>> the data base of sets themselveses is very expensive to produce. i can't produce them. i would think that if they were created by various nonprofits in the country it would be shareable for everybody in the country. shelly: anybody want to comment? matt: i heard two pars to your question. one is on the data base of officials and who represents you. that data is not easily accessible enough. there is no data base of every elected officials and there's no easy way and say here's what i am. there are some good attempts and there are some groups working hard on that. google civic a.p.it. map light has been working on the problem for years now. the sets are getting better but they're city not where they need to be. the second part is the

responsiveness of those reps. did they hear what you said, and did it zphount a lot of that comes down to incentives. i talked to a lot of elected officials and who spent a lot of times fund raising a ton of time talking to interest groups that represent a lot of money and or votes in their district and have a lot less time to think about how to engage in a wider audience and they're not that incentivized to do so. part of what we are hoping to do is aggregate votes and voters, in a way, and constituents, so their opinions are tied to their identity as someone who votes and ken incentivize elected officials to spend more time. they're spending a lot of time figuring out how to get the money. if you could get them directly connected to a group of voters who care about something, it would be well incentivized to spend time. but i think it is an unsolved problem at this point, and there are some good people working on

it. >> thanks. thank you. next question. >> hi, my name is shayna. me, the flip side of the proliferation of social media is and young of my peers people feel like clicktivism and liking something on facebook is enough, and that is engaging with the cause. for me, as someone who has a twitter and a website, it has been difficult to see how social media can be used to sustain involvement in nature civic engagement goes past just a social media presence. i wonder if you can speak to that. >> print question. -- great question. i think there is a huge amount of engagement online with millennials like shayna, commenting on political topics, and then when you ask them what are the most impactful things they do to help their community,

it is off-line and/or giving money, direct to service where they can see the people they are serving, or work on things with their hands. [laughter] where they money have confidence the money will be used to fund something that is impactful. i do think there is a disconnect between the discourse in self-expression that maybe feels satisfying in the moment because you won that argument or got three likes on the thing you posted, even if it is political. you have to ask yourself, what do those likes amounts to? the answer is not much. more millennials are saying they are most satisfied off-line, through volunteerism in philanthropy. i think there is a gap, and i cited that stat of 8% of millennial's voting in the california midterm. they just don't believe voting matters, and that is huge.

that probably sounds like a depressing nonanswer. i think part of the way you solve that, though, is -- this is a terrible word -- you amplify it, you make the data explicit, you show them they are not alone. you show them how many voters there are, how much their potential impact is. i just got this thing as a holiday present, and it changes behavior. just tracking how many hours i sleep, how many steps i take, how much water i drink, these little nudges to do things has to medically changed my behavior. i go for a walk after dinner. i try to go to bed earlier. it's not quite as simple in the civic space but this is the kind of technology that we are responsive to as consumers and as younger people. we have to build those kinds of

tools for the civic space. there has been a huge underinvestment in that. government has been the enemy. we don't want to deal with bureaucracy. we are hit and cool and iterative and solve problems that they don't. jen speaks eloquently to how to bridge that gap and why it is imperative that we do. jennifer: there's a particular opportunity that bridges that with the sense of working in your community. that is a program called the code for america brigade. 44,000 people across the country participate in their local communities and built technology for their city government, their local community. two of the most active communities are here, in san francisco and oakland. one of our sponsors is in the back.

this is activism that is digital that helps out in your community. y: we have time for two more questions. >> my name is ruth shapiro. i was watching the town hall with president obama about guns, and there seemed to be in the audience quite a few people who are very much galvanized i what i believe is completely untrue information about guns. i think the dark side or the underbelly of proliferation of information is the proliferation of untrue and destructive information with isis recruitment being obviously a worst-case example of this. i wonder if you can just discuss the fact that there is untrue, destructive information out there which people are organizing around, and how do

you deal with that? [applause] shelly dan: there are pros and cons to all things, and the dramatic democratization and proliferation of information has done great rings but there are people who can use it in if -- in nefarious ways, isis being the most obvious example. there has been evil in the world before social media. there was prejudice. social media allows you to express opinions in different ways. what it does do in some cases is allow people to confront opinions they would not otherwise ever see. guns is a very interesting one. guns and climate change are two of the hardest issues to communicate on, because we don't live in this broadcast world where you just go on the news that everyone here's what you have to say.

