Its up to us to make sure why make it greater. I believe were going to make history one more time. The Democratic Candidates debate live from the Gilliard Center in charlescharleston, so carolina. Here now, lester holt. Good evening and welcome to the nbc news youtube Democratic Candidates debate. Soon americans will have their say with the first vote of the 2016 Campaign Just 15 days away in iowa and New Hampshire not far behind. Tonight will be the final opportunity to see these candidates facetoface before the final voting begins. Our sprpurpose is to highlight examine the differences between the three candidates. Secretary Hillary Clinton, senator Bernie Sanders and governor Martin Omalley. [ applause ] welcome to all of you. Hope you are excited. Were excited. We want to thank our host, the Congressional Black Caucus institute. Im joined by my colleague Andrea Mitchell. 60 seconds for answers, 30 seconds for followups or rebuttals. I know youll all keep exactly to time so our job should be pretty easy. Also questions from the youtube community. This is a critical point in the race. Youve been defining your differences with each other especially in the last week on the campaign trail. Were here to facilitate this conversation on behalf of the voters so they know exactly where you stand as you face off tonight. Lets have a great debate. Well begin with 45second Opening Statements from each candidate. Good evening. I want to thank the Congressional Black Caucus institute and the people of charleston for hosting us here on the eve of Martin Luther king day tomorrow. I remember well when my youth minister took me to hear dr. King. I was a teenager, and his moral clarity, the message that he conveyed that evening really stayed with me and helped to set me on a path to service. I also remember that he spent the last day of his life in memphis fighting for dignity and higher pay for working people. And that is our fight still. We have to get the economy working and incomes rising for everyone, including those who have been left out and left behind. We have to keep our communities and our country safe. We need a president who can do all aspects of the job. I understand that this is the hardest job in the world. Im prepared and ready to take it on. And i hope to earn your support to be the nominee of the Democratic Party and the next president of the United States. Thank you. Senator sanders, your opening statement, sir. Thank you. As we honor the extraordinary life of dr. Martin luther king jr. , its important not only that we remember what he stood for, but that we pledge to continue his vision to transform our country. And as we look out at our country today, what the American People understand is we have an economy thats rigged. That ordinary americans are working longer hours for lower wages. 47 Million People living in poverty and almost all of the new income and wealth going to the top 1 . And then to make a bad situation worse, we have a corrupt Campaign Finance system where millionaires and billionaires are spending extraordinary amounts of money to buy elections. This campaign is about a Political Revolution to not only elect a president but to transform this country. Governor omalley . My name is Martin Omalley. I was born the year dr. King delivered his i have a dream speech. I want to thank the people of South Carolina not only for hosting our debate but also for what you taught all of us in the aftermath of the tragic shooting at mother emmanuel church. You taught us that love would have the final word when you took down the Confederate Flag from your state house, let go of the past and moved forward. Eight years ago, you brought forward a new leader in barack obama to save our country from the second Great Depression and thats what hes done. Our country is doing better. Were creating jobs again. But in order to make good on the promise of equal opportunity and equal justice under the law, we have urgent work to do and the voices of anger and fear and division weve heard coming off the president ial republican podiums are pretty loud. We need new leadership. We need to come together as a people and build on the good things president obama has done. Thats why im running for president. I need your help. I ask for your vote and look forward to moving our country forward once again. Thank you. Thank you. To our first question. The first question ill be addressing to all of the candidates. President obama came to office determined to swing for the fences on health care reform. Voters want to know how youd complete your presidency. In my first 100 years in office, my top three priorities will be fill in the blank. Senator sanders. Thats what our campaign is about. Its thinking big. Understanding in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we should have health care for every man, woman and child as a right that we should raise the minimum wage to at least 15 an hour. That we have got to create millions of decent paying jobs by repairing our crumbling infrastructure. What my first days are about is bringing america together to end the decline of the middle class and tell the wealthy theyll start paying their fair share of taxes and well have a government that works for all of us and not just big campaign contributors. Secretary clinton . Id present my plans for create i creating good jobs, raising the minimum wage and guaranteeing finally equal pay for womens work. I would also [ applause ] i would also be presenting my plans to build on the Affordable Care act and improve it by decreasing the outofpocket cost by putting