Boston. Hi senator, how are you . Thank you for coming. Nice to meet you. Thank you for coming. Of course toward of course. Come on in. [indiscernible] sen. Bennet hi, everybody. [indiscernible] have you had a chance [indiscernible] great. We have a fullscale replica of the chambers. That is where the program will be today. We will walk you this way. The lot of our programs are for student programs. We have a tour coming for the program we will be doing today. Sen. Bennet [indiscernible] yes, of course. [indiscernible] [laughter] [indiscernible] it is awesome to see students come in and learn about that, why it is important and how the senate operates. Down here, we explain what the senate does. What the separation of powers are. Down at the end, [indiscernible] which has changed with the country in terms of Additional Space and after the. It is unique to see all the spaces that changed. Everybody loves to point out when the first woman was elected. Sen. Bennet [indiscernible] by session. It starts with the first and goes every two years. Here we are. Sen. Bennet i see. Senator kennedy over there. Sen. Bennet how are you . We are so happy that you are here. So delighted. Sen. Bennet [indiscernible] i am so excited. I would not be anywhere else. So thrilled. Sen. Bennet [indiscernible] thank you. [indiscernible] sen. Bennet absolutely. Thank you. [applause] good morning. I am so happy that you all got here and the weather. I am vicki kennedy. On behalf of our executive director and the board of directors, i am so pleased to welcome you to the Kennedy Institute for the United States senate. This morning, for our special getting to the point program. It is always meaningful to have a senator visit us here. And join us in our replica of the Senate Chamber here in boston. It is especially meaningful to be joined by a candidate for the president ial nomination of his party. It is especially significant to have a senator here when such historic action are taking place today on capitol hill. With a special shout out to the students, i think you all for being here. When my late husband, edward kennedy, first contemplated the creation of this institute more than 15 years ago, he had a list of things he wanted to accomplish. First, he wanted to educate the public about the senate that he loved. And he wanted to do it in a handson experiential way. That is why he insisted on this replica of the United StatesSenate Chamber. He wanted all of us to be able to walk onto the senate floor and feel what it was to be a senator. To feel of the all and majesty of the place. And to remember the hard work and dedication of the men and women of good will in both parties who came together to address the challenges facing our nation. Even though he could not have anticipated at the time how much we would need it, he wanted this place to be a center that encourage civil discourse, a place where citizens could come together to discuss tough issues, and find a way, when necessary, to reach compromise. He also wanted this to be a place where we could hear and learn from and question our nations leaders about the important issues of the day. He wanted to encourage active participation in our democracy, active citizenship, and in the process, he hoped to inspire our next generation of leaders. Our featured speaker this morning, senator Michael Bennet of colorado, is one of our nations inspirational leaders. Trust me when i say there is no greater compliment than i could that i could pay to anyone. I believe he is cut from the same Public Service called as a ted kennedy. Senator bennet was sworn into the senate in 2009. My husband passed away in 2009. By their service in the senate did overlap briefly. In that short time, ted recognized Michael Bennet leadership qualities. His pragmatism, his independence of thought, and his drive to create opportunity for the next generation. During these past 10 years in the senate, satyr bennet has built a reputation as someone willing to take on dysfunction in d. C. Like all great senators, he has reached across the aisle, working with republicans and democrats to address our nations greatest challenges. He has also developed a reputation among staff and colleagues as someone who knows what he is talking about. A voracious reader who immerses himself in the issues, who prepared, who studied, who is constantly expanding his knowledge. Drawing on that knowledge, senator bennet has authored innovative proposals to make education, health care, childcare, and housing more affordable and accessible for working families. He made Climate Change a top priority, helping farmers, ranchers, and communities become more resilient to changing weather and investing in clean energy. As a member of the bipartisan gang of eight, he helped create comprehensive Immigration Reform that overwhelmingly passed the senate. It got stuck in the house. He worked to dramatically reform no child left behind, fasttrack the fda approval process for breakthrough medical treatments, conserve iconic public land, promote clean energy, and crackdown on the illicit prescription of opioids. He was also central in crafting and passing the bipartisan farm bill in 2014 and 2018, which provided much needed stability for americas farmers and ranchers. Before representing colorado in the senate, Michael Bennet was a