biggest anticorruption plan since watergate. let me give you a taste of what , startingis about with ending lobbying as we know it. [applause] sen. warren: block the rollbot -- revolving door between wall street and washington. here is one you may never have thought about, make the united states supreme court follow basic rules of ethics. [applause] i could do these all afternoon, but i will do just one more. just one more. you really want to hose out some of the corruption in washington? make every civil person who runs for federal office put their tax returns online. [applause] sen. warren: yeah.

because here's the thing. we need to get off our back foot about the influence of money. we need to be on our front foot. we need to have the courage to call out the influence of money. we need to have the commitment to disrupt the influence of money. we need to have the dedication to say we are going to have a government that is not just always about money, money, money. because here's the thing, we do it, we disrupted, we change it. and now, what is possible opens up in front of us. now what is possible is we can and we can take care of an entire generation of young people. [applause] sen. warren: we can get a green new deal to save our planet. [cheers and applause] sen. warren: we can fight back against gun violence. [cheers and applause] sen. warren: we can make sure

every american has access to free health care. [cheers and applause] thiswarren: we can make investment in us, in our children, in our children's children. all it takes is the courage to get in this fight, and that is why i am running for president. [cheers and applause] yes!warren: [cheers and applause] sen. warren: all right, iowa is ready for this! yeah! i love it! whoo! [cheers and applause] sen. warren: i love it. yes! let's do some questions.

you guys are good. let's do some questions. who has our first question? hi. >> when you get to the white house -- sen. warren: till everyone your name. hoss.name is bev when you get to the white house -- sen. warren: i am already liking this question. [laughter] >> who will you surround yourself with and what kind of leader will you be? warren: that is a very good question. bailey.in, bruce and it is ok. it is good. i think it is a great question. i want you to understand this about me. i want people around me who are smart, who are committed, who are courageous, who will bring their ideas forward.

they may not be the same ideas , but i want to grow and learn from people with other ideas. i want people who are committed to what government is about. can i give you one example? department of education. [applause] my secretary of education will have been a public school teacher. [cheers and applause] of. warren: my secretary education will believe in public education! [applause] sen. warren: my secretary of education will believe public dollars should stay in public schools. [applause] sen. warren: my secretary of

education will believe that child,hild, every regardless of race, regardless of the child's financial background, regardless of the child's gender identity, regardless of anything about that child, every child will be safe and perform well in that school. every child. [cheers and applause] so, let's have someone at the department of education who loves public education and is willing to fight for it. and then, let's replicate that. let's have someone at the environmental protection agency who is there for clean air and clean water! [applause] sen. warren: here is a shocker, someone who believes in science!

[applause] sen. warren: someone who believes the point of the epa is not to enhance the profitability of giant polluters and oil drillers, it is to protect this planet. [applause] sen. warren: ok. i can't stop. i'm going to do one more. that is the department of defense. i'm going to have someone who is not a former lobbyist for the defense industry! [applause] sen. warren: someone who believes the safety of this country is not just about buying making aons, but about stronger through our diplomacy, through our allies. that is the america i want! [applause] sen. warren: yes. i could keep this up, but you get the drift because the drift

is this is the part we have to remember. we have lived for decades with this notion that government is the enemy, government cannot do anything right. reagan spain his words, what are the nine worst words in the english language? "i'm from the government and here to help you." those are not the worst words from the government. "i'm from the government and we don't care about you." that is worse. we need to be an america where our government is our government t. end it works not just for the lobbyists and the billionaires, it is an america that works for the rest of us. that is the kind of people i will surround myself with. [applause] sen. warren: thank you. hi. >> hi, my name is ashley. my question is, how do you plan

to eradicate [indiscernible] and with what funds and how you plan to get those funds? sen. warren: oh, ashley, i got a plan for that. you are going to love this. here is where it starts. let's start with how to pay for it. it is time for a wealth tax in america. [applause] sen. warren: it is time. here is the basic idea. wealth tax. it is on the fortunes above $50 million. the first goldman -- $50 million is free and clear. right? i see people saying this one is not unreasonable. to cents on every dollar after that until you hit $1 billion. that is the basic idea. just so everybody remembers this, anyone here own a family or grew up in a family that owned a home? it is called property tax.