a cap on Prescription Drug costs, by looking for ways that we can put the Prescription Drug accident and Health InsuranceCompany Business on a more stable platform that doesnt take too much money out of the pockets of hardworking americans. And third, i would be working in every way that i knew to bring our country together. We do have too much division, too much meanspiritedness. Theres a lot we have to do on immigration reform, on voting rights, on Campaign Finance reform, but we need to do it together. Thats how well have the kind of country for the 21st century that we know will guarantee our children and grandchildren the kind of future they deserve. Governor omalley, same question. Thank you. First of all, i would lay out an agenda to make wages go up again for all americans, rather than down. Equal pay for equal work. Making it easier rather than harder for people to join labor unions and bargain collectively for wages. Getting 11 million of our neighbors out of the underground shadow economy by passing comprehensive immigration reform. Raising the minimum wage top 15 an hour, however we can, wherever we can. Secondly, i believe the greatest Business Opportunity to come to the United States of america in 100 years is Climate Change. And i put forward a plan to move us to a 100 Clean Electric Energy grid by 2050 and create 5 million jobs along the way. Thank you im sorry, that was second lester, and third and finally, we need a new agenda for americas cities. We have not had a new agenda for americas city since jimmy carter. We need a new agenda for america cities thatll invest in the talents and skills in our people, invest in transportation, infrastructure, and transit options. And make our cities the leading edge in this move to a redesigned, built, Clean Green Energy future thatll employ our people. All right governor, thank you. Youve all laid out large visions, and were going to cover a lot of the ground you talked about. Last couple of weeks of this campaign have featured some of the sharpest exchanges in the race. Lets start with one of them, the issue of guns. Senator sanders, last week secretary clinton called you, quote, a pretty reliable vote for the gun lobby. Right before the debate, you changed your position on immunity for lawsuits for gun manufacturers. Can you tell us why . Well, i think secretary clinton knows what she says is very disingenuous. I have a dminus voting record from the nra. I was, in 1988, there were three candidates running for congress in the state of vermont. I stood up to the gun lobby, and came out and maintained the position that in this country, we should not be selling militarystyle assault weapons. I have supported, from day one, at instant background check to make certain that people who should not have guns do not have guns. And that includes people with criminal backgrounds, people who are mentally unstable. I support what president obama is doing in terms of trying to close the gun show loopholes, and i think it should be a federal crime if people act as strawmen. We have seen in this city a horrendous tragedy of a crazed person praying with people and coming out and shooting nine people. This should not be a political issue. What we should be doing is working together. And by the way, as a senator from a rural state that has virtually no gun control, i believe that i am in an excellent position to bring people together senator, you didnt answer the question that you did change your position on immunity for gun manufacturers. Can you answer the question as to why. What i have said is that the gun manufacturers liability bill had some good provisions. Among other things, we prohibited ammunition that would have killed cops who had protection on. We had child safety protection on guns in that legislation, and what we also said is a small, mom and pop gun shop, who sells a gun legally to somebody, should not be held liable if somebody does something terrible with that gun. I said i would relook at it. We are going to relook at it. And i will support stronger provisions. Secretary clinton, would you like to respond to senator sanders . Yes, look, i have made it clear, based on senator sanders own record, that he has voted with the nra, with the gun lobby numerous times. He voted against the brady bill five times. He voted for what we call the charleston loophole. He voted for immunity from gunmakers and sellers, which the nra said was the most important piece of Gun Legislation in 20 years. He voted to let guns go on to amtrak, guns go into national parks. He voted against doing research to figure out how we can save lives. Lets not forget what this is about. 90 people a day die from gun violence in our country. Thats 33,000 people a year. One of the most horrific examples, not a block from here, where we had nine people murdered. Now, i am pleased to hear that senator sanders has reversed his position on immunity, and i look forward to him joining with those members of congress who have already introduced legislation. There is no other industry in america that was given the total pass that the gunmakers and dealers were, and that needs to be reversed. All right. Governor omalley. You signed tough gun control measures as governor of maryland, and there are a lot of democrats in the audience here in South Carolina who own guns. This conversation might be worrying many of them. They may be hearing, you want to take my guns. What would you say to them . This is what i would say. Ive listened to secretary clinton and senator sanders go back on forth on which has the most inconsistent