successful businessman, and as superintendent of the Denver Public schools, he led one of the most extensive Reform Efforts in the country, resulting in substantial, sustained academic improvement for denvers children. As anyone who has seen him in action as a senator or candidate can attest, he has a passion for issues relating to quality education and opportunity for young people and a drive to continue to make things better. As a candidate, he has been passionate and eloquent about providing opportunity for everyone to participate in the american dream. And restoring integrity to our government. I know you cannot wait to zero him. I cannot either. Please welcome him now to his seat here. Colorado senator and candidate for president , Michael Bennet. And please welcome Stephanie Murray from politico who will be here talking to him. Thank you so much. [applause] sen. Bennet good morning. Stephanie thank you for being here. Especially in the weather. We will get to our conversation shortly. I will give senator bennet a chance to make remarks. Sen. Bennet i will be brief because i want to spend any time in conversation with you. My name is Michael Bennet. I have been in the senate for 10 years. You are sitting at my desk right there. If that is where i sit. Teddy kennedys desk was next to it. I want to thank you for having me. I cannot tell you what it means for me to be here. I did not know what it would mean for me to be here until i came into this room and i feel lucky that your husband was still in the senate when i got there. We were talking about it earlier this morning. I was sitting at the desk presiding one day, had no idea what i was doing because i had just become a senator and there i was sitting at the desk presiding over the senate, which has a surprising place for anybody to be and i heard this commotion coming out of the store in this part of the chamber. I had a gavel to get people to settle down, but i was unsure enough of what i was doing that i did not do that. I looked over at what did i see but ted kennedy, through that door and he is out with cancer for months and he had come back for an important devote, i dont remember what it was, his colleagues screamed across the floor to welcome him back. Never have i been more glad that i restrained myself. If i had been gaveling ted kennedy, i would not be able to live with it. That is something to remember. I just will say, i spent a lot of my life outside of politics. I was in business, the superintendent of the Denver Public schools, 95,000 kids in colorado, mostly kids of color, mostly kids in poverty. If i had to summarize the last 10 years of my town halls in colorado, which is a state that is exactly one third republican, one third democratic, one third independent, it is people coming to visit my meetings and saying, we are working hard, but we cannot afford housing, we cannot afford health care, we cannot afford Higher Education for ourselves or our kids come we cannot afford Early Childhood education. We cannot afford what we used to think of and i still think of as a middleclass life. We cannot save, we are worried our kids will live a more diminished life than we lived. If i think about the families that were in the Denver Public schools who are not coming to my town halls because a lot are working two or three jobs to get by, if they did, what are they would say is, we are killing ourselves and no matter what we do, we cannot get our kids out of poverty. That is an anecdotal reflection of an economy that for the last 50 years or so has worked really well for the people at the very top, sometimes we call them the top 10 , and it has not worked well for most everybody else. We have an Education System today that has reinforcing that income inequality instead of liberating children from it because the best predictor of the equality the quality of a kids education is their parents income. That is not the way this is supposed to work. That is not what Teddy Kennedy fought for when he was in the senate. This is supposed to be a country where, if you work hard, which almost everyone does, you can lift your family and to grow economically. I decided to run for president because i was worried that if we spent another 10 years like the last 10 years, my generation would be the first to leave less opportunity, not more, to the people coming after us. That is what ted kennedy fought for, what the Kennedy Family fought for, and what i think it means to be an american. You fight no matter what your job is. If you are a teacher or a student or a senator, our job is to make sure the next generation has more opportunity than we had. I believe strongly that if we can pull ourselves together and unify our country, there is no reason why we cannot be a generation, my generation, that leaves more opportunity, not less, and that is why i am running for president. Im grateful you are here today. I am looking forward to your questions. I often say, please ask me the questions you might not ask another politician because you might be worried you would hurt their feelings. I was a superintendent for five years, you cannot hurt my feelings. They had been beaten out of me a long time ago. Thank you for having me and thank you for being here. Stephanie i want to get started talking about something is front of mind for a lot