Bernie to Hillary: Let's Not Insult The Intelligence Of The American People on Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Oil

"Why in God's name does Wall Street make huge campaign contributions," asks Bernie Sanders. "I guess just for the fun of it; they want to throw money around."





CLINTON: We are mixing apples and oranges. My 750,000 donors have contributed more than a million and a half donations. I'm very proud. That, I think, between the two of us demonstrates the strength of the support we have among people who want to see change in our country.



But, the real issue, I think, that the Senator is injecting into this is that if you had a Super PAC, like President Obama has, which now says it wants to support me. It's not my PAC. If you take donations from Wall Street, you can't be independent.



I would just say, I debated then Senator Obama numerous times on stages like this, and he was the recipient of the largest number of Wall Street donations of anybody running on the Democratic side ever.



Now, when it mattered, he stood up and took on Wall Street. He pushed through, and he passed the Dodd-Frank regulation, the toughest regulations since the 1930's. So, let's not in anyway imply here that either President Obama or myself, would in anyway not take on any vested interested, whether it's Wall Street, or drug companies, or insurance companies, or frankly, the gun lobby to stand up to do what's best for the American people.



SANDERS: The people aren't dumb. Why in God's name does Wall Street...



But let's not -- but let's not -- let's not insult -- let's not insult the intelligence of the American people. People aren't dumb. Why in God's name does Wall Street make huge campaign contributions? I guess just for the fun of it; they want to throw money around.



Why does the pharmaceutical industry make huge campaign contributions? Any connection maybe to the fact that our people pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs?



Why does the fossil fuel industry pay -- spend huge amounts of money on campaign contributions? Any connection to the fact that not one Republican candidate for president thinks and agrees with the scientific community that climate change is real and that we have got to transform our energy system?



And when we talk about Wall Street, let's talk about Wall Street. I voted for Dodd-Frank, got an important amendment in it. In my view, it doesn't go anywhere near far enough. But when we talk about Wall Street, you have Wall Street and major banks have paid $200 billion in fines since the great crash. No Wall Street executive has been prosecuted.



CLINTON: Well, let's just -- let's just follow up on this, because, you know, I've made it very clear that no bank is too big to fail, no executive too powerful to jail, and because of Dodd-Frank, we now have in law a process that the president, the Federal Reserve, and others can use if any bank poses a systemic risk. I think that's a major accomplishment.



I agree, however, it doesn't go far enough, because what it focuses on are the big banks, which Senator Sanders has talked about a lot, for good reason. I go further in the plan that I've proposed, which has been called the toughest, most effective, comprehensive plan for reining in the other risks that the financial system could face. It was an investment bank, Lehman Brothers, that contributed to our collapse. It was a big insurance company, AIG. It was Countrywide Mortgage. My plan would sweep all of them into a regulatory framework so we can try to get ahead of what the next problems might be.



And I believe that not only Barney Frank, Paul Krugman, and others, have said that what I have proposed is the most effective. It goes in the right direction. We have Dodd-Frank. We can use it to break up the banks, if that's appropriate. But let's not kid ourselves. As we speak, there are new problems on the horizon. I want to get ahead of those, and that's why I've proposed a much more comprehensive approach to deal with all of these.