America deserves a president who is as resilient as her people. 2020 is our time to change who makes the rules. The election is just too important to get it wrong. Theres no limit for the next four years. Together we have built a movement. We organized unite together. We are here and we are strong. Live from the gillard center and South Carolina. This is the cbs news democratic debate. The candidates for the president ial nomination. Good evening and welcome. The democratic president ial candidate primary. Super tuesday is just a week away and this is the biggest primary day of the year. As voters in 14 states cast ballots and many of them tell us they have not actually made up their mind. This debate would you think about it tonight may be the last best candidate for the candidates to make their case to South Carolina and super tuesday voters. A Nonpartisan Organization committed to educating voters and training political leaders. How do you do that. Send us your questions on twitter. Here are the rules for the next two hours when you are asked a question you will have a one minute and 15 seconds to answer in 45 seconds for followup. Senator sanders we have not have a National Unemployment rate this low for this long and 50 years. And South Carolina and the unemployment the Unemployment Rate is even lower. How will you convince voters that a democratic socialist can do better than President Trump with the economy. The economy is doing really great for mr. Lindberg and other billionaires. In the last three years billionaires in this country sought 850 billiondollar increase in their wealth. But you know what for the ordinary american things are not so good. Last year real wage increases for the average worker were less than 1 . Half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. 87million americans have no Health Insurance or are underinsured. 45Million People are struggling with student debt. 500,000 people tonight including 30,000 veterans. That is not an economy that is working for the American People. We will create an economy for all. Mayor bloomberg. I will let you respond to that d think senator sanders economy would be better for america. I think donald trump would be better if he is president. Vladimir putin thinks that donald trump should be president of the United States and thats why russia is helping you get elected. Let me tell mister putin im not a good friend of the president of china. I think he is an authoritarian leader. He is feared in the 2016 election. If i am president of the United States trust me you are not going to interfere in any more american elections. We know what. The way i see this is that bernie is winning right now because the Democratic Party is at Progressive Party and progressive ideas are popular ideas even if a lot of people on the stage you dont want to say so. But bernie and i agree on a lot of things but i think i would make a better president than bernie and the reason for that is that getting a Progressive Agenda enacted is going to be really hard in its gonna take someone who digs into the details to make it happen. Bernie and i both wanted to help rain and wall street in 2008 we both got our chance. But i dug in i fought the big banks. I built the coalition and i won. Bernie and i both want to see universal healthcare. It doesnt show how we are going to get enough alex into it. I dug and i did the work. Progressive had one shot and we need to spend it with the leader a leader who will get something done. We want to bring you and this conversation. Why would they want to be working on behalf of Bernie Sanders. They dont have a political party. They want chaos and chaos is what is coming our way. If you think the last four years has been chaotic and divisive, toxic exhausting imagine spending the better part of 2020 with Bernie Sanders versus donald trump. Think about what that will be like for this country. And me and mobile folks at home they are trying to figure out what any of this means for us. It is right that there is a progressive majority. They want to see wages go up. But also here is the majority of the American People who i think right now just want to be able to tell them. And hell there Blood Pressure go down a little bit. The Bernie Sanders analysis is right. The differences i dont like his solutions. I dont think a government takeover. Makes any sense. Unchecked capitalism has failed. The answer is not for the government to take over the private sector. To break the corporate stranglehold on our government and have the government work for the people again. Let me just finish. We need to have an alternative to donald trump. Doubling the minimum wage. Cutting taxes by 10 . And creating over four and a half million good paying union jobs. We have to show that we have can create a growing prosperous. Your time is up. We talk about progressive. Lets talk about being progressive. Nine people shot dead. By a white supremacist. Bernie voted five times against the bill. In a waiting. Of 12 hours. I dont think he is responsible for the nine deaths. That man would not had been able to get that weapon. Until you are cleared. In addition to that. He might a primary. Someone should. The administration was not up with it. Lets talk about progressive. It is getting things done. And thats what we got done. Senator sanders would you like to respond. I am hearing my name mentioned a little bit tonight. And maybe pete mentions what the American People want. I tell you people. Once and for all. What the American People want by the way their issues i raised four years ago. Making public colleges and universities there. Finally doing what every other major country on