Sen. Elizabeth Warren testifies during a hearing on Capitol Hill about the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg)
17 August 13
hen
I first started thinking about running for the United States Senate, I
talked with people in living rooms and backyards all across
Massachusetts.
I wanted to hear what people thought about me running,
and more importantly, about their concerns, frustrations, and hopes for
the future.
And I wanted to have a conversation about what I saw
as two fundamentally different visions for America. Are we a country
that says, "I've got mine, the rest of you are on your own"? Or are we a
better people than that?
At one of my first stops at a home in Andover,
Massachusetts, someone asked me a question about building a future. I
responded by saying "nobody got rich on his own." Somebody else recorded
my answer and stuck it up on YouTube a few weeks later. Today, that
little video has been seen more than a million times!
I'm still amazed by that.
This month is the two-year anniversary of when I
started traveling around the Commonwealth, and in so many ways, it has
been a long two years for our country. And it's been a long two years
for me too of campaigning and serving in the Senate.
But I still feel passionately about what I said back
then, and I feel even more passionately about it as I see what's
happening in Washington.
Two years later, I still believe down to my toes that
we are a people that do better when we invest in our future, when we
invest in education and infrastructure so that everyone can get ahead.
I've been working hard the past eight months in Washington, but I don't need to tell you that there's still so much work to do.
Big oil companies -- some of the most profitable
companies on the planet -- are still guzzling down billions of dollars
in subsidies, while Head Start and Meals on Wheels funding are cut in
sequestration. Millionaires and billionaires still don't pay their fair
share in taxes, but student loans continue to increase and the policy of
the federal government is now to profit off our young people getting a
higher education.
In other words, the game is still rigged to make the
rich and powerful even more rich and powerful. And that means we've got
more work to do to help make sure the next kid can get ahead and the kid
after that and the kid after that.
As I have traveled back and forth across Massachusetts
over the past two years, many people have told me about the challenges
they face and their hopes for the future. And every day that I go to the
United States Senate I carry those hopes, along with a determination to
give families a fighting chance.
It's been two years, but one other thing is still true: I can't do it alone. We're in this together.
1 comment:
Senator Warrren does absolutely nothing to explain how the "game is rigged." Nor does she spell out a proposal of any kind to explain h9ow she would "un-rig" the system. In short, she piously mouths a lot of generalities with not a single specific, except the common liberal complaint that "the rich" .... who already pay the lion's share of taxes .... don't pay thier fair share. Just what would their fair share be?
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