May 26, 2016 - Burlington, VT

Video: Burlington Free Press, C-SPAN



Transcript:



Today, here in our small state – the state that has led this nation in so many ways – I am proud to announce my candidacy for President of the United States of America.



Today, with your support and the support of millions of people throughout our country, we begin a political revolution to transform our country economically, politically, socially, and environmentally.



Today, we stand here and say loudly and clearly “Enough is enough!” This great nation and its government belong to all of the people and not to a handful of billionaires.



Brothers and sisters, now is not the time for thinking small. Now is not the time for the same old, same old establishment politics and stale inside-the-Beltway ideas.



Now is the time for millions of working families to come together to revitalize American democracy, to end the collapse of our middle class, and to make certain that our children and grandchildren are able to enjoy a quality of life that brings them health, prosperity, security, and joy, and that once again makes the United States the leader in the world in the fight for economic and social justice, for environmental sanity, and for a world of peace.



My fellow Americans, this country faces more serious problems today than any time since the Great Depression, and if you include the planetary crisis of climate change, it may well be that the challenges we face now are more dire than at any time in the modern history of our country.



And here is my promise to you for this campaign. Not only will I fight to protect the working families of this country but we are going to build a movement of millions of Americans who are prepared to stand up and fight back.



We are going to take this campaign directly to the people in town meetings, door to door conversations, on street corners and in social media.



This week, we’re going to be in New Hampshire, we’re going to be in Iowa, and we’re going to be in Minnesota, and that is just the start of this national campaign.



Let me be clear. This campaign is not about Bernie Sanders. It’s not about Hillary Clinton. It’s not about Jeb Bush or anyone else. This campaign is about the needs of the American people and the ideas and proposals that effectively address those needs.



As someone who has never run a negative political ad in my life, my campaign will not be driven by political gossip or reckless personal attacks. This is what the American people want and deserve. These are serious times; we need serious debates.



Politics in a democratic society should not be treated as if it were a baseball game, a game show or a soap opera. And I hope the media understands that as well.



Let me take a minute to touch on some of the issues that I will be focusing on in the coming months and then give you a brief outline of an agenda for America – an agenda which in fact will deal with these serious problems and lead us to a better future.



Today, we live in a nation which is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world but that reality means very little for most of us because almost all of that wealth is owned and controlled by a tiny handful of individuals.



In America, we now have more income and wealth inequality than any other major country on Earth and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider and wider.



The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time. It is the great economic issue of our time. It is the great political issue of our time and we will address it.



Let me be very clear and let the top 1% understand this: There is something profoundly wrong when the top one-tenth of 1% owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%, and 99% of all new income goes to the top 1%.



There is something profoundly wrong when in recent years we are seeing a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires at the same time as millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages and we have shamefully the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country.



There is something profoundly wrong when one family – one family – owns more wealth in this country than the bottom 130 million Americans.



This grotesque level of inequality is immoral. It is bad economics. It is unsustainable.



This type of rigged economy is not what America is supposed to be about.



This has got to change. And as your President, together, we are going to change it.



But it is not just income and wealth inequality. It is a tragic reality that for the last 40 years the great middle class of our country, once the envy of the entire world, has been disappearing.



Despite exploding technology and increased worker productivity, median family income is almost $5,000 less today than it was in 1999.



In our great state and all over this great country, people are working not one job but two jobs, three jobs, trying to cobble together an income and some health care. That is not acceptable. We can and must do better.



The truth is that real unemployment is not 5.4%, which you read in the papers. It is close to 11%. Youth unemployment 17%. African-American youth unemployment: off the charts.



Today, shamefully, we have 45 million people living in poverty, many of whom are working in low-wage jobs.



In America today, despite the gains of the Affordable Care Act, 35 million Americans still lack any health insurance.



My friends, that is the reality of the middle class in America today. And that is the reality not just for us but for our kids and our grandchildren that we are going to change.



My fellow Americans, let me be as blunt as I can and tell you what you already know.



As a result of the disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, the American political system has been totally corrupted and the foundations of American democracy are now being undermined.



What the Supreme Court said essentially was that it was not good enough for the billionaires to own much of the economy. They can now own the United States government as well and that is precisely what they are trying to do.



And what I learned in school and I think what the men and women who’ve put their lives on the line for our country have long known that American democracy is not about billionaires being able to buy candidates and buy elections.