americans, impeachment. It seems the trial will happen in the senate in january. I am curious about your thinking on impeachment and how it might impact your candidacy, you might get pulled off the trial the trail before early stage. Sen. Bennet whether i get pulled off the trail or not is not important to me. We have a constitutional obligation. The 100 seats you are occupying this morning is the jury in an impeachment trial. We have a vote to acquit or convict the president. It takes two thirds to convict. The house has an impeachment proceeding and then they refer it to the senate. It will be interesting to see whether the majority leader, mitch mcconnell, he sits at that desk, it will be interesting to see whether he wants us there for a short period of time or a bond period of time. If you want to inflect a lot of pain on the president ial candidates, we will be there for a long time. Have you studied watergate . A little bit . Not in school. That was when we had the impeachment of richard nixon. I was a little younger than you when that happened. I remember it really well. It was a dark time in american history. The vietnam war going on, a lot of divisions, sort of like we have political divisions today. That experience of having that impeachment was a victory in the end for the rule of law. A victory for the idea that nobody is above the law, including the president , in that case richard nixon. In this case, President Trump has done some things bear he brought this on himself and we will have to see as this process goes forward what the result is going to be. I hope it becomes an opportunity for us to reestablish for the American People why the rule of law is important. The rule of law is a fancy way of saying no one is above the law and we are a nation of laws. Not a nation of men or women. It does not matter who you are, you are the same in the eyes of the law. That is an essential aspect of living in a democracy. Stephanie lets talk about your president ial campaign. Between now and the New Hampshire primary, you are planning on doing 50 town halls. I think we have 60 days left until the election. Tell us why you are betting on the New Hampshire and throwing all of your energy just above the border here. Sen. Bennet i am not a wellknown politician. I am not a celebrity politician. I am not wellknown as some people in the race. I have not been high in the polls. There might be other reasons. That is one of the reasons. I decided i will spend the next 60 days in 50 town halls in New Hampshire and i will go place to place to place answering every question, taking whatever criticism anyone has, and staying until the last question is answered. That is the style of campaigning i love, it is the way i am a senator at home. When we were passing the Affordable Care act, ted kennedy and others in 2009 when obama was president , they were telling people in washington, do not even have a town hall meeting because the tea party was going crazy. I went to the reddest part of colorado and had townhall. That is my style of campaigning. Sometimes it works in New Hampshire. John mccain had a lot of success showing up and in a meeting after meeting and i am trying to replicate that. Stephanie you mentioned colorado is one third, one third, one third. Do you see colorado as a swing state . Sen. Bennet i do. It is a purple state. Democrat or republican, it depends. It is challenging to be a senator from a state like that. I noticed, it puts me in a different place than some of the other people running for president. When you represent a state that is one third, one third, one third, you will learn that you need to say the same thing in the primary as you say in the general. And the same thing in urban parts of the state as rural part. People are listening if you are pandering or not. Or if you are not sure about what you are saying. With some of these other folks from very blue states, they do not have to have that same discipline. There is a view that you take one position to where the primary and another position to win the general. It has been fascinating to see that. It taught me more about my colleagues in the senate and why we have differences. We do have differences based on the states we are from and the politics of the state. Stephanie i would love to hear your talk more about that. In the past year or so folks have been in the race, a lot of the conversation has hinged on medicare for all. Do you think a candidate espousing medicare for all can be donald trump . Sen. Bennet i think it will be very hard. I would not say they could not beat him. I think it creates a real challenge. Medicare for all makes illegal all insurance across the country, private insurance, except for cosmetic insurance. It raises taxes by about 31 trillion, the equivalent of 70 of all the revenue the federal government will collect over the next 10 years. That is almost doubling the amount of taxes we will collect to take peoples private insurance away. I do not think that will happen. I believe strongly that we should have a goal of ending poverty in this generation. That is a goal i think ted kennedy would have shared. I have a proposal called the American Family act that would cut childhood poverty in one year by 40 . It would and the two dollar a day poverty for kids. It would cost just 3 of what medicare for all