 get started here. Good afternoon, I'm Pat Moulton, and I'm the interim president here at Vermont Technical College. And we are very happy to welcome you to Vermont Technical College today. Especially happy to welcome so many wonderful VTC students. And we're especially pleased to have Senator Sanders here today, a big supporter of higher education, and a big supporter of education beyond high school. And at Vermont Tech, our graduates earn the fifth highest wage post-graduation of any college or university in Vermont, and graduates have the third lowest debt of any education investment. And we have 100% placement rate of our graduates continuing into a job in their chosen field or higher education within six months. We are the seventh best college for veterans, according to the US News and World Reports, and the 11th best college for veterans, according to Military Times. And that, my friends, is in the entire United States. A high school sophomore or junior, you ought to be looking into the Vermont Academy of Science and Technology, where your high school senior can attend Vermont Tech with a tuition picked up by the state of Vermont, and graduate with a high school diploma and credits to record towards a college degree. Please visit our table over here for more information about the excellent programs that we have here at Vermont Tech. And while you're there, take a look at this amazing piece of art that one of our students, Shana Lindwood McLaughlin, has prepared. After so many of Vermont's quintessential essence in this painting, it's amazing. So, Shana, amazing job. Good for you. It's a pleasure to introduce to you our Vermont Tech student council president, Dima Alnami, who will introduce the senator. Thank you, guys. Thank you for being here. This is a wonderful turnout. Senator Bernie needs no introduction, but I'll still say a few things about him. Bernie Sanders is serving the second term of the United States Senate after winning reelection in 2012 with 71% of the vote. His previous 16 years in the House of Representatives make him the longest-serving dependent member of Congress in American history. We're tirelessly in his 26 years in Congress on issues that affect the needs of the people that government often ignores, like the warping families, the middle class, the irritability, children, and the poor. Senator Sanders, or Bernie, as he is known across the country, electrified the nation with his 26th presidential campaign. Won in 22 states in the primaries and some 13 million votes, leading the voice of the international stage, leading the effort to address very serious problems like wealth, income inequality, and for policies that will help grow the middle class. He has a leader for civil rights, affordable health care, higher education, environmental sanity, and vicious defender of our veterans. Thank you, Senator Sanders, for all you have done for us and for getting young minds interested in politics like myself. Thank you. To Vermont's U.S. Senator, Bernie Sanders. I appreciate everybody being here. What I wanted to do was just chat for three, four hours. That's only the Senate fully. That's some questions. I think the main point that I wanna make is that politics and democracy really is not complicated. I think media and some folks make it seem very complicated, but really isn't. What it is supposed to be is people coming together as we hold this afternoon to talk about the problems that we face as a community, as a state, as a nation, as a world and figure out how we go forward. That's about it. It is not supposed to be billionaires buying elections. It is supposed to be one person, one vote. It is supposed to be civil discourse hearing each other out and learning from each other. So what I wanna do on this afternoon is just to give you my views as your senator of what I see as the major problems facing our country. And I wanna talk about a little bit where I think we should be going. And I wanna talk a little bit about where President Trump is taking us, which is not the direction that I would like to see us go. All right, so what are the issues? First of all, in determining what the issues are, you're not gonna get it from TV or the front pages of the newspaper. We, as people, as eight people, we have gotta go into our own hearts and ask ourselves what are the real issues? And most of the time, the media gets it wrong. So what are the issues? The issues are, in my mind, that despite a huge breakthrough in technology, which you guys know about, as people who are familiar with technology, which is making every worker in this country more productive, we're producing more with fewer workers. Yet despite that, for the last 40 years, we have seen a shrinking middle class. On the Republican administrations, on the Democratic administrations. What does that mean? It means that median family income for that family right in the middle of the economy is about $1,400 less than it was 30 years ago. It means that in Vermont today, there are people who are working, maybe people in this room, who are working two or three jobs trying to couple together the income that they need to take care of their family and maybe some healthcare. It means that there are mothers in this room today who may be making $25,000, $30,000, $40,000 a year and have a baby and need to have good quality childcare for that baby but can't afford the 10 or 15,000 bucks that that childcare costs. It means obviously here today that there are young people who are going into debt in order to get the education that they need and in some cases, people in this country are paying off that debt for decades. It means that for the first time in the modern history of America, the young generation, the generation of the students here today will likely have a lower standard of living than their parents. Throughout our history, what America has been about, certainly