people are now communicating in networks and they are becoming more homogenous. it becomes hard for someone who is outside of that network to convince a bunch of people in a different network that climate change is real or that no one is actually coming to take your guns. that is a challenge. as people learn and politicians learn better how to communicate in this area, you will have more progress there. but social media is a tool that does way more good than bad, but we are going to have to work and learn about how we can deal with close communication. it is worth noting that the fact that people have facebook friends or twitter followers who basically believe the same thing is more the symptom of

something larger that's happening in society because off-line, the same thing is happening. people are hanging out with people who have the same opinions. there are precincts in this country in san francisco and new york where mitt romney got zero votes. not a single person voted for mitt romney in those areas. there were precincts where barack obama got zero. not one person differed from their neighbor on that issue. it's always easy for people in politics and media to blame twitter and facebook and have made our politics uglier. we have to look at bigger things than just what the social media platform is. matt: we made a specific design decision. maybe background checks should

be required for gun purchases. on what informed citizens do if they take a position, they agree or disagree, but then they have the ability to leave a reason and the crowd has the ability to comment and upload. we made a decision to structure it as a debate with different perspectives. i would rather have a crowd sourced, multidimensional -- multidimensional debate more like a wikipedia model that an expert driven type of model. it's going to require time and tools and new social norms for that to really work. dan: i'll do a little bit for that. if you have not downloaded brigade, i encourage you to do it. i was an early user. it is a cool feeling. you leave a reason and have

someone changes their mind because of your reason, you get a notification. you look at their phone like, so and so changed their mind. it gives you a fulfilling, rewarding dealing. on the big issues like guns or taxes or women's health issues, in the course of reading about -- you hear interesting arguments about things you would not have otherwise thought of. it can have you change your mind. my first time of the million bell initiatives here was incredibly helpful. jennifer: i feel like you are talking to me. i have already said i'm going to download it. just kidding. shelly: with that were going to

our last question of the evening from the audience. >> i was going to ask what you are talking about, which is the unintended consequence of technology helping polarize the nation more. i was going to complement you on brigade. you always see both points of view. my question comes down to this, what roles do you see yourself having on actually using technology so we can graduate and use it as a way to work together? there is so much overlap on issues like immigration that different sides agree on. when you go into this world of sorting and dividing, i'm not going to work with that person because they are so evil. that's kind of what is happening. my question is how important is that for you at brigade and what are your thoughts on how to work on that? matt: thanks for the question.

it is critical. our mission is to empower people through collective action. we want to help people will real influence. learning where you stand on the issues and forming an opinion on things is an important starting place, but we have a long way to go to build the tools for those people to come together and collaborate. the brigades are actually that, people who have a common vision for getting things done. they use technology to meet off-line and work together to build amazing things. somewhere in electoral politics we want to connect new people to work together. i don't know which of my neighbors care about the same issues i care about. finding ways to reconnect with

those people and give them tools to get things done is the long-term vision. jennifer: we can connect around getting the policy we think matches our values. we can connect around implementation of that policy. if you care about immigration, one of the things i was doing was working with the domestic policy council. that was when we still thought we would pass immigration reform at the legislative level. if aca is vulnerable, so is immigration. since then many wonderful people have come to silicon valley to help the administrative things that have to happen if her going to process many more people through. so there is common ground around getting the policies to actually work using digital technology.