would cost. My concern about medicare for all his lust that we might lose the president ial election, which i am worried about, but that we could spend the next 10 years fighting a losing battle for medicare for all instead of of fighting a winning battle to end childhood poverty at deal with Climate Change, both of which we have to do. Stephanie you have been in this race for quite some time. I was looking through photos on my computer of the first time i covered you and that was in march. Sen. Bennet that is the first time i went. Stephanie it feels like a lifetime ago. What is missing in this race . What has been left out of the conversation that you feel like democrat should be talking about . Sen. Bennet i think the next generation that is what this race should be about. If we were focused on the next generation, as a former school superintendent, i do not think the Democratic Party would be standing for free college. We would be standing for free preschool. We would be standing for, what are we doing for the 70 of kids that graduated from high school and do not go to college so they can earn a living wage when they graduate from high school, not just a minimum wage . We should be standing for my plan to end childhood poverty instead of medicare for all. That is why i stayed in the race. We will be judged, properly so, on what we do for you guys. I was with the former president of harvard not that long ago and i asked her to tell me about the political activity on her campus. She is not there anymore but she was there. She said, everybody hates politics and everybody hates politicians. I said, i know some of these guys and i do not like some of them myself. But then i said, tell me about what political activity was like when you were a student. She was a student during the 1960s. She said, we thought our country needed us to survive. We thought our country would fail without us. That is what i think about all of you. We need you to survive. We will fail without you. We need you involved in this today. My generation is not doing the job we should do. In terms of the debt on the Balance Sheet of this country, the lack of investment we are making in our infrastructure, the fact we have not gone to universal health care, universal preschool, or end childhood poverty. Or addressing climate in the way it needs to address. All of those things need to get worked on. If we do not start working on them now, we may be handed you something that you will not be able to fix, which is why it is important for you to be involved in this. You do not need to wait until you are 18 when you have a chance to vote. Even now you can make sure everybody in your community that is eligible to vote actually does cast a vote in november. If that is an important thing you can do and getting involved in your community. I think that is what has been missing in the campaign and i had been pleat to have a chance to make this case. Stephanie i will ask one more question and then turn it over to the audience. We are gearing up for another debate and i am curious did you think the debates matter . I was reading something, most americans had not paid attention to the debates. Sen. Bennet i think they are unwatchable. I was talking to someone in New Hampshire who was saying the debates have become a loselose proposition. You make it on the state and that is the good news, the bad news is you have to be on the stage. If you do not make it on, and i have been on and that why you have not, the bad news is you are not on and the good news is you are on. We have to revisit it. It is not useful to the American People to watch politicians try to figure out how to Say Something witty and 30 seconds. That is not what i want to know about the next president. I want to know if they understand the challenges we are facing. And the challenges we are facing in this world and if they have ideas about how we will fix it. I dont think the debates tell us that. Stephanie if anyone has a question, we have microphones around the audience. You can raise your hand. Sen. Bennet i am happy to take questions on any topic. Do not feel the need to restrict yourself to what we have been talking about. Im happy to talk about whatever you want to talk about. I am not sure whose seat you are in, but i know what seat you are in. That is lamar alexander, who is a republican from tennessee and chairman of the Education Committee and is a wonderful man. He is not wearing and Abercrombie Fitch switcher. Can you tell me your name . My name is teagan. What are your honest, tangible aspirations in the scope of your life . Sen. Bennet is to make your life better. I mean in your own personal life of, what goals do you want to reach in your own standing . Sen. Bennet i think i read once i think i am living that light. My wife and i are raising three daughters who are 20, 19, and 15. They were 9, 7, and fight when i became a senator. They have been engaged in this work with me whole time. That is a great privilege to have been able to be together as a family and be a Public Servant. When i was in the second grade, we were asked to line up in my classroom in order of whose family was here the longest and whose family was here the shortest period of time. My family turned out to be the answer to both of those questions. On my dads side, they can trace it