 Four years ago, we were doing something similar to this. It's even more exciting today. It really is, you know, times they are changing, but they aren't changing for the best. And we need a guy, we need a guy that works hard. I worked with Bernie for 18 years in his office, did press conferences back before then. Could never keep up with him. Somebody said, well, how does he do all that? And I said, I don't know, I think he's an energizer rabbit. But the senator has always been almost ahead of his time. But I think his time is now. I may remember I'm a dairy farmer. And I'll tell you, there'd be more farmers here today if we didn't have this one good day of the week. Doesn't matter that it's Memorial Day weekend. Those fields have got to get planted because they've got to get milked. And the last four years have been kind of rugged. We've lost almost a third of our farms here in Vermont just since 2010. But if there's one guy that stands out in the crowd and is willing to go on your farm and let you teach him how to milk, it's Bernie. Come for any photo op. He got in there when the first cow was milked and he stayed till at that time it might have been 130 cows got milked. He didn't take off in a car with his press club. He was in the house with us having breakfast. And he asked Bill, my husband, more darn questions during that breakfast. You would not believe. Talk about a student. He wants to know what the common person is up to. What you're thinking. Why do you think he does all those town meetings? Town meeting here and a town meeting there. We've had town meetings in our grade school. We've had town meetings in our firehouse. We've had a farmer meeting under a maple tree on the farmhouse lawn. He wants to know. And that's what makes him so impressive and on task because he knows us, the common people. You know, there's a guy way back. His name was William Jennings Bryant. He ran for Congress in Nebraska. He was leading the Democratic Party, setting policy out there for people to think about and act on. He wrote these words, burn down your cities and leave your farms, our farms. Your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country. And Bernie is that kind of guy. He understands what it means to have a rural America plan, to bring life back to the communities. And Donald all, how would he not? He lives here in Vermont. We're so rural. We've got our wonderful city of Burlington that we can escape to sometimes. But we need our green fields and our mountains, our trees. Heaven knows, farmers are great for helping to capture what's good in our environment. We work hard every day to keep those landscapes working and growing your food, our food. Bernie knows that national food security, national security period, depends on people growing their own food. The more local, the better. Steve Varney come to St. Albans. She happened to be the person in charge of the antitrust division. And we talked to her about our concerns that things were getting more and more vertically integrated, that farmers were finding fewer and fewer places to sell their milk, to market their milk. She wrote a wonderful report. She went all over the country. She talked with hog farmers and beef farmers and soy and corn. And in every instance, it was the same. She wrote up the report, was working for the Department of Justice, and disappeared. Back into private life. Nothing was done. Bernie's got antitrust, merger, consolidations, all those things in his role plan. And it means a lot to me to see him push that once again. But he needs a Congress behind him that's going to support him as president and get some things done. All right. I've told you all about, not really, low milk prices. But anyway, Bernie's too big for Vermont. I'm sorry. I told him that. I said, do you just wait. They're going to catch up to you, Bernie. And then you're going to be able to get something done. I think we're there. It's working with him. He's learned a lot. He's been all over this country. He's ready. And we're ready for him. Let me just remind you, if I can find the right paper, that if you want to show your support for Bernie and some of you have on your green t-shirts, check this out. And in that red umbrella over there somewhere, you can get t-shirts, books, bumper stickers. And another way that you can give is right from your phone. I'll give you the number. You text the word donate. And the number 67760. No amount's too small, let me tell you. If farmers can give, everybody can give. I've got a reason to vote this year. How about you? Gives us a reason to want to vote. And it's going to be more important than ever this year. Don't lose faith. Have hope. And eat lots of good Vermont products. Thank you. Please welcome to the stage Montalier High School student, Hope Petraro. Thank you so much for showing up today. I am so excited to be here with you all today to not only share my past experiences in the lovely state of Vermont, but the glimmering hope and the potential I firmly believe our future holds. I'm 16 years old. I'm a junior at Montalier High School, just a few blocks that way. I'm a member of the Vermont Youth Lobby, organization of high school students from around the state who advocate for climate justice in Vermont, plan the rally for the planet on the state house lawn each year. I also helped co-found the Race Against Racism, a community event and fundraiser for racial justice in Vermont, one who's regularly thinking about world issues. And like many young people who are inheriting the world today, the question that is usually at the forefront of my mind is, how can I advocate for what I believe in? How can we as a state and as a nation create real and exacting change and push for equality and justice in all facets of the world we live in? I support Bernie Sanders because he stands up for the reform that American people need. He's a candidate who advocates for comprehensive legislation and the necessary infrastructure to support low income, working and rural Vermonters. Bernie Sanders, because he's willing to act on climate change, a defining issue of our time and one that's already unleashing its effects and will