>> that was our last question. thank you from the audience. before we close i want to go to our tradition. the last question is for all of the panelists. i would like to ask each of you, what are your 60 second ideas to change the world? [laughter] dan: i have to go first on that one? obviously personal crowd fundraising. [laughter] shelly: obviously. would you like to expand on that? [laughter] dan: i was trying to be efficient in silicon valley style and do it in 10 seconds. i think the most important thing for changing the world is education. it's giving people the opportunity to reach their full potential. that can happen in a wide array of things.

if you can start with early childhood and work your way through where people can learn a specific skill set, more than anything else that is on the long arc of making our country a better place. shelly: agreed. jen? jennifer: i would say i think if we all believed and held government accountable to it working for us and for the people it needs to help, not just us, the people who need to rely on government more, we would live in a fundamentally different world. i think the believe that it could be and the ability to make it as effective as we need it to be is a powerful idea. it's not only about the delivery of government services, but it turns out that if we make the

delivery of those government services work in the way that uber works, you get real-time data about what programs work, and then government really can work as effectively at the policy level. agree more,dn't like everything you guys have said. matt? matt: i feel like i've been talking about the whole time, probably selfishly, sorry. i would just reframe it as a better answer to that question, i want to live in a world where people take pride in having opinions and being engaged in doing things, not just with their voice but with their hands. this may be a sad statement on humanity, but i think we will have to measure those things and they will have to be recorded and it will have to be part of our civic identity online and our identity of who we are online.

my big idea is that having opinions, having a stake in society and contributing through my voice and my hands, making that aspirational is the big idea and it's what we are trying to build. shelly: thank you so much. those were great answers. i'm so thrilled to be on stage with you tonight. can we get our panelists a round of applause? [applause] thanks, guys. don't get up. don't move. thank you, everyone. is there still line? -- wine? just kidding. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute,

which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] onthe iowa caucuses are monday. coming up, sanity bernie sanders speaks in des moines. donald trump announces he will not attend the foxnews debate thursday. hillary clinton talks to voters in marshalltown, iowa. on the next "washington journal," alan mulally him on reforming federal prisons. beforehat, with six days the iowa caucuses, our guest is benjamin ginsberg, former national council for the mitt romney campaign. atshington journal" is live 7:00 a.m. eastern and you can join with your calls and comments on facebook and twitter. today at the senate judiciary committee, they examine heroine and prescription opioid abuse. witnesses include the

governor of the month and the manchester police chief. watch live at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. next, democratic presidential candidate hopeful bernie sanders speaks at a local chapter of the united steelworkers in des moines, iowa. he talks about expanding unions and points out his differences with hillary clinton. this is 40 minutes. [chanting] mr. sanders: thank you. begin by thanking you for inviting me to be with you today.

thank you for the introduction. most of all, thanking the steelworkers for their long, long support of what i've been trying to do throughout my political career. i don't get any money and i don't want any money from corporations. never got a nickel. [applause] don't want any money from the billionaire class. but i am very grateful for the support that i've received from the steelworkers throughout my entire political career. thank you very, very much. [applause] when i went to college, i studied some economics. but the real economic lesson that i learned was when i was a kid. i grew up in a home where my dad

had come from poland at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket. never made much money. a 3.5-room rent-controlled apartment in brooklyn, new york. familyd not for, but our lived on the financial stress, as is the case with millions of families in our country today. the major economics lesson that i had in my life was as a kid. understanding what financial stress does to a family, understanding that every decision that is made has got to be thought about, whether you can afford to do this or that. aat, brothers and sisters, is lesson i have never forgotten and i never will forget. [applause] hat, brothers and sisters, is a lesson i have never forgotten and i never will forget.

[applause] you know, one of the reasons i think our campaign is doing well is because we try to talk about the real issues impacting the very people. don't necessarily do what the media wants us to do but talk about real issues. just turned out yesterday, we were in iowa falls. had a few hundred people out to a meeting and i kind of opened up the discussion to ask people what was going on in their lives, what was going on in their lives in terms of trying to make it on $12,000, $13,000 a year social security. and suddenly what was it like in their lives if you can't afford the prescription drugs that you need. i want to thank the nurses, our sisters and brothers that are nurses here -- [cheers and applause] who know these issues. who know what it means to be treating patients who can't afford prescriptions.