back to the mayflower. On my moms side, they were polish jews who survived the holocaust and had recently might mom at her parents were the only ones that survived. They lived in warsaw for a couple years and then went to sweden for a year, mexico for a year, then came here. The only place in the world where they could rebuild their lives. They had an art gallery in warsaw and started that art gallery again in new york and jack kennedy was a frequent patron of theirs. I have a book at home that is a photograph book of john f. Kennedy, the president , and inside it, there is a note that says, to Michael Bennet, president kennedy thought about you and your generation, signed robert kennedy. That is what i think it is about. My dad was a Public Servant his whole life. He taught us that Public Service was noble, so i am proud to have the chance to do that. I traveled the country broadly and i never met anybody that had a stronger accent than my grandparents. I never met anybody who work greater patriots than my grandparents. They believed that this country had done everything for them and they thought they had given back to the country. That is how it is supposed to work. I am a lucky person. I think i have fulfilled the goals that they set for me and i continue to try to do it every day, i try to get better at it. John kennedy was asked, what the most important attribute of a Public Servant was. He said something unusual for a politician, he said, curiosity. I agree with that. As long as you are trying to learn everything you can about the world in which you live, you will find Something Interesting to do and he will be good at it. I wish that for you. Knowing that your mother was a holocaust survivor and your father is a former u. S. Diplomat, how would you say your parents experience shaped you as a person today . Sen. Bennet they really did. My dads experience he worked for the Senate Roy Blunt of his life. He worked for the senate for a bot of his life. It was called an administrator assistant for several senators at work for one of the Senate Committees and then worked in the state. It really was the idea that Public Service is noble. We have an obligation to help other people. I was in business for a while, but is something he never would have been interested in. I will say, having been in business, it has helped me be a better Public Servant. I think you can do a range of Different Things and one of the things he told me was, find something you are passionate about and do it as well as you can and when it is time to do something else, that other option will present itself to you. That is how i handled my life. It was pretty good advice. I pass that along to you as well. I do not think it matters what you pick. Private sector, publicsector, nonprofit, as long as it is something you are passionate about. From my moms experience, it was to not take any of this for granted. I do not think we can take any of this for granted. Democracy is something we build every day of our lives. When i have middle school kids come to see me sometimes in washington, which i love, or high school kids, because i used to be a superintendent, they rarely get to see this, they almost never get to see this, but it will come to my office after they have seen the Washington Monument have any of you been to washington . A couple. You have seen pictures of it, so you know, the Lincoln Memorial and the supreme court. There is a tendency for them to think it was all just here. Of course, none of it was just here. 230 years ago none of it was here. This was not here. There are some people recall the founders who did do incredible things. They led an armed insurrection and that was successful against a colonial power, we call that the revolutionary war. A lot of those people for some of those people were from your hometown, i guarantee that. Some of them for your age when it happened. They were involved in that. It is amazing to think about. The other thing they did that was incredible was they wrote a constitution that would be ratified by the people that would live under that constitution. That had never happened before in human history. They also did something really terrible, they perpetrated human slavery. They did not have to do that but they did. It took other americans do and that. I tell kids about Frederick Douglass in particular. Abraham lincoln was the president when we ended slavery, but Frederick Douglass was a human being who was born a slave, and enslaved human. This was 100 years before i was born. It was not one million years before i was born. He went to massachusetts where we are today and ended up in Marthas Vineyard with abolitionists who are leading the movement against slavery. The abolitionists were argument that the constitution was a proslavery document. Frederick douglass said, you have this wrong. Project of this was selftaught by the way. He said, you have this long. The constitution is an antislavery document. We are just not living up to the words in the constitution. Which is the same thing that dr. King said the night before he was killed in tennessee when he was there for the striking garbage workers and said, i am here to force america to keep the promise you wrote down on the page. In my mind, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther king are as much founders