the case in my family, well, we didn't have any money but the goal was my dad worked very hard, my mom worked very hard so their kids could do better than they did. That is the case in our family. And that's what parents want. They want to work hard so their kids do better. But for the first time in the modern history of this country, for many families, that will not be the case. When we talk about declining middle class, it means that over the last 30 or so years, as a result of disastrous trade policies, corporate America has thrown millions of workers out on the street, moved to jobs in Mexico, China, and other low-wage countries. And many of those workers in Vermont and elsewhere who lost their manufacturing jobs, others down in Springfield last night used to be a great manufacturing city, not the case anymore. Many of the new jobs being created pay substantially less than the jobs that were lost. Put yourself in the place of a 50-year-old worker who worked in a plant for 30 years, made a decent wage, had decent healthcare, made me a pension if you had a union. You lose that job and now you're working in some service industry for 10 bucks an hour. What the decline of the middle class means is that in America today, almost half of older workers, workers between 55 and 64, do you know how much money they have in the bank as they move toward retirement? Anyone wanna guess? Zero. Being a sip with yourself in the head of a 60-year-old worker, somebody who's worked his or her entire life, and you're gonna stop working in five years and you've got zero in the bank and then you've got people in Washington talking about cutting social security or cutting Medicaid. You're nervous, you're frightened, and you should be. This is the wealthiest country in the history of the world and that is a point that I wanna underline five times over. Because we should not be talking about all of those problems in the midst of so much wealth. But most people in America don't know we are the wealthiest country in the history of the world because almost all of that wealth and all of that income is going to the people on top. Today in America, the top one-tenth of one percent. Now I know that for a month second, you guys are good at arithmetic. I'm not talking about one percent, I'm talking about one-tenth of one percent, owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. I'm talking about one family, the Walton family, owning more wealth than the bottom 42% of the American people. Now you don't see this much on TV. No one wants to talk about it a whole lot because it is both economically and morally indefensible. Not just wealth, wealth is accumulated income. It is income. And right now, while in Vermont and all over this country, you have people working incredibly long hours. I don't know how many of you know that in the United States of America, we are the hottest working people of almost any major country on earth. We work the longest hours of almost any major country. 100 years ago, some of you may remember in your textbooks in school. No, not 100 years ago. Yeah. 100 years ago, as you may have seen in your textbooks. How's that, that better? No. There were pictures, and I remember these pictures of workers demonstrating, big bangers. What were they demonstrating for, I don't know? What were they demonstrating for? Demonstrating for unions, what else did they demonstrate? They were demonstrating for a 40 hour work week. Because they were saying, you know, we're not animals, we're not beasts of bird. We want to spend time with our families. We want some leisure activities, maybe we want to study. We want to work 40 hours a week. Today, a significant majority of Americans that work 40 hours a week, they work 50 or 60 hours a week. And as I go around the country, I see a lot of people who are physically exhausted. I see moms and dads who don't have time to spend with their kids, because dad's working 3,000 and mom's working 2,000. That's what it means when you have a middle class in decline. What it means is that today, despite all of the hard work of working families, 52% of all new income generated goes to the top, 1%. So what it means in English is that the very, very rich are doing phenomenally well. Since the year 2000, we have seen a 10 fold increase in billionaires in America. Very rich are doing very well. Middle class continues to shrink. And we got 43 million people living in poverty, including many in the state of Vermont who worry how they put food on the table tomorrow for their kids. That's the economic reality. What's the political reality? Political reality is that as a result of a disastrous Supreme Court decision called Citizens United, by a five to four vote, by a five to four vote, Supreme Court said that if you are a billionaire or if you are a corporation, you can put as much money as you want into a political campaign. You don't like Bernie Sanders? You can write a check for $10 million which is small change for these guys and flood the airways with ads telling the world how bad Bernie's. And you do that any place in this country. So you got billion and a half families like the Koch Brothers who were worth some $80 billion spending in this campaign cycle, 2018, they estimate some $300 million to a lot of candidates who represent the wealthy and the powerful. So we are rapidly moving away from a one person, one vote type of democracy into a nation with billionaires by election. Then on top of that to make a bad situation even worse, we are seeing all over this country Republican governors working overtime trying to suppress the vote. One would think, one really would think that if you ran for office you would have the guts to run on your ideas. You win, you lose. This is what I stand for, both for me, vote against me. But all over this country right now as a result of a very bad Supreme Court decision which got it, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, what you've seen Republican governors and their attorney generals doing is trying to make it harder for poor people, for old people, for young people to participate in the political process. In Vermont we are moving fortunately in exactly the opposite direction. We're trying to make it easier for people to vote. Back together, you look at an economy in which the very wealthy are becoming much richer. You look at a political system which big money is able to buy elections. You add all of that stuff up and you come up with one word in the direction that we are moving. And we are moving toward an allegarctic form of society. Now I know that sounds like a radical analysis but I think it is a factual analysis. So you're seeing small numbers of people controlling the economy, Wall Street with unbelievable power, the drug companies, the insurance companies, the fossil fuel industry, incredible political and economic power. And then you look at some of the other issues that impact people. How many people in this room know how many major countries there are in this world that do not guarantee health care for all people? All right, good. Well it's not good, I'm glad you know it. We are the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people as it might. Now I have introduced in the past and I will introduce again what I call a Medicare for all single payout program. You know how many close sponsors I'm gonna get in the United States Senate for the legislation? Probably less than five. And that is the power of the insurance companies and that is the power of the drug companies. Every major country on earth, Canada, every other major country guarantees health care to all people, we end up spending twice as much per capita as the Canadians do, almost three times what the British do, far more than any other country on earth. And yet you have a political system so controlled by big money that it is hard to find any members of Congress who are prepared to take on the insurance companies and the drug companies and move toward a Medicare for all system. That's the reality. Then we look at issues like education. We live as everybody here knows in a highly competitive global economy. And it doesn't take a PhD in economics to figure out that if this country is going to do well economically now and in the future, we need the best educated workforce to deal with the technological changes that take place every single day in the drug industry. With everybody understanding that, nobody will deny that for a second. And yet despite that common sense reality that we understand, we have hundreds of thousands of bright young people in Vermont and all across this country. Kids who are qualified, who have the energy and the desire to go to college are unable to get a higher education because of the income or lack of income of their families. And then on top of that, you got millions of people who have gone to college, have gone to graduate school, have gone to medical school, have gone to dental school, have left school deeply, deeply in debt and are forced to pay that debt for year after year after year. I will never forget meeting a guy in Nevada. That was 55 years of age. He said, I took out my loan when I was 25. I owe more today than I owed when I took it out. And I'm scared to death, I gotta garnish my social security check when I receive social security. I remember a woman in the Hampshire said, I'm not only paying my daughter's student debt, I'm paying my own, paying her own and her daughter's student debt. Young lady in Burlington went to medical school, graduated medical school, is now practicing primary care in a community health center. Exactly the kind of doctors that we need. She graduated $300,000 in debt. Person graduated dental school in Iowa, $400,000 in debt at a time when we need more dentists. There is something wrong with that picture. In fact, it is an insane picture. Why are we punishing young people for doing the right thing in getting the education they need and that our country needs? What's the solution? Well, for a start, we should be making public colleges and universities tuition free. Two things, it makes people able to get to college and graduate with virtually no debt. And the other thing that it does, which is equally important, is it tells kids today in the fifth grade and in the sixth grade in Randolph or in Burlington or in Rutland or any other city in this country that if you study hard and you take school seriously, yes, regardless of the income of your family, you will be able to go to college and likely make it into the middle class. That's a big, big deal. People say, Bernie, that's a great idea, but it's an expensive idea and it's true. It would cost us about $70 billion a year to make public colleges and universities tuition free and to help people significantly reduce their student debt. Where are we gonna get that money? Where are we gonna get the money? Well, we're gonna get the money by imposing a tax on Wall Street speculation. Point is, we can in fact address many of the very serious problems we face as a nation if we have the courage to take on the greed of the billionaire class and to tell them that in this country, no, they are not going to have it all. We need a thriving middle class. We do not want an allegorical society. Very important, we can go on and on and on about the issues. All of these issues are enormously important. I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. But one other issue that is out there that is obviously not only a Vermont issue, it's not only an American issue, it is a global issue. We have a president today who after intensive study has decided that climate change is a hoax. And he has appointed an administrator of the EPA whose job in life is to dismember the EPA and environmental protection in this country. Well, I