help bring Vermont to its goal of 90% renewable energy by 2050. By taking firm stances in the face of legislative inaction and by defying corporate interests, Bernie is changing the nature of American politics and truly serving the people he represents. In the fight against climate change, against big money in politics, against the prison industrial complex, against xenophobia, racism and hatred, against growing income inequality, there's an opportunity. It's the opportunity to fight for what we believe in. Our next steps as a state and as a nation won't just affect us, they will affect generations around the world for hundreds and hundreds of years to come. And we as Vermont can and will fight for what we believe in, for equity, for entrepreneurship, for community, for justice and most of all, for progress. Thank you. Please welcome to the stage representative Peter Wells. Bernie Sanders, my friend. You know, he won that landslide in 1981 in 1981, foaming support to become the mayor of Burlington. That was the year I began serving in the state Senate so we were in politics together. Every step of the way along my career when I served in the state Senate, Bernie was my friend and was always there. Politically, but also personally. When I ran for governor in 1990 and lost Bernie was there. He helped me stay close to me. When I was out of politics and he was in as our US representative in the House of Representatives. When we in my family had some down times, sad times, Bernie was there. Then when I've served in his shoes, and I don't wanna say I filled his shoes, but I served in his job as I do now. Every single day, if there's anything I need that can help me succeed and help from honors, and I need Bernie's help, Bernie is there. And we spend a lot of time too, just accidentally on the plane talking about how smooth things are going in Washington. And so far, when it is time for one of us to give the other a ride home or check up the cab fare, some people say Bernie's tight, but so far I'm ahead of him by at least five to one. Thank you, Bernie. Tell you something, friendship matters. You know, we've got our political issues and we've had wonderful discussion about it, but friendship matters. Loyalty to your friend, matehouse who can remember who his friend was let alone his wife was the other day. We're proud of Bernie, but we're all Vermonters and we share something that's dear to us. Our constitution, the state of Vermont, was the first constitution in the United States of America that banned prohibited, condemned slavery. It was young men in the hard rock fields of Vermont who came down out of those hills in more than any other state on a per capita basis contributed to the union cause that ended legal slavery in this country. That was Vermonters who did that to face the challenge of discrimination. And Vermonters took this position that we know Vermonters would only take that every person should be able to love the person they love, Republicans and Democrats made that tradition of expanding opportunity and equality to all people. It is sometimes people criticize Bernie because he's giving the same message. Think about it. It was always for a higher minimum wage. Something wrong with that? He was always diverse in any problem accessible and free higher education. Anybody got a Bush decision? He was always for the men and women who served in our veterans who came up. The people who have a problem with that because they said it was too much in 2016 but now it's doctrine in 2020. Or there's a lot in there. Russia collusion one thing, obstruction of justice, 10 separate incidents. Then you've got a president whose attorney general says the president is above the law and there is no accounting. And now you have a president who when he's having a meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer about a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, he says he's four, he walks out of it in two minutes. And you know what the division we have in this country? When we were at the height of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and the Congress of the United States built the transcontinental railroad. Bernie Sanders is a doer. He's a healer. He's a uniter. And yes, he's been consistent. And you know what? He's been consistent in his friendships. He's been consistent in his advocacy for Vermont. And he has been consistent in his advocacy for the opportunities for all Americans. And it is about time we get a president of the United States who knows where he comes from and who he's for and that's Bernie. In the 2020 campaign and co-founder of Vermont's own Ben and Jerry's Ben Cohen. Before Bernie, Jerry and I used to be the most famous guys from Vermont. So now we are happy and proud to pass that distinction on to Bernie. I mean, ice cream is good, but a president of the United States who truly believes in justice in all its flavors, victories of Ben and Jerry's and Bernie are pretty interconnected. So I'd just like to talk a little about the old days and then bring us up to date. In 1978, when Ben and Jerry's first started, I was living in Burlington under the rule of the long-term Democratic machine mayor, Gordy Paquette and his old cronies on the city council. I remember going to that city council for permission to show free outdoor movies in front of our ice cream shop and being told no, never, not in this city. And I remember as a struggling ice cream man in that old gas station feeling overcome with joy at the victory party in the basement of Memorial Auditorium when Bernie was elected mayor. Movies in Burlington continue to this day. During those early days of Bernie's administration, the old guard controlled the city council and they thwarted anything and everything Bernie tried to do. So Bernie did some basic common sense stuff that the good old boys just couldn't argue with. Bernie's staff conducted the first audit of Burlington's pension system in a quarter century. They moved the city's money into higher yielding accounts. They raised fees for building permits and for utilities that dug up the city streets. They ended the city's old crony insurance contracts and