as the people who wrote the constitution. The women mostly that fought so woman would have the fight to vote, they are founders as much as the men who wrote the constitution. And my mom and her grandparents, i think our founders as well. I think every person in this room is one. You have to think about your responsibility as a citizen in a democratic republic as that elevated sense of responsibility. This place is going to rise or fall, it will live or die, based on what you do. And how seriously you take that responsibility. That is what i learned from my parents. I am passing that on to you. Thank you for that question. Stephanie we have a time for a couple more. Sen. Bennet how are you . What is your name . I did not ask your name. Thank you. Most of us are High School Seniors and we are on our way to college. I want to know if you have a plan how you are going to help us tackle college debt . It is a big problem. Sen. Bennet is a huge problem and it did not have to be this way. There is no law written in the sky somewhere that says we should force you into having to pay back 25 years worth of Student Loans for the privilege of going to college. But we have made college very expensive and we are no longer Funding College the way we used to when i was your age. That is why door generation has to bear this expense and it is unfair. The most important thing we can do is reduce the cost of college. If i am elected president , that is something i will lead a discussion in with all 50 governors and say, this is ridiculous and we have to find a way to do something other than just raise the price of college every year and have the federal loan program land into that increasing expense. That is not going to do you very much good because you are going to College Next Year and it is going to take years for us to get this under control. What i propose is we reduce the amount of money you have to pay as part of your income when you graduate from college on Student Loans. You should be able to be negotiated the weights to get negotiated the rates to get them as low as possible and have the federal government help you do that. I think i think that is basically it. There are some people running for president saying they are for forgiving every student loan. I have not taken that position. There are a lot of people who do not have any chance to go to college you are saying, if you are going to forgive Student Loans, why are you not forgiving me my mortgage or other loans i have . I wish i had the chance to go to college. White dont you pay for me to go . These are things you need to take in your mind when you are thinking if these are good ideas or not. That is what i would do. Stephanie one more . Four fairly quick wins . Stephanie yeah, sure. I want to know your thoughts about Climate Change. I know there are some bans on plastic bags in some states, some states are replacing plastic straws, i want to know your thoughts on what you hope to accomplish at the end. Sen. Bennet what i believe is we have to deal with Climate Change urgently because the climate is warming and some things could become here reversible and then we cannot fix it anymore. There was an article yesterday about what is happening in the arctic, permafrost, stuff that is supposed to be frozen forever, which is now not frozen and is reaching co2 the Greenhouse Gas we do not want to have. It is a great question. You are sitting in this Senate Chamber and i was asked the other day by somebody on the campaign trail whether democracy could solve Climate Change. It is an incredible question because it is not just about acting urgently i just said we have to act urgently. We also had to greet a solution that will last a generation. If you accept our current politics in washington where i put my ideas in for two years, the other side rips them out, i put them in for two years, the other side rips them out, you cannot solve climate two years at a time. We need a generational answer to Climate Change. We need a durable solution, not just an urgent solution. We will have to have something that we think of ultimately as american climate policy. We used to have American Foreign policy. When we had foreign policy, even though we elected a democrat or republican, the president knew what their job was with respect to the soviet union or the cold war or the transatlantic alliance. We have to get there on climate. Which means we have to recreate our political system. We have to create a system where we can create durable solutions. I think that will last 30 years. Ted kennedy worked on that stuff all the time when he was in the senate. That was not ancient history. That is where we have to get back to. The Current Situation is not going to yield a solution to climate. There are so many reasons you should be upset at my generation. This is the one you will really get us more. It bought a few think correctly that if we do not start working on climate now, you might not have a chance to address it. That is why we have to address it good another place you can be involved today, there is no reason for you to wait. You need to let your elected representatives know that this is an issue you care about at every level. At the local level, that is probably where you will have a debate about plastic bags, which is important to have. At the national