top .10 of 1%, may be there property tax in addition to real estate should include the stock portfolio, the diamonds, the rembrandts, and the yacht. you may have heard there are some billionaires who do not like this. [laughter] sen. warren: some have gone on television and cried. others have run for president. [laughter] [applause] sen. warren: thought it was $.02per than paying a wealth tax. hard for this,ed i had this great idea and followed it through. my answer is good for you. you had a great idea, you got out there and work, good for you. but here is the thing. you built that fortune here in

america, i guarantee you built it at least in part using workers all of us paid to educate. you built it at least in part getting your goods to market on roads and bridges all this helped to pay build. you built it at least in part protected by police and firefighters. all of us help pay their salaries. and here is the thing. we are glad to do it. we are americans. we want to make these investments in opportunity. all we are saying is when you make it big, i mean really big, .10 of 1%, kick in $. 02 so everybody else gets a chance to make it. [applause] sen. warren: $.02. and now, ashley, what can we do with $.02?

here is the list. we can provide universal child care and early education for every baby in this country age zero to five. universal pre-k for every three-year-old and four-year-old in america. exploiting the largely black and brown women who do this work. we can raise the wages of every child care worker and preschool teacher in america! [applause] make anren: we can historic $800 billion investment in our public schools all across america, k-12. we can quadruple the funding for title i schools. every kid needs a good education. [applause]

sen. warren: you got to hear this one from a special ed teacher. for the first time in history, we could fully fund idea. children with disabilities would get the full education they are entitled to. [applause] sen. warren: we could do all of that for our babies, for our we can make and technical school, two-year college, for your college tuition free for anybody who wants an education. yeah. [applause] sen. warren: we can help level the playing field and put $50 billion into our historically black colleges and universities. $.02. same "washington journal" -- $.02 covers every bit of that. plus, let's cancel student loan debt for 43 million americans. [applause]

that is how we build a future in america. we invest in a whole generation. let's do it. thank you, ashley. [applause] sen. warren: hi. i love that, fabulous. >> thank you. my question is, right now, we are seeing totally unprecedented bubbles of activism and engagement. my friends and i grew up in california, colorado, massachusetts. there is a lot of energy. when you are our president, how will you lead us to maintain this engagement and keep the momentum so we are never in a situation again --this situation again? sen. warren: you asked it the right way. you are asking the question, how to plan to actually make these changes? because there's going to be a lobbyist or two who does not like this. think about it. there will be a few billionaires who will say ixnay.

on the floor of the united states senate, i had someone say to me, in that time we got to talk, they said i have been watching this thing on your wealth tax, but you realize you will never get it passed. i said, why not? it is very popular among democrats, independents, and majority of republicans. the person said but the billionaires do not like it. i said this is a democracy. there are a lot more of us than there are of them. yeah. [laughter] [applause] sen. warren: yes. good, that resonates. i can tell. here is the plan. i have been building this grassroots movement since i got in this campaign. really putting a lot into it. i have been doing that partly because i think it is the right way to win. i think it is the right way to repair our democracy.

i think it is the right way we lift up all voices. here is the thing. we are going to win this primary. then we are going to be donald trump in november -- beat donald trump in november. then we get to take off 24 hours to celebrate. and then, it is back to work. because here is the basic idea. i'm not going to try to do this alone, in the same way you cannot do this alone. we magnify our strength when we come out this together. so the way i see this is you have got to have somebody in the white house willing to get in .he fight and we are going to need to keep pushing from the outside. we start with the anticorruption so we can disrupt. that will make it easier to do anything else. and then, we embrace each other's fights as our own. sopull the fights together

this truly is about a first-rate education for every one of our children. this truly is about taking on the existential threat of climate change. this truly is about children who are being killed with gun violence, not just mass shootings, but in black and brown neighborhoods, on sidewalks, in playgrounds. people who are dying from suicide and domestic abuse. we take it on! [applause] sen. warren: we can do this together! that is how we are going to do it. are you in? let's do it! [applause] sen. warren: thank you. i am feeling good about this. hi. >> hi, my name is evelyn. i have autism. what do you do for kids with special needs? [applause] i start by saying

how glad i am that you are here today and that you are asking a question. i want you to be part of this. here is how i see this. we are made up of a lot of different people who have a lot of different talents. when i was little, all three of my older brothers could really sing beautifully and so could my mother. my mother used to sing at weddings and funerals. as a little girl, i could not sing at all. nope. in fact, i still remember overhearing my mother and my brother john talking about bme. when she poor betsy, sings, she cannot carry a tune in a bucket. into thelly walked room and asked if they could get me a bigger bucket. [laughter] sen. warren: but i realized there were something that was

not good at, but there were other things i was really good at. there were other things that were special to me. i was a kid who could talk. i was a kid who could fight. not with my fists but with words, and occasionally with my fists. everybody has something special to bring. everybody has a unique talent, a unique vision, a unique perspective. everyone has something to add to the we are as a people. and so, it is important to me when i think about the plans that i work on for education, but also for housing, and also for employment, when i think plansevery one of our that i think not just about people who look one way but people who look a lot of different ways who come from a lot of different backgrounds and have a lot of different things to add.