opened them up to competitive bids. All together, Bernie saved the city of Burlington hundreds of thousands of dollars. The old guard couldn't stop them and next election they were voted out of office. Bernie was faced with the plan left over from Mayor Gordy to privatize Burlington's waterfront on Lake Champlain with expensive condominiums. Bernie fought that plan in court and instead of high-end condos on the shoreline, he and his team created a public park, a community boat house, a marina, a bike path and some residential and commercial development as well. Bernie is that he created a city government that put the needs of people first and the needs of business second and that's exactly the way it should be. There's no reason why business cannot prosper without raping and destroying the very society that supports it. Bernie calls it democratic socialism. I call it social capitalism. And Bernie built a city government that endured. He created CEDO, the Community Economic Development Office. It spawned and supported not only Ben & Jerry's but other little companies that are now national like Gardner Supply, Burton Snowboards, Seventh Generation, Magic Hat and Lake Champlain Chompers. Bernie's time as mayor. And CEDO exists to this day targeting assistance and loans to small businesses, micro enterprises and employers who provide livable wage jobs. It was during Bernie's administration that plans were conceived to create a supermarket for Burlington. Today, city market is one of the highest volume supermarkets per square foot in the country. And it was Bernie who helped Will Rapp take garbage strewn land at the introvale and turn it into productive farms that now supply over 10% of Burlington's food. The way Bernie ran the city of Burlington was just good business. But Bernie has always been about more than doing the right thing at home. He's always understood that we're all interconnected. That if you care about people, it doesn't matter what country they were born in. He's not a politician who sticks his finger in the wind and says whatever he thinks voters want him to say. He is a leader who sticks to his principles and does what he truly believes, anti-war. He's always been for solutions based on peace and justice. Of all the candidates running for president, it's Bernie Sanders who has been most consistently opposed to killing people in other lands in our names and in with our money. Ted Fastly resisted U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. He voted against every bloated defense budget since he got to Washington. He poses U.S. intervention in Venezuela and Iran. Republicans and Democrats together to pass a resolution to prevent the U.S. from participating in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. You have seen him in action know that Bernie lives and breathes peace, justice, and common sense. He has dedicated his life to it and he has done it successfully in the face of opposition from entrenched interests. It's not often. This is the first time in, well, no, it's the second time in my life that we have the opportunity to elect a president that truly represents our values. A man who has proven himself and has withstood the rigors and spears and arrows of 40 years in public office and has never wavered, he is tried and true. We in Vermont know Bernie and can vouch for him like nobody else can. We have this opportunity, but only if we work to make it happen. So how do we do it? Well, the first thing that we can do right here, right now, today is on your way out. You go over to that blue tent over there. It's a beautiful blue tent. It's all the way over there. And what they got there is some Bernie bumper stickers. You take one and you stick it on your car. If you got two cars, you take two. If you got some friends that want to stick it on their cars, you take some for them too. And if anybody in that tent says you can't take that money, that many, you tell them that I said so. Because in Bernie's campaign, I am the king of bumper stickers. The king of bumper stickers is that I believe in bumper stickers just about as much as I believe in Bernie. When you put a bumper sticker on your car, it means something. It's worth more than buying TV ads because it's your personal endorsement and that can't be bought. There might not be that many of us in Vermont, but two thirds of us voted for Bernie. And there's a lot of tourists going to be coming through here this summer. If every other car those tourists see has a Bernie bumper stick on it, that's going to be big. That's going to be alive. Know this guy and they support him. And they're out front with their support. Don't forget the blue tent as many bumper stickers as you want. I said, we've got a presidential candidate worth working for. Let's pull out all the stops. Let's elect Bernie Sanders, president of the United States. Each journalist and activist, Sean King. My wife and our kids loaded up our car and drove six hours from Brooklyn to Burlington because we lose Bernie to you today. First because Bernie Sanders is a hero to me and he's a hero of what it means to actually live out your values, to walk your talk. I tell people that right now, we could go to any website for anybody running for president. And all of those websites are amazing. They'll all inspire you because now that they're running for president, the candidates believe in every good and perfect idea imaginable. But Bernie's website is not just a brochure for who he hopes to be someday. He's not just telling us what he'd do if he would become president. Every idea that's on Bernie's website emanates from the life that he actually lives right now. Bernie's website is rooted in what he's been fighting for his entire life. For me, and I hope for you, the greatest indication of what you'll actually do as president isn't what you put on your website. It's not what you promised on the campaign trail. The greatest indication of who you'll fight for and what you'll fight for as president is who and what you've been fighting for your entire life. And listen, not a single political leader in this country has more consistently fought for everyday people and their