BETO OROURKE CHARLESTON SC TOWN HALL ABC 2020
TVU 20 BETO OROURKE CHARLESTON SC TOWN HALL ABC UNI 082619 2020
193603
Charleston! How are we doing? Thank you all so much for welcoming us, we literally just flew in, just got to the airport. El Paso flight to DFW, DFW to Charleston. Get in the Dodge Grand Caravan, never thought as a young man I'd be in a minivan os muc. But as the father of 3 with Amy raising our kiddos, we spent our fair share in minivans, now doing it as a candidate.
193633
And so grateful to be here with you, and have a chance to see you all again this is our fifth visit to South Carolina and let's make it the best, Okay? Let's have a great conversation tonight. Representative Stavenakis (?) thank you for the introduction. Thank you for your leadership at the state level to ensure that we ban offshore drilling in South Carolina.
193701
That this state, with your leadership, takes the lead, nationally, to confront climate change before it is too late. Use the 10 years that we have left to us not only to protect our waterways, but listening to the mayor of Charleston who told me Now, every single time that it rains, it floods in this community. Telling the stories of how it affects our lives on a day to day basis, not waiting for some far off point down the road, but recognizing that it's right now, right here.
193736
We have but 10 years left to us to act or we lose it forever, not just for Charleston, not just for South Carolina, not just for the United States for for human civilization as we know it, for every generation that follows ours so for your leadership on this, we cannot be more grateful. Thank you so much.
193757
Standing next to him isRepresentative Marvin Pendarbus, Marvin thank you for joining us,
One of the very first to welcome us to South Carolina, this stranger from far west Texas told me what he was excited about in the State, the challenges that he was working on, how they might apply to challenges that we face as a nation on affordable housing and making sure that everyone is included in the economic success of this country.
193829
Though he has not served very long yet he's already established himself as a leader on these and other issues, Marvin, I want to thank you for being here as well. Thank you. And to President Shew, to Amanda, to the College of Charleston, to everyone who's taking some time out of their lives to be here tonight. I want to thank you as well. It makes me feel so good to see you. And to be with you, and to see the University of Texas Longhorns cap right there. Thank you.
193857
We're trading caps right now. Thank you all. I just spent the weekend in El Paso, with my kids with my wife, Amy, in the city where I was raised. In the city that we are raising them. It was Ulysses who's in the seventh grade, 12 years old. His first cross country meet this Saturday morning at 8am. And here we are 4000 feet base elevation up against the Franklin mountains, which are part of the rocky mountain chain in the Mountain West.
193929
We're the only city in the mountain time zone in the state of Texas, to give you an idea of how far west we are from you right now. Afterwards went to his first basketball game. Then his second basketball game, then his third basketball game. It was the Ulysses' sport weekend. The next morning, his little brother Henry who's eight years old, had his first basketball game of the season, least the first one that I've been able to go to. And was fun to watch it. If you've watched eight year olds play basketball, it is cats chasing a ball of yarn across the basketball court.
194003
Got to spend some time with our daughter Molly, who is 11 years old and has nine or 10 pets in the house. Last night we fed the snake, this ball python that she has these frozen mice that we warm up for her, so more than you're wanting to know but just wanted to tell you where I'm coming from. El Paso for those of you who have not been here and understand we have a member of the Leverton (?) family who's here tonight who understands El Paso. His brother Reed is there as a judge.
194030
It is an extraordinarily beautiful community in the Chihuahua desert, so not as green as what we have here in Charleston but beautiful in its own way. On the banks of the Rio Grande River, which connects us, does not separate us fromCiudad Juarez, and that city and El Paso, and Las Cruces, New Mexico. This is the point where three states Chihuahua and Texas, and New Mexico, all meet.
194057
3 million people from two countries, three states, forming something far greater and more powerful than the sum of their parts or the number of people involved. You'll never meet a friendlier group of people in the world, even if you do not speak the same language as they do. We have found our common bond, understand that our differences, do not define us. Do not disqualify us. Do not make us dangerous, we embrace them as foundational to our success to our strength, and to our security and our safety.