letter, a debate about how to control Greenhouse Gases and your voice can be important to whether we have that debate, the nature of that debate is, whether we create that solution im talking about. Good morning. My name is brandon therein i have a question. If you became president , what are your plans for immigration echo immigration . Sen. Bennet i mentioned my own familys immigrant history. That is one of the reasons i am interested in this. The other reason is my old school district, Denver Public schools, was 57 percent hispanic, 20 africanamerican, 20 white. Of the 57 , the kids who were hispanic, ivanka were dreamers. They were dreamers. They know no other country than the United States. I was lucky in 2013, i was part of the gang of eight that road the immigration bill in the senate. Four democrats, four republicans, we spent seven months working together behind closed doors, create an immigration bill that went to the judiciary committee, it had over 100 amendments that over 100 amendments considered. Then it came here to the floor of the senate. We had more amendments that were adopted here. We passed with 68 votes. That bill had a pathway to citizenship for the 11 billion people who live who are undocumented. It had the most progressive dream act that had ever been conceived, much less the past. Something donald trump cannot remember, it has 46 billion of Border Security in it. Not 6 billion for the wall that mexico is supposed to pay for, 46 billion so we can see every inch of the border and we knew who came here lawfully but overstayed their visas. That is what we should be doing. If i were president , that is what we would be doing. The only reason it is not the law is the house of representatives killed it through something called the hastert rule, which is a rule that said for you to pass a bill in the house, which is over there in the capital building, you walk to the other end of the hallway and there is another chamber much larger than this chamber called the house of representatives, they said it takes a majority of the majority to vote through a bill, which meant that there were a group of people, they call themselves the Freedom Caucus or tea party, 40 people, who represent a minority view in this country, they are not a majority view, and they said, we will not give you the votes, and they killed the legislation. It was antidemocratic. That is what we have to resurrect. It is one of the reasons donald trump should be a one term president. We have never had a president in my lifetime as antiimmigrant as donald trump. We never had a president in my lifetime who is as antirefugee as donald trump. That is not who america is supposed to be. We almost got it done. If i am elected president , we will pass a bill along the same lines, only this time we will get through the house. My name is helina. Sen. Bennet my grandmothers name is halina. My second daughters name is halina. Its unusual to meet a halina. What are your views on raising taxes on the rich and capitalism . Sen. Bennet my view on capitalism is it has done a lot of good in the world. It lifted a lot of people out of poverty. It has not worked well the last 50 years in america. We need to recognize that. But you are living in a country where for 50 years the bottom 90 of americans had their income bflat be flat and the top 1 , the top 10 have all seen their income grow, there is something wrong, especially when you have an Education System that is reinforcing that inequality. We have the greatest income inequality we have had in 100 years since 1928. We have to address it. A democracy cannot survive without shared prosperity. Without everybody benefiting by the economy grows. We have to get back to that. We can get back to that by investing in america, which we have not been doing for 20 years. Since 2001, we cut taxes by 5 trillion on the wealthiest in america. Since 2001, we spent 5. 6 trillion fighting these wars in the middle east that started before you were born. That is what we have been spending my on. We did not pay for any of it, we borrowed that money from china. You will have to pay it back if we do not get our act together. That is 13 trillion we could have it invested in education, infrastructure, to drive Economic Growth for everybody. That is when we drive Economic Growth, when we make those investments. Point two, we need to tax the wealthiest people id be are doing it. If i were president , i would reverse the drop tax bill to go back to where we were in the taxes for the wealthiest people, i would make sure investors were treated the same way as working people and terms of the taxes they pay. Today, working people pay this rate and if you deal with stocks and bonds you deal this rate. That is ridiculous. We should bring this rate to this we are getting at a time where there are these massive estates passed from one wealthy generation to the next generation. We never were supposed to live in a country with an aristocracy that pass it well down. We should be taxing that as well. If we did those three things, that would be a big step to getting us back to where we need to be. Stephanie i think we will leave it there. Sen. Bennet one last one and then we are done. I will get out of your hair. I know you have important work to do. I wanted to ask i was sitting here, there are muslims in