rights and their dignity and their safety and their future like Bernie Sanders. And nobody knows for a young civil rights activist and organizer to grow up and one day join the government but never actually lose his sensibilities and spirit as a fighter against the status quo. I've said it before, but Bernie has been giving the man hell for over 70 years, right? This week, I hope you saw it. When Bernie stood up for McDonald's workers this week, working side by side with them, they invited Bernie to stand with them. And when he did it, half of the other people running for president followed suit because Bernie sets the trends. Drivers of Uber and Lyft, as their founders and executives reap billions and billions of dollars but their drivers aren't even making minimum wage. And Bernie is standing with those drivers. Bernie consistently has been standing with the workers of Walmart as they work day in and day out owned by a company with owners of family that is literally the richest family in our country. But most of them literally cannot pay their bills. And Bernie stands by them. Listen, Bernie Sanders is a bulldog for what he believes in. Workers' rights, he's a bulldog for fair pay, for equal pay and for wages that people can actually live off of. Bernie right now is a bulldog for the environment, for clean water, for clean air, for the preservation of public lands. He writes, not just in the United States but all over the world and he's been speaking out against war for over 50 years. He voted against the disastrous war in Iraq and he's speaking out today against the gross actions going on right now in Yemen. And Bernie's speaking out against a foolish war that it seems Trump wants to start with Iran. Listen, we need an anti-war president and Bernie has been fighting for peace his entire life. To some people that actually get him, that understand him and really understand what he means to this state and what he's done right here in Vermont as a leader in why he is literally the single most popular senator in America because you know his character and you know his record. Listen, no single senator in the nation has consistently had approval ratings as high as Bernie Sanders with the voters of Vermont. He's the single most popular senator in the nation and not only is Bernie the longest serving independent in the entire history of the United States but for 21 straight years he's never received less than 63% of the vote in Vermont because you have Bernie's nationally and it's gonna take you telling it and letting people know because every single year that Bernie was mayor of Burlington his approval ratings went up every single year. Every single time he was reelected all four times he was elected by a larger margin than he was the previous term. Now the first time he was elected it wasn't hard to win by a larger margin because he just won by 10 votes. Margin grew by thousands of votes every year after that. And for just a moment as I close I wanna brag not just to all of you here but to the whole world about Bernie's life of leadership in Vermont. Because so much of what Bernie has fought for here in Vermont was really rooted in his love of Dr. Martin Luther King and what Dr. King was fighting for at the end of his life. Listen, do the research and find out and see for yourself that at the end of his life Dr. King was fighting for workers' rights. He was fighting for fair pay. He was fighting for affordable housing and he was fighting to end senseless wars. And when Bernie moved to Vermont he tried his best to pick up that mantle and run with it and you've supported him every step of the way. Stories are told everywhere. Cause I regularly hear people ask what has Bernie actually done? And Bernie has done so much across the years but he's too humble to brag about it and tell the story himself. So we have to tell these stories for him. Listen, there are two beautiful stories that I wanna leave you with. In 1984, when Bernie was the mayor of Burlington he started funding something called the Burlington Community Land Trust and he started doing it just $200,000 at a time. And the idea was that the city would partner with families in creative ways so they could have affordable housing. And today that trust that really started being funded when Bernie was mayor has a portfolio of 3,000 affordable homes worth over $300 million. Bernie Sanders' single largest home ownership trust in the entire nation. And the families who live in those homes are 10 times less likely to ever default on their mortgages. And these are the types of creative ideas that we would see from President Bernie Sanders. The apartments that were built had to allot at least 25% of their units for affordable housing. And he made sure that those people who built those units guaranteed they were affordable for 99 years. Mayor Bernie Sanders did that. Now that's more than any other city in the nation and when Bernie started doing that as mayor it was a novel idea but now almost every big city in the country is now doing what Bernie was doing in the mid-1980s. 36 residents of the Northgate apartments in Burlington risked being evicted or displaced when the owner was going to double their rent. Bernie literally said, and this is a quote, over my dead body will these residents be displaced? And crazy Bernie because sometimes he is a little crazy but crazy in a good way. In 1986 he really helped lead an insurrection with the residents of that apartment complex and he raised the money for the city to buy that apartment complex. And he started something so that over the course of 20 years the 336 residents of the Northgate apartments would actually own the entire apartment complex. It is one of the only controlled and managed apartment complexes in the entire country and Bernie Sanders helped make that happen. Unemployment rate of any city in America mind them that right now in Vermont this state has the lowest unemployment rate of any state in the nation. This has helped create the climate and the culture that's attractive to businesses that have provided many of you with the jobs you have today. Right now Vermont has the sixth highest life