194132
El Paso Texas is one of, if not the safest cities in the United States of America. And it is safe not despite but because it's a city of immigrants, because it's connected, conjoined to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, the rest of the world. A quarter of those with whom we live, with whom we're raising Ulysses and Molly and Henry were born in another country and the way that I look at it, they chose us.
194158
They left their family, their hometown, their culture very often, their customs, their country to start a new as strangers in a strange land. To do better for themselves and for their kids that's for sure just like you're trying to do better for yourself and your kids, but uniquely they were also called to do better for us. They were inspired by America, and the idea of America and they have wanted to contribute to our success and by their very presence, they have. That's the story of El Paso. That is by and large, the story of the United States of America at our best.
194234
And I tell you all that in large part because I am proud of who we are in El Paso because I'm cognizant of the fact that when we fail to tell our own stories, other people will tell them for us. Donald Trump for example has called El Paso with the most dangerous cities in the United States of America, not once, not twice -- repeatedly as a basic tool of propaganda.
194308
Most often seen in fascist dictatorships and authoritarian strong men ruled countries, not in this great Republic not in our democracy, not in the United States of America, repeat that often enough. And though it is a lie, people will begin to believe it and it will change our behaviors, because it has changed our perception. And that's precisely what has happened to us in El Paso, Texas, it did not begin with Donald Trump.
194331
For a very long time, this country has projected it's paranoia, it's anxieties, it's hatred. And part of its racism on the community where I live, 85% Mexican American does not look like the majority of this country. Doesn't look like the majority of those who are here tonight, and that scares people just on its face, by the faces of those who live in El Paso, Texas. We are somewhat complicit and culpable in not telling our story -- sharing that we're one of the safest places in the country, sharing our contributions to the richness of this cultures to deepening the understanding of what it means to be American.
194410
What it means to be America. So, this is something that I've always taken pride in, telling our story to others, telling our story to our kids, but something that we learned on August 3 in El Paso Texas is, no matter how exceptional you are in this country, no matter how special your community, no matter the distance between you and the other centers of population and power, and we are closer to like four or five other state capitals than we are to Austin Texas our state capital. Faster for me to get to to Chihuaua city in Chihuahua, or Santa Fe, New Mexico, or the capitals of Arizona, or Colorado before I even get to Austin, Texas.
194453
We are an afterthought if we were ever thought of at all by Washington DC. And in that distance and isolation and our co evolution with Ciudad Juarez, something magical was created. And yet we are still part of this country. Martin Luther King Jr reminded us. We are each caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. We're all connected together you cannot exempt or accept yourself from the rest of us we are tied in a single garment of destiny.
194523
And this is a very violent country. And this is a country where racism and hatred and intolerance and white supremacy are flourishing right now, though they have been part of our fabric that garment from the very beginning, as we mark 400 years of the slave trade and slavery that began right here in August of 1619. Right here in the southeast of the United States of America. And so sooner or later, that will find every single one of us.
194557
And though we have, on average, 18 murders in a year in El Paso, Texas. On one day, August 3 we had 22 in under an hour. Someone drove 600 miles from North Texas, a city called Allen, and came to El Paso intent upon killing, as he told the police afterwards Mexicans. Published a manifesto online before he went out and killed people, and talked about his fear of an invasion -- invasion and being replaced and a Hispanic takeover of the state of Texas that would manifest itself in every way, including at the ballot box.
194639
I should not have to tell you I think you know this already. These are some of the same words that the President of the United States is using. Repeatedly warning of invasions of Mexican immigrants, who he described in his maiden speech for the highest office in the land as rapists and drug dealers and criminals, though they commit crimes at a far lower rate than those born here in the United States.