say to President Trump, no, climate change is not a hoax, but the truth is the scientific debate is over. Climate change is all too real. Climate change is caused by human activity and the emission of carbon. And climate change is causing devastating problems already in our country and around the world. And if we do not get our act together and transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, from oil, from coal, from gas and into sustainable energies, wind, solar, geothermal, et cetera, the planet that we will be leaving our kids and our grandchildren will not be a very healthy planet. Now, as you know, President Trump and the Republican leadership are supporting a very bad healthcare bill. The Affordable Care Act, so-called Obamacare, is far from perfect. It needs significant improvement. What the Republicans are doing with Trump's support is gonna make a bad situation much, much worse. If they are successful, they will throw 24 million people off of healthcare. 24 million people of healthcare today, health insurance today will lose their health insurance. And when 24 million people lose their health insurance, thousands of them will die. Because if you can't get to a doctor, if you can't afford to get into a hospital, your illness will get worse and some people will die. Furthermore, this legislation proposed by the Republicans defunds planned parenthood. It tells two and a half million women who have chosen planned parenthood as the place where they get the healthcare that they no longer will be able to do that. Further, it raises in a very significant way healthcare costs for older Americans. According to the AARP, if you are 64 years of age and you make it $25,000 a year, if this plan goes into effect instead of paying $1,700 a year for your healthcare costs under Obamacare, you'll be paying $13,000. Which will mean that many of those old people will simply stop their health insurance entirely. And it's not a good place to be to be 64, 63 years of age without any health insurance. But in the midst of that plan, there is some good news. And that is if you are within the top 2%, people making 200,000 home wall, you're gonna receive $275 billion in tax breaks over the next 10 years. So throwing people off of healthcare, raising premiums, devastating Medicaid, defunding Planned Parenthood, and giving $275 billion in tax breaks to the people who need it the least does not make a heck of a lot of sense to me. And we're gonna work as hard as we can to defeat that proposal. Just announced yesterday an outline of his proposal and almost every respect, not every respect. In almost every respect, it is a bad proposal. The United States now spends more on defense than the next 12 countries combined. Yes, we need a strong defense. But you don't increase defense spending by more than $50 billion by cutting funding for the low income heating assistance program, which is so important for a month, from after school programs, from a variety of programs that impact working people and lower income people. That is wrong and it is in defense. So we've got a lot of work in front of us. As I see it now, we are fighting a two prong wall. Number one, we've got to fight vigorously against a lot of Trump's proposals, which will be disastrous to the middle class and working people of this country. Second of all, we have got to continue our fight for a progressive vision, a vision which says that in the United States, yeah, we can create millions of jobs, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. And we need a lot of good engineering help to make that happen. As we can transform our energy system every day, I was just in Rutland today looking at a storage battery system run by Green Mountain Power. We are moving closer and closer to the day when we're going to be able to store a enormous amount of solar energy into batteries, making solar available on a sense 24 hours a day. We need help in making that happen. Vision system, far more efficient and it's really the electrification of our transportation system. We need a stronger rail system and we need joint help to make that happen. I got stuck, this is what I learned. One of the things that I learned is that I ran around the country. Is there a tens of thousands of homes not just in Flint, Michigan, where people turn on the water and you know what, the water is not drinkable. We have an age of water crisis in many respects and we need a lot of help from you guys in addressing that crisis. In addressing the crisis of waste water crisis. I will get rid of it. I will waste in a energy effective way. So there's an enormous amount of work facing our country. Our goal is to create good paying jobs for our people. I want to congratulate Papolton at this point. This school does a fantastic job in that regard and I want to thank all of you for making that happen. I and my staff would be talking about issues and so why don't we do this? Well actually, Vermont Tech is doing that. You know, I'll give you an example. You know, it's not a sexy example but it's really important, all right? In this state, you know, we're a very rural state and we are largely dependent on volunteer fire departments. That's a sexy issue but very, very important, especially if your house catches fire, all right? And we need folks, both professionals in the state of Vermont and volunteers to get the training that they need. We work with Vermont Tech. You have a good firefighting facility right here at Bird Building which is being used by the public school of the state. Okay, talk about dental care. You have a dental technician program right here in Vermont. Dental, we have a major crisis in this state and in this country in terms of affordable dental care. People cannot afford to go to a dentist and get their teeth taken care of. So we need more dentists. We need more dental technicians. We need to move to