expectancy rate. Almost every year for the past 10 years Vermont has been rated the first or second safest state in the nation. The past 10 years Vermont's public schools have been ranked in the top five in the nation and Vermont is the second most money per pupil of any state and has the best teacher-student ratio in the nation. And it's why we need to elect him as president. Bernie knows that when a state has affordable housing, when a state has good jobs, when a state has low unemployment, when children have good schools, when the air is clean and the water is clean, guess what else goes down? Prime goes down. Despair goes down. Hopelessness goes down. And over 30 years ago, Bernie said these words and it's a quote and I'm so touched by it because we are living really in his prediction. Bernie said, quote, maybe, just maybe in Vermont we will strike a little bit of a spark that might spread across the country. Senator, but Vermont, I believe it's time that you take the spark that was started here. I believe it's time that you take that spark and help make Bernie Sanders the next president of the United States. Christopher Harness, let me thank Blaine Kennedy Fitzgerald that young lady from Colchester, what a beautiful voice. It was one of the most beautiful forms in the state up in Reagan. Welch, Peter and I have worked for so many years on so many years, just thanks for your work, Peter. And let me thank long time friend, Ben Conn, ran for president on a message that said a chicken in every pot. Well, maybe we run in 2020 on a message that says cherry Garcia in every freezer. Thank you, Ben, for all you've done for this state and country. And let me thank Sean King and his family. Sean is one of the real leaders in addressing a major, major crisis in this country. And that is the need to reform a racist and broken criminal justice system. I want to thank all of you for being here this afternoon. Looks like we're getting a little sun. Let me mostly thank the people of the state of Vermont who have given me an opportunity that when I was a kid, I never would have dreamed of in a million years. And that is to be the mayor of Burlington, to be a United States congressman from Vermont, and now your United States Senate. It has been the honor of my life. And I thank you all. He is standing in front of our beautiful state house. We can reflect a bit upon the history of our small but proud state. We were the first state in the country to outlaw slavery. Vermont was a major part of the underground railroad. We're the first state in the country to mandate public funding for universal education. More recently, we were the first state whose legislature voted to legalize same-sex marriage. It's a state which, over the years, has held its head high in the struggle for human freedom and justice, and is a state that I know will continue to do so. Working together, we have accomplished much for our state. Starting in Burlington in the 1980s, as Sean just mentioned, we were the first municipality in the country to fund a community land trust that not only gave working people the ability to own their own homes, but to make sure that those homes would be perpetually affordable. And that idea has spread not only all over this country, but in fact, all over the world. The crisis in healthcare, we are proud that Vermont is helping to lead the nation in expanding federally qualified community health centers. For a look, we have expanded and improved veterans' healthcare at the VA in White River Junction throughout the state. As the former chairman of the US Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, I have always believed that the men and women who put their lives on the line to defend our country deserve the best quality healthcare this nation can provide. An energy efficiency and the movement of the sustainable energy that climate change is real. In Vermont, especially relevant in this particular moment in American history, given what is happening in Alabama, in Georgia, and all over this country. In Vermont, we understand that women have a constitutional right to control nations in the US Congress or the state governments or the local government that will control a woman's body. It is the women of this. Now, as we assemble today, here in front of our beautiful state capital, in this pivotal, an unprecedented moment in American history, I am here today to ask for your support to help me win the Democratic nomination, to help me lead this country in transforming this nation so that together, we create an economy and a government that works for all of us and not just the privileged few. I wanna welcome you to a campaign which says with confidence, optimism, and love that the underlying principles of our government will not be greed, hate, racism, will not be sexism, will not be xenophobia, just bigotry beliefs of the Trump administration. The principles of our government will be based on justice, economic justice, racial justice, social justice, and environmental justice. To spend a lot of time talking about Donald Trump, one of my least favorite subjects, because you already have been you ever wanted to know. Sadly, we have a president who is a pathological liar and that he says whatever he wants without regard to the truth. You know that we have a president who has no understanding or respect for the constitution of the United States and the separation of powers and is attempting to move every single day this country into an authoritarian form of government. Who would have that we could have a president of the United States who considers the media in this country as an enemy of the people. This is praise on despotic and anti-democratic leaders all over the world, who storms out of meetings after berating and insulting congressional leaders and who refuses to obey congressional subpoenas. But that's not all. During his campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump told the American people that he was going to defend the interests of the working class of this country. He lied. Instead of protecting the interests of working people, he attempted to throw 32 million Americans off of the health care they currently have, protections that all Americans have for pre-existing health conditions. That is not defending the interests of the working class. That is betraying the working class of this country. During his campaign for president, Trump promised not to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. He lied. His budget calls for a trillion and a half dollar cut to Medicaid over 10 years, 845 billion to Medicare and billions more in cuts for Social Security. That when Trump ran for president, he said, you know what, we're going to have a tax plan that will not benefit wealthy people. Remember that? He lied again. 