal employees like that, you've worked here 20 years, you're out of here, goodbye.
21:11What do you think that they will be doing to workers in the private sector when artificial intelligence comes to take your job?
21:23Now technology in itself is not a bad thing.
21:27If it works for working people, not just the people on top.
21:36But it is not just domestic policies of the Trump administration that we've got to fight.
21:44For the first time in our 250 year history, we have a president who is turning his back on democracy and aligning us with authoritarianism and murderers like Vladimir Putin.
22:04No, we must not abandon the people of Ukraine who were invaded, Mr. President.
22:10Ukraine did not start this war, Russia did.
22:16Our country must always stand for democracy, not dictatorship.
22:24And no, at a time when Netanyahu is waging a horrific war against the Palestinian people, our government must not provide another nickel to that murderous government.
22:44My friends, it is no great secret that our government is way out of touch with the needs of working families.
23:01I don't think anybody would deny it.
23:04You have a two-party system, both parties heavily dominated by big money interests.
23:10So our job in the coming weeks and months is not just to take Trump on in every step of the way, but it's to do more.
23:20It's to have a vision for where our country should be going.
23:27As the wealthiest nation on earth, for beginners, to begin, it's important to know that we are not going to make the changes we need so long as we continue to have a corrupt campaign finance system.
23:43It is not democracy when Musk himself can spend $270 million to help elect Trump and then become the most powerful person in government.
23:56And there are billionaires in the Democratic Party also playing a major role.
24:05Our job is to overturn this horrendous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United and to move this country to public funding of elections, one person, one vote, not billionaires buying elections.
24:21No, we should not be giving huge tax breaks to billionaires.
24:32On the contrary, we've got to demand that they start paying their fair share of taxes.
24:39No.
24:45Tax the rich! Tax the rich! Tax the rich! Tax the rich!
24:54That sounds pretty good up here.
24:59And while we're at it, we cannot maintain a federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
25:08We've got to raise that minimum wage to a living wage at least $17 an hour.
25:14And we, all over this country, workers know that if you want decent wages and benefits and working conditions, you've got to join a union.
25:27And all over this country, corporations are making it harder and harder for workers to join unions.
25:33And that's why we need to pass legislation that I just introduced called the PRO Act that penalizes any employer that acts illegally when workers are trying to form a union.
25:46Together, we're going to stop the cuts to Social Security. Instead of cutting Social Security, we're going to expand Social Security benefits.
26:00Instead of making massive cuts to Medicaid, we're going to join every other major country on earth guaranteeing health care to all through a Medicare for All single-payer system.
26:13And in the wealthiest country on earth, you know what? Nobody should go homeless. Nobody should pay 50% of their income in housing.
26:24We can create millions of jobs by building 4 million units of low-income and affordable housing and stopping corporate landlords from jacking up rent prices.
26:38I grew up in a rent-controlled apartment. Seems to me that's a pretty good idea.
26:46And in a competitive global economy, we need the best educated workforce in the world.
26:54All of our young people must have the ability to get a higher education by making public colleges and universities and trade schools and universities tuition-free.
27:15Alexandria led the effort for the Green New Jobs, creating millions of good-paying jobs, transforming our energy system to save the planet. Let's do it.
27:27Now, I know that there are a lot of people here in Las Vegas and around the country who are feeling despair and anxiety about what's happening in D.C.
27:49And some of you may feel a little bit hopeless. So let me say this. At this particular moment, this pivotal moment in American history, despair is not an option.
28:03Giving up is not acceptable. And none of us have the privilege of hiding under the covers. The stakes are just too high.
28:19And let us never forget, real change only occurs when ordinary people at the grassroots level stand up against oppression and injustice and fight back.
28:34That is the history of our country from way back when. When this country was first formed, you had people here who took on the most powerful person in the world, the King of England, and the entire British Empire.
28:57And you know what? They won. In the 1840s, you had people in the abolitionist movement standing up and saying, slavery is not acceptable. It's horrendous. It's horrific.
29:13They had to take on the great power of the slave owners. And we fought a war where hundreds of people, hundreds of thousands of people died. But we won. Slavery was abolished.
29:27In the early part of our century, workers who were overworked and underpaid demanded to form unions. Some of them were killed. They were fired. They were beaten. But they stood up for the trade union movement and they won and helped create the American middle class.
29:45In the 1930s, we had a depression. 25% of America was unemployed. But people stood up, elected a great president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, transformed the government, and we managed to end the depression.
30:04In 1941, this country was attacked at Pearl Harbor. Our military was weak. We had to fight a war on two fronts. Yet, because the nation came together and we produced the planes, the guns, the tanks that we needed, in two and a half years, that war was essentially won.
30:24So what I am saying to you is that this is not the first time we have faced crises. And what I believe from the bottom of my heart is the American people do not want to see a handful of billionaires running this country.
30:47The American people understand that in democracy, we criticize each other, we have free elections, and we're not like Donald Trump, too cowardly to accept criticism. American people do not want to move us toward an authoritarian society.
31:09The American people understand that there's something very wrong today when so few have so much and so many have so little. So my view is that while I am not a mathematician, I do know that 99% is a hell of a lot bigger number than 1%.
31:33And I believe from the bottom of my heart, if we do not let Trump and his friends divide us up by the color of our skin, or where we were born, or our religion, or our sexual orientation, if we stand together as one people fighting for justice, there is nothing that we cannot do.
32:00Trust me, I work in Washington, and I know the power of the oligarchs. They are very powerful. But if we stand together, I have zero doubt that we can and will defeat them, that we can transform the economics and politics of this country, and that we can have an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the one.
32:29Thank you all very much.