and i opened it up, the discussion. one woman gets up there and says the medicine her family needed -- her husband needed shot way up. shot way up to an outrageous price and we all know that tomorrow as you walk into a drugstore to refill your prescription, the price could be double or triple than what it was today. some of you have that experience, right? because the pharmaceutical industry is ripping off the american people. [applause] so people say, we don't have a lot of money. the prescription drugs goes up. one woman was -- making the point, millions of people in this country -- we don't talk about it terribly much -- trying to get by on $12,000, $13,000 a year on social security. you do the arithmetic. tell me how you pay for

prescription drugs, how do you heat your home, how do you buy the food you need on $12,000 or $13,000 a year? and the answer is exactly right, you don't. you don't. [applause] and then we got republicans going around the country lying, as they occasionally do -- [laughter] and they're saying social security is going broke. we have to cut social security benefits. now, just stop and think about it. forget politics. tell me how somebody can go around the country when we know that millions of people, seniors, disabled vets, people with disabilities, people who can't make it on $12,000, $13,000 a year and they're talking about cutting social security benefits. there's a thing that a lot of people have not heard of.

it's called the chain c.p.i. it's a fancy term from washington to cut social security benefits, and it argues the theory behind it is that the colas, the cost-of-living adjustments that seniors are getting today are too generous. does anybody here know what seniors got in their cola last year? zero! too generous. got to cut it. anyhow, at iowa falls we heard from people, i'm not getting $12,000, $13,000 a year. i'm trying to live on $10,000 a year. then we heard another woman talk about what it means to have minimum wage jobs and how difficult it is to survive. and that is the reality for millions and millions of people in this country. it's a reality we don't talk enough about, and it's certainly a reality that we are not

effectively addressing. now, here's the story. if we were a poor country -- and there are poor countries around the world -- you have a certain type of discussion. and you say, you know, it's unfortunate that we have to live in poverty but that's who we are. we're a poor country. we can't have good education, we can't have good health care, we can't have decent paying jobs. we're a poor country, but the truth is, as everybody here knows, the united states of america is not a poor country. we are the wealthiest country in the history of the world. but -- but most people don't know that because almost all of the new wealth and income is going to the top 1%. and brothers and sisters, what a sanders administration is about is a very radical idea.

you ready for a radical idea? we're going to create an economy that works for working families, not just billionaires. [cheers and applause] and not only that, in the last 30 years, as everybody in this room knows, technology has exploded. almost every worker in america is more productive than he or she was 20 years, 30 years ago, right? you're producing more. question -- if you are more productive, if we are producing more, why are millions of people working longer hours for lower wages? >> greed! senator sanders: why is almost all income and wealth going to a small number of people? >> greed!

senator sanders: it's a smart group here. and that's what we're going to deal with. so we are going to tell billionaires who pay an effective tax rate lower than many of you do, we're going to tell large multinational corporations who make billions of dollars a year in profit and stash their money in the cayman islands and bermuda and in a given year may pay zero in federal income taxes, we're going to tell them that it is time for them to accept their responsibility as americans to start paying their fair share of taxes. [cheers and applause] and when we eliminate that cayman islands loophole and when

we raise a trillion dollars in new revenue, you know what we're going to do with that? we're going to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and create millions of decent paying jobs. [applause] this is the united states of america, the greatest country on the face of the earth. you tell me why our roads, our bridges, our water systems, our waste water plants, our levees, our dams, our airports, our rail system are deteriorating or crumbling? >> republicans! senator sanders: all right. we need to invest in a $1 trillion investment, which i believe we should make, creates 13 million decent paying jobs. [applause] including a lot of good steelworker jobs.

[applause] now, every person in this room -- because the steelworkers are one of the great unions in our country. you understand the history of the trade union movement. and you understand that change, real change never comes from the top on down. it always comes from the bottom on up. [applause] and you understand the way back when employers did not say, well, i think it's a great idea for workers to have a union. we'd love to sit down and do some collective bargaining with you. because we think that's fair and that's right. that's not the way it happened. the way it happened is way back when workers went on strike, workers fought and workers died, workers were beaten, workers

were fired from their jobs in order to make sure that working people could organize, could engage in collective bargaining, could sit down at a table and fight for decent wages and decent working conditions. that's the history of the trade union movement. and we should be proud of that. but what all of you know is that over the last several decades, despite the fact that millions of workers want to join a union, it has become harder and harder for workers to in fact create unions, to become members of unions. you know and i know that employers have acted illegally with the support of the nlrb so that if workers tried to organize the organizers there would be fired and if by some miracle people actually did organize a union, employers would refuse to engage in a first contract, collective bargaining.

