Its such a privilege to welcome the senator back. Politics and prose is committed to creating communities through productive and meaningful dialogue. Meghan kelly, thomas friedman, cory booker, just to name a few. We strive to bring the finest writers and thinkers for the new book this fight is all fight. If elizabeth is working and fighting for the families and middleclass in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, senator warren served as the chair of the congressional oversight panecongressionaloverd asset relief program. Her efforts to protect taxpayers hold wall street accountable and have oversight of the administrations on both sides of the aisle. Recognized as one of the top experts on bankruptcy and the financial working families. Senator warren is credited for the original thinking, political courage and relentless persistence that led to the creation. [applause] [cheering] went to the creation of the Consumer Financial protection bureau. [cheering] senator warren is a member of the committees on banking, housing and urban affairs, Health Education labor and pension, Armed Services at a special committee on aging. The author of ten previous books including the nationally bestselling a fighting chance. Her new book this fight is our fight is a call to action. In the new york times, it was a unapologetic for candidates right. It is one of the reasons why the middleclass imiddle class is ud how we can and must fight to save. Please help me in welcoming senator elizabeth warren. [applause] [cheering] thank you. A roomful of people that like to come out and get folks. This is fabulous. Im so glad that you are here tonight. What i thought i would do is read from the book and tell you a little bit about the argument in the book and read a little bit more independent hit as many questions as we possibly can. I think you were asked to do questions and we have a whole stack of them and i will try to do as many as i can. People often drop by our office and we get visits from folks in town in massachusetts, School Groups or families on spring break. We care about the oceans, human trafficking, music education. Some people just want to say hello and stick a pin in the map in their hometown. When i can i have an open house. Visitors form a line, we she can, they tell me that their issues are themselves and we take a picture together. We have done some killer soltis. With salt and pepper hair as i stretched out my hand, his face lit up with a smile. He wore a dark suit and a purple shirt and tie but what caught me were his eyes, engaged and completely locked onto mine. Hello, senator. I am mmik mike from douglas massachusetts and i have alzheimers. Im 55 and soon i will have forgotten this conversation. I will have forgotten everything. You, my children, my wife. His wife stood quietly searching for words. Finally, he said everything i know will be taken from me and that was all it took. How does anyone deal with the future for an instant the faces of those i loved the way to cross mthecross my mind. My grandchildren, my husband, my three brothers and all of those who already died. Dad, mother, our beloved dog. Who would i be if i forgot them. Before i could recover enough to speak, i will have forgotten so i am here today so i can remember. To ask for more funding and research on alzheimers. Please, i am going to forget, so i need you to remember. I walked into that room with some paperwork thinking ahead to my next meeting. It was like a spear thrust between my ribs reminding me that everything we do in Washington Matters to real people. Its for those that need it right now. Alzheimers disease offers the perfect example of how foolish it is to short change investments in research. In 21601, americans spent 236 billion caring for people with alzheimers. That is 236 billion in one ye year. We will keep spending these astronomical year after year. We still have time to do something about it. So, how much do they allocate to Alzheimers Research . In 2016 the amount spent on research was less than one half of 1 of the money spent. It doesnt have enough funding even if the population increases, Congress Continues to cut research dollars. They now have 20 less funding than just ten years ago. Alzheimers isnt the only pressing medical concern. Think about the other disease is on the cusp of scientific breakthroughs like diabetes, heart disease, Breast Cancer and hiv. Think about kids with lifethreatening allergies or autism, people trapped in a nonresponsive body until they suffocate. Think about how a single medical breakthrough could give new life to hundreds of thousands of people. I get worked up over this. The way that i figured it, we should all be worked out. We would have devoted an extra 162 billion to basic research in just one year. That would more than double the budget of the National Institutes of health and National Science foundation combined. Five times the funding. I want you to think for a minute of the additional science and laboratories that would have been working hard to solve problems. If we made progress out of those three funds alone come to think of how much more money we could save and how much better off our people and our planet would be. It is chronically short of money. One in five Biochemistry Research scientists admit that they are considering leaving the United States so they can continue their work. Its not an exaggeration to say an entire generation of young researchers as president extinction or exile. But much of the research that is needed simply doesnt get done. I asked the director of the National Institutes of Mental Health what he could do with more funding and he described how we are on the cusp of a revolution. He believed researchers are right on the edge of unraveling of the most important puzzles about the brain. The belief that we are inches