record on gun safety legislation, and i would have to agree with both of them. Theyve both been inconsistent when it comes to this issue. Im the one candidate on this stage that actually brought people together to pass comprehensive gun safety legislation. This is very personal to me being from baltimore. I will never forget one occasion visiting a little boy in Johns Hopkins hospital, getting a birthday haircut, age of 3, when drug dealers turned that into a shooting gallery and boys head was pierced with a bullet. It did not kill him. I remember visiting him and his mother in the hospital. And his diapers and tubes running in and out of his head. Same anyone as my little boy. After the slaughter of the kids in connecticut, we be pass in our state comprehensive gun safety legislation. It did have the ban on combat assault weapons, universal background checks, and we did not interrupt a single persons hunting season. Ive never met a selfrespecting deer hunter that needed an ar15 to down a deer. So were able to actually do these things. Governor, thank you. Secretary clinton, this is a community that has suffered a lot of heartache in the last year. Of course, as you mentioned, the church shootings. We wont forget the video of of walter scott being shot in the back while running from police. We understand that a jury will decide whether that Police Officer was justified, but it played straight to the fears of many africanamerican men that their lives are cheap. Is that perception or in your view, is it reality . Well, sadly, its reality. And it has been heart breaking and incredibly outraging to see the constant stories of young men, like walter scott, as you said, who have been killed by Police Officers. There needs to be a concerted effort to address the systemic racism in our criminal Justice System. And that requires a very clear agenda for retraining Police Officers, looking at ways to end racial profiling, finding more ways to really bring the disparities that stalk our country into high relief. One out of three africanamerican men may well end up going to prison. Thats the statistic. I want people here to think what we would be doing if it was one out of three white men. And very often the black men are arrested, convicted, and incarcerated for offenses that do not lead to the same results for white men. So we have a very serious problem that we can no longer ignore. Your time is up. Senator sanders, my next question is for you. Let me respond to what the secretary said. We have a criminal Justice System which is broken. Who in america is satisfied that we have more people in jail than any other country on earth, including china . Disproportionally africanamerican and latino. Who is satisfied that 51 of africanamerican young people are either unemployed or underemployed . Who is satisfied that millions of people have Police Records for possessing marijuana when the ceos of wall street companies who destroyed our economy have no police record. Senator sanders we need to take we need to take a very hard look at our criminal Justice System, investing in jobs and education, not in jails and incarceration. Just over a week ago the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed secretary clinton, not you. He said choosing her over you was not a hard decision. In fact, our polling shows shes beating you more than two to one among minority voters. How can you be the nominee if you dont have the support . Let me talk about polling. As secretary secretary clinton well knows, when this campaign began, she was 50 points ahead of me. We were all of 3 percentage points. Guess what . In iowa, New Hampshire, the race is very, very close. Maybe were ahead in New Hampshire. In terms of polling, guess what, we are running ahead of secretary clinton in terms of taking on my good friend donald trump. Beating him by 19 points in New Hampshire, 13 points in the last National Poll that i saw. To answer your question, when the Africanamerican Community becomes familiar with my congressional record and with our agenda and with our views on the economy and criminal justice, just as the general population has become more supportive, so will the Africanamerican Community, so will the latino community. We have the momentum. Were on a path to a victory. Governor, im coming to you in a second. Google searches for the words black lives matter surpassed Civil Rights Movement here last year. Black lives matter was the number one political issue. Governor omalley, you campaign on your record as governor of maryland and before that, the mayor of baltimore last year. Of course, baltimore was rocked by violent unrest in the wake of the death of freddie gray. And right from the start of your campaign, youve been dogged by those who blame your toughrun crime, so called zerotolerance policies as mayor for contributing to that unrest. What responsibility do you bear . Yeah, lets talk about this. When i ran for mayor in 1999, lester, it was not because the city was doing well. It was because we were burying over 300 young, poor black men every single year. And thats why i ran. Because, yes, black lives matter. And we did a number of things we werent able to make our city immune from setbacks such as freddie gray unrest and tragic death showed. But we were able to save a lot of lives doing things that actually worked to improve police and community relations. The truth of the matter is, we created a civilian review board. And many of these things are in the new agenda for criminal Justice Reform that ive put forward. We created a civilian review board, gave them