a president ultimately is the one who makes the statement of values about what kind of nation we are. [applause] sen. warren: i want to be the nation that values every single person and that lives those values every single day. i hope that is helpful. i am glad you are here. thank you. [applause] sen. warren: thank you, evelyn. thank you. hi. other way. >> sorry. sen. warren: that's ok. >> we are going to do a couple more questions. everyone, get your tickets ready. going 377-3262.

3662.arren: time i was in iowa city, there was a long pause waiting for the number. finally, this woman says i think it is me bye-bye --but i put my used gum in the ticket. but she had it. >> classic iowa city. three cents and have been -- 377-3281. sen. warren: hello. fabulous. we have a future voter. come on over. it is ok. 377-3270. sen. warren: all right, fabulous. come on over. this is terrific. >> my gosh, so many little ones. 377-3264. sen. warren: 3264.

anybody? ok. you got it? we got somebody. good. 3356. the last one, sen. warren: 3356. anybody? right here, all right. fantastic. you got it. thank you very much. who is up next on our questions? uh, if you change or, what would you change it to -- your idea, what would you change it to? [laughter] medicare for all and maybe adding in our puppies and kitties? [applause] i think the question he

wanted was your plan for medicare for all. sen. warren: it is a wonderful question. yearllion americans last did not have a prescription pill because they cannot afford it. think about that. they were sick enough to go to the doctor or had a problem they were worried about enough to go to the doctor. checked it out and said you need a prescription. the person looked at it and said it is that were groceries. it is that were paid the rent on time. 36 million people. that is wrong. it is fundamentally wrong. health care is a basic human right, and we fight for basic human rights. [applause] plan.arren: so here's my do everything a president can do all by herself. defend the affordable

care act. the trump administration is trying to sabotage it. second thing we got to do on the first day is use the power the president already has but does not use to reduce the cost of commonly used prescription drugs. i want to bring down the cost of insulin, at the pens, hiv-aids drugs. hundredsave families of millions of dollars. the next part is very important i me, just like the question got on college. how are you going to pay for what you do? i have shown how we can pay for health care coverage for everyone without raising taxes on middle-class families. we can do this. we can ask the top 1% to pay a little more. we can ask these giant corporations like amazon that are paying nothing in taxes to pay a little more, and we can go

after the tax cheats. that will give us enough money to cover everyone. and here is the thing. we can start in the first 100 days by offering full health care coverage to about 135 million people at no cost. offer it, try it. and we can offer it at a low cost to millions more. let people try it. let them see what it is like to make a health care decision that is between them and their doctor or nurse practitioner or their mental health professional or their physical therapist without some dang insurance companies standing in the middle saying no. [applause] sen. warren: we let people try it. we have shown how to pay for it. we have the coverage paid for. we let people try it. and then we do what you do in a democracy. we vote. i think people will go all the way for medicare for all.

and i will be there to lead that fight. there it is. thank you. [applause] sen. warren: hi, sweetie. >> this is prudence. her question was why you decided to run for president. sen. warren: thank you for the question, prudence. you know, prudence, it is a good question. i know why i wanted to be a teacher because i always knew i wanted to be a teacher, because i like watching people learn. i like learning from them. i never in a million years thought i would run for any elected office, much less for president. about what was happening to working families, what was happening to children who were born into families that were not rich. and i did not like what i saw in our government. that is how i got in the fight. i got in the fight first to

build a consumer agency to protect people who were getting cheated. and then, in a senate race, and now for president of the united states, because i believe we can not our government work just for a thin slice of the top, not just for people already born rich, but i think we can make it work for everyone. to fight for it and to ask more people to join me, including you, prudence. will you do that? good. thank you. [applause] sen. warren: nice job, prudence. hi. >> hi. i am emily. in a recent cbs news story -- sen. warren: tell me your name. >> emily. in a recent cbs news story, a reporter illustrated how much the american population does not understand about the extent of

the personal wealth gap. i would guess that would be the first major step in getting the $.02 wealth tax through congress and forcing the issue a little bit. sen. warren: is this the pie story? >> exactly. sen. warren: have you seen this? you have to check this out. check out cbs pumpkin pie wealth, and take a look at this video. >> i was wondering how you would propose us trying to fight that misunderstanding that people have. sen. warren: it is a great question. basically, so everybody follows it, what this reporter did is he divided americans up into five pie plates. the top 20%, the middle class, the working class, and the poor. he asked people to guess how much pie, how many scientists are going where -- slices are going where.