194703
He talked about an infestation, which is how Amy and I might talk about cockroaches in our house, something less than human that you would want to kill or keep out, but not a human being, not those children that we put in cages after we dehumanize them so you can treat them as something less than human, not the kids, seven whose lives we lost in our care in custody.
194727
The wealthiest, the most powerful country on the face of the planet, one comprised of immigrants and asylum seekers and refugees, the world over. This is how we treated the most vulnerable, the most defenseless among us. This is how we will be judged for as long as it persists. He called them animals, predators, and killers, and he repeated the lie, over and over and over again 10s of thousands of times on Facebook, dozens of times on Twitter from his own feed, he talked about it at rallies.
194804
And in May of this year, he's in Florida, not too far from where we stand right now. And he's talking about this invasion, and he's talking about these immigrants who are coming to get us. And he says, How do we stop them. And Someone in the crowd yells out, shoot them. And everyone else in the crowd roars they're assent. And the President smiles and laughs his consent, with what has just been said, giving permission for exactly what took place in El Paso on August, 3.
194833
And lest you think this is an isolated string of his hatred, this is the same man who called clansmen and neo nazis and white supremacist very fine people days after they were marching in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting Jews, you will not replace us. This is the same man who proposed banning all people of one religion from the shores of this country that is comprised of people from the world over every walk of life, every tradition of faith.
194905
It is hard to find another example outside of the Third Reich, of a modern Western democracy proposing that all people are inherently defective or dangerous, based on their religion or their ethnicity. But that is what our president of the United States of America has said and on the day after he proposed his Muslim ban, actually signed the executive order attempting to stop Muslim travel to the United States of America, the mosque in Victoria Texas was burned to the ground.
194933
The killer at the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, used Donald Trump as inspiration for his attacks of terror there. Calling African nations shithole countries, saying that he wants more immigrants who look like the people of Sweden and Norway, perhaps the whitest places on planet earth today. There can be no doubt, for any of us about who he is and what he intends and how he is trying to remake this country right now.
195004
We have to draw the connections and then draw the conclusion and then stand up and act decisively. If we fail to, in a government of by and for the people, it is on every single one of us. We can take no comfort, afford ourselves no superiority by blaming it on one person or his enablers in one party. This is America. It is all of us at this moment but there's this --
195031
There's this thing that we struggle with in this country and I will admit, I have struggled with it as well. It seems that the bigger the lie, the more obscene the injustices, the more bizarre his pattern of behavior, the harder it is for us to see it clearly, to speak about it honestly, and then to take action decisively.
195057
Here's how I propose to change that. Number one, listen to the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations nominated by President Trump himself who says the majority of domestic terror crimes and investigations that they're pursuing right now are of white supremacists. Let's make that our number one, domestic law enforcement priority and stop domestic terrorism, led by whiote surpremicists in this country.
195126
Two: When the killer in El Paso received his order of the AK 47, a weapon designed for war to kill people as effectively, and as efficiently in as great a number on a battlefield. She called the police in Allen Texas, and said What in the hell does my son need with this, I need some help. What do I do, and they said, Ma'am, I'm sorry this is completely legal no way that we can help you right now.
195156
Let's take the following steps, let's not only be ban AK47s and ar15s and other weapons of war from being sol in our communities in this country, let us also -- and this is a politically difficult thing to say -- let us also buy those ar15s and AK47s and weapon war from the Americans who own them right now. And I understand this is a big step, not everyone has to clap for this one, but I owe you my candor, and my honesty and I cannot escape the conclusion that with millions of them on the streets, they will still remain tools of terror that frightened our kids as they do mine before the first day of school.
195241
Hispanics in El Paso Texas maybe right here in Charleston, South Carolina, who now feel like they have target on their back, and those who pursue them and hunt them in the halls of their high schools, in their seats in an elementary school, through the aisles of a Walmart are better armed than the police were sworn to protect and to serve them, if we add to that, universal background checks, follow representative Kleiber's lead on closing the Charleston loophole.
