Sandbox has been cleared. Long live the new Sandbox!:

I serve all of them and because I listen and then find common ground and build for their I get a lot done. I passed the 9/11 health bill twice for first responders all across this country - people who ran up the towers on 9/11 when everybody else was coming down. And unfortunately because they've been breathing all these toxins for decades they're dying. And so I had to lift up their voices and carry their stories with the 9/11 responders knocking on doors with me and got it passed.

I also was able to bring people together on Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal. Even Democrats at the time and advocates at the time were saying, "look you can't do this and this is not a convenient time or this is the right strategy." And I just was very clear that when is civil rights convenient? You have to fight for it for the right reasons because you have to fight for it because It's necessary. These are men and women who will die for this country and they're being denied the ability to serve based on who they love...

I do not back down from a fight especially if it's the right fight for the right reasons. And it doesn't matter if it's hard. I will fight especially if it's hard and I've shown that I could do that by taking on the generals in the Pentagon over sexual harassment in the military... Being willing to take on special interests on on all hosts of ideas and making sure that we do the right thing even when it's hard and especially when it's hard.

I talk to voters everywhere and the number one thing still on their minds is health care. And I can't explain to you how important this is because if you don't have access to healthcare - you can't afford it or you're being denied because of an insurer - you might not think you'll survive to be able to provide for your kids. You might think my child has a pre-existing condition and he'll die if I can't get the treatment or the medicine that he needs,' so this is an issue of life or death. So I would really like to bring people together and focus on healthcare as a right not a privilege.

I think Medicare for-All is the right solution. I campaigned on Medicare-for-All in 2006 in my 2-to-1 Republican district and I made it really simple for folks back then. They just said, "Our insurers charge us too much money, co-pays are too high, deductibles are too high. It keeps going up." I said, "Well how would you feel if you could just buy into Medicare at a percentage of your income something like 5%? Would that be something you're interested in?" And they said, "Of course!" Because they knew #1, creates competition because you're having a not-for-profit public option that will drive competition with the for-profit insurers. And #2, they knew Medicare's good. It covers most things - the things they want. And even after this last presidential election I would talk to voters in upstate New York and the thing I'd hear is "I'm angry that my neighbor makes five thousand dollars less than me and he gets access to Medicaid and I don't and it's unfair." So, folks want access to basic health care.

So the part of the Senator Sanders bill that I got to write was the transition which is the part that I think is really important for people to understand. It's a four year transition where anybody can buy in at 4% of their income to create competition in the market and let people begin to choose what works for you. I promise you, if you've a choice of paying your insurers endless amounts of money and not great coverage and actually buy into Medicare people are going to choose that because it is affordable medicine, affordable health care, quality service, and I want people to look at this as something that is theirs, like an earned benefit because what we have is Social Security it's really clear; You buy in across your lifetime at 6% of your income up to a certain amount, I would blow that cap by the way as a way to have more people invest into our social safety net through all incomes, and then let people buy at 4%. So, if you bought it at 4% and for your earned benefit of health care people can understand that if you're you're committing 10% of your income overall to make sure that you have access to healthcare as a right not a privilege, to make sure that you will not die in poverty, that you'll have a safety yet when you're a senior. I think that's the kind of thing that makes sense to people. So that's the part of the bill I wrote that I really like and that's how you get to single payer. That's how you get to true Medicare for all because you're letting people participate in a way that makes sense to them

The platform of it is really exciting because it recognizes and in the way I see a green economy is this I think we need a moonshot. We need to tell the American people we are going to have a green economy in the next 10 years not, because it's easy but, because it's hard. Because it's a measure of our innovation and effectiveness. Like that JFK moment where he says "This is what we're gonna do in 10 years not because it's easy but because it is hard." And I think if you lay out a large agenda that really transforms the economy in a lot of places and I'll explain the places where I've been working for a long time which are very much part of that platform. So, the simple thing. Jobs. We, you can create more economic growth if you invest in entrepreneurialism innovation. If you actually invest in wind turbines, in solar panels, in geothermal, in hydro power, in biofuels. If you use our ability to innovate and invent you will solve the problem of moving into a green energy economy. And by doing that you're going to create a lot of jobs. You also can use the investment of investing in efficiencies.

So there's a school in upstate New York where they teach green energy and it's what they do. And so the kids learn how to build a home that's LAED certified. They learn how to install solar panels, and wind, and wind turbines and they learned how to do energy efficient appliances everything. And what I was told when I toured that school they said 98 percent of our graduating seniors have three or more job offers before graduation. Well now that's a true statistic. That's pretty amazing. But that's what, that's what the green economy can look like. You're just actually creating the vision for how to create a faster growing economy.

And we've made a mistake in the last 10 years because you know Congress always, hems and haws, and doesn't provide these tax benefits for innovation. We've let the tax credits lapse and expire. And so industries that would normally be investing over and over again chose not to. And you know what happened? All that innovation all that manufacturing went to China. So now China is in a better position to innovate than America is because they took on the goal of making green energy a real part of their economy. So make it a real part of the economy.