sustainable agriculture. You guys are looking at that issue. We have had a major nursing crisis in this country. All right? God bless the nurses. Yeah. Backbone of our health care system. And we need more nurses and we need more training nurses and we're doing that as well. So what Vermont Tech's niche and what they are doing is looking out and saying, what are the needs here in the state of Vermont? And they're doing their best in doing it very well and trying to fill those gaps. And that's exactly what we should be doing. So thank you very much. Okay, that's the end of my speech. Stick into it. Why don't we just do some questions and answers. Still how are we gonna do that? We got a mic up here until you got a mic? Okay. Anybody have any questions? Why don't you come up here or grab Phil and grab the mic. Don't be shy. Just tell us who y'all. Hi, so I'm Ray Alves. Ray? Yep. And my question is, so President Trump has repeatedly asked Mr. Connell to quote, go nuclear on confirming the Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, meaning changing the Senate rules to no longer allow a filibuster to force a 60 vote majority for confirmation. What options are available to prevent this from happening and how will you and your colleagues respond if it does? We are in the minority. I'm an independent. I work within the Democratic Caucus. That will be a decision that Republicans make. I do not, if they do that. What he's talking about is that historically there's been a 60 vote threshold for appointees. Democrats changed that because there was a lot of filibustering on Republicans and Obama couldn't get an assistant political inspector, a pastor. It was really bad, all right? But what the Democrats did do was say, hey, when you come to the Supreme Court, which is the most important nomination process that we have, that's gotta say at 60 votes. We will see, I am not sure that they will do it, to be honest with you. There are a number of Republicans who do not think they should. And I think there are 48 people who are Democratic Caucus who don't think so. So if three Republicans say no, they will not be able to change the rules on it. I think that will be the case. I think Gorsuch will lead 60 votes. And I think that should be the case. Okay, yeah. Hi, I'm Josie Carothers. What do you think rank-and-file people should just ordinary people should be doing, there are a lot of hope for the students, their efforts, I mean, we older people can put our hopes on the students, which is sometimes a little unfair too. But what can rank-and-file people do in this nest of problems? What do you see as the most effective thing? Well, I think if they're, and obviously this is my view, not everybody recently, but if there is a civil line amidst of the Trump election, it is that millions of people are asking my question and getting involved. I think about six weeks ago, we had the Women's March, which was unprecedented, outpouring all across our country. I was at the event in Montpelio. And the police had to block off the entrance into Montpelio because I think the city couldn't accommodate any more cars. And I've never seen more people at a rally in my life than 15,000. And you know, millions of people all over the country and all over the world, which I'm sharing. And it is happening in its impact. The Republicans wrote forth legislation. They were very nervous about making their healthcare legislation public. They kept it secret for as long as they could. And when it came out, the phone line started busting off all over Washington, DC. People said, you can't do that. They're now going back to the drawing board. They're retreating. Many of their colleagues went in the Senate in the House, saying, we can't support that because they're hearing from their constituents. You're hearing from 62-year-old people cannot afford huge increases in their healthcare or people, women, who want to continue to go to Planned Parenthood, et cetera. So I think we're about to be creative and what I will say to you, this isn't what. And this I have no doubt as to its truthfulness. On almost, not every, but on almost every major issue, the American people support a progressive agenda. If it comes to raising the minimum wage in a living wage, 15 bucks an hour, American people will believe that. If it comes to taxation, Trump and his friends want to give you tax breaks to the wealthy. Do you know what Republicans and Democrats say? That's wrong. In fact, the wealthy and large corporations have got to begin paying their fair share of taxes. You can't think of and be creative. It means thinking about being involved in politics in the way you happen before we're seeing this. In California, largest state in this country, hundreds of thousands of people jumped into the political process and they have, I don't know, some kind of complicated process by which they elect their Democratic Party leadership. Progressives are going to take over the Democratic money. They used to have meetings, they used to have meetings where 20 people showed up and suddenly hundreds of young people walked in and started electing progressive leadership. And you see that in fact all over the country. What it means for you all is to get involved, run for school board, run for the board of selectmen. Think about running for state legislature. Put pressure, know what the legislature is doing, know what the governor is doing. And say, look, these are our needs. Articulate your needs and demand that elected officials listen to what you have to say. But it is not just elections. It is fighting for, for example, transformation of our energy system. All right, in Burlington, Vermont, right now, our municipal-owned like-a-bomb-it uses no fossil fuel. We're doing an excellent job. Work with them. Get your communities involved in becoming more energy efficient. We can lead the nation in energy efficiency. We're