and that is why i believe that the middle class does not grow unless the trade union movement grows. [cheers and applause] the middle class does not prosper unless workers are engaged in strong collective bargaining. now, what a lot of people, what a lot of nonunion people don't understand is that to the degree they get anywhere near decent wages, it has a lot to do with the success of the trade union movement. because you're driving wages up. in any case, after decades of illegal action on the part of employers, it seems to me we have got to make it easier, not harder, for workers to join

unions. that's why we have introduced a new piece of legislation and it says very simply that if 50% of workers in a unit plus one sign a card saying they want to be in a union, they will have a union. [applause] senator sanders: here's the truth. here's the truth. not going to tell you that every worker in america wants to join a union, but what i will tell you is that millions of them do. millions of them understand that workers who have a union get better wages, better working

conditions and better benefits. and our job is to say that the american people must be able to exercise their constitutional right to organize unions without illegal impediments on the part of employers, and that is what i intend to do. [applause] i mentioned earlier that there are millions of seniors and disabled veterans in this country, and by the way, as the former chairman of the senate committee on veterans' affairs, let me thank all of the men and women in this room and in this country for their service to our country. [applause]

for their putting their lives on the line to defend this country. and here's a promise i make. is that we will do our best, absolute best, and there should not be any debate about this if you're a progressive, democrat or republican. when people put their lives on the line to defend this country and they come home, they are going to get the best health care available, they're going to get the benefits that they earned. [applause] but here's the difference that secretary clinton and i have on a very important issue. i believe that when millions of seniors and disabled vets are struggling to get by on $12,000 or $13,000 a year, it is not good enough to say -- and i've led the effort on this, that we're not going to cut social security.

that is an abomination. what we must do is say, of course we're not going to cut social security, but we are going to expand social security benefits. [applause] and here is how we are going to do it. it is not complicated. right now somebody makes $5 million a year, somebody makes $118,000 a year, they both contribute the same amount into the social security trust fund. if you lift that cap and you start at $250,000 and above, top 1.5% of the american people, what we can do is increase social security benefits for those now living under $16,000 a year by $1,300 a year. that's not insignificant for people who are struggling.

[applause] and when we do that we also extend the life of social security from 19 years to 50 years. now, that is my view. i think -- i think that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when the wealthy are getting much wealthier, you know what, i think it is just appropriate, just right to lift that cap and ask the wealthiest people in this country to make sure that all seniors can live in dignity. [applause] that is my view, as secretary clinton drops in, ask her her view. i don't think she agrees. now, when we talk -- when we talk about why it is that the great middle class of this country is disappearing, why it

is that we have 47 million people living in poverty, why it is that we have massive wealth and income inequality, one -- one of the important reasons is our disastrous trade policies. [applause] you are looking at a former united states congressman. i represented vermont in the congress for 16 years and a senator today. you are looking at a member of the senate who in his life voted against nafta, against cafta, against pntr with china. [applause]

senator sanders: and by the way, is helping to lead the opposition to the t.p.p. now -- [applause] look, everybody in this room understands what these disastrous trade agreements are about. you all know who wrote these trade agreements. not complicated. the steelworkers did not write these trade agreements. they are written by corporate america to benefit corporate america, people who could care less about what these trade agreements did to working families. here's what they've done. since 2001 in america, we have lost 60,000 factories. got that? in my state, in iowa, all across this country, 60,000 factories. not all of that, to be fair, is attributable to trade. there are other reasons factories shut down, but a lot

of it is attributable to trade. and when you lose 60,000 factories, many of them attributable to disastrous trade agreements, you're talking about the loss of millions of good-paying american jobs. [applause] everybody knows what the purpose of these trade agreements were supposed to do. they did exactly what corporate america wanted them to do, what they were designed to do is to say, why should we pay workers in the united states $20, $25, $30 an hour, provide decent benefits, negotiate with unions, protect the environment, why would any corporation want to do that when they could shut down in america, throw people out on the street, move to china, move to mexico, move to low-wage countries, pay people pennies an

hour, not have to worry about the environment, not have to do deal with unions and they can bring their products right back in this country? >> greed! senator sanders: the simple truth is, and it's indisputable, these trade agreements have been a disaster for working families in this country. they have benefited the c.e.o.'s of large multinational corporations. no one can deny that reality. i am proud to tell you that way back when i was on the picket line in opposition to nafta and helped lead the opposition against all these trade agreements. i got to tell you also. these trade agreements have been supported not just by republicans but by some democrats as well. we got to acknowledge that. where we are today is to say when our country is deindustrializing -- do you know what i mean by that?