It is not about the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and other incredibly wealthy individuals spending billions of dollars to elect candidates who will make the rich richer and everyone else poorer.



According to media reports, if you can believe it, the Koch brothers in this election cycle are prepared to spend more money than either the Democratic or Republican parties. That is not democracy; that is oligarchy.



In Vermont in our town meetings, we know what democracy is about and that is one person, one vote. And that’s the kind of political system we are going to fight for and are going to achieve.



Now, when we talk about our responsibilities as human beings and as parents, there is nothing more important than leaving this country and the entire planet in a way that is habitable for our kids and our grandchildren.



The debate is over. The scientific community has spoken in a virtually unanimous voice. Climate change is real. It is caused by human activity, and it is already causing devastating problems in our country and around the world.



And let’s be clear: If we do not get our act together and have the United States lead the world in combatting climate change, there will be more drought, more famine, more rising sea level, more flood, more ocean acidification, more extreme weather disturbances.



As human beings who look out over this environment, who appreciate the beauty that we have on this planet, we are not going to allow the fossil fuel industry to destroy this planet.



Brothers and sisters, it is no secret that there is massive discontent with politics in America today.



In the last mid-term election, some 63% of American did not vote, including 80% of young people.



Poll after poll tells us that our citizens no longer have confidence in our political institutions and given the power of big money in the political process in general.



They understand that their pain is not being heard in Washington and that people in Washington and elected officials are much more concerned about the lobbyists and the billionaires than the suffering of ordinary people.



Now, combatting this political alienation, these cynicism and this legitimate anger will not be easy. That’s for sure. But that is exactly what together we must do if we’re going to turn this country around. And that is what this campaign is all about.



And if we are going to bring people together, we need a simple, straightforward progressive agenda which speaks to the needs of the American people and provides us with a vision of a very different America.



And what is that agenda? Let me briefly tell you what I think.



The agenda begins with jobs, jobs, and more jobs.



If we are serious about reversing the decline of the middle-class, we need a major federal jobs program which puts millions of people back to work at good-paying jobs.



At a time when our roads, our bridges, our water systems, rails and airports are decaying, the most effective way to rapidly create meaningful jobs is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.



And that is why I introduced legislation which would invest $1 trillion over five years to modernize our country’s physical infrastructure – legislation that would create and maintain 13 million good-paying jobs.



And as your President, I will lead the effort to make sure that legislation is passed.



I will also continue to oppose our current trade policies.



For decades, Presidents from both parties have supported trade agreements which have cost us millions of decent-paying jobs as corporate America shuts down plants in Vermont, throughout this country, and moves to low-wage countries.



As President, my trade policies will break that cycle of agreements, which enrich the few at the expense of the many.



Let us also be honest and acknowledge that today millions of American workers are now working for totally inadequate wages.



The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage and must be raised.



The minimum wage in this country must become a living wage, which means raising it to $15 an hour over the next few years.



Our goal – this is not a radical idea – but our goal must be that any worker in this country who works 40 hours a week is not living in poverty.



Further, we must establish pay equity for women workers.



It is unconscionable that women earn 78 cents on the dollar compared to men who perform the same work.



We must also revise our overtime standards so that people making $25,000 or $30,000 a year who are working 50, 60 hours a week get time and a half.



And we need paid sick leave and guaranteed vacation time for every worker in this country.



This campaign starting today is going to send a message to the billionaire class and that is “You can’t have it all. You can’t get huge tax breaks while children in this country go hungry. You can’t continue sending our jobs abroad while millions are looking for work. You can’t hide your profits in the Cayman Islands or other tax havens while there are massive unmet needs on every corner of this nation.”



To the billionaire class, I say that your greed has got to end. You cannot take advantage of all of the benefits of America if you refuse to accept your responsibilities.



And that is why we need a tax system which is fair and progressive, which tells the wealthiest individuals and largest corporations that they are going to begin to start paying their fair share of taxes.



When we talk about power, we talk about Wall Street. In my view, it is time to break up the largest financial institutions in this country.



Wall Street cannot continue to be an island unto itself, gambling trillions in risky financial instruments while expecting the public to bail it out.



If a bank is too big to fail, that bank is too big to exist.



If we are serious about a progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of working families, that talks about climate change and the needs of our kids and the elderly, we must be focused on campaign finance reform and a need for a constitutional amendment to overturn this disastrous Citizens United decision.



I have said it before and I’ll say it again. I will not nominate any justice to the Supreme Court who has not made it clear that he or she will move to overturn that disastrous decision, which is undermining American democracy.