195310
Then we will make this country safer, and we will no longer functionally accept and be complicit in the deaths of nearly 40,000 of our fellow Americans no other country like us comes anywhere close to this level of carnage. We do not have to accept it, either.
195331
And then let's let's do this. Let's also acknowledge that it's not just the President's rhetoric and the consequences. Something that some have referred to as stochastic terror, where a leader puts it out there, repeatedly, and does not instruct people exactly how to act but knows full well what the consequences of his words will be. I was in Mississippi last week, and we were there in the communities that have witnessed the largest single state ice raid inUnited States history.
195404
Nearly 700 of our fellow human beings, rounded up while at work, one of the toughest jobs that I can imagine: a chicken processing plant. Where some of them have worked for years, in some cases, decades, for the crime of trying to provide for themselves provide for their families get ahead in this country, contribute to our success and our greatness.
195426
600 agents flown in for the operation. Helicopters overhead, one US citizen tazed at his workplace, another person punched in the face. Folks tied by the wrists some by their ankles, some their wrists and ankles tied together like you would a hog, and hundreds locked up and detained and taken it away from their kids. We met one man who was seeking shelter in a Catholic church with his four month old child. A child who was still breastfeeding, but her mother was now in ice jail and detained.
195502
The child inconsolable, the mother absolutely miserable, depressed, beyond words. Her breasts swollen and painful, because she could no longer feed her child - the most basic human instinct and act that I can think of. And we all, through this presidents are doing this to these people right now and it continues, a pace 10 times the increase in ice raids at workplace from this administration from the last one.
195531
This is a concerted effort to terrorize people in this country. I don't know if you saw this proposal that was floated this last week, President Trump is thinking about setting the cap on the number of refugees that we take into America at zero. How do you explain that one to your kids? Imagine the look on their face when they're reading this in the history book decades down the road. Who were those pendejosof 2019, in 2020 who allowed this to happen.
195601
We cannot be that country. So what if we met this challenge, not just defending those undocumented immigrants, working the toughest jobs in America right now, sometimes making a minimum wage, sometimes making something far less. Their immigration status used as leverage against them to be able to assault them with impunity in the workplace, to pay them nothing because, who are you going to tell, and what are they going to do for you especially in this administration.
195629
What if we said not only will we stop those practices, but together, the people of Charleston and El Paso and the rest of the country, we rewrite our country's immigration laws in our own image. Legalize the people who are here, including more than a million dreamers make them US citizens in this, their true country. Never again cage another child, reunite those families that have been separated.
195658
Work with the people of Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador, reduce violence in their home communities, violence, which we are somewhat to blame for -- the civil wars we've been involved in, the drug trade that we facilitated, the war on drugs that has militarized and hollowed out their civic institutions in their home countries. And Guatemala, suffering, one of the greatest droughts in their recorded history, caused not by God nor by Mother Nature, but by you and me, and all of us in our emissions and our excesses, in our inaction, in the face of the facts and the science and the truth.
195736
We have the opportunity and really the responsibility to do the right thing and under our administration, we will we will be proud of this country again. We will have the president, who will heal instead of inflame. Who will be confident and courageous about our role in the world, taking the lead on reducing the wildfires in the Amazon instead of turning a blind eye or turning his back.
195806
And then making sure, I started with this and I'll begin to close with this. I talked about El Paso's failure to tell our own story and then having our story told for us, and having our fellow Americans fear us, and I don't blame those who've been told repeatedly by this president, and by people in the past that we are people to be feared, we now just have to give them the alternative but I was thinking about the history here in South Carolina.
195832
When I was on the statehouse grounds in Columbia, not too long ago, I heard that there is a statue commemorating, celebrating that we look up to a guy named Benjamin Tillman. Now this guy was not only a US Senator for South Carolina, he was a proud member of a white supremacist terrorist organization who proudly shared that he killed African Americans in this state, to try to force the other African Americans who survived that wave of terror, to stay in their quote, unquote, place.