the bottom line was everybody guest the people at the top got more. they understood that we put that there was still pie going down the line. the answer was they were down to -- the answertime was they were down to the crumbs. by the time you got to the poor, there was nothing left because the top had so much of the pie. the reporter was trying to give you a visual -- visible distribution. the $.02 wealth tax is on accumulated wealth, how much money you have socked away. it, just like a home, it is a property tax. is you idea behind it are growing that fortune every year.

rich people grow their fortunes 6%, 8%, 10% a year. tax does not even shrink your total wealth. say don't grow it quite so fast. you can grow it a little bit slower by putting $.02 into investing in everyone else. here is the thing. just so everybody sees it. americar, the 99% in pay about 7.2% of their total wealth in texas -- taxes. 1% paid less,of 3.2%. here is how we can think about this. we can think about it one of two ways. we can say we will redistribute. we will cut it off and sprinkle it around. or we can say we are going to invest in building a future.

we are going to invest in childcare, canceling student debt, in better public education. to me, the whole question around the wealth tax is about our values. do we think it is more important that the people who already have the biggest hunk of the pie can pie growing that type -- faster while a huge portion of our population cannot even get in the game? what i'm trying to do with the wealth tax is a starting place to say, as a country, we need to live our values. and living our values means asking those at the top to make an investment in an entire generation of young people. it is something democrats like, independents like, republicans like. if we fight for it, we can make it happen. that will start to change our country and structural ways. thank you. [applause] sen. warren: thank you.

>> hi, elizabeth. my name is karen. i wanted to thank you for a couple of things. i have been a fan for many years. i'm so glad you're running for president. i want to thank you for all the work you did in consumer finance reform. [applause] and then, i really wanted to thank you for being such a wonderful role model for women and young girls. [applause] sen. warren: thank you, karen. that is so sweet. [applause] sen. warren: i tell you what, let's wrap this up. and going to wrap this up with a story about a toaster. you did not expect this, right? a young mom, toasters could burn down houses. the toaster ovens did not have an automatic shutoff switch. that meant you could put four slices of bread on the tray,

flick it on, hear the baby cry, run to the other end of the house,ot we, and by the time you got that, flames could be leaping off the coast six to eight inches. then catch kitchen curtains and cabinets on fire. ask me how i know. [laughter] to. warren: all i'm willing confess to is one year around this time, my daddy bought me a fire extinguisher for christmas. but along came a federal agency, consumer product safety commission, and they said enough, we are done. you cannot sell a toaster in america that burns down people's houses. and that was it. they put safety switches on the toasters and that was the end of it. in america, 2000's mortgages, home mortgages, had become so dangerous that they

had a one in five chance of costing a family their home through foreclosure. only this time, the federal government was not on the side of people. it was deep in the pocket of the banks. and it told them, keep selling those mortgages because those mortgages are making profits. right? they did that right up until they crashed the economy in 2008. so, i had an idea. i was not an elected politics. this is before i ever got there. i had an idea for a consumer agency like the toaster agency only you could not cheap people cards,gages, credit student loans, payday loans. i love it. consumer finance nerds, my people. here is the thing. i went to washington with this idea. i knocked on doors. democrat, republican, i did not care. i pitched to everybody on this.

it is a financial crisis, let's do this. i discovered after a while, i was getting the same two answers. part one, democrat/republican, that is a good idea. it would actually make a real difference. structural change. the other was don't even try. wall street will be against it. the big banks will be against it. republicans will be against it and half the democrats will be against it. you will never get it done. i get it. big structural change is hard. but it was the right thing to do. [applause] sen. warren: yes. so we got in that fight. we took on the big banks. we took on wall street. and in 2010, president barack obama signed that agency into law. [applause]

sen. warren: we can make government work for the people. we can do it. we have done it. now, we have had three years of donald trump. a lot of people around this country are afraid. they are afraid for their families, for the neighbors. they are afraid for the children locked up in detention centers at our borders. afraid for the children in lockdowns in our public schools. they are afraid for women, for people of color, for lgbtq people, for trans people, all of whose rights are up for grabs in this united states supreme court. they are afraid. they are afraid for our nation, afraid for our planet. and the danger is real.

