Economics and engages in dialogue, learning and leadership in the intersection of markets, businesses, governments and society and accountable capitalism and trust. And how do we ensure we have the right laws and policies in place and hold government accountable. We have honored to have senator sherrod brown, somebody who cares passionately about the issues that we focus on and care pabl. And the directors and myself testamented about banking leg lags that senator brown shared from 2011 to 2015. And once again, faces a great many challenges, similar and some different from the financial crisis. I look forward to hearing senators perspective on how we got here and how we can go from here. Senator brown has dedicated his career to the words of dr. Martin luther king major calls it dignity of work. Let me give you a few examples how he puts the mantra in practice. The senator often wears a pin of a canary in a cage as a symbol of the days when miners brought canaries with them in a coal mine before we had rules protecting Workers Health and safety. If the canary died, the miners knew there were Dangerous Levels of toxic gas and it was time to get out. The canary is an important reminder how far america has come. And also how much still needs to be done. Senator brown also notes that his zip code in cleveland 44105, had the most foreclosures of any of the nation leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. This fact symbolizes the dire fate of homeowners who fell for predator lending practicing in the Manufacturing Base in the cities in the midwest. It also encapsulates the economic policy. At committee hearing, you can find brown and the banking regulators, and the color of law. How forgotten history the forgotten history how the government segregated america. And he once organized his fellow organizers to boycott the senator cafeteria until the workers received a raise. A club that only admits 100 american, the senator maintains a level of empathy and a connection to American People that is too rare to the most powerful leaders and institutions. We are honored and grateful to host you, senator brown, today. To discuss the role of the federal government in the pan iming, he will be joined by susanna, mba 21. And we will open it to up to questions to you that you are submit using the q, and a function. With that, i turn it over to susanna. Thank you very much. And thank you so much for being with us here, senator brown. And for giving all of us a chance to put on real clothes for a change. I havent worn a sue jacket in months. I hope your family and dogs are well. I know we dont have a lot of time. If you dont mind, i would love to just dive right in. Sure, thank you. Okay on, perfect. We heard that you have been a long time advocate for workers rights, you have been vocal about the need to raise wages for workers, and in the current pandemic, you have been advocating for stronger protections for essential workers. I was particularly moved by statements you made in a hearing expressing outrage that the senators are still in session, putting workers at risk on capitol hill. I want to hear from are you, what you think the long term impacts of the pandemics will be on labor rights and poll thecies in the United States. Well, thank you, thank you for your work. You mentioned the book i recommend, the color of lie, and the two other books to read to understand better our o society, and the mistreatment of so many, and i mentioned a book with called evicted, and also a book called the bankers new clothes, that happened to be written by a notable stanford professor. The three books together tell you alo lot about 21st century america. And graham steel, one of the best Public Servants i know. Graham was the one the senator always gets the credit, the staff person is the driving force and also does so much else. But graham, after the financial crisis, he been in the office not long then. He and i advanced the idea that members of the senator and house should not the be allowed to own corporate stock. When we consider the things we vote on in the senate. The amendment was defeated, 21. And a former chairman of the intelligence committee, used is believed, alleged to have used information we all got about the coronavirus, early information. He he got it earlier because of the intelligence briefings. He may have bought and sold stock based on the briefings. To me, its just incredulous that people that have the trust that we the responsibility that were entrusted with, that that would be a step you will take. Im not saying he is guilty. But i know the temptation is there for far too many of my colleagues and were not giving up on grahams idea and my idea from almost a decade ago. How things look different for workers . I think some what i do Conference Calls all day. So many of the privileged people, as you will, as you might say, those of us who are lucky enough to stay home, work safely and get paid as opposed to the million workers in ohio and 3 million i suppose or more in california that are unemployed and the millions of workers that go to work every day in generally moderate and lowwage jobs putting themselves at risk from the public, and they are not protected well enough and then go home with the anxiety, am i infecting my family . We call them essential workers. Wumpb groeshly store worker said to me, they call me essential but im expendable. They dont pay me much. They dont protect me at work. They are 12, 14, 15 an hour workers that drive buss and clean hospital rooms and do security and stock shelves in grocery stores. And they call them essential. The other storily mention and i will try to get to a broader view of where we are, when you look at this pandemic, you see the great revealer that has shown our faults. It showed racial disparity. You know who is dying from this. You know who is going to work. The people who are working in the 12 on, 14 an hour jobs. More women than men, and people p of color. They are the ones most disadvantaged by the economy. We know that. Look