seeing an explosion of solar in this thing. I think we'll win, et cetera, et cetera. So get involved in any way you can. Yup, chill. We're in Braintree, right down the hill, about five miles from here. Senator Sanders, we have a tremendous concern as do many Americans about the price of drugs. The drug companies are making obscene profits off of us and we're all paying for it. So I have this little visual aid here with me. This is from my husband. And I just want people to understand we're very fortunate because we have Medicare and our drugs, we pay for the supplemental medical for drug benefits. But nevertheless, we feel guilty because there are people who can't afford the drugs that we have. And this one drug, Braintree here, it's empty. They said no drugs, so I empty it all. But it's a one month supply for my husband who has a progressive disease, but it helps him to live longer, which we would all want for all of our loved ones. This is a one month supply of his drug. It had 60 capsules in it, I took them out. And he takes two pills a day. Does anybody want to guess what that one month supply cost for this drug? I'll find a higher. Higher. How much is it? 8,500 dollars a month. Don't drop the bottle. Yeah. We're already far in. Betty, is your name? Yes, it is. Betty raises an issue which is thought remunerse. That's an issue I've been working on for many years and I hope we're going to make some progress, maybe in a bipartisan way. In the United States, our people, like Betty and Betty's husband, pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. It's not even close. We pay far more than our Canadian niggas. You know, maybe I don't remember. Many years ago, I did a busload of folks, women who were dealing with breast cancer across the history of the world. To make that point. And that was, again, as long as I live, it's one of those things that will stay with me forever. We went and we arranged all of these things so we knew what was going to happen. But we took these women who were dealing with breast cancer, working class women, fighting for their lives, walked into a drug store in Montreal. They paid one tenth of the price for the medicine that they needed to stay alive when they were paying Vermont 10% of the cost. The five largest drug companies in America make $50 billion in profits two years ago. Less statistics that we have. And meanwhile, one out of five Americans on the 65 when not in Medicare cannot afford the medicine that their doctors restored. Right now, there is no legislation, not to prevent the drug companies from doubling the price of that product or any other medicine that you are taking. In my mind, the drug companies are extraordinarily greedy and it is time we took them on. And we take them on in at least two ways. And we're working very hard. I just introduced legislation two weeks ago which now has 20 co-sponsors in the Senate. And what that legislation says is that your pharmacist, or you, or a distributor should be able to buy medicine from any country in the world where the prices are low and where that medicine is safe. If we do that, we will substantially lower the price of medicine in this country. Have you been inquiring as to how much that cost in Canada? No. Well, check it out. Go to a website. Last night, this is an example. We did a town meeting in Springfield. The woman came up just like him. And she said, I need a life-saving drug. I have to take it every day. Here in the United States, it cost me $25 a day. I get the same medicine from Canada for $1.68 cents. Okay. Check it out. Go to the website. And I suggest that everybody do that. It is legal for you to do that. What we want to do is make it easier and we want pharmacists and distributors to be able to do that. There is no reason on earth why we have to pay two, three, five, 10 times more than other countries for the same type of medicine. We do that. Go to the website. Take your drug and see how much it costs in Canada and other countries. It may be well worth your while to check that out. Then deal with it. Okay? Okay. Yes. Senator Sanders, thank you so much for being here. My name is Gina Cavicella. I live in Sharon. I made phone calls for you. Lots of them around the country. People were overwhelmingly in favor of you when presented with the options. I donated money to your campaign. I did fundraisers for you. We have a group called Belly Dancers for Bernie. Woo! This is another reason. I mentioned, you know, I thought you should get involved in politics. Someday... Someday, Betty will have Belly Dancers for Betty or Joe or whatever. Look, I asked... Thank you very much. Oh, and thank you, sir. I've asked Peter Welch and David Zuckerman the same question, which is, how to take action locally? We're vermanders. We're smart. We have money. We have time. We have energy. We're behind you and your ideals. You gave some good ideas. You said, no, organized. We did. We went to the Women's March. We're thinking about going to the Climate March, going to the Immigrants March. You talked about making phone calls. They don't always get through. You talked about running for school board. You talked about, I want to hear some more creative ideas. Okay, here's some more creative ideas. Mentor, you're a good person. Here's an idea. I think it is fair to say that on most of the major issues of concern to you, you'll see Senator Leahy and Congressman Welch voting the right way. So then the thing is, what do you do? You have your delegation that's doing the right thing. Well, you know what? I have been traveling a little bit around the country recently and I am finding myself in states where their senators are not doing the right thing. Just as an example, and my point is that you're gonna have to nationalize what you do. You've got friends around the country. In states, we have senators falling more concerned about campaign contributions