83% of his benefits in that tax plan go to the top 1% at the end of 10 years. During his campaign for president, Trump said that he would drain the swath He lied that Swamp is murkier now than it has ever been and his administration is the most corrupt in the modern history of the country. And dangerously, Trump is endangering the future of our country and the entire planet by refusing to acknowledge the reality of climate change and is in fact making a horrific situation even worse by encouraging the production of more fossil fuels. The scientists tell us that we have only 12 years, not a very long time, before we see irreparable, irreparable harm done to this planet and we have a president who ignores that stunning reality. But our campaign is not about Donald Trump. It is about something far more important. It is about laying out a new vision for our country, a vision that speaks to the needs of ordinary Americans, people from coast to coast who for too long have been ignored. Which is going to bring our people together, black and whites and Latino, Native American and Asian American, whether they are men or women, young or old, gay or straight, Native born or immigrant, a vision which calls upon our best instincts, not our worst. It is a vision that understands that love conquers hate together. In common purpose, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish. It is a vision which states unequivocally that in the United States of America, we believe in democracy, not authoritarianism. United States of America, in the year 2019, we have to say that. But unfortunately, we do. Too many brave men and women have fought and died to defend democracy in our country, and we will not allow Donald Trump or anyone else to take it away. We want our country to have the highest voter turnout in the industrialized world, not one of the lowest. We believe we must make it easier for people to vote, not part of. It is why we are going to take on those cowardly Republican governors from coast to coast who are trying to suppress the vote, for people of color, for poor people, for young people to vote. When we become the government of the United States, the law will be that if you are a citizen of this country and you are 18 years of age, you have the right to vote end of discussion. That elections should be decided by one person, one vote, not building the process to overthrow that disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court funding of elections. It is not just to reform a corrupt political system. It is to create an economy based on justice, not uncontrollable and destructive greed. The wealthiest nation in the history of the world, but most people don't know that because almost all of the wealth and new income is going to a small number of people at the top of the economic ladder. As clear as I can be, we need a government that reigns in the uncontrollable greed of the billionaire class and the power of the special interest. It makes the rich much richer. We don't need an economy in which half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, wondering how they will feed their families, pay the light bill, or put gas in the car. All three families in America own more wealth than the bottom half of the American people. The economy in which millions of workers in Vermont and around this country are forced to work two or three jobs to put food on the table, an economy where 500,000 people will be sleeping out on the streets tonight while 49% of all new income is going to the top 1%. We need an economy that allows all Americans to have a decent standard of living and to live productive and secure lives. We need an economy in which so few have so much and so many have so little. And today we think about those moms and dads in Vermont and in California who cannot afford quality childcare. And today we think about public school teachers who are taking money out of their own pockets to buy supplies for their kids in underfunded schools. And today we think about veterans who are sleeping out on the streets. We are going first for the elderly, the children, our veterans, the sick and the poor, not just the 1%. I want to take a few minutes just to give you a couple of examples of what is going on in this country when I talk about grief and how we are going to change that when we get into the White House. Example one. In America today, we have one family, the Walden family of Vermont. This is a family that is worth $175 billion. They're doing well. Meanwhile, this very same family that owns Walnut pays his workers wages that are so low that many of those employees are forced to go on government programs like Medicaid, food stamps, and public housing. In other words, working families, here in Vermont and throughout this country are paying extra taxes to subsidize the wealthiest family in this country. Insane is that. Next week, just next week, as a result of an invitation that I received from Walnut workers, I will be going to Arkansas to participate in the Walmart stockholders' meeting for allowing me to represent them at that meeting. I'm not quite so sure how welcoming the Walton family will be. But let me tell you what I will tell them. And my message to the Walton family will be pay your workers a living wage 15 bucks and continue providing corporate welfare for the richest family in America. And the message to the fast food industry is exactly the same. On Thursday, just a couple of days ago, I teleconferenced into a rally in Texas held by McDonald's workers. And