We need to go further and establish public funding of elections.



As I look to our future, it is clear to me that the United States of America must lead the world in reversing climate change.



We can do that by transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels to an energy efficiency and such sustainable energies as wind, solar, geothermal and biomass.



Brothers and sisters, the United States of America today remains the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right.



Despite the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act, 35 million Americans continue to have no health insurance and even more are under-insured.



Yet, despite that pathetic record, we end up spending almost twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation.



In my strong opinion, the United States must join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all as a right.



And we must do it through a Medicare for all single payer program.



At a time when millions of Americans are struggling to keep their heads above water economically, at a time when senior poverty is increasing, at a time when millions of kids in this country don’t get enough food to eat, my Republican colleagues as part of their recently passed budget are trying to make a terrible situation even worse.



If you can believe it and this is the truth – the Republican budget throws 27 million Americans off of health insurance, makes drastic cuts in Medicare, throws millions of low-income Americans including pregnant women off of nutrition programs and makes it harder for working class families to afford college or put their kids in the Head Start program.



And then to add insult to injury, the Republican budget provides huge tax breaks for the very richest people in this country while they raise taxes on working families.



Well, let me tell my Republican colleagues that I respectfully disagree with their approach.



Instead of cutting Social Security, we are going to expand Social Security benefits.



Instead of cutting Head Start and child care, we are going to move to a universal pre-K system for all the children of this country.



As Franklin Delano Roosevelt reminded us, a nation’s greatness is judge not by what it provides to the most well off but how it treats the people most in need and that is the kind of country we must become.



And when we talk about education, let me make it very clear. In a highly global economy, we need the best educated workforce we can create.



It is insane, it is counter-productive to the best interest of our country that hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college and that millions of others leave school with a mountain of debt that burdens them for decades.



This is not what a great country is about. That must end.



And that is why I as President will fight to make tuition in public colleges and universities free as well as substantially lower interest rates on student loans.



The young people of our country are the future. They’ve got to get the education they need.



As everybody knows, we live in a difficult and dangerous world, and there are people out there who would do us harm.



As President, I will defend this nation but I will do it responsibly.



As a member of Congress, I voted against the war in Iraq and that was the right vote.



I am vigorously opposed to an endless perpetual war in the Middle East.



Yes, we must be vigorous in combatting terrorism and the defeating ISIS. But we as a nation should not have to bear that burden alone. We must be part of an international coalition led by the Muslim nations that can not only defeat ISIS but begin the process of creating the conditions for peace.



As some of you know, I was born in a far away land called Brooklyn, New York.



My father came to this country from Poland without a penny in his pocket and having dropped out school at a young age. My mother graduated high school in New York City.



My father worked his entire life as a paint salesman, never made much money.



My parents, my brother and I lived in a small rent-controlled apartment. My mother’s dream was to move out of that small three-and-a-half room apartment and get a home of her own. She died young and her dream was never fulfilled.



As a kid, I learned in many, many ways every day in my house what lack of money means to a family and that is a lesson that I have never forgotten and never will forget.



I have seen, as many of you have, the promise of America in our own life.



My parents never, never, never would ever dream that their son could become a United States Senator, let alone run for President.



But for too many of our fellow Americans, the dream of progress and opportunity is being denied by the grind of an economy that funnel virtually all of the wealth and all of the income through the top.



And to those who say we cannot restore the dream, I say just look where we are standing today.



As some of you will remember, this beautiful place was once an unsightly rail yard that served no public purpose and was an eyesore.



As mayor, I worked with the people of Burlington to help turn this waterfront into the beautiful people oriented public space it is today.



We took that fight to the courts, to the legislature, and to the people and we won.



The lesson to be learned – and it is a profound political lesson – is that when people stand together, when people are prepared to fight back, there is nothing that cannot be accomplished.



We can live in a country where every person has health care as a right not a privilege.



We can live in a country where every parent can have quality and affordable child care and where all of our qualified young people can get a college education regardless of their income.



We can live in a country where every senior can live in dignity and security and not be forced to choose between food and medicine.



We can live in a country where every veteran who has put his or her life on the line to defend this nation gets the quality health care and benefits they have earned and deserve.



We can live in a country where every person no matter their race, their religion, their disability or their sexual orientation realizes the full promise of equality that is our birthright as Americans.



Brothers and sisters, that is the nation we can build together.





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