our democracy hangs in the balance. but when we see a challenge like this, what is our response? will we cower? will we panic? or will we fight back? me? i have fighting back! that is why i am here! [applause] sen. warren: fighting back! act ofg back is an patriotism! [cheers and applause] to. warren: we fought back build this nation. we fought back against the scourge of slavery to preserve a union. we fought back against the great depression to rebuild an economy. we fought back against fascism to protect our democracy. americans are at our

best when we see a big problem and we face it head-on and fight back. that is who we are! [applause] sen. warren: yes! [cheers and applause] sen. warren: yes! [cheers and applause] timewarren: this is not a for small ideas. to see big a time problems and nibble around the edges. no, this is our time. our time in history. understand this. i am not running a campaign that is shaped by consultants. i am not running a campaign with proposals carefully designed not to offend big donors. i passed that stop sign a long time ago.

[applause] sen. warren: i am running a campaign based on a lifetime of fighting for working people. i am running a campaign from the heart because i believe that 2020 is our moment in history. [cheers and applause] sen. warren: 2020 is our moment. and if you believe that, then i am asking you to commit today to caucus for me, to sign up, to volunteer, to do some phone banking, knocking on doors. go to elizabethwarned.com and find a place near you. get in this fight because this moment in history will not come our way again. this is the moment. dream big. fight hard. and win!

>> ♪ers and appe] [applause] [cheers and applause] >> good job. [applause] >> where going to be having a selfie line with our second ley, overwarren, bai banner.n with bailey" >> ♪

[applause] >> ♪ [indistinguishable conversations] [aretha franklin's

"respect"] ♪ >> from west high school in iowa city, a campaign rally with senator elizabeth warren. about 900 people in attendance marking her 115th event on the campaign trail. c-span's live coverage continues. in a moment, we will take you to waterloo, iowa, for a campaign appearance with former vice president joe biden. he is running behind schedule. first, we want to share with you this headline from " the wall street journal." joining us on the phone is ken thomas on the bus heading to the event in waterloo, iowa. thanks for being with us. host: give us a sense of the day and what the former vice president has been doing. the former vice president has been campaigning in eastern iowa today.

by a freshmanined member of congress from the area who endorsed him and also john kerry, the 2004 nominee. he has been campaigning for the vice president and serving as a closer at these events and trying to encourage people to caucus for him. i think the thing that has stood is theay from biden contrast he is trying to make as it relates to the other candidates. he will not name them by name, but he will say if you want to get something done on health care, if you want to get something done on gun control, if you want to make progress on climate change, i'm the one who has a record of actually doing things. and he will say plans are not enough, that you actually need to be able to build a coalition and get these things through

congress, which biden says he has a record of doing so. he is running behind schedule. let me go to your piece. you are calling it a season for expectation games when it comes to monday. tell us what would can expect monday night when the results come in. guest: iowa is so much an issue of meeting and exceeding expectations. it is not a matter of gaining a massive number of delegates. there are only 31 delegates in the contest. it is about growing momentum and being able to tell your supporters that you have the viability, you have the wherewithal to go to the distance. we will be watching very closely not only the order of finish but how they stack up, how close they are together.

what is unique about this caucus is the amount of data we are going to get from the results. in past cycles, we have gotten the state delegate equivalent, which is a measure of the support a candidate has across the state. but this time, we are going to get two sets of raw votes. raw support someone has at the start of the caucus process the vote at the end. what it does in effect is it gives candidates a chance to attach themselves to one, that data, see, look, this is the reason why i should be able to keep going. in terms of the expectations, i think bernie sanders is probably someone with the best trajectory going into the caucus. polls have shown him rising in

recent weeks. and we're going to have a very important poll coming out tonight in a few hours, the des moines register poll, that has often served as a very strong indicator of what may happen. but sanders seems to be the one with a lot of momentum. and after that it is kind of a jump ball. biden is trying to finish strongly. buttigieg probably have seen their numbers decline, but they built up strong organizations. then amy klobuchar is -- host: that is ken thomas. we lost you a moment ago but let's go back to the metrics. what i hear you saying is that may not be the case if you are close fourth or fifth, you can say you met expectations. is that correct? guest: