YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Bennet

lines on the record: 77
first: 2019-07-02
most recent: 2019-07-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And I am not going into this deal believing that we can trust that that will happen any more than I signed on to the Iran deal because I thought we could trust what Iran was going to do. We don't know. We don't have any idea. The thing we can do is control what we can control. And what we control is what our agenda looks like, what our message looks like. We can make an effort to really talk to America broadly. And I think we would find that if we did that, we're running against a candidate who's actually really, really weak because he's so far outside of the ideological mainstream of America that I think he can be beaten.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On winning red states, I think there are some still, but there are many fewer than when I got there in 2010, because that was the beginning of the Tea Party. Bob Bennett on a Saturday morning in Utah that then led to Rand Paul, that then led to everything else, the cascading thing that has ended up with Bob Quarker going away. What's her name coming back in? I mean, you know, the trade has always been more toward the Tea Party side than not in the last 10 years. Still, there are some people, though, that I think would be willing to try to work, particularly if they felt that they were imperiled politically if they didn't.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It doesn't matter whether we're not saying your view, Dan Pfeiffer, I'm just saying if one's view is that it doesn't matter whether we perpetuate these instruments of self-government, which is, I think, the Freedom Caucus's view and Trump's view, then none of this matters. The quicker you get to an autocracy, the better off you are. From our point of view, Inheriting a legacy about making this country more democratic, more fair and more free, and wanting to do that again for the next generation. I think that's too much sacrifice that we're asking for the country. And it's not expecting enough leadership from our elected officials and frankly from all of us. There's a lot we can do here to win. And I guess that's my argument is let's go out and win.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Supreme Court justices, and when we got parity on each of those, we'll go back to the old rules where we actually had a reason to be bipartisan. Today, these judges that are going on these courts, I mean, my God, they are people who have written racist briefs. And in the old days, Republican senators, not the old days, 10 years ago, five years ago, Republican senators would have said, I'm not voting for that person. You're not going to be able to get the Democrats. Today, it's become this badge of honor. Do you support Donald Trump or not? You have no excuse for not voting for these people. And that means it's a whole different quality of person that's populating these seats. And I'm sorry, we got stuck on the judges because my instructions are never to talk about the judges. But it goes for the institutions generally. If your view is that...”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To the process. I think the judges were done. I think the next generation is going to inherit our stupidity and our inability to lead and do what needed to be done. The answer to the way we've done with all these vacancies, the flip side of that is Betsy DeVos wouldn't be secretary of education and Pruitt wouldn't have been secretary of whatever it is he was secretary of before they ran him out of town and we wouldn't be accepting this degraded view of what it all should look like. I don't think it can be fixed. I mean, if you were in a perfect world, what you would say is, look, we were insane for a moment. We had this moment of madness. We were overcome by the Koch brothers. And we were overcome by cable TV hosts. And we were overcome by social media and we abandoned our best traditions as a result. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to let everybody loot the same number of district court judges and circuit court judges.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Argument in California. We did not make that argument in 2016. Donald Trump won a cartoon argument on the economy, and if we are going to continue to lose to that argument, then I accept that we're doomed. But I think we can do better than that. I really do. I think we have to”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the short term, how can look the majority of people in this country believe that climate change is real and we should be doing something about it and that it's an urgent problem. They may have some disagreements about how to deal with it. I think we lost the climate argument because we lost the jobs argument. That's what I believe. I think we lost the economic argument to Donald Trump preposterously, ridiculously. We didn't make an affirmative argument on the economy in 2016, and we didn't make an argument on the economy in the context of climate change. If you're down in Miami, Florida, as we were last week, for the debates down there, it's impossible to argue that not contending with climate is better for climate is not better for the economy than not contending with climate. It's impossible to make that argument in Colorado. It's impossible to make that argument.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think climate is so much more urgent and so much more grave than that that accepting that half a loaf is the same thing as not getting anything done. That's my view.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that's the alternative we're living right now. And we're living that alternative because we freaking elected a climate denier president of the United States. That should never have happened.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some people say it was Robert Bork. Some people say it was when Democrats started filibustering circuit court judges. Some people say it was when Republicans were appointing people that were so odious.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not okay with me that I grew up in a country where Where the advice and consent was done by senators in a bipartisan way, establishing the independence of the judiciary. And now my kid has to endure a judiciary that's just partisan like the rest of our government because a bunch of politicians in Washington couldn't figure out how to do something else. It's not our democracy. It's their democracy. We've got to find a way to preserve it.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll go back and run for the Senate again. And I hope that I'll get re elected and go on to be constructive, play a constructive role for the country. But this is a moment in our country's history when we need all of us to step up here. The carelessness with which we treated our democracy allowed us to elect Donald Trump president of the United States is something we can never repeat again. And the fact that he got elected once means he can get elected again. If we're not careful and we need to be the worst thing we could possibly do is let this guy get elected again. But on the back end of beating him, we also have to figure out a way to govern the country again. I know that people here are going to shoot me that came with me on the judges, but I have to say one more thing about it, which is...”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You even said it. I mean, yeah, it hurt my feelings. The Republican chairman, when I was appointed to begin with the Republican chairman in Colorado, called me an accidental senator, but it was true. It was true. I had been in business and I'd been a school superintendent. By the way, a job that I really loved. And what I thought my job when I got to the Senate was to represent a state that was a third, a third, a third Republican, Democrat, and independent. And I thought my job was to support what you guys were trying to do. And my job was to do my part to show the American people that our system wasn't broken, that it could still work. And I think I held that end of the bargain the whole time that I've been in the Senate. It is broken. And it doesn't work. And we can't spend another 10 years like we did the last 10 years and expect to do our job as Americans. I believe that. And that's why I'm running for president. And if I lose, I'll...”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Democratic majority in the Senate. And to get a Democratic majority in the Senate, we need to run on an agenda that is appealing to people in the states that you are talking about, that can allow us to win elections at a moment where you've got somebody as corrupt, as demonstrably incapable of being President of the United States who doesn't believe in the rule of law, doesn't believe in freedom of the press, doesn't believe in the independence judiciary, doesn't believe in the most profound traditions of this country. That's a guy we should be who's a climate denier on top of all of it. That's somebody who we should be able to beat. And I think we can beat them if we've got an agenda that's unifying for the American people. And to me, to go back to your earlier point, that actually is not about who's progressive and who's a moderate. It's about who's got an agenda that's going to appeal.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think the party has. I think that when I say the party, I mean our Democratic base, when I'm in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina, they're the same as the folks in Colorado. They want universal health care. They don't want to take it away from 180 million people to get there. They want us to act urgently on climate change in a way that really is durable. They want economic opportunity for everybody. That's what they want. I think there is a social media component here to the Democratic Party that some people have called the Twitter base of the Democratic Party that has moved way to the left and you couldn't elect the Twitter base in Colorado. You couldn't elect them in Arizona. And what my argument is I'm fine with all that. I mean, people can do what they want to do. But to go back to this sort of central thesis of this whole discussion, it really would be better if we had it.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now this is a fact of our political system that we did not have to deal with when we wrote the Gang of Eight Bill, and we are going to have to deal with going forward. And I don't think there's any way to deal with it other than by going straight at these guys. We've got to go straight at the Fox guys. We've got to go straight at these Republicans and stand for what the American people want, which is a rational immigration system that supports the rule of law and reflects our history as a nation of immigrants.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“John Tester, who barely won in Montana, tells a story this time about. Being in a tractor on his farm in Big Sandy, Montana, and he's listening to the radio and the trumps rolled into town to support his opponent and to attack John. And John Jesin, completely mystified because he's talking about MS, is it 13? MS-13? Mystified by that. Because there hasn't been an MS13 person when 1,000 miles of big sandy Montana.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“2013, Ted Cruz shut the government down. And his numbers went up. And the Republican Party's numbers went down. And the Freedom Caucus went to Boehner and they said, it turns out we don't need a big tent party. It turns out we don't need to do rational things. We don't need to legislate. All we have to do is break the government and we're going to win. And that is their operating theory. And that has been the theory since then. I also think, and I could, you know, I don't have a monopoly on wisdom. I certainly don't. I don't believe there's this massive that there was this massive latent anti-immigrant sentiment in America when Donald Trump rode his escalator down from Trump Tower and called Mexicans rapists. I think it's been created by Trump, Fox News, and by to their everlasting shame.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In what way? But here's what we did. So Rein's Priebus, who was the Republican chair, you'll remember, did the autopsy in which he said maybe if we didn't weren't so negative about gay people, maybe if we didn't hate Latino people, we would do better in the polls and we wouldn't lose to the likes of Barack Obama. Remember that? And then what happened was Ted Cruz shut the government down in whatever, 13?”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's not a defensive bone in my body on immigration. My landing place is the work I did in the 2013 Gang of Aid, and I can defend that work in any county in this country, I think, Republican or Democratic. People may disagree with it. They may not think it was a good idea, but I'm in no sense worried about being disqualified by it. And actually, I think, as you said, most people support it. If you look at the polling, the elements of the Gang of A poll much higher than anything else, including Trump's wall.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For new freedoms or the four freedoms. That's what he was doing. The conditions haven't changed. The political terrain is the same. I think we just need to be as smart as he is, and we need to be not less strategic than McConnell is. And Trump's no genius in any of this, but he does have a preternatural sense of how to disqualify people based on a grain of truth or a shred of truth. And we shouldn't give it to him.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“High, very high. Look, he's trying. Every day they try to disqualify us. And as you were saying earlier, you know, that the conversation I had with Ezra, he's always going to do it, and they're always going to do it. That's true. I accept that point. That's not the point I'm trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is that Franklin Roosevelt never called himself a socialist. He was called a socialist over and over again, but what he was for was American democracy. What he was a Democrat. What he wanted was the survival of this republic. And what he expressed was the need for us to have what he called.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did not because I know that Barack Obama was able to enforce that law without separating children from their parents at the border and without giving the American people the sense that we believed in having open borders. And I think we can do that again. Look, Trump has every reason to want to conflate the refugee crisis on the border with our immigration issues. And we shouldn't fall into that trap, in my view.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Obama folks were doing. We could have had 350 miles of steel slats today if we had done the Gang of Aid Bill. We doubled the number of border security agents on the border. Lynn's Graham used to say that those guys would be able to hold hands at the border. They'd be standing so close to each other. So when Trump says that Democrats are for open borders, that's a lie. I mean, it's demonstrably false because every single Democrat who is in the Senate when that bill was on the floor voted for it, which is more than I can say for the Republicans.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think funding his wall makes any sense. We had in the bill that I was just talking about 350 miles of fence, which he now calls steel slats. That's weird. He doesn't care whether it's concrete now or steel slats. And he goes down there and stands next to this like two or three steel slats that are left over from what.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trump's wall and all this stuff. I mean, we had real 21st century security that we were going to put in place that basically would allow us to see every single inch of the border and understand who had come in and overstayed their visa and who needed to go back. And we have none of that because of the tyranny of the Freedom Caucus in the House”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there are other countries that would want to take theirs. And over the long haul, we've got to figure out what we can do so that we don't have failed states 1,500 miles from our border that are perpetually sending refugees to the southern border. On immigration, I think it would change. There are things that have changed since 2013, but in the main, the deal that was struck there, which is a pathway to citizenship for the $11 million that are undocumented, the most progressive of DREAM Act ever conceived, much less passed in the Senate. The agricultural jobs provision, and $46 billion of border security is probably the deal that could get struck again.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I stand by the original gang of AIDS. I think that we have two distinct issues that we need to contend with right now. One is the immigration issues, which represent the gang of AIDS. The other is the refugee crisis at the border. I don't think we should be making immigration law based on the refugee crisis at the border. Trump is acting like we're this pathetic, weak country. He's not acting like we're strong, we're powerful, we're wealthy, and by the way, humane. And if we were behaving that way, we'd be spending the money that's necessary to create a set of conditions for people at the border, sending lawyers down there, making sure people got this stuff adjudicated. We'd be leading a conversation in the hemisphere with everybody, Canada, in Latin America, to say, what is it we're going to do to all carry a share of the refugees that are coming from the Northern Triangle countries? We certainly would need to take our share.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have healthcare. But now it's 10 years later, 10 years of paying for emergency room visits, 10 years of classrooms that aren't saved, 10 years of these guys unwilling to do anything. I think obviously the best thing to do would be to pass comprehensive immigration reform and to deal with the refugee crisis that we have at the border.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Colleagues who hate the Affordable Care Act already, that that should be available. So we're going to have to figure out how that goes. And I do think the politics of this are very complicated. I think it would be dishonest to say otherwise.