195907
And then, when this state with some of the present company included tried to erect a statue to Robert Smalls, an African American, a slave who commandeered a confederate vessel with his family and others, broke through the lines convinced, Abraham Lincoln to allow African Americans into the Union Army, and then was elected to the United States Congress, and I believe, distinguished South Carolina by passing legislation that he introduced that created the first compulsory free public education in the United States of America.
195942
When that bill was introduced in your state house, it was allowed by the majority, not president company to languish, and to die. So what are we telling the people of this state? The people of this country? Let's recognize the existential threat that Donald Trump poses right now but let's also understand the current that has flown underneath for people like me, a white guy or right in your face. If you do not look like me in this country. For 400 years a story that we have never fully told.
200000
And so the consequences and the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression and white supremacist terror continue in this country. Manifest in every part of American life. 10 times the wealth in white America than there is in black America.
200035
Health outcomes that are disparate, we have a maternal mortality crisis in America, it is three times as deadly for women of color. And at least in Texas, in a kindergarten classroom, where school just started in some school districts, last week. Four or five years old, if you're a child of color you're five times as likely to be disciplined, or suspended or expelled. The schoolhouse to jailhouse pipeline that has produced the largest prison population on the face of the planet.
200106
I did not know this until recently begins, not in high school begins in kindergarten. When that kid does not have a chance against this system. So, until we expose this system, and tell our full story as a country -- to tell Everyone's story. We are not going to make it better and we will not make progress on the priorities that we have in our day to day lives. Those things that contribute to our dignity, and our well being, making sure that healthcare is not a function of fate, or luck, but is a universal human right upon which you can depend.
200138
It's primary care, it's mental health care, and it's every woman making he rown decisions about her own bpdy, and having the access to the care to make that happen. It's making sure that we follow your lead and free ourselves from a dependence on fossil fuels.
200202
Embrace renewable wind and solar and the high paying, high skill, high wage jobs that come with that. And then, following the lead of Roberts smalls who lead on public education in this state, and for the country. Let's make sure that the teachers of South Carolina and throughout this country are paid a true living wage.
200229
We do that, then we are doing right by our fellow Americans. We're living up to our potential, and to our promise, and we will no longer create the fertile ground for demagogues, who will exploit our frustration at the dysfunction of our government and our inability to deliver. To direct our anger at immigrants and people who are vulnerable and have no defense against the most powerful. That is our opportunity right now.
200259
That is why I'm here to listen to you. And that is why I'm running to serve you as the next President of the United States. Thank you all.
200321
We are now going to, I think, Allegra is going to facilitate some questions from the audience recipients going to. All right, Cindy is right here if you can get her attention, she'll bring your microphone and we just need to get this second mic turned on.
Q>> Welcome to Charleston, South Carolina. You mentioned solar, Really important but it's not about that. I saw in March. On Twitter videos, you were at a town hall meeting just like this in Cleveland, and someone asked you specifically about third trimester abortions and you said that the decision was left up to the mothers so my question is this, I was born September 8 1989 and I want to know if you pick on September 7 1989 my life had no value.
200423
OROURKE>> Of course I don't think that, and of course I'm glad that you're here, but you referenced my answer in Ohio and it remains the same. This is a decision that neither you nor I, nor the United States government should be making. That's a decision for the woman to make. We want her to have the best possible access to care and a medical provider and I'll tell you the consequence of this attack on women's right to choose.
200500
And -- and
Someone in Crowd>> What about my right?
OROURKE>> I listened to you and I heard your question I'm answering it, and the attack on on Roe vs. Wade which we thought was this settled law of the land, and unless we had any illusion that the achievements that we made are protected forever or that progress is inevitable that has been shattered right now. I don't want to tell you some of the consequences of this. In my home state of Texas thanks to these trap laws that make it harder for providers to offer the full spectrum of reproductive care, more than a quarter of our family planning clinics have closed.