earth does. Guaranteed healthcare with all people. Its just not true. People that have this untrue thing about my campaign. Fifty people in charleston alone over 2000 people had contributed to my campaign. That means that the dollars that came from my campaign is just from charleston. Grassroots contributions are that life lifeblood. If youre watching right now and you support my campaign. If youre watching right now and you are a billionaire i will raise your taxes. But if you would like to defeat donald trump please go to pete for america. Com and donate the legal maximum. I want to bring us into another topic. We are in South Carolina. The first and primary with a significant primary. First of all, at the latest poll i saw my numbers im still 15 points ahead. In the latest poll. But senator sanders is in striking distance with you. I have learned the vote. I work like the devil to earn the vote. Not just here but across the country. Making sure the employees want those people. We put 500 million in our Administration Just into this county. We have created jobs for these people. Its been wrapped up with dealing with civil rights. I am here to act. I intend to win South Carolina and i will win the africanamerican vote here in South Carolina. Mister biden will you continue if you do not win South Carolina. If you dont win South Carolina will you continue. I will win South Carolina. I want to ask you about a question that impacts the black and brown community. You apologize. What exactly are you apologizing for. Will you let it get out of control and when i realized that i cut it back by 95 and i apologize and ask for forgiveness. Im trying to get an understanding of how i can better position myself and what i should have done what i should do next time. I had been working very hard we have improved the School System for black and brown students in new york city. We had increased the jobs that are available. Weve increased the program for them. It continues to follow you. It is in their interest to promote that. If you talk to the people in new york city i head over 100 black elected officials that have endorsed me. A lot of them are in the audience tonight. I have earned the respect and the people of new york city. I was for mayor of the most populous city in the United States for 12 years. And people will tell you its a lot better city today. The School System is better. The budget is under control. Weve done the things needed for all ethnicities. Do you think the implementation of stop and frisk was racist. In effect it was. It was about profiling people based on their race. And the mayor even said they disproportionately stopped white people too often and minorities too little. Im not here to score points. I come at this with a great deal of humility because we had have a lot of issues especially when it comes to Racial Justice and policing in my own community. And i come to this with some humility because im conscious of the fact that there are seven white people on the stage talking about Racial Justice. None of us. Have the experience of walking down the street or in a mall and feeling eyes on us regarding us as dangerous. None of us have the experience that black women had head that drives that maternity motoric mortality gap. We dont have the experience. The next mask thing we can do is actually listen to them. I know if i was black my success would have been a lot of a lot harder to achieve. We have got to do something about it. The just demagogue about it. Was the way that they implemented this dopp and frisk appropriate. I think what they need to do instead of just reviewing everything from the past is talk about where we are going to go forward. Martin luther king once said we are all tied in a single garment of destiny and what affects one of us directly affects all of us. Extending that to the states. To invest in impoverished communities we will never get to that single garment of destiny. And we also need to do something about child care. In make sure that we increase the minimum wage. Why we are all sitting here wisconsin has kicked hundreds of thousands of people off of their voting rolls. I will get Voting Rights to be a reality. For everyone. He doesnt believe that anybody on stage that can be to donald trump. I mean that mayor bloomberg. Here in charleston. You know its can be in charleston they do this week is because donald trump. He will be here to waste money for his buddy Lindsey Graham. They funded the Campaign Last time. It was mayor bloomberg and that is not the only right wing senator that he has funded. In 20 succeed he just dumped 12 million into the senate race. To have a antichoice right wing senator. The woman challenger was terrific. In 2012 he stood there to try to defend another republican senator against a woman challenger that was me. It didnt work but he tried hard. I dont care how much money mayor bloomberg has. The core of the Democratic Party well never trust him. He has not earned their trust. I will and the fact that he cannot earn the trust of the core of the Democratic Party. He is the riskiest candidate standing here. I had been training for this job since i stepped in the pile that was still smoldering on 911. I know how to run a country. I had run the city which is almost the same size or bigger than most countries in the world. I am the one choice that makes some sense. All of those side shows that the senator wants to bring up has nothing to do with that. When they hired me to run new york city three times in an overwhelmingly democratic progressive city they elected me again and again. He called me out by name. And referred to what i talk about as a sideshow. This