The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement is a continuation of other disastrous trade agreements, like NAFTA, CAFTA, and permanent normal trade relations with China.
After all, Wall Street is clearly the most powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill. From 1998 through 2008, the financial sector spent over $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to deregulate Wall Street.
Because of a mass media more interested in gossip and sensationalism than real issues, I would say a vast majority of the American public doesn't have a clue about how the Congress functions and what goes on.
What democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent - almost - own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent. That when you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States.
The light bulb going off in my head was a fear that in this pivotal moment in history, when America faces so many serious problems, when the middle class and working class of this country are being decimated, that there were not voices out there representing the tens of millions of people who needed a voice. And the idea of going through a campaign where there is not a serious discussion about the most important issues facing America, where there are not voices out there representing people who are hurting - that seemed to me unacceptable.
When millions of people stand up and fight...they win.
If you take donations from Wall Street, you can't be independent.
I have spent the better part of my adult life standing up and fighting for working families.
All I can say is if you check my record going back a long time, I have stood with those who are hurting. I have stood with those who have no money.
The reality is we that have a corrupt campaign finance system which separates the American people's needs and desires from what Congress is doing. So to my mind, what we have got to do is wage a political revolution where millions of people have given up on the political process, stand up and fight back, demand the government that represents us and not just a handful of campaign contribution - contributors.
Everyone can have health care. Everyone can earn a living wage. We can educate all our kids - well. But none of that happens unless there's a political revolution. And it's not going to happen unless we deal with corporate control of the media.
I don't represent large corporations and I don't want their money.
Millions are unemployed and our roads are falling apart. If we can spend $6 trillion sending people to war, we can spend $1 trillion to put Americans to work fixing our nation's crumbling infrastructure. Let's rebuild America and create jobs.
What the people here have said is that given the enormous crises facing our country, it is just too late for the same old, same old establishment politics and establishment economics.
...Poverty in America today leads not only to anxiety, unhappiness, discomfort and a lack of material goods. It leads to death. Poverty in America today is a death sentence for tens and tens of thousands of our people.
The government of our great country belongs to all of the people and not just a handful of the wealthy.
I don't think any sensible person would disagree that the invasion of Iraq led to the massive level of instability that we're seeing right now. I think that was one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the modern history of the United States.
In 2013 Citigroup had profits of $6.4 billion in the United States. They paid no federal income tax and, in fact, received a rebate from the IRS of $260 million. That same year J.P. Morgan had $17.2 billion in profits in the U.S. They also paid no federal income tax. Do you think it's time for tax reform?
Democracy is one person, one vote and a full discussion of the issues that affect us. Oligarchy is billionaires buying elections, voter suppression and a concentrated corporate media determining what we see, hear and read.
Climate change is real, caused by human activity and already devastating our nation and planet. The United States must lead the world in combating climate change and transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and sustainability.
Being Jewish and having lost relatives in the Holocaust, I've always been aware of the meaning of prejudice. These are things that have remained with me throughout my political career.
People are hurting and angry, and they want something to be able to stand up and fight for. That's what I believe the antidote is to Trumpism.
In community after community, there are unemployment rates among young African-Americans of 30 to 40 percent. Thirty to 40 percent! Kids have no jobs, they have no future. That is an issue that has got to be dealt with simultaneously as we deal with police brutality, voter suppression and the other attacks that are taking place on the African-American community.
And the reason that I was one of the first, not one of the last to be in opposition to the TPP is that American workers should not be forced to compete against people in Vietnam today making a minimum wage of $0.65 an hour. Look, what we have got to do is tell corporate America that they cannot continue to shut down. We've lost 60,000 factories since 2001. They're going to start having to, if I'm president, invest in this country - not in China, not in Mexico.
Wall Street has enormous power over the Republican Party, enormous power over the Democratic Party.