for billionaires than the needs of their own people. Give me up, just one second. The repeal of the ACA will hurt Vermont very badly. The government itself has estimates that will cost us about $200 million. A lot of money through a small state. It will be infinitely worse in states like West Virginia and in Kentucky, which have benefited very, very significantly, because they came from nowhere. In West Virginia, before the Affordable Care Act, 17% of the people are uninsured. Now, 7% are uninsured. That's pretty good. And you have a senator there who is not quite clear whether she is gonna vote for the Republican bill or not. And I would draw this to make it very clear how she has to vote. All right, so you have to work. We've got the majority leader in the United States Senate, Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, whose state may benefit more than any other state. He is leading the effort to throw hundreds of thousands of people in his own state of the healthcare. You know anybody in Kentucky? Let's start making some friends. Because there are, all of you are parts of organizations that are national. And there are good people in those states. And you gotta figure out how we hook up with them. I have the feeling that the next couple of months I'm gonna be visiting some of those states. Because I think when these senators and members of Congress understand that the people in their states are catching on to what's going on. Can you imagine a senator voting in a poor state to throw many hundreds of thousands of his or her constituents off the healthcare? How can you do that? But they get away with that so they don't perceive that there's any opposition. And our job is to develop that opposition. So when they look out and see 10,000 people. Thank you very much. Okay. We're here? Where are you from? Okay. Senator, thank you for being here. My name is Mel Adams. We have a history in this country that's probably not the greatest, but at least we've been getting better over time. We've come to the point where we have apparently a president who every morning approaches the world from a point of, some apparent global ignorance with his tweets. And has put us in the position of being nearly the most aggressive and populist leaning country in the modern world. Other countries are leaning the same direction. What is it that we can do and what can you folks do in Washington to maintain the sense of civility and equity that represents who we think we are? That's an excellent question. I know I don't have all of the answers, but I'll tell you what I do think. You know, if those of you who know me will know that I've run for office many, many times in Vermont. I ran for mayor four times, Congress City times, Senate points. I've never run a negative political ad in my life. Because I don't think they work. I don't think that's what the people in this state want to see. I think they want to see a discussion of the real. They both want to be good. They don't both want to be illiterate. But what you have now is something new. George W. Bush is a very, was a very conservative president. I oppose almost all of his initiatives, to be honest with you. But he functioned within the framework of the paradigm, the framework of modern American politics and how he treated people and how he dealt with the opposition. And I am not happy to say that. I will say to Daniels I've said it many, many times, I'm national television. President Bush is President Bush. President Trump is a pathological liar. Enjoy, I have Republican friends or colleagues in the Senate who believe what they believe, which is exactly opposite what I believe. They are not liars. They believe what they believe. But this guy, and I think your point is, he wakes up in the morning and he comes out and he says, Barack Obama tapped Trump House. Okay, that's a very serious charge. Clearly you must have evidence to back it up. No, not whatsoever. And then his press secretary asked, well, what he meant was, and ah, ah, ah, ah. And he's applying to Republicans in Congress and we have no evidence to believe that that is true. Trump says three to five million people voted illegally in the last election. Now, if that were true, that would be an incredible attack upon American democracy. It would be a very, very, very serious issue. Do you know what? You look at election officials all over this country and they will tell you it's not true. That's what Republican election officials say. That's what Democratic election officials say. There was a very, very close race in New Hampshire where a woman named Maggie Hasson won the election by a few thousand votes. Very close election. I talked to the former Senator Kelly A.I. who lost, and I said, Kelly, I'm seeing on television that bus loads of people came from Massachusetts to vote in New Hampshire. What do you think? She said, well, you notice I didn't call for a recount. She doesn't believe it. She lost a very close election. So if you have somebody just making these things up out of thin air, Donald Trump in the early parts of his campaign saw on television Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9-11. He saw it. So the media goes, he saw it on television? Yeah, he saw it on television. Nobody else in America saw it on television. Complete fabrication. Now, what becomes, it becomes, where this is a real, real problem, is it embarrasses us before the entire world. That's number one. And our credibility diminishes. But number two, the day will come when there will be a major crisis. And Donald Trump will go on television and say, this is what is happening. And people say, oh, that's just Trump again? Who's gonna believe me? So you have a president whose credibility is extremely, extremely low. And the other thing that he's doing, which, you know, his tax breaks for the very rich and the cuts of programs for working