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that substantively the reason that people put their hands up is that people are here and they're going to need health care. And the way they get their healthcare today is through the emergency room, which we pay for, which is ridiculously expensive. And as somebody who used to be a school superintendent, I know firsthand that it does no good for kids that are American citizens who have had inoculations to sit in classrooms with kids who haven't been inoculated. That's a bad thing. And we should figure out how to deal with that. It is true that that represents a change politically. I mean, when we negotiated the gang of aid immigration bill, the Republicans insisted that the undocumented people be banned from having healthcare because their argument was we're never going to be able to convince our”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You remember the politics of that? Imagine a world where our offer is, and if you like your insurance, we're going to take it away from you. I might be for Bernie's plan if we didn't have an existing system because there are a lot of merits to it. But we do have an existing system. And I think this is an issue we can win on. Think about this. Those guys spent years and years threatening to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And we were on defense all those years. Barack Obama always said he said there's going to come a time when you're not going to be on defense anymore. He was right. It was when we defeated the repeal attempt in the Senate. The next week, Bernie introduced his Medicare for All, and these folks signed up to it, and then we're on defense on that bill instead of being on offense on universal health care, which is where we should be, I think, as a party.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm sure they are, and that's up to them. They have to run their race. My thing is we just got to beat Donald Trump at the end of the day here. And so we have to have an agenda that is going to appeal to the American people. And it's not just about disqualing us as socialists, it's about disqualifying us as people that want to take away 180 million people's insurance. Think about it. You remember what the pushback was when Barack Obama said if you like your insurance, you can keep it. And a couple million people maybe lost their insurance because they had those plans that didn't meet the bear. Right? You remember that?”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Bernie, at least, is honest about what's in his plan. Bernie has been very clear that what his plan does is make private insurance illegal except for what he calls cosmetic insurance, which is, I guess, insurance for cosmetic surgery, plastic surgery. That is the plan. And so people that have signed up for that plan that are in this primary have signed up to a plan that Bernie is being honest about. I'm not sure everybody's being as honest as Bernie is being about it. And it really matters because... It's the difference between running on a plan that the majority of Americans support and running on a plan that only 33% of Americans support.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because it's so deeply unpopular. I mean, once you understand just the fact that it takes health insurance away from 180 million people, its support falls into the low 30s. When you add the taxes on that, its support falls into the low 30s. And that's the way people in Colorado see it. And I'm sure in Arizona and I'm sure in North Carolina”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think that it would be very hard for a Democrat to lose Colorado next fall in the Senate race Unless they're for Medicare for all.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like many countries. I mean, Australia in many ways is the best example. They've got great health outcomes for the people there, and they've got a mix of public and a mix of private.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's simpler than the Medicare for America plan. And I think subsequently it's better than Bernie's plan. I just think Bernie's wrong on the policy here. I think it's a lot better to give people an option to get to, I mean, my desire here is to get to universal health care as fast as we possibly can. That's what we need to do. There are millions of people in America who are making too much money to be on Medicaid, but not enough money to afford private insurance. They desperately need a solution. And I think finishing the job on Obamacare with the public option that we should have passed back then is the best way of doing it because it gives folks a choice and it also allows the public option to compete down the price of private insurance in the country, which I think will help as well. That's why I think it's better.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not how they voted, just getting caught up in national politics and looking like it's the National Democratic Party and it's not about an opportunity agenda. It's not about trying to drive economic growth for people. It's about the McConnell and these guys, the Freedom Caucus have so successfully delegitimized the federal government that that's a huge problem that we got to catch up to. But I take your point. I mean, they were really good candidates in those places, but they couldn't carry that burden.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think those guys, this isn't the only reason they lost, but I think they paid a very heavy price because of Kavanaugh, the Kavanaugh hearings. And how they.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Propose solutions that are broadly popular among the American people, a public option, for example, versus Medicare for all. That's one example, but there are many others. Something that's broadly popular, and then go out to the country and fight for it and make sure that the country understands that McConnell is misleading them about what he's saying, which he is. And at a certain point, you either achieve victory that way, highly unlikely, or you change the outcomes of elections so that you can close over these guys. We live in a democracy. I mean, the tyranny of the minority will continue to persist in this country, whether you have the filibuster or not, if we don't win elections based on a broad policy agenda that the American people can get behind. And I think that's what we're going to have to do. When I say it's not just one election, it's a lot.