200533
And it is made us one of the epicenters of this maternal mortality crisis because not only can you not get safe legal access to an abortion. You cannot get access to a cervical cancer screening or a family planning provider, or the state to refuse to expand Medicaid, any provider at all and we are losing the lives of women in our state as aresult. I don't question the decisions that a woman makes outside of the home -- only she knows what she knows.I want t ottrust her with that. I appreciat ethe question.Thank you.
200605
Q>> My question is as President, what would you want to do in your first 100 days in office in order to begin repairing what has been done to our country by the current president?
OROURKE>> I'm tempted to ask for 100 days to give you the answer, given what has happened during this administration,. We talked about those kids who are kept in cages. Many of you have heard about the Border Patrol station outside of El Paso in Clinton Texas, where the administration inexplicably argued that those kids again who just survived a 2000 mile journey by foot much of it, some of it, a top of the train, known as the beast or LA Vesta.
200653
The administration argue that they did not deserve a change of clothes. The toddlers should not have diapers, kids didn't deserve toothbrushes and toothpaste. They were living and sleeping in their own squalor, not to be too graphic, but for those parents who've had a little kid, without a diaper they are shitting on the floor, and that cold concrete for in their own shit is where they are sleeping. Without their folks, being cared for by other kids who they have never met before. It's really important that we try to envision it. To imagine that level of suffering so that we are compelled finally to act and it can help explain how we lost the lives of seven children in our care to things like the flu.
200736
So, freeing those kids rejoining them with their families, promising to never criminalize another asylum seeker, again, allowing them to dignity to live in a community. With family. With our help, with our care. Is a great place to start. We mentioned the rise in hatred and intolerance, the fact that it doesn't just offend our sensibilities but that we've seen a rise in hate crimes Three of the last three years.
200805
What about overturning the transgender troop ban, so that we recognize the service of every American. Nominating those to the Supreme Court who understand a woman's right to choose, understand that corporations are not people. Understand the full civil rights of every single American and then being in every single courtroom in this country, wherever that is litigated.
200830
And then working with our friends and allies in Congress to back this up legislatively. I think that's an important place for us to work. And in this -- I served on the Veterans Affairs Committee for six years, live in a community that has been distinguished by service to country --El Paso, Texas, home to Fort Bliss. I've seen those service members go off to war. I've seen them come back and transition into civilian life, unable to get into the VA to see a psychologist or psychiatrist who can save their life from the PTSD that they carry with them.
200903
We lose more than 20 veterans, a day every day by their own hands. So first let's make sure that we have the resources in the VA to take care of all those come back from having borne the battle, and then two, let us end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, an syria nad Lybia, and Yemen and Solamia and bring those service members back home to this country.
200930
Sign the Paris Climate Agreement. Tak the lead globally on climate change. Make sur ethat we lead the fight on $15 an hour as a base wage in this country. Elevat unions. Make sure that they can represent working Americans. Create more apprenticeships to train working Americans. I'm just -- that's just the first 15 minutes of my first day in office.
200957
But you get an idea that there is so much and you said this there's so much that we have to roll back, but then there's so much that we have to lead on. We have to start right from the beginning. Those are some areas that we can work on Thank you for asking.
201030
Q>> I'm Nelson Trey Middleton, the CEO and coordinator, as well for the democrats as well as the vice president for the woman's democrats and, but our main concern is our education. What are you going to do to help with the school to the prison pipeline that has targeted our children from their youthful days to be failures to be cast out, and to not even have an opportunity and successful life.
201102
OROURKE>> Some have made the case, and you're making it right now, that in some parts of the country, segregation in public education is worse today in 2019 than it was in 1954 on the eve of Brown v the Board of Education. You have an annual funding shortfall for majority minority majority school districts have $23 billion a year, a year, that we are under funding their education, their teacher pay, their facilities, their services, their technology, and there is a consequence to that.