is personal for me. When i was 21 years old i got my first job as a special education teacher. I loved that job in by the end of the first year i was visibly pregnant. The principal wished me luck wish me luck and gave my job to someone else. Pregnancy discrimination you bet. But i was 21 years old i didnt have a union to protect me. I passed up my stuff and i went home. Ellie said it have a boss that said kill it. Thats what he wouldve said to one of his employees. People want a chance to hear from the women that said this. We treated our teachers the right way and the unions will tell you exactly that. Whether to have the women have an opportunity to speak. The bloomberg corporations and mayor bloomberg himself had been accused of discrimination they are bound by non disclosure so that they cannot speak. If he said there is nothing to hide here then find a blanket release and let those women speak out. With a number of issues to discuss. I want to give the mayor an opportunity to respond. At the last abate some of the female employees might not had liked some of your jokes do they take your jokes rock were you wrong to make the jokes. I dont remember what they were. I apologize. I apologize for that. We went back 40 years and we can only find three cases where women said they were uncomfortable no one accuse me of doing anything than making a comment or two. And what the senator did suggest we released them. I did that two days later. And my company has sent we will not use non disclosure agreements ever get. I dont know what else she wants us to do. We are following exactly what she asked. Enough is never enough. Im in a start focusing on some of these other things. You cant continue to relitigate to this. Thank you. We probably make the world better because of it. We probably changed the corporate landscape all across america. Senator warren that is a very serious charge. What evidence do you head of that. Could you respond to this. We are doing that. We want to get to the issue of electability and ideological difference within the Democratic Party. Senator sanders, the cost of your agenda. Yesterday you released information about how you will pay for your major proposals that not all of the details are clear. You proposed more than 50 trillion in new spending. You said medicare for all, 30 trillion. You only explain how you pay for just about half of that. Can you do the math for the rest of us . How many hours do you have . Thats the problem. Its not the problem. Lets talk about medicare for all. Im sure youre familiar with the new study that came out of Yale University published in lancet magazine, one of the prestigious medical journals in the world. It said medicare for all will lower healthcare costs in this country by 450 billion a year, and save 68,000 lives of people who otherwise would have died. What we need to do is to do it every other major country on earth does, guarantee healthcare to all people, not have thousands of separate insurance plans which are costing us some 500 billion a year to administer. Our plan, we have laid out options all over the place. One of the options of the 75 7. 5 payroll tax on the place which was safe and substantial sums of money. [talking over each other] does the math at up . It does not add up. Just on 60 minutes this weekend he said he wasnt going to rattle through the nickels and dimes. Let me tell you how many nickels and dimes we are talking about. Nearly 60 trillion. Do you know how much that is for all of his programs . That is three times the american economy, not the federal government, the entire american economy. The medicare for all plan alone on page eight clearly says that it will kick 149 million americans off their current Health Insurance in four years. That is true. As one prominent democrat once said, we should Pay Attention to where the voters of this country are. That prominent democrat was barack obama a few months ago. I think thats what we should do. They are not with you on spending nearly 60 trillion. What a think we should do is make things more affordable, nonprofit public option, make sure we are paying for longterm care better, take on the pharmaceuticals like you and i done together, and do something for the people of america instead of a bunch of broken promises that sound good on bumper stickers. [applause] esther stier lets talk about it. First of all let me go. I think she is talk about my plan, not yours. I think were talking that math and it doesnt take two hours to do the math. Lets talk about math. Heres the math. Doing nothing is what will speedy senator sanders, you are allowed a Quick Response. Senator sanders. Is it my turn . You have been name check. You are allowed to respond. What health and Human Services have said in analyzing healthcare costs, what recent yale study has said is that your program would cost some 50 trillion over a ten year period. Will continue to pay in some cases ten times more for the same exact prescription drugs. What every study out there, conservative or progressive says, medicare for all will save money. Ours will cost about 45 billion, not 60 trillion. [talking over each other] we would like to bring mr. Steyer in on this conversation. This conversation shows a huge risk for the Democratic Party. We are looking at a party that has decide we are either going to support someone who is a democratic socialist or somebody who has a long history of being a republican. Let me say that i got into this race because i wanted to fight for Economic Justice, for Racial Justice, and to make sure we had Climate Justice for the American People. And i am scared [applause] if we cannot pull this party t