away from opening exciting new lines of treatment for Mental Illness and alzheimers, psychosis and schizophrenia. But there is a catch without government funding, they could be delayed by years or decades. For me this fight is about building a future and its also about mike from douglas massachusetts because hes starting to have trouble remembering his wife and children. [cheering] i want to say two things about that. The first one is last thursday night i was at massachusetts Mount Holyoke and when i First Reading the passage, they were with us and i asked them to stand. He got this enormous standing ovation. People were in tears because they were looking at the man im talking about here. He isnt here and in washington tonight. But its the only way that i know to say it is real people that are touched by every one of these decisions made in washington. Every time we decide to cut the budget. Every time we take research off the table it touches the lives of real people. There was 5. 8 billion of cuts to the National Institutes of health and it would take away about 20 of their budget. The middle class went to college, got married, had two boys and worked and now finds herself the boys are grown and her husband is a roofer come starting to have trouble with his back. Gina worked for several years now have all art and i asked her how she had been those gina still think shes middle class and she said i dont think there is a middle class in america anymore. If there was i wouldnt have to go to the food pantry at the end of every month. Theres also a story about tie who headed off to college with not just a dream, but a plan to go into computers and had a pretty well mapped out idea for how to do that but got tangled up in a forprofit college. When i pick her up in the book shes 27yearsold, has no diploma, has a 100,000 of Student Loan Debt and is working as a waitress. Its about another, michael in chicago who worked hard all his life and when the crash of 2008 came from a first he lost his house and then he lost his job and described the crash when it broke my heart. So the people in the book are the ones that try to make it real the policies we make in the Big Decisions that we make about the directions the country will go. These will not be those alternative facts that you have read so much about. I have to say its never occurred to me for describing the facts i want to talk about. There is a story that i want to tell you about. The last thing i want you to walk into your brain now i wont act out the powerpoint but it will be a circumstance. Heres the first one i want you to lock in your mind in 2016. Basically with a few exceptions, the gdp, how much we are producing. It is a nice steady lineup. That will be the first 11935 to 2016 now i will divide the story into two time periods. They will give us an idea of how to work with them. 1935 to 1980 but happens in america and the answer is the we work on how to build opportunities. The first one [applause] we do things like the antitrust regulations so they dont get to roll over little businesses before they can get started. We put a cop on the beat in wall street. We regulate the biggest financial institutions. Theres going to be some regulation around that. Make it safe to put money into banks but they become regulated businesses. Businesses. Okay so park number one is we regulate. Second is progressive taxation. We tax those at the top and use that money to invest in business opportunities, more opportunities. We invest in education big time. The g. I. Bill to return the soldiers from world war ii. We invested in public education, k12. We invested in state universities. Why do we make of these investments, because we believe that if youve got an education, you can do anything. We invested in infrastructure, national highway transportation system, bridges, power, power to roll america. Why, because we didnt know that we were pretty sure. The businesses could grow and jobs could grow. The first thing we did, we invested in research. We put the money into medical research and Scientific Research and engineering research, Behavioral Sciences research, all kinds of research. Because we didnt even know what the research was going to produce. We believed if we build this giant pipeline of ideas that things would come from it that would permit our children and grandchildren to live a life that we never even dreamed of. It still gives me goosebumps how much it works. It works so much that the uppermiddleclass, the middle class, the working class, the working poor and the poor. 70 of all of the Income Growth enough time to count. 70 , heres the thing when we scratch through the data it is all the way. Everybody did better. Iit better. It got bigger and evt more heat. We were not perfect by any stretch. The gap shrank by 30 and a 15 year period. So, we were not there by any stretch but we were on the road. And then we had 1980. Deregulate, turn them to whatever they want to do, stop enforcing or slow down enforcing the antitrust law. And stuff about taxes. When you cut taxes for those at the top, all of those investments in education and infrastructure and basic Research Start shrinking up and that is exactly what we did. And here is the deal it goes up both time periods. The gdp keeps coming up, so how did the 90 due from 1980 to 2016 the answer is 90 . Everybody outside of the top 10 cost nothing. None of the new Income Growth, zip. Nearly 100 of the new Income Growth in america from 1980 to 2016 has gone to the top 10 of this country. Think about that. And it has tripled. That is what the trickledown has done for africanamerican families. And look, there are people that will say theres a whole lot more food stamps than there used to be. Yes, and while there are subsidies, true. But this is about people that want a chance to earn a living. People who want