concentration camps in china. If you are elected, how do you plan to work with for leaders on human rights policy . Sen. Bennet thank you for that question. That group of people is called the uygers. What the chinese have been doing is devastating. We need an american president who will stand up for our values around the world. That is going on in the world. Saudi arabia murdered a journalist that was living in america. They learned them from america to turkey to kill them. The president did not stand up to that. What we are learning now is that if america does not stand up, nobody else will. I am the first person to say that we have not set a perfect example for the rest of the world. We never have. Remember what i said at the beginning . We had people that founded the country saying doing those two incredible things, but also perpetrating slavery. It has never been a story of perfection. That is not the point. What it has been a story of his constant struggle to overcome adversity and make our country more democratic, more fair and more free. That is what generation after generation of americans have done. Never perfectly. And never completely. Which is why you guys have a lot of work to do. We do not live in a just society today. But the point of that is not to give up, it is to fight injustice. That is what you need to do. Even though we are not a perfect example, we are the best example that the world has. We are the best example. I know from my mom at her parents how important that example is to people around the rest of the world who are trying to be free. And are hoping for Something Better for their kids and grandkids. It is that example that we have to restore. That is what this project is about. When ted kennedy, his legacy was to remind people of the genius of our democracy. The genius of our democracy is not a that it always works, it often does not work. It is often inefficient and often unfair. The genius of it is when we figure out how to make it work. And we figure out how to reflect the pluralism, diversity of ideas that exist in our society. People that founded this country did not found it believing we would agree with each other. That was not the point. The point of being in a republic not what we call a democracy, was that we would disagree with each other. They believed out of those disagreements, it is not that we would create a lazy compromise, it is that out of those disagreements, we would create more Imaginative Solutions than any king or tyrant could come up with on their own. That was the idea. When you think about it in your own life, it makes sense. The worst decisions i make are the ones i make by myself at home. The best decisions i make are the ones i make when i am dealing with someone elses point of view or perspective or knowledge. Taking their position into account. That is what this chamber is about. These 100 people that have the fortune to represent 330 Million People in this chamber, they come from states that there almost no resemblance to each other. Political parties that have disagreements. Personal experiences that are different from one another. But the reason this was created by the founding fathers, and that is you created this, is so we can have that disagreement and come to a result. And never a perfect one. The whole world watches what happens here. That is why, standing up for our values, whether it is china or anybody else, is important. Every year we do not do it, those values erode more. Every year, just like we were founding the country every year, we are renewing our commitment to those values every year and what we do. Whether we are students or a senator, it does not matter. We have the same responsibility. I want to thank you for having me today. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here as well. I wish you luck today. [applause] going to do that. I feel not a lot is being done about it. Issued like to see that have more tension again because it is a very serious issue that is plaguing millions of families all across this country. Moreld like to see programs help people that are afflicted with unfortunate Mental Health problems. One of the issues that is close to home is me is immigration. I would like to have the candidates speak on the topic of immigration and Immigration Reform as well as current immigration laws and the climate that immigration has set apart. America is a melting pot, so i feel like that is something that should have to be addressed because you cannot ignore what is going on as well as we cannot hide the fact that there are issues that need to be addressed when it comes to immigration. President trump recently recognized jerusalem as the capital of israel. Transferred our embassy there. I wonder if any of the thatdates would follow procedure and continue to recognize jerusalem as the capital of israel or if they byn to reverse it president ial decision, to return the capital our recognition of the capital to tel aviv. Box i am interested in learning more about what our candidates do plan on doing to support our hbcus. As a graduate of a historically , i want to hear more about what the candidates plan to do to sustain our hbc yous. Hbc businessman and president ial candidate and your gang held a town hall meeting on Climate Change. Hosted by iowa state senator rob hogg. In cedar rapids