Remarks
provided by Washington
Post and below.
Thank
you! I’m Elizabeth Warren, and this is my first Democratic Convention. Never
thought I’d run for senate. And I sure never dreamed that I’d get to be the
warm-up act for President Bill Clinton--an amazing man, who had the good sense
to marry one of the coolest women on the planet. I want to give a special shout
out to the Massachusetts delegation. I’m counting on you to help me win and to
help President Obama win.
I’m
here tonight to talk about hard-working people: people who get up early, stay
up late, cook dinner and help out with homework; people who can be counted on
to help their kids, their parents, their neighbors, and the lady down the
street whose car broke down; people who work their hearts out but are up against
a hard truth--the game is rigged against them.
It
wasn’t always this way. Like a lot of you, I grew up in a family on the ragged
edge of the middle class. My daddy sold carpeting and ended up as a maintenance
man. After he had a heart attack, my mom worked the phones at Sears so we could
hang on to our house. My three brothers all served in the military. One was
career. The second worked a good union job in construction. The third started a
small business.
Me,
I was waiting tables at 13 and married at 19. I graduated from public schools
and taught elementary school. I have a wonderful husband, two great children,
and three beautiful grandchildren. And I’m grateful, down to my toes, for every
opportunity that America gave me. This is a great country. I grew up in an
America that invested in its kids and built a strong middle class; that allowed
millions of children to rise from poverty and establish secure lives. An
America that created Social Security and Medicare so that seniors could live
with dignity; an America in which each generation built something solid so that
the next generation could build something better.
But
for many years now, our middle class has been chipped, squeezed, and hammered.
Talk to the construction worker I met from Malden, Massachusetts, who went nine
months without finding work. Talk to the head of a manufacturing company in
Franklin trying to protect jobs but worried about rising costs. Talk to the
student in Worcester who worked hard to finish his college degree, and now he’s
drowning in debt. Their fight is my fight, and it’s Barack Obama’s fight too.
People
feel like the system is rigged against them. And here’s the painful part:
they’re right. The system is rigged. Look around. Oil companies guzzle down
billions in subsidies. Billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries.
Wall Street CEOs--the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions
of jobs--still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting
like we should thank them.
Anyone
here have a problem with that? Well I do. I talk to small business owners all
across Massachusetts.
Not
one of them--not one--made big bucks from the risky Wall Street bets that
brought down our economy. I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and
firefighters--people who bust their tails every day. Not none of them--not
one--stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share
of taxes.
These
folks don’t resent that someone else makes more money. We’re Americans. We
celebrate success. We just don’t want the game to be rigged. We’ve fought to
level the playing field before. About a century ago, when corrosive greed
threatened our economy and our way of life, the American people came together
under the leadership of Teddy Roosevelt and other progressives, to bring our
nation back from the brink.
We
started to take children out of factories and put them in schools. We began to
give meaning to the words “consumer protection” by making our food and medicine
safe. And we gave the little guys a better chance to compete by preventing the
big guys from rigging the markets. We turned adversity into progress because
that’s what we do.
Americans
are fighters. We are tough, resourceful and creative. If we have the chance to
fight on a level playing field--where everyone pays a fair share and everyone
has a real shot--then no one can stop us. President Obama gets it because he’s
spent his life fighting for the middle class. And now he’s fighting to level
that playing field--because we know that the economy doesn’t grow from the top
down, but from the middle class out and the bottom up. That’s how we create
jobs and reduce the debt.
And
Mitt Romney? He wants to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. But
for middle-class families who are hanging on by their fingernails? His plans
will hammer them with a new tax hike of up to 2,000 dollars. Mitt Romney wants
to give billions in breaks to big corporations--but he and Paul Ryan would
pulverize financial reform, voucher-ize Medicare, and vaporize Obamacare.
The
Republican vision is clear: “I’ve got mine, the rest of you are on your own.”
Republicans say they don’t believe in government. Sure they do. They believe in
government to help themselves and their powerful friends. After all, Mitt
Romney’s the guy who said corporations are people.
No,
Governor Romney, corporations are not people. People have hearts, they have
kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love,
and they die. And that matters. That matters because we don’t run this country
for corporations, we run it for people. And that’s why we need Barack Obama.
After
the financial crisis, President Obama knew that we had to clean up Wall Street.
For years, families had been tricked by credit cards, fooled by student loans
and cheated on mortgages. I had an idea for a consumer financial protection
agency to stop the rip-offs. The big banks sure didn’t like it, and they
marshaled one of the biggest lobbying forces on earth to destroy the agency
before it ever saw the light of day. American families didn’t have an army of lobbyists
on our side, but what we had was a president—President Obama leading the way.
And when the lobbyists were nclosing in for the kill, Barack Obama squared his
shoulders, planted his feet, and stood firm. And that’s how we won.
By
the way, just a few weeks ago, that little agency caught one of the biggest
credit card companies cheating its customers and made it give people back every
penny it took, plus millions of dollars in fines. That’s what happens when you
have a president on the side of the middle class.
President
Obama believes in a level playing field. He believes in a country where nobody
gets a free ride or a golden parachute. A country where anyone who has a great
idea and rolls up their sleeves has a chance to build a business, and anyone who
works hard can build some security and raise a family. President Obama believes
in a country where billionaires pay their taxes just like their secretaries do,
and--I can’t believe I have to say this in 2012--a country where women get
equal pay for equal work.
He
believes in a country where everyone is held accountable. Where no one can
steal your purse on Main Street or your pension on Wall Street. President Obama
believes in a country where we invest in education, in roads and bridges, in
science, and in the future, so we can create new opportunities, so the next kid
can make it big, and the kid after that, and the kid after that. That’s what
president Obama believes. And that’s how we build the economy of the future. An
economy with more jobs and less debt. We root it in fairness. We grow it with
opportunity. And we build it together.
I
grew up in the Methodist Church and taught Sunday school. One of my favorite
passages of scripture is: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matthew 25:40. The passage teaches
about God in each of us, that we are bound to each other and called to act. Not
to sit, not to wait, but to act--all of us together.
Senator
Kennedy understood that call. Four years ago, he addressed our convention for
the last time. He said, “We have never lost our belief that we are all called
to a better country and a newer world.” Generation after generation, Americans
have answered that call. And now we are called again. We are called to restore
opportunity for every American. We are called to give America’s working
families a fighting chance. We are called to build something solid so the next
generation can build something better.
So
let me ask you--let me ask you, America: are you ready to answer this call? Are
you ready to fight for good jobs and a strong middle class? Are you ready to
work for a level playing field? Are you ready to prove to another generation of
Americans that we can build a better country and a newer world?
Joe
Biden is ready. Barack Obama is ready. I’m ready. You’re ready. America’s
ready. Thank you! And God bless America!
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