I was proud to join with them in their fight for $15 an hour and the right for workers in the fast food industry to join a union. An educated issue. In the richest country in the world, if you work 40 hours a week, you should not be living in poverty. And that is why, together, we will raise the national minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. We believe... That's the Walton family strongly. Let me give you another story. And this is something that I've been working on for a while. As you may know, Jeff Bezos. Anybody know who Jeff Bezos is? Mr. Bezos is the owner of Amazon. He is the wealthiest person in America worth about $114 billion. And for years, my office in Washington had been hearing from Amazon workers all over the country about the starvation wages they were receiving and about the unhealthy working conditions that they were forced to abide. Very proud that working with those employees, we were able to get Amazon to raise their minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. In California, we raise the minimum wage at Disneyland also to 15 bucks an hour. But the Amazon story about greed is not yet over. Last year, after making $11 billion in profits, Amazon paid zero in federal income taxes. Economy is about you subsidize the wealthiest family in America because they don't pay their workers a living wage. And the wealthiest guy in America has a company that makes $11 billion and does not pay a nickel in taxes. And that is what we are taking on in this campaign and what we are going to take on in the White House. It is not just the low wages that Walmart pays or the ability of Amazon not to pay any federal income taxes. It goes a lot deeper than that and let me tell you something that I think no candidate for president perhaps has ever talked about. And that is the power structure of America who owns America, who has the economic and political power to demand that Congress work for them and not just ordinary people. So it is not just Amazon and it's not just Walmart. It is about Wall Street where six financial institutions have assets equivalent to 50% of the GDP of our country and control the flow of trillions of dollar. Well, you know what? Today we tell Wall Street we're going to break up the major financial institutions it is too big to exist. But it is not just Wall Street or Walmart or Amazon that are ripping off the American people. Take a hard look at the unbelievable greed and power of the pharmaceutical industry. Last year, the top 10 drug companies in America made $69 billion in profit. Meanwhile, they charge you and you and everyone else in them the highest prices in the world by far for the medicine that they need. Insanely, and it is insane, one out of five Americans cannot afford to fill the prescriptions their doctors prescribe. It is for the drug companies. The cost of prescription drugs by 50% whether the drug companies like it or not. It is not just Amazon, Walmart, Wall Street or the drug companies. It is the insurance industry as well. We're ready to take on the insurance industry. The five major insurance companies made $20 billion in profit while maintaining a dysfunctional system that cost us twice as much per capita for healthcare as any other country. You got that? We spend twice as much per person on healthcare as do the other countries that provide universal care. And here is what a dysfunctional healthcare system is about. Last year, the CEO of Etna, Mr. Berlini, got a $500 million bonus for engineering a merger between Etna and CVS. 34 million Americans have no healthcare. Even more are underinsured with high deductibles and high copayments. And this system allows one man to make $500 million for a merger. Well, we have a little different vision just a little bit as to what a humane and rational healthcare system should look like. We believe that healthcare is a human right, not a privilege. A healthcare system is to provide quality healthcare to all people and not to make billions for the insurance companies and outrageous compensation packages for CEOs. And that is why, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that the insurance companies and the drug companies will spend against us, I suspect they're going to make me a very famous guy on 32nd TVX. But despite all of their line and all of their ads, yes, we will pass a Medicare-for-all single-player program for the United States to end the international embarrassment of being the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all and we are going to end that embarrassment. But it's not just Wall Street and the drug companies and the insurance companies. Let me say a word about something that very few people talk about and that is we need to take on the military-industrial complex. To the military-industrial complex that we will not continue to spend $700 billion a year on the military. We want and need a strong defense but we do not have to spend more than the next 10 nations combined. To invest in education, we're going to invest in affordable housing, we're going to invest in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, but we are not going to invest in never-ending wars. Military policy. Let me say a word about foreign policy because they are obviously interrelated. Now recently I have been attacked in the media because of my views, actions and votes on foreign policy issues. So let me be as clear as I can be. Yes, as a young man along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and many others, I marched against the war in Vietnam, ravaged my generation, which left 59,000 brave young Americans dead as well as killing over a million Vietnamese people. I make no apologies for having opposed that war. House of Representatives, I helped read the opposition to the war in Iraq. Dick Cheney or John Bolton or President Bush and others when they told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that we had to invade that country. The war in Iraq turned out to be the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of our country and has led to the destabilization of that entire region with more war, more death and more suffering. I make no apology for leading the effort against the war in Iraq. But recently I am proud to have been the lead sponsor on a resolution that for the first time in 45 years utilized the War Powers Act to get a majority vote in the House and the Senate to get the United States out of the horrific Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. A war that is unconstitutional. Frankly, if we do not end that war soon, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children according to the UN will die this year in Yemen and millions more will face starvation in years to come. I make no apologies to anyone for trying to end that horrible war. Right now, this minute, I am doing everything that I can working by the way with some honest conservatives in the Senate to prevent Donald Trump and John Bolton from taking us into a war in Iran. Much more destructive if you can believe it than the war in Iraq and could lead us, literally, to perpetual warfare in that region that not only this generation of members of the armed forces would be there, but their kids and their kids. So I make no apologies for trying to do everything that I can to make sure this country does not get into another war in the Middle East. Our corporate greed and corporate irresponsibility, there can be no greater culprit than the fossil fuel industry and industry which lies to us every single day about the damage that they are doing to our country and the planet. Today we say to Donald Trump and his friends in the fossil fuel industry that climate change is not a hoax but is an existential threat to our country and to the entire planet and whether the fossil fuel industry likes it or not, we are going to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency living grandchildren here today grandchildren. And what the struggle about climate change is about them and every child in this country and in the world. We have a moral responsibility to make sure that the planet we leave those children is a planet that is healthy and is habitable. Everything possible to have the United States bring countries all over the world together because we have a common enemy in climate change. Instead of spending over a trillion dollars a year on weapons of destruction all over the world, what about bringing the countries together to fight the common enemy of climate change? Justice in this country, we are talking about racial injustice. At a time of overall and massive levels of disparity in the United States the situation is much worse for African American families. It is not acceptable to me or to you that black families own one tenth the wealth that white families own that the infant mortality rate within the African American community is two and a half times higher than the white community that redlining and housing continues to exist that black businesses are unable to get the loans that they need that black school districts are underfunded and that an enormous amount of racism exists within our criminal justice system. So let us be very clear when we talk about justice we mean ending institutional racism from one end of this country. This insistence, when we first launched our campaign in 2015, right up in Burlington very few people took that campaign seriously. The ideas that we talked about four years ago were considered by establishment politicians and mainstream media to be radical and extreme ideas. They said that nobody in America would support. Well, a lot has happened in the last four years. Raising the minimum wage to a living wage not so radical today. Guaranteeing healthcare to all as a human right not so radical today. Up to 15 million jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure not so radical today. Legalizing not so radical today. And by the way, those ideas that we talked about four years ago that seem so extreme at the time. Well, today virtually all of those ideas are supported by a majority of the American people and have overwhelming support from Democrats and independents and they are ideas that Democratic candidates from school board to president are now supporting. Let me just conclude by telling you what we're going to do when we make it to the White House. We're going to provide universal and affordable childcare for every family in America. Thank public colleges and universities to wish in free to substantially lower the outrageous burden of student debt to people all over. When we talk about criminal justice reform we mean that there will be no more private prisons or detention centers because they are too poor to afford bail. We say that when we are in the White House we are going to end the demonization of undocumented immigrants in this country. We're going to pass something that is long overdue and that is comprehensive immigration reform and a path toward citizenship. Status for the 1.8 million young people eligible for the DACA program will have a humane border policy for those who seek asylum. Administration babies will not be slashed from the arms of their mothers. Administration, Amazon, Jeff Bezos profitable corporations and the wealthiest people in this country will start paying their fair share going to end the epidemic of gun violence pass the common sense gun safety legislation that the overwhelming majority of Americans want. People who should not have guns will not have guns. So let me conclude by saying this this is a pivotal moment in American history and Donald Trump and his friends believe they can win the coming election by dividing us up based on the color of our skin or where we were born or our sexual orientation or our religion. They think getting us to hate each other is their path to victory. Well I've got news for Donald Trump that it's not a path toward victory that is a path toward defeat. So while it is true that the 1% in this country and the profitable corporations have enormous wealth and power it is also true that 1% is 1% and 99% is a hell of a lot bigger number than 1% Together and keep our eyes on the prize we are not only going to win this election we are going to transform this country and create the kind of nation that you know we can become. Thank you all very much.