Amy Klobuchar on Welfare & Poverty DFL Sr Senator (MN); Democratic presidential contender

Eradicate child poverty in a generation

Then she pivoted to an anecdote about President Franklin Roosevelt and a man who sobbed when the dead president's funeral train passed by. The man was asked if he knew the Roosevelt, Klobuchar said. "The guy says: 'No, I didn't know the president, but he knew me. He knew me,' " Klobuchar said.

Klobuchar, who referenced her humble roots several times during the debate, said that she too would govern in a way that the poor will feel known.

"If you have trouble, stretching your paycheck to pay for that rent, I know you and I will fight for you," Klobuchar said. "If you have trouble deciding if you're going to pay for your childcare, or your long-term care, I know you and I will fight for you."

Economic opportunity must be for everyone

A: Economic opportunity means economic opportunity for everyone in this country. That means we put out better childcare and better education, and we pay teachers more, and we make sure there's a decent retirement system in place, yes, we help the African-American community and we must, because they have been the ones that have been most hurt by what we've seen in the last decades, but we help everyone.

Expand the EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit)

FOUR CANDIDATES HAVE SIMILAR VIEWS: Cory Booker; John Delaney; Kamala Harris; John Hickenlooper.

Harris is calling for a massive expansion of the EITC, including nearly doubling the income cutoff for eligibility. Hickenlooper and Delaney want to double the EITC. Delaney also wants to make it available to people without children. Booker would increase EITC income eligibility level from $54k to $90k, boost the credit for childless workers.

Voted YES on instituting National Service as a new social invention.

Adds to National and Community Service Act of 1990 (NCSA) purposes:
1. providing year-round opportunities in service-learning;
2. involving program participants in emergency and disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery;
3. increasing service opportunities for retiring professionals;
4. encouraging service by individuals age 55 or older and continued service by national service alumni;
5. focusing national service on the areas of national need.

Proponent's argument to vote Yes:Sen. BARBARA MIKULSKI (D, MD): [In developing national service over many years] we were not in the business of creating another new social program. What we were in the business of was creating a new social invention. What do I mean by that? In our country, we are known for our technological inventions. But also often overlooked, and sometimes undervalued, is our social inventions.

We created national service to let young people find opportunity to be of service and also to make an important contribution. But not all was rosy. In 2003, when I was the ranking member on the appropriations subcommittee funding national service, they created a debacle. One of their most colossal errors was that they enrolled over 20,000 volunteers and could not afford to pay for it. That is how sloppy they were in their accounting. I called them the "Enron of nonprofits."

And they worked on it. But all that is history. We are going to expand AmeriCorps activity into specialized corps. One, an education corps; another, a health futures corps; another, a veterans corps; and another called opportunity corps. These are not outside of AmeriCorps. They will be subsets because we find this is where compelling human need is and at the same time offers great opportunity for volunteers to do it.

Opponent's argument to vote No:No senators spoke against the amendment.