201137
We propose in the first year of our administration, a permanent Education Fund of $500 billion. The proceeds from which are spent to reduce that funding gap. In fact, to level it completely. That begins to address equality, but it does not get at equity. To do that, we propose $500 million a year for world class teacher academies at historically black colleges and universities and minority serving institutions.
201206
Creating a teacher pipeline to combat that school to prison pipeline to ensure that that teacher in front of the classroom looks like the students that she's instructing and having that connection at a very basic human level is so fundamental to that child's success and then we will make sure that Betsy de Voss is replaced by a Secretary of Education who has experince in the classroom. That's the way that we make this better. Thank you,
201242
Q>>My name is Elena Moultrie. What would you do for Labor Union as far as for the employers to stop threatening the employees because it's their right. If the union is so bad, why are the employees fighting so hard to keep them out. So, what are you going to do about that.
201333
OROURKE>>Thank you for the question. And thank you for your commitment to pub;ic service. We know this in the ORourke family, you know this because you do it every single day. It's very often the driver of that bus who was the first to see signs of hope, or signs of distress or despair, in a child, and by getting in touch with the school administrator the teacher, or the parent. The first their first line of defense to be there for that child when they need it the most.
201400
So I want to thank you for your public service and for making the case for being able to organize and I think one of the challenges that you and I have, and others who believe in what you're saying is, we've got to speak to those who are not yet members of unions and maybe even more importantly, to those who do not believe in the power of unions maybe don't understand it, maybe take for granted the gains that unions have won.
201426
Here's one way that I would start in South Carolina. We now know that 25% of public school educators, leave the profession within the first year in the state. Within five years, 50%, of those that all of us through our tax dollars have paid to train and educate who through their own sacrifice in the student loans that they still carry on their backs paid to train and educate themselves are leaving the profession, creating a teacher shortage an educator shortage and a support administrative staff shortage in this state.
201459
Now that's not only bad for the public school educator and support staff it's not only bad for the kids in the classroom. It is bad for the taxpayer, for the economy, for the competitiveness of South Carolina. So, let's make joining a union and the right to organize, something that is fundamental to the success of everyone in South Carolina. Everyone in this country, when we show that the gains are shared across the economy as a whole, union member and non union member alike. I think we have a better chance of bringing in more support and elevating the place and prominence of unions in South Carolina and in Texas, and in the places that you are least likely to find them today. So you have my commitment to do that with the rest of America. Thank you for asking the question.
201550
Q>> And it's specific as possible. How do you plan, not only to stabilize, but also to increase the country's financial economy, and in what timeframe, do you think your plans will actually, you'll be able to start acting any of that.
201618
OROURKE>> Yeah, thanks for asking the question, folks, Democrats, Republicans independents alike. This is the moment where the Democratic Party reclaims the mantle of fiscal responsibility and stewardship in this country. This president, that Republican controlled Senate, As you probably know, are running deficits now that amount to a trillion dollars a year. Adding to $22 trillion in debt, following a tax cut of $2 trillion that flows disproportionately to the wealthiest and to corporations at a time of record profit making in those corporations, record income inequality and record wage stagnation for working Americans.
201702
So, how do we meet this challenge, one, we roll back the worst of the Trump tax code so that corporate rate that went from 35% to 21%, the specific you as for, take it to 28% which generates hundreds of billions of dollars. Tax capital gains at the same rate that you tax wages and salaries and ordinary income, you generate hundreds of billions of dollars.
201728
End the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria Somalia Yemen and Libya, which have added trillions of dollars to the debt. Focus resources on those veterans and former service members who bore the battle, put their life on the line. Make investments in teachers and schools, healthcare wage growth. Any minimum wage, and you will grow your way out of this deficit spending at the same time that you're cutting costs by rolling back from the worst of the tax cuts and the military spending and you begin to get this fiscal house in order.