when you tell me, how are we a great nation if we're not purchasing the products that we need that are made in our country? can you be a great country? can you be a great country where everything you buy is made in china? i don't think so. i don't think so. and by the way -- this is another important point to be made. it is not only the loss of jobs, it is what we call the race to the bottom. so here's what's going on. people are saying -- and this is a good thing. people are saying, well, you know what, we're seeing an uptick in manufacturing in america. good. take a look at the wages that those new manufacturing jobs are paying. there was once a time when manufacturing jobs, unionized manufacturing jobs were the gold standard for the working class of this country. you had a good job in a manufacturing plant, you had a

union, you were making middle-class wages and middle-class benefits. but then -- i tell you a story. a couple years ago in louisville, kentucky, general electric announced they were expanding their manufacturing capabilities creating a couple hundred jobs. some people were very excited about it. and they asked this guy from g.e. why are you doing this? he said, well, it turns out that if you add all of the these things together, transportation costs and the fact that wages in america have gone down, it is actually more competitive to do manufacturing in america now than in china because wages have gone down so much so they're paying people in manufacturing $10, $12 an hour. now, if manufacturing workers are getting paid $10, $12 an hour, what do you think other people are getting working? this is a race to the bottom.

not to bring chinese wages up to where we are, it's to bring our wages down to where chinese wages were. [applause] so this t.p.p., they want us to support the t.p.p., they want our people to compete against workers in vietnam. i have nothing against workers in vietnam. i was there. they work very hard. minimum wage in approximate vietnam is 65 cents an -- minimum wage in vietnam is 65 cents an hour. i do not want american workers to have to compete against people who are making 65 cents an hour. [applause] so we have to take a deep breath. we have to understand that our trade policies have failed and

we have to begin an entirely new set of policies. and the bottom line for me is that every major corporation in america wants all of us to buy their products. can't turn on the tv, buy this, buy that, buy that. well, if they want us to buy their products, they damn well better start manufacturing those products back in the united states and not in china. [applause] senator sanders: let me touch on another important issue, and i'm glad our brothers and sisters from the nurses union -- and we thank you so much for your support. [applause] reason that the nurses are

supporting our campaign is that these are serious people who want to be able to do their job as well as they can. all right. thank you job is to prevent disease. their job is to take care of people who are sick, but right now they and many, many other people in the health care profession are unable to do the job that they were trained to do. now, i think the affordable care act has made some important steps forward and one important step forward that we are not going to allow to go forward is the so-called cadillac tax. we will continue to push that back. workers who gave up wage increases and other benefits for decent health care should not be penalized for those sacrifices. [applause]

the affordable care act, which i voted for and strongly supported, did a couple -- number of good things. it did away with this obscenity called pre-existing conditions. you all know what that is? there's private insurance obscenity which said if you had a disease years ago they would not cover you for the disease that you needed coverage for. like getting fire insurance except if you have a fire, then they don't pay. got rid of that. we have expanded health insurance to some 17 million americans. we have made it fairer for women who are forced to pay higher rates than they should have for the crime of being a woman. so we kind of eliminated that. but having said that, here's the reality of health care today, and what our campaign is about is asking the american people to think big, not small.