people, something obviously I strongly oppose. But there's nothing new about it. He's gone a little bit further about it. We've seen that before. But what we are not seeing, and you did not see this in George W. Bush. Some of you may remember. Again, Bush was a very conservative Republican. Does anybody here remember, I don't know if it was the day after 9-11 or a couple of days after 9-11, where Bush went? He went to a mosque. Remember? And he stood with Muslims to say, look, we have some barbaric people who did a terrible thing in this country, but don't take it out on an entire religion. That was a very decent thing then to do. Very decent thing then to do. That's not what this president is doing. What this president is doing and has a history of doing. Some of you will remember before he was elected president. He was one of the leaders of the so-called Bertha Movement. You remember what that movement was? That was a racist effort. Without any doubt, a racist effort to try to undermine the legitimacy of the first African-American president in history. Wasn't that he disagreed with Obama? He could disagree upon all you want. But to tell the American people that our first African-American president wasn't born in America is an outrage. And it's just interesting. My father, as it happened, was born in Poland. All right, I'm a first generation American. During my campaign, nobody asked me where I was born. Maybe I have something to do with the color of my skin. I don't know. See a question. I think what we have got to do is stand together when he saw us attacking Muslims or undocumented people. But when he lies, we stand with those people who are being scapegoated because we know that's what demagogues always do. They don't have the guts to take on big money. He told the people, he told his supporters, I'm gonna take on Wall Street. They're doing really bad things. We're gonna drain the swamp. Well, he has appointed more people from Wall Street to his administration, I think any person that ever has. So I would draw up just to stand with people who are being scapegoated and to tell the truth in the midst of a lot of lies. Senator Sanders, thank you very much for being mute up here every day to go to school. An amazing opportunity that I just a year and a half ago took advantage after being in the Army for 20 years. 11 years since I retired in 2006, I have not, I have yet to see any retired income increase. And yet I also have seen a continuing slide on the fact that I no longer have free VA healthcare. There's a co-payment for everything. And I just, it's infuriating. My father was born in 1919. And after he was finished with his time in the service, he had free healthcare. Walk into any clinic and be taken care of. And it no longer seems to me to be the case. So I was wondering, what's happening? Well, as the former chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, and a little bit about it, I will tell you, we introduced legislation that would have put, my memory may be wrong about this, but I think $16 billion more into the VA to expand benefits and make it easy for every veteran in this country to walk in the door as you indicate it, as you think I make appropriate and I do as well. We ended up, I think, with 57 votes. I've only got two Republican votes for that. So we have to come back and do another vote, which did some good things, but didn't go anywhere near as far as I would like. My own view in terms of veterans issues, and I say this based on this member of the committee and this experience, if you all prepare to put your life on the line, which you have done and millions of others have done, this country owes you a debt of gratitude that cannot fully be repaid. It's the best healthcare that we can provide to you at no cost to you. And I should tell you, I'm just down at White River, did you go to White River? And I think what I'm hearing is that in White River, most of the veterans that I talk to think the healthcare there is pretty good. We have five, we've expanded the number of community-based outreach clinics around the state. I've got one in Broward River now, one up in Newport, one in Bennington, and we have a very large one in Burlington, which is pretty new. So I'm with you, but this is again a question of priorities. It gets back to whether you think that tax breaks for billionaires is where we should be going, whether we invest in our young people, whether we pay back those veterans and put their lives on the line for us, whether we protect seeing the citizens. Where should we be going as a nation? I think most people are pretty clear. They don't think billionaires need more tax breaks. So thank you very much for your service. Thank you, one more question. I think we're gonna get running on my pillow. I'm Elizabeth Hendricks from Randolph Center, and I'd like to know what you think of instant runoff voting and if that might make a difference for democracy. Yeah, I do, I like the idea. Why don't you explain to people what it is like? It's when you rank the candidates that are on the ballot, so that if your candidate doesn't get enough votes, your second place choice gets your vote. In other words, if you have three candidates running, very often people say, well look, the polls say the 40%, one's at 35, and one is way down, but I like the person who's way down, but I'm not gonna vote for that person. Now you can vote for that person, and then what happens if nobody reaches 50%, the votes of that person are eliminated and your second choice counts. So I think it gives, instead of having to sometimes hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, it gives you the opportunity to vote for your first choice. Which I think makes sense. All right, let me just, this is a wonderful turnout. Thank you all very much for being here for months. Thank you very much, and thank you for what you're doing. Thank you.