201802
Now, this was a long time coming, starting with the first george w bush unpaid for tax cut. It will take us a while to get out of it but those are some of the preliminary steps that we can take to be on the right path. Thanks for asking the question.
Q>> I am a first generation of high school graduate. On your first day of the presidency, you said you would use executive order to reunite families, and I wanted to ask you. Can you be more specific with that.
201842
OROURKE>>Absolutely. So, as you probably know, we still have children in our custody. In some cases, whose parents have been deported back to their countries of origin. So think of our own moms risking their lives, traveling 2000 miles to bring us here, and instead of finding shelter or safety or refuge, it is literally your worst nightmare.
201904
Your, your child taken from your breast by force if necessary, which we have done. You were remanded into custody of the Department of Justice, then over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and then sent back to Honduras, or Guatemala, or El Salvador, very often without being able to track your whereabouts or your ability to track your child's whereabouts. This country should move every mountain, bear any burden to reunite those families.
201928
It's the most fundamental responsibility I think that we have and we should be able to pursue it. We should ensure that those families who are detained right now are released and reunited with family members, and then we should end a policy implemented by the Trump administration. They are sharing the fingerprints of these kids who are in Border Patrol custody right now with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is sharing the fingerprints of family members who are in the United States, so that if somebody comes forward to claim a child said that's my nephew, who's in custody right now, they can come to my house and be with me, if they're in the ice database, they are arrested, detained and deported.
202009
It is such a chilling effect throughout the country, and families are not coming forward. We will roll back that policy remove that policy, so that we make family reunification paramount. And the number one priority of our of the short term or immigration policy and then never again, break up a another family. Never again treat them as criminals.
202029
I mentioned rewriting our immigration code, so that we prioritize, not just family reunification But folks who want to work a job or come to school here, a legal safe quick path to do that. So we don't incentivize going around the law right now. So I will make sure that we make it a priority, and we put the resources in place to reunite those families, thanks for asking.
202056
Q>> Hi, my name is Taylor and I'm hoping to go into the genocide prevention, I'm sure you're aware there is a genocide in Myanmar, that has been ongoing for the past two years, the Western world has done a little to nothing to assist in this genocide or to help the ranking of victims who are being persecuted, the United States is included in this group of countries who was just little to nothing. As president what concrete steps would you take to not only help her in the minority in Myanmar, but also to end human rights crisis is everywhere.
202130
OROURKE>> Yeah, thank you, what a great question. Grateful for your choice of career. So, let's use the full diplomatic force of the United States to protect the (rohinga?)Muslim minority in Burma slash Myanmar. To either relocate there or if we cannot assure their safety to find some other suitable place for them to be. But the priority should be returning to their homes to their communities to make sure that we do not reward or turn a blind eye to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar or anywhere in this world.
202157
And then use meetings like the one that President Trump is at or was just at with the g7 in France to bring the other Western democracies together on issues in Myanmar, or Saudi Arabia, which is bombing Yemen into the last century, and into the next greatest humanitarian crisis we've seen. 7 million people who are on the brink of starvation or dehydration in one of the most water scarce countries on the face of the planet.
202226
We have similar challenges in other parts of the country, but right now instead of embracing democracy and standing up for the rights of minorities in these countries, you have a president who's enabling strong men and dictators and thugs, he literally said who's falling in love with Kim Jong-Un of North Korea. Embraces Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Solman of Saudi Arabia who's doing this, who killed an American based journalist with complete impunity, President Trump literally said this and I mentioned that the more obscene the injustice, the harder it is for us to take in. He said that they buy a lot of weapons from the United States of America so we don't have to worry about that right now.
202303
What do we stand for any more? And I love what you stand for and I want to make sure that we follow that lead and that we take a role, nationally, to bring the eyes of the world to these challenges, make sure that we stop them and guarantee the freedom of people all over the world so thank you for asking. Appreciate it.
202343
Thank you all very much for having us out. We will see you next time we are here in Charleston. (speaks in spanish)
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