Tom Steyer in CNN N. H. Town Hall

On Budget & Economy: Balanced budget in good economies, but spend in tough times

STEYER: So the answer to that is, it depends, and let me tell you why. There are times when you want to have a balanced budget and there are times when you don't want a balanced budget. The whole idea about economics is as if we're a family, when times are flush, you want to be putting some money in the bank because everything is going well so you're saving. If something goes wrong, somebody gets sick, somebody loses their job, you have somebody goes to college, you have money to spend. So the answer is, when times are good like now, you should be balancing the budget. When times are tough like 2008 & 2009, you have to be able to take money out of the bank to pay for the health insurance, to pay for the unemployment, to pay for school. That's just the same with us. When times are tough, the government has got to come in with money to support the American people.

On Civil Rights: Increase disability funding; we all succeed together

STEYER: I believe in the idea that we're in it together, that we succeed together, and that looking down or not investing and giving a chance to anybody who is an American is something that to me is deeply wrong. So when I think about disabilities, it starts with the Individuals with Disability Education Act. Basically the federal government says that they'll pay approximately 40 percent of the cost of the education of individuals with disabilities, and they pay about 13 percent. So to me, the real question here is partly a policy of making sure that we fund people's abilities to succeed, but beyond that there is a question here about attitude that goes towards people with disabilities, people of different race, people with a different sexual orientation, or however we want to cut the American pie.

On Education: Hold charter schools to same standards as public schools

STEYER: Actually, I'm not a supporter of charter schools. What I'm a supporter of is making the public school system work and supporting teachers in that public school system so they can be as effective as possible. And I would put much more money into it, both in terms of paying teachers, but also in terms of supporting teachers with the kind of services, like librarians and nurses and mental health support. When I think about what we're trying to do in terms of school, this is the basic investment in ourselves and in our future prosperity. Look at any successful country in this world, they spend [on] making sure that the kids can succeed. We spend ten times more in our budget on defense than we do on education, $70 billion on education. The defense number is over $700 billion. That is a dramatic misplacement of values in our society.

On Energy & Oil: Cap-and-trade market-based approaches are ineffective

STEYER: [We need] to put in rules about how fast utilities have to move to clean energy, how fast car companies have to stop creating gasoline-fired cars, how fast businesses have to rebuild buildings to make them more energy-efficient. How effective is putting a price on carbon? And here's the answer. That isn't what really works. There has been a sense in this country that what works is somehow using the market. Let me say this. As somebody who was in the private sector for 30 years, who believes in a dynamic, competitive, effective private sector, a price on carbon, which we've had in California through our cap-and-trade system has been very marginally effective. So do I think it's bad? No, I don't think it's bad. I think it's marginally positive. But the way we're going to get out of this problem is not by trusting the market. We are going to get out of this problem by putting in rules and making corporations obey them.

On Environment: Environmental justice means clean air & water

We're going to make this work the old-fashioned way: We're going to have a government that puts in rules starting day one. We call our climate plan a justice-based climate plan. We can make this work. We can be better paid. We can more just. We can be cleaner and healthier, particularly in black and brown communities, which are bearing the brunt of our pollution.

If there's a big problem, the American government will solve it. And somewhere around 14 or 15 years ago, I thought, this doesn't seem to be working. There's this huge unintended consequence of having a fossil fuel economy, which is climate change. So what I finally decided was, this is a political problem. ]\

On Families & Children: $100M/year for mental health, to reduce suicide & depression

STEYER: I've talked to Americans across this country, and one of the things that I found over that time is that mental health is an under-discussed, under-resourced true source of pain for Americans. And it really is a question about anxiety and depression that goes untreated--mental health is healthyou never go to the doctor and they say, "You have a broken leg, come back in four months and I'll set it." But if you go in with a mental health issue, they literally say stuff like that. So part of this, in my mind, is about putting money towards mental health. In my health plan, there's $100 billion a year to try and address specifically mental health. And that's designed really to go after anxiety and depression across this country, as it shows up in terms of alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide. And I have another $75 billion going directly towards the opioid crisis.

On Welfare Reform: Billions for affordable housing; market won't do it

STEYER: This is a straightforward problem. We have too few affordable housing units in the United States. It's not hard to figure out why prices go up. There's too little supply and too much demand. We need more affordable housing units, to the tune of 7 million affordable housing units. And the reason is that the federal government decided that "the market would provide," that if we just stepped aside, the market would provide affordable housing. And now we have this gigantic problem, which is, it didn't. So we're going to have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars building affordable housing units in a smart way across this country. Here's an example of an absolute market failure that is absolutely predictable, that the government has to step in and solve. And we've got to get over this idea of these Republican lies that government is bad and the market will provide.