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, he's not going to do anything without being forced to do it. I mean, he's not interested in these issues. And I write in my book, which is called The Land of Flickering Lights, based on some work we all did together, that Mitch McConnell is impervious to give and take unless he's taking everything, which he almost always is, which is true. And so you have to force him. And I'm assuming for this the purpose of this, that he's still there, because that's what you said. I don't think there's any other way to do it than to...”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe there is. It's not a dumb and naive question. There are a lot of libertarian think tank type folks who are for this kind of thing because they see it as a way of addressing poverty without adding a bunch of bureaucracy to it. So I think there's a world, Marco Rubio has worked on some of this stuff. There are other people that have looked at it. And I think that it's the kind of proposal that in a rational world we'd be able to work on.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“District and their families. It's that no matter what they do, they can't get out of poverty. And I think the Bennett Brown Bill, which is the American Family Act, combined with the Brown Bennett Bill, which is a big increase to the earned income tax credit, combined with paid family leave, combined with an increase in the minimum wage could make an enormous difference in this country. Just my bill alone, the American Family Act, the professors that have looked at it say that it would reduce childhood poverty in America by almost 40%. It would end $2 a day poverty in America for America's poorest children and all for the less than 3% of the cost of Medicare for all.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can. Yeah, it's called the American Family Act. It's a dramatic expansion of the child tax credit. It takes it up to $3,600 a year for a kid under the age of six, $3,000 for a kid older than six. And one of the really important parts of it is instead of having it be an annual payment, it pays out every month. So that's about $300 a kid for people that have a kid or two. That makes a really material difference. My state has one of the greatest economies on the planet. And if I had to summarize the last 10 years of my town halls, it would be that people come and say because our wages haven't gone up and because expenses have gone up, we can't afford housing, healthcare, higher education, and early childhood education, no matter how hard we work. If I think about the people that don't come to my town halls because they're so poor that they're working and working and working, it's that they, but I think about the kids that were in my old school.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You wouldn't send a person there unless you had such a degraded sense of what we were doing there that it seemed like a suitable thable thing to do. And I think we need to elevate our view of all of that.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why would anybody want to work in a place with a 9% approval rating? And there's an answer to that. If you think you've been sent there to dismantle the federal government, having it be at 9% suits you just fine. If you're going there to expand opportunity for people to change the tax law so it actually gives the American people a chance to get out of poverty if they're in poverty a chance to make a paycheck pay again, then it makes it much harder for you to do your job. And I think that's the challenge that we confront now because the degradation of all of this makes it harder for us to do our work, not easier for us to do our work. And the fact that I would absolutely believe Mitch McConnell, given the opportunity, would do the same thing, leads me to conclude that we've got a job to do to change our politics and restore these institutions. Dan, there's a reason there's a guy in the White House who is a reality TV star.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I absolutely believe he would have done it. I absolutely believe he would have done it. There's no question in my mind, but I think I believe we should expect more out of our elected officials than we have been delivered on this issue, for example, in the last 10 years. When I was in law school, and so I don't accept the degradation of our institutions in this way. And I think it's worth fighting for them to make sure they're not degraded because the people who win when it's degraded are the Freedom Caucus. I used to walk around, I would land at Denver International Airport when we were doing some idiotic thing in Washington, and I wish that I had a paper bag to put over my head because I was so embarrassed. And I would wonder.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or most Democrats in Washington don't agree with my position. But I think that we set the precedent and we set the predicate for McConnell to be able to do his dirty work, which is what he did. What you asked what the alternative was. I think the alternative was another gang of 14 to say we're going to head this off. We headed it off before. We headed it off even in the same term as when we confronted this. And I think there was a feeling at the time that it was just too late. We had to give in to this. And I wish we hadn't done it. I don't think we needed to.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And not be able to fill the sponsorship. I think one of the great disappointments of the Obama administration was that there were more vacancies at the end of the first term than there were at the beginning. There were more at the end of the second term than there were at the beginning, and that's a huge problem. I think that the short-term gain of getting three people on the DC circuit is way overwhelmed by what has happened as a result of the Trump people. I wouldn't expect you to agree with my position, by the way. Most Democrats don't agree with my position.”
2019-07-02 · Pod Save America · 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source