Elizabeth Warren in 2019-2021 Town Halls
On Civil Rights:
If you believe in one-man-one-woman, marry just one woman!
Q: Let's say you're on the campaign trail and a supporter says, "My faith teaches me that marriage is between one man and one woman." What is your response?WARREN: I'm going to assume it's a guy who said that and I'm going to say, "Then just marry
one woman. I'm cool with that, assuming you can find one."
Q: You grew up conservative in a conservative household. You were Republican by party for many years. Was there ever a time that you felt differently about this issue, in particular, about
same-sex marriage?
WARREN: No, I don't think so. I mean, it may have been the case; I don't have notes from when I was a little kid. To me, it's about what I learned in the church I grew up in. First song I ever remember singing is, "They are
yellow, black, and white; they are precious in his sight; Jesus loves all the children of the world." And to me, that is the heart of it--it truly is about the preciousness of each and every life. It is about the worth of every human being.
Source: CNN LGBT Town Hall 2020
Oct 10, 2019
On Education:
Secretary of Ed should enforce civil rights and value all
Q: What do you think schools need to do better to make sure that I don't have to worry about anything but my homework?
WARREN: I want to have a secretary of education who believes in public education and believes in the value of every one of our kids and is willing to enforce our civil rights laws.
Source: CNN LGBT Town Hall 2020
Oct 10, 2019
On Energy & Oil:
Environmental standards in trade agreements
Q: You say you support environmental standards in trade agreements?WARREN: You know, we won't let you pollute here in the US. It can't be the case that you get to produce these products and sell them in the US when you created huge carbon emissions
somewhere else around the globe, because it hurts us all. What are those trade policies always driven toward? Not American workers. Not American consumers. Not American values. What have they driven toward? "Make giant multinational corporations more
profitable." That's been it. They don't want to hear that we could put other restrictions on trade, that we could use trade to lift standards all around the world, that we could use trade to lift regulatory standards all around the world. And the reason
for that is we have not had a government that is working on behalf of the American people. We've had a government and a trade policy that has been all about giant multinational corporations. That is corruption, and I plan to change it.
Source: CNN LGBT Town Hall 2020
Oct 10, 2019
On Free Trade:
Countries want to trade with us; so push for human rights
Q: The current administration maintains financial relationships with countries that have terrible human rights records--what's your stance on working with these countries?WARREN: Our responsibilities are not just to each other in this country.
Our responsibilities run worldwide. And that's true whether we're talking about the AIDS epidemic or it's true whether we're talking about human rights violations. I believe what we need to do as a country, we need to bring more pressure to bear.
On trade policy: Everyone around the world who has something to sell wants to get to the American consumer. Why? Because we buy a lot of stuff. We need to use that leverage to say, "if you want to come and sell here, then you have to meet some basic
standards." Now, some of those are going to be labor standards, what you pay people. You can't be producing these products with prison labor. We want to use the leverage of our markets to raise human rights standards all around the globe.
Source: CNN LGBT Town Hall 2020
Oct 10, 2019
On Government Reform:
Pass Equality Act in Senate with more Dems or end filibuster
Q: What will you do to ensure that the Senate passes the Equality Act?WARREN: We can get it through the House because we got a majority in the House. What it's going to take in the Senate, we got to have more Democrats in the Senate.
If you want to get something done in the United States Senate that is important and that you've got a vocal minority that's opposed to it, it's time to roll back the filibuster.
Source: CNN LGBT Town Hall 2020
Oct 10, 2019
On Health Care:
AIDS drugs should be available at cost for all
Q: Would you commit to calling for funding increases to end the AIDS pandemic? WARREN: Yes. I want to see us bring down the cost of drugs that are generic. This drug will be off-patent by then.
And I commit that in my administration we will let out a government contract to produce that drug and make that drug available at cost both here in the United States and all around the world.
Source: CNN LGBT Town Hall 2020
Oct 10, 2019
On Welfare & Poverty:
Need funding to help LGBTQ homeless youth
We know that LGBTQ youth are far more likely to end up homeless. And we know that part of that is rejection by their families.
I propose to expand our funding that is specifically targeted to LGBTQ youth who are homeless.
Source: CNN LGBT Town Hall 2020
Oct 10, 2019
On Corporations:
Break up big tech platforms like Amazon & Google
You can run the platform, that is, you can be the umpire in the baseball game and you can run an honest platform, or you can be a player, that is, you can have a business or you can have a team in the game,
but you don't get to be the umpire and have a team in the game. If we break off the platform from the parts that are competing, what you'll see in America is a platform that works really well.
It's a very profitable business, but you'll see a lot more competition where little businesses have a chance to get going, where when you've got a good idea you can build that good idea into something,
where there's really a chance for everybody to get in and compete. So that's the reason I want to see the two of them broken apart.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: 5 candidates back-to-back
Apr 22, 2019
On Crime:
Must get serious about gun control & background checks
One of the main ways that we could help make our police safer is to get serious about gun safety in this country. We need universal background checks. We need to take weapons of war off our city streets. Right now, we live in America where 7 children
and teenagers will die every single day, where the lives of officers are put at risk. We need as a country to step up, to be more responsible, to be willing to push back against the NRA and to put some sensible gun safety laws in place.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: 5 candidates back-to-back
Apr 22, 2019
On Drugs:
Change to pro-legalization of marijuana
It makes no darn sense that we treat marijuana as a schedule 1 drug, which means in effect the federal government has determined that it has no medicinal use, that it can't have any good effects, no research is supposed to be done. [Then there's the]
racial impact of the enforcement of marijuana laws. The best evidence suggests that African-Americans and whites use marijuana at about the same rates, and yet African-Americans are far more likely to be arrested for marijuana use than whites are.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: 5 candidates back-to-back
Apr 22, 2019
On Education:
Roll back student debt; free college going forward
I have two parts to [my college debt] proposal. Part one is that we say that we're going to roll back student loan debt for about 95% of students who have debt. And part two is to make sure that we never get in this mess again is to make college
universally available with free tuition and fees, and to put more money into Pell grants so that students of color & our poorest students have real access to college and that we put real money into our historically black colleges and universities.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: 5 candidates back-to-back
Apr 22, 2019
On Energy & Oil:
Supports Green New Deal; invest in green infrastructure
I am a strong supporter of the Green New Deal. The first reason that I'm a strong supporter is it is a way to say urgency. Now, we cannot wait any longer.
We have got to make change. The second part about the Green New Deal right now is it calls for a huge investment in our infrastructure.
And I think that's just absolutely critical. And when I say our infrastructure, it's about our green infrastructure, it's about our power infrastructure, but it's also about
hardening our infrastructure so that we can withstand heavier storms, so that flooding is not so much a problem, so that we move to distributed generation of power. Lots of pieces that we need to do.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: 5 candidates back-to-back
Apr 22, 2019
On Social Security:
System can be fixed if we have political will
Until the late 1980s, we understood that Social Security is not something you can just set once and go. Every few years we kept making little adjustments. And that way, Social Security stayed on a track. In the late 1980s, the Republicans just
said, "no, we're not going to make any more changes." The consequence is every year, we get the system just a little further out of whack. The problem is the political will to make adjustments. The plan is not hard. I'm willing to take on that fight.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: 5 candidates back-to-back
Apr 22, 2019
On Tax Reform:
Proposes wealth tax for fortunes over $50 million
I started several months ago about a wealth tax, an ultra-millionaire's tax. It's 2 cents on every dollar of the great fortunes above $50 million. So, your 50 millionth and first dollar, you've got to pay 2 cents, and 2 cents on all of the dollars
after that. If we put that 2 cent wealth tax in place on the 75,000 largest fortunes in this country, we can do universal child care & universal college, and still have nearly a trillion dollars left over.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: 5 candidates back-to-back
Apr 22, 2019
Page last updated: Apr 07, 2021