at the president s actions. Hundreds of workers. Many of them people of color, not entirely, but when slaughterhouses, there was a big outbreak in sioux falls, south dakota. Hundreds of people were diagnosed with coronavirus, and after a couple weeks, the president , using the defense production act, something we had tried to get him to use to scale up testing and Contract Tracing enter to scale up production of protective equipment. He e used it to reopen the plant. He said youre going back to work. He said nothing about protecting the workers, nothing about food safety. Nothing about slowing down the line f you know anything about manufacturing, you know that a Faster Assembly line means more workplace illness and injury and death. Understand that is where we are as a nation. What happens in the future, we can go back to now that the country recognizes the Racial Disparities. Stanford students probably recognize them. Those who dont go to graduate school just to make money. Those like you who want to make social change recognize this. And the disparities are income, health. We know the mortality rates, the number of people dying from this virus. Housing from slavery to jim crow to red lining to the Trump Administration trying to lock had in by regulation many of the discriminatory practices that occur in housing, all of those things. Its really what we make of it. Are we going to use the newfound information or are we going to do what we did ten years ago and just no banker went to prison, no bankers bankers dont pay much of a prize, and homeowners homeowners in my zip code so many for fowere for closed on paid the prize. Just speaking ten years ago, what do you think we failed to learn from the crisis in 2008 that you hope that we can learn and particularly act on today . Well, i dont know that we fail to learn. Lets put it this way. The fif first big recovery act, the first big stimulus package, sbre deuc introduced in the senate, the same kind of corporate bail out. Good for the airlines, good for wall street. It was good for bankers generally, particularly large banks, the community banks, the credit unions. It did pennies on the dollar for us. It did nothing for state and local government. It did a little fwoit keep people from being evicted. It did nothing for local government. It didnt do anything for homeowners about to be evicted. 25 of renters in the country pay more than half their rent and i dont know that we dont know that ten years ago, we have a few bhot is under the gun. One of the things when obama took office, we were losing 700,000 jobs a month and as we began to do what we should have done, not in the quantity we have should have done it, the tea party formed, a Grassroots Group that wasnt really grassroots, it was founded by wealthy people, to push back. When we spend money on people, budget deficits are a terrible thing. That is sort of the wall street journal way. But what we learned, we cant do it the same way. Nobody went to prison. The bankers it wasnt written yet. It was soon to come. That helps as people start if im chairman of the senate, i will be chairman of the banking and housing committee. Shut be required reading, as should the color of law, and required reading for senate members. I will say it a different way. The committee, not referred to me as the Ranking Member of the Senate Banking committee, the name of the committee is the banking committee. The committee does very little on housing. If not, just the housing committee. The banks take care of themselves and the banks have a financialized economy. E we should learn from what happened ten years ago, if thats the case. What were doing differently, this time from ten years ago, we are putting real dollars in peoples pockets, the 1200 check. The 600 a week unemployment benefits. The largest congress has ever done. Putting money in local statement governments. We didnt it do that in 2009. We had, it might have had a different political outcome. We might have launched the economy. Not just ten years of growth but ten years of wage growth. We had growth for ten years. The economy that donald trump said is the best economy in the history of the world, since it wasnt a good economy for so many people. The focus has to be on wagers, it has to be on workers and you go from there. Lets talk about the cares act in the context of that statement. You recently shared a plan for addressing the concern getting relief directly to consumers and workers. You can talk about the provisions and bro texts are important for ensuring the stimulus funding gets to main street and not just wall street . We know that companies try to garnish wages. We know when will is a transfer of money, as there has been, 1200 a person, and per adult a great majority of the public, as it should be. 1200 plus 500 for child. Some families will get a check for 3400, two parents, two kids. That calls out the vultures. It gets the payday lenders excited. It gets the Check Cashing people excited. Those are just the legal ones. It gets people who are going to prey on if you go to a military base, it can be in california, ohio, any where. You will see all these financial v vultures, all the economies outside the base, ready to bounce on vulnerable military people. The wife goes overseas, and the husband stays at the base with two kids, and struggling, they dont have a lot of money. They are lonely, they are all that, and the financial predators ha that is why the Consumer Protection bureau is so important. And they are ready to swoop down. We e you know, senator warren and i are working on legislation to protect the workers, protect the people there, and we also have to do many other things, as the cares act started to do, not enough. We can talk about it later if we want to, put dollars in peoples pockets so they wont be fore closed on, so they can take care osm their kids. Hunger is a significant problem in the country now, so many people dont have the where withall to be able to feed themselves because of the pandemic and there is so