SANDERS: Elizabeth is absolutely right. If anybody here thinks that corporate America gives one damn about the average American worker, you're mistaken. If they can save five cents by going to China, Mexico, or Vietnam, or anyplace else, that's exactly what they will do. As president, let me tell you what I will do. These guys line up at the federal trough. They want military contracts. They want all kinds of contracts. Well, under my administration, you ain't going to get those contracts if you're throwing American workers out on the street.
Rep. Tim RYAN: We have to invent our way out of this thing. Make sure that people can actually make money off of the new technologies and then cut the worker in on the deal.
SANDERS: We have got to be super aggressive if we love our children and if we want to leave them a planet that is healthy and is habitable, so I don't disagree with Tim. What that means is we got to, A, take on the fossil fuel industry, B, it means we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, at a hell of a lot of good union jobs, as we do that. We got to transform our transportation system, and we have to lead the world.
DELANEY: We [should not] go down the road that Senator Sanders wants to take us, which is with bad policies like Medicare for all.
Q [to Sanders]: He previously has called Medicare-for-All "political suicide that will just get President Trump re-elected." What do you say to Congressman Delaney about whether it's "bad policy"?
SANDERS: You're wrong. Right now, we have a dysfunctional health care system: 87 million uninsured or underinsured; 500,000 Americans every year going bankrupt because of medical bills.
DELANEY: We can create a universal health care system [without] telling half the country that their health insurance is illegal.
SANDERS: Tens of millions of people lose their health insurance every single year when they change jobs. If you want stability in the health care system, if you want a system which gives you freedom of choice, a system which will not bankrupt you, the answer is to get rid of the profiteering of the drug companies.
SANDERS: It will be better because Medicare-for-all is comprehensive -- it covers all healthcare needs. For senior citizens it will finally include dental care, hearing aids and eyeglasses.
Rep. Tim RYAN: But you don't know that, Bernie.
SANDERS: I do know it; I wrote the damn bill. And many of our union brothers and sisters are now paying high deductibles and copayments when we do Medicare for all, instead of having the company putting money in to healthcare, they can get decent wage increases, which they're not getting today.
RYAN: Senator Sanders does not know all of the union contracts--the only thing they have is possibly really good healthcare. And the Democratic message is going to be, "we're going to take it and we're going to do better."
Two days ago, I had a remarkable experience which should tell you everything you need to know about what's going on in America. I took 15 people with diabetes from Detroit a few miles into Canada, and we bought insulin for one-tenth the price being charged by the crooks who run the pharmaceutical industry in America today.
But it's not just the price-fixing and the corruption and the greed of the pharmaceutical industry. It's what's going on in the fossil fuel industry. It's what's going on in Wall Street. We need a mass political movement. Stand up and take on the greed and corruption of the ruling class. Let's create a government and an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1%.
SANDERS: Please don't tell me that in a four year period we cannot go from 65 down to 55, to 45, to 35 -- this is not radical. This is what virtually every other country on Earth runs. We are the odd dog out.
Rep. John DELANEY: We don't have to go around and be the party of subtraction, and telling half the country, who has private health insurance, that their health insurance is illegal. It'll underfund the industry, many hospitals will close, and it's bad policy.
SANDERS: The fact is, tens of millions of people lose their health insurance every single year when they change jobs or their employer changes that insurance. If you want stability in the health care system, if you want a system which gives you freedom of choice with regard to a doctor or a hospital, which is a system which will not bankrupt you, the answer is to get rid of the profiteering of the drug companies and the insurance companies, move to Medicare for all.
SANDERS: I happen to believe that when I talk about healthcare as a human right that applies to all people in this country, and under a Medicare for All single payer system, we could afford to do that.
SANDERS: No, because we'll have strong border protections. But the main point I want to make is that what Trump is doing through his racism and his xenophobia, is demonizing a group of people. And as president, I will end that demonization. If a mother and a child walk thousands of miles on a dangerous path, in my view, they are not criminals. They are people fleeing violence. And we've got to ask ourselves, "Why are people walking 2,000 miles to a strange country where they don't know the language?" So what we will do, the first week we are in the White House, is bring the entire hemisphere together to talk about how we rebuild Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador so people do not have to flee their own countries.
SANDERS: Look, Steve, there ain't nobody in the Congress who's more strongly pro-worker than I am. So when I talk about taking on the fossil fuel industry, what I am also talking about is a just transition. We can create what the Green New Deal is about. We can create millions of good-paying jobs. We can rebuild communities in rural America that have been devastated. So we are not anti-worker. We are going to provide and make sure that those workers have a transition, new jobs, healthcare and education.
Gov. HICKENLOOPER: I'm saying [that socialist ideas on healthcare & the Green New Deal] are a disaster at the ballot box.
Q: Senator Sanders, you are a proud Democratic-Socialist, how do you respond?
SANDERS: Every credible poll that I have seen has me beating Trump-- including the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania. And the reason we are going to defeat Trump, is that he is a fraud and a phony and we're going to expose him for what he is. The American people want to have a living wage; I've helped lead that effort. The American people want to pay reasonable prices for prescription drugs; I've helped lead the effort for that as well.
HICKENLOOPER: If we're going to force Americans to make these radical changes, they're not going to go along.
SANDERS: Well, I respond to that by saying that I am supportive of Jim Clyburn's legislation, which is called 10-20-30. And what that understands is that as a result of slavery, and segregation, and the institutional racism we see now in health care, in education, in financial services, we are going to have to focus big time on rebuilding distressed communities in America, including African-American communities.
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The above quotations are from Democratic candidates debate in Detroit Michigan, July 30-31, 2019.
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