here we are. the united states of america today is the only major country on earth -- the only one that doesn't guarantee health care to all people as a right. they do it in england. they do it in france, do it in germany, do it all over scandinavia. i live 50 miles away from the canadian border. every major country does it. 29 million people today have no health insurance at all. millions more have high deductibles and high co-payments. sound familiar. ok. and by the way, we pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. at a time when one in five americans are unable to afford the prescription drugs their doctors are prescribing, at a time when seniors are cutting

their pills in half because they can't afford to buy what they need, the three major drug companies in america last year made $45 billion in profit. because they are so powerful, because they provide millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions, because they have 1,400 lobbyists in washington, d.c., there is no legislation on the books to prevent them from doubling, tripling, quadrupling the price you pay for medicine. they are getting away with murder and in some cases they are committing murder. [applause] we are hearing from oncologists who are hearing from cancer patients and they're telling us our cancer patients can't afford the medicine that they need.

we are dealing in some cases with folks who have hepatitis c, new drug, very effective drug out, do you know what that costs? $1,000 a pill. what we have got to tell the pharmaceutical industry -- now, let me back up and tell you a story for a minute. late 1990's, late 1990's, when i represented vermont in the congress, i took a bus load of women from northern vermont over the canadian border to montreal, and the reason we went is that i knew that prescription drugs in canada were much less expensive. women who were dealing with breast cancer, working class women, walked into the pharmacy, they purchased the breast cancer medicine that they needed -- this is not generic. brand name medicine for .1 the price they're paying in the united states. i was the first member of congress to do that. others followed. now millions of people, by the

way, get their medicine from canada. we should not have to get medicine from canada. pharmaceutical industry has got to stop ripping us off. [applause] now, when you got 29 million uninsured, even more underinsured, when we're paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, it turns out that we are spending per person in health care almost three times more than they do in the united kingdom where they guarantee health care to all of their people. we are spending 50% more than the french who guarantee health care to all of their people. much more than the canadians who guarantee -- health care to all of their people. it seems to me that the time is now for us to say loudly and clearly that in the united states of america, health care is a right for all people.

[applause] and we are going to pass a medicare for all single payer program. [applause] and when we do that, when we do that, not only do we make the nurses and the doctors' jobs easier, because they're going to be able to treat everybody in a comprehensive way, we're going to save the middle class many millions of thousands a year on health care costs. [applause] we began our campaign for the presidency of the united states

nine months ago, and when we began it i think we were at 3%, 4% in the polls. we didn't have any money. we didn't have any organization, and frankly not so many people outside of vermont knew who bernie sanders was. but the message that we have been bringing forth to the american people, a message which says that the economy today is rigged, that it benefits the wealthy and the powerful at the expense of everybody else, that the campaign finance system that exists today is corrupt and undermining american democracy -- [applause] that message is resonating all across this country. and here we are in iowa, and one week from yesterday there will be the first caucus in the country.

i believe that we have an excellent chance to win that caucus if -- and here is the if. if we have a large voter turnout. [applause] it is going to be a very, very close election, but i believe that if working people want to be part of a campaign which says enough is enough, our government has got to represent all of us and not a handful of campaign contributors, if those people come out and vote, we will win and we'll win big. [cheers and applause] >> bernie! bernie!

bernie! bernie! bernie! bernie! bernie! bernie! bernie! senator sanders: and let me also say this. let me also say this. this campaign is different from other campaigns, not just because of the fact that i am perhaps the most progressive member of the senate and my agenda in this campaign is the most progressive. this campaign is more than that. and that is what i say every single day and i repeat to you now from the bottom of my heart. no president, not bernie sanders, not anybody else, can do it alone. all right. now, i want to tell you a painful truth that you understand as proud trade unionists, but not all people in america understand, and that is the powers that be -- wall

street, whose greed and recklessness and illegal behavior brought this country into the worst economic downturn since the great depression, they have endless supplies of money, endless. in fact, somebody on wall street now i think just announced is going to spend $600,000 in ads against me here in iowa this week. $600,000 from one guy. >> give them hell, bernie. senator sanders: he surely will. [applause] senator sanders: you got the power of wall street. i want to remind you something about wall street. you know, congress against my vote helped to bail them out because the banks were too big to fail. remember that? well, you won't be shocked to know that three out of the four largest banks in this country