much wee we need toe do. Yeah, there is certainly so much that we need to do. Im curious, you know what are your biggest priorities for securitying securing some of the protection before we look at the next similar bill is going to look like . What do you think are the biggest students f biggest opportunities for the government to act within the next few months to solve the problems . One is nobodys Credit Rating should be dinged in this period. You lose your job and you miss a rent payment. We come up on the first of the month, april, people couldnt pay their rent. You miss a rent payment, you miss a mortgage payment. You shouldnt get your credit dinged. We thought we had it in the last st stimulus and one republican, mcconnell signed off on it, stopped it. So we want to bring in Consumer Protections like that. We also you know, were a rich country still. We will be a very rich country in the future. We dont we need a tax system that works for working families better, and one of the things that we hope that we can do in this legislation is to expand the income tax credit again. Something that Speaker Pelosi and i spoke on. We were going to expand it five years ago and we need to do refundable tax credits. For right now, if youre making 80,000, you get a bigger tax credit for your children if you make 20,000. We want it to be fully refundable. So the poorest families in the country have money in their pockets. And i notice this over the years, while republicans, conservatives representing the Interest Groups love to talk about local control, they fundamentally dont really trust people and local governments to do the right thing. That is why senator mcconnell doesnt want to send money to local governments whose budgets have just cratered because of lost tax revenue. But in if he is forced to it go, he wants to attach strings to how to spend it. He doesnt want to go with low income people. But if he does, he wants work requirements. He wants to do it on this or that. And you cant do this or that. I trust local governments and individuals, if you really believe in the human spirit and believe in freedom, you help them financially and you allow them to make the best decision. What is best for the family, and the community. That is why the Child Tax Credit is so important. Youre a low income person. If you get an extra 3,000, we trust you to spend it youre going to spend it right. To do the best thing to give your children a better future. Whether its clothes, food, and maybe its a its a better used car so your car doesnt break down when you miss work too many days. But those choices, i know that Mitch Mcconnell and donald trump dont trust people. They might surprise mcconnell and trump by doing the right thing. There is sort of a related question e that came in from the audience, and a subject i would like to talk with you. Can we expand benefits like Better Health care . And what are your thoughts on the way that health care is structured in the United States and the opportunity we might have now with the pandemic to change that . Yeah, look, ask the first part of the question again the first part of the question was, can we expand benefits like Better Health care to essential workers or another thing, separating health care from employment altogether. Yeah, i mean, one of the things that i advocated i was on a stage with senator kennedy in the late 90s. We announced d i was a member of the house then. And i think Vice President gore was there, and a congressman from northern california, pete stark who has since passed away was there, and we unveiled the first medicare 55 bill, that people have the option to buy into. I met a woman once who told me that she she stood up in a town hall in youngstown, ohio, and she said, im 63 years old. My goal in life this is my goal in life, is to live two more years to get on medicare. Not my goal in life is to get to go to london or my goal in life is to help raise my grandchildren. My goal is to live another year and a half to finally get insurance. She had been working two jobs at low wages. So the medicare at 55 says she could have been helped by the Affordable Care act for sure. She was the perfect person we were thinking about. But people who are 58 years old, 60 years old. Often when they lose their jobs, they have so few options. They have few options going back in the workplace and few options on health care. Thats the group of people we most want to focus on. So allowing medicare to buy in at a reasonable price, we actually had that in the Affordable Care act. And one senator, joe lieberman, said were not voting for it. We needed 60 votes and we lost it. It could have changed everything. And a lot of people could have gotten insurance. It would have gotten the political the push back from the Affordable Care act would have been cut off at the knees. And the heck for the essential workers, i think one of the most essential things we do, the pandemic pay proposals. The person who changes linen in a hotel may make 12 to 15 an hour. And at minimum, we should pay them more. We have the house passed and we hope the senate can the it has something called pandemic pay, the hero oes doe news. They will get 13 an hour additional pay up to 10,000 for the year, and its something that if were going to call them essential, then we ought to treat them as if they are essential. And i think it will embarrass some corporations to actually pay them more. If we are going to say that essential workers are only worth 12 to 15 an hour, i know that is less where you live, but its not to live on in cleveland either. Let alone rural ohio, then we have to skkt like we mean it. And a few companies are giving pandemic pay eboh newses, hazard pay. But they short lived and too minimal. On that subject of doing better a topic that coming up all the time here at the stanfo Stanford Graduate School of business is the business round tables stated commitment to stake holder capitalism. And we have seen, in response to covid19, e e it appears we might did in a moment to galvaniz