to be able to build something for themselves. The people who want to be able to get out there and work and have security and be able to build for themselves and for their kids. That part is just gone. Now here comes the twist of the night. It didnt have to happen. It didnt have to happen. But the middleclass started doing really bad working across the spectrum. The. We are getting richer. The difference is what is happening. If a bunch of billionaires and corporate ceos decided to invest millions, billions of dollars in making sure the. The investment paid off and thats what we see from 1984 word. The way that i see it, it is a story about the good and the evil. [applause] i am unapologetic about that. Its a story about right and wrong and it is a story about monumental smite. It is a story about billionaires and giant corporations and their buddies in washington and its also a story about mike from douglas massachusetts. Lets me go back and read a little bit more from this book. They seem to believe the government is the enemy and the poor giant corporations should be turned loose to do whatever they want, break the economy, poisoned water, cut deals with russia, refuse to pay people for the hours they work. Trump and his team have the power to destroy much of what is left of americas middle class. They have the power to extinguish the hopes that all of our children will have a chance to grow up and do better than their parents. He is now poised to deliver the knockout blow to the middleclass. I want to make a point and focus this down. Its not about what donald trump says. Its not about the 3 00 in the morning messages. Its about what donald trump does and his friends in congress are doing to this country right now. Here we are. We havent even hit the 100 day mark yet and i just want to mention a few things. Donald trump has already signed off to make it easier for the contractors to steal employees wages. Hes already signed off on a wall to make it easier for companies that kill or maim their employees to keep it hidden. Hes already signed up on the wall to make it easier for Investment Advisers to cheat with higher 80s. It was like a microcosm, we will have 24 Million People off of health care coverage. We will raise costs for a whole bunch of people in a middleclass, but we will get a tax break to the handful of millionaires and billionaires. Is there anyone in america who thought what we need to get the Healthcare System working again is a tax break for millionaires and billionaires, yet that has been the signature piece of the first 100 days. Trump and his republican buddies are delivering one punch after another to middleclass families and that is why i am here to fight back. [applause] i want to take you to a place near the end of the book in part because i would still be writing this book every day. I want to tell you how i tried to pull this all together. What it starts with, this section near the end, it starts with i watched donald trump become inaugurated. I wanted it burned into my eyeballs. [applause] [cheering] if there was ever a moment i just close my eyes. The next day is the day of the womens march. [cheering] im thinking how are we going to fight back. What does the army look like in the democracy so here is what i picked up i knew we were eight or ten blocks from the commons where the march would begin and that is when i caught my first glimpse. [applause] men pushing strollers, kids laughing and running. Without clutching a sign that read i will fight like a girl. It was an ocean of signs, clever, colorful. This is my first protest, but not my last. Its like a broken down cardboard box. [laughter] womens rights are not up for grabs. [applause] and donald, you aint seen nasty yet. [applause] we were not fully organized yet, but the power was there, the energy was everywhere on a Cold Saturday morning Something Special was happening. Every step brought us closer together, everyone on boston commons, washington, little towns and big cities across america and around the world. Deep down, unshakable belief in a. As i marched with tens of thousands of others that they i had no illusions. I knew that it would be a hard fight. But i knew that we had tens of million of people with us in this fight and that it would be our fight. The. [applause] how do we help alleviate Student Loan Debt and federally funded the heavy burden of the Monthly Payments which we all know about ken stun growing the middleclass and not only graduates of those as well. This is a great question. I want to start with something about why this is deeply personal and. When i was registering for high school there was no money for college. I got a scholarship. I got a debate scholarship, and nearly dropped out of college, so smart. I am deeply grateful. [applause] [cheering] and to say the other way. Here is the twist of the night. The United States government is making a profit. [applause] this is why it matters so much. To cut the Interest Rates on Student Loans. [applause] charge students the same amount we are charging jp morgan chase. [applause] [cheering] so, anyway, ultimately, we go through all of this because the United States government is having profits on Student Loans and theyve already been budgeted. So all the prophets have already been built into the budgets. In order to push the bill through, what it had to do is come up with a way to pay for it. You have to pay to get rid of the problems. They would have to pay taxes the same rate as middleclass families. I know this is so sad. [laughter] there would be more than enough money to drop the Interest Rate on the Student Loans. The. We can spend o it on tax breaks for the richest among us or that very same money. We have hundreds of thousands of people who are just trying to get a start. Trying to make something of their lives. This kind of choice