are bigger today than they were when we build them out because , they were too big to fail. you know what i think? when you have a handful of huge financial institutions with political power, maybe it is time we broke them up. it's not just wall street. you deal all of the time with corporate america, whose greed, whose unquenchable greed, they want more and more and more and they are prepared to step on every working person in this country to get more and more and more. we got to take them on. got to take on the corporate media that decides what we see and what we hear. we got to take on the large campaign contributors. that's not an easy fight and no one president alone can do it. and that is why what this campaign is about is a political revolution. [applause]

senator sanders: we need trade unionists. we need millions of people to stand up and be involved in the political process in a way that we have not seen for a very, very, very long time. what we are fighting for, brothers and sisters, is not only for our well-being, we are fighting for our kids. we are fighting for our parents. we are fighting for the planet. this is a fight that we cannot afford to lose and together we will not lose. thank you very much. [applause] ♪

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[indiscernible] >> following the rally with unions do workers bernie sanders spoke with reporters outside. this is 10 minutes.

sen. sanders: our campaign has come a long way. we began at 3% of the polls, 50 points or 60 points behind clinton. we have a little bit of a lead in new hampshire. we are doing great in south carolina and nevada. we will win in iowa if the voter turnout is high. nothe voter turnout is high, we will struggle. what we are focusing on, and we have 15 thousand volunteers in iowa, we have a great organization. making sure as many people come out to vote in the iowa caucus,

the first election in this presidential cycle. if that happens, i think we will do just fine. think, also, what we need to do is reach out significantly to nontraditional voters. the younger people, the working people, the many people who have given up on the political process. if we are successful in doing that, in bringing out a significant number of the over 50,000 people in iowa that have come out to our rallies and town meetings -- i think we will hit 60,000 by the end of this week -- if we can bring those people out, i think we will win in iowa. i had the privilege today to talk to a union that has been a supporter of my political career from way back when, the united steelworkers of america.

a couple of the points that i know this do workers, are concerned about -- areas where secretary clinton and i have differences of opinion are areas such as trade policy and social security. here is the story with regard to social security. it does not get the kind of attention, in my view, it deserves. we have 50 million people on social security. are seniors and disabled veterans trying to get by on $12,000, $13,000 a year or less. people in this day in age cannot get by when you are 85 years of age or 90 years of age on $13,000 a year. my republican colleagues think we should cut social security. i think that is a horrific and

ugly idea. i think we should expand social security benefits. is to doou do that what barack obama talked about in iowa in 2008, lifting the taxable income of the top 1%, making more than 200 $50,000 he year, then you expand benefits by 13,000 dollars a year for people making less than $16,000 on social security. to the best of my knowledge, that is not secretary clinton's view, but i hope she would join the in standing up for the disabled veterans and seniors that are struggling on inadequate social security benefits. you are looking at a senator and former congressman who has led the effort since his first day in congress in the early 1990's against trade agreements like

ttp., and the it is different than secretary clinton's. i'm glad that after talking about how the ttp would be, under great pressure, she opposed it. i think it is a real area of disagreement. i have opposed all of these trade agreements. we have lost zillions of jobs and corporations have shut down in america to go to china and other low-wage countries. if i've elected president, we will make fundamental changes to our trade policies to create good paying jobs in the united states of america -- not china, mexico, or other low-wage countries. on views on trade, our views sosa security, and our view as to which candidate is prepared to stand up to the greed

and irresponsibility of wall street and corporate america. questions? momentum., you have withmessage is resonating new hampshire and iowa. with the backdrop of the e-mail investigation with the fbi, do you regret saying you did not give a damn? sen. sanders: no regrets at all. i would argue the reason we are doing well is that people understand we are trying to run a different kind of campaign. one dealing with real issues .acing the american people the american middle class is disappearing. all new income and wealth is going to the top one percent, and we have a corrupt campaign system that allows

billionaires to buy elections. i will talk about the impact for middle-class and working families, and i will not engage in personal attacks. >> the town hall, one of your young supporters told secretary clinton they feel she is dishonest. characteristics that make a good president, do you view as secretary clinton as dishonest? sen. sanders: same question. with all due work dust with all due respect, that is not with the american people want to see. they're working 50 hours or 60 hours a week. their wages are going down. their kids will have a lower standard of living than they will. i did not want to get in to these personal characterizations. i have known secretary clinton for 25 years. she is a