You should put a price on carbon because what you're doing is you're incentivizing good behavior you're saying "If you want to be a polluter - fair enough, but you're going to pay a lot more because you're harming the rest of us and we're going to have to pay all those hospital bills." That's going to come to the taxpayer eventually. So you don't get the benefit of being a big polluter unless you're gonna pay for it. But if you're going to be the inventor and the innovator who's going to create the new energy efficient processes you get the benefit. And so I love putting a price on carbon as well.

So I believe in full employment and I think you should get to a full employment. And the way you do that is you make sure that anybody who wants to be working full time can get whatever job training it takes to get a full time job. And we've been doing that in New York and a couple places effectively and the way I think you could do it is you partner with community colleges and the state schools and the apprenticeship programs and the not-for-profits that do this today. Do the really good hands-on job training to get the skills you need for the job that is available.

In upstate New York one of our local manufacturers needed advanced welders and they said "We couldn't find any being 500 mile radius of our manufacturing plant." So they went to the community college and said "Will you offer this coursework? We'll hire every-one it's a $70,000 a year job." Sure enough it works perfectly. So now they have all the welders they need.

So, my vision for full employment is making job training really accessible and funding that because that's what our community colleges and state schools and these not for profits do so well. They're already doing it. So amplify their work investing in that directly. So you know if you're underemployed or unemployed and you want... You want a better job or higher wages you have someplace you can go and know that there's a path for you.

So I believe that public service is life changing for people. I believe that if you give someone a chance to put others before themselves it changes their hearts. It changes who they are. Changes what they care about and I think you've you told every young person in America if you do a year of public service we're going to give you two years of community college free. And if you do two years of public service we'll give you four years free for a community college your state schools or any not-for-profit training program. And so I would combine that so with your full employment goal so that young people can also get good training.

Immigration in our country has always been a strength. We thrive on our diversity. Our diversity has always been a strength. It helps to increase the economy it helps to create entrepreneurial ism and innovation. It's the American story. The Statue of Liberty stands in New York Harbor with a beacon of light and hope saying to the world come we will help you. You know for anyone the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We are here that beacon of light. We've never been afraid of refugees. We've never been afraid of immigration. We've always seen it as something that is part of our story.

And so we need to build that. And it should be under the Department of Justice. It should be part of a humanitarian issue certainly for asylum seekers. And as a humanitarian issues and immigration is an issue of families making sure families who desperately want to be reunited can be reunited and those communities can be strong and economic and making sure that we ultimately rightsize immigration. And so that's why you need a comprehensive immigration approach. And you're going to do all of it so you're not going to sacrifice national security and anti-terrorism work. There needs to be fully funded as part of Homeland Security.

But immigration is about so much more. It's not a criminal issue it's not a national security issue. It's about who we are as a nation and what makes us strong. And immigration is going to be part of that. And so you've got to make it work. You have to have a pathway to citizenship for the 11 or 12 million folks that are here. You have to let people who are here start buying into Social Security and buying into, paying their taxes and making sure they're investing in our schools. So you have to create a pathway for that to happen.

And then you have to look at asylum very differently because we have a lot of reasons why asylum seekers are coming here. You've got things happening in South America and Central America that frankly we're turning a blind eye to that we should be actually addressing working with the international community with political solutions and diplomatic solutions to try to end the gun violence gang violence and terrorism that's happening these communities that are making mothers send their young boys to travel by themselves to America. So they just don't get recruited into a gang. Think about the problem that these people were facing. How many women are, are seeking refuge because of gang violence and rape and and being treated so horribly that they can't survive.

So if you don't start with the human story about what's actually happening in these families you're not going to create the right solution. I promise you. Locking them up in a for-profit prison or sticking lots of young boys in a Wal-Mart with no windows is not the solution to the horror their lives are facing or our immigration challenges. And so I would do comprehensive and I would try to solve each problem based on what is the actual problem and and get at it from the root.

When you say the future is female. I'm not saying the future's only female. I'm saying please include the ladies in the future because we have a lot to offer which is why I created "Off the Sidelines" it was a political action committee I created seven years ago - a call to action asking America's women to vote to become advocates, to participate, to run, to find a woman candidate to support because we want 51% of women at the table. Why would you exclude half of our U.S. population from the decision making table? And that that's going to resonate in any community because they know that their mom or their sister or their aunt or their daughter have important things to say that they listen to in their own families. And so when you elevate men and women at the same table you're going to have a diversity of opinion about what are the biggest problems but also what are the best solutions and the diversity of that really works.

I'll give you one example. So when I first got elected in 2006 I was put on the Armed Services Committee and I'm sitting next to Gabby Giffords and a bunch of new freshmen women and we were having a hearing on military readiness and you know a lot of the men were talking about equipment... it was all about the the function of military readiness from an equipment perspective. From what are we gonna buy and what we gonna build? But the women just instinctively were looking at other data and saying, well, why is the divorce rate as high as it is right now? Why is the suicide rate as high as it is? Domestic violence rate as high as it is? And we realize that military readiness also has to do with the troops... they're being pulled to the thinnest, they're not having rotations at home, their deployment times are longer than they've been in other conflicts. And there's no rest time, and no dwell time, and they're struggling.

And so the military readiness that we're talking about is both equipment and personnel. And so for that for America that was a better answer for them because the combination of our voices was strong.

So intersectionality what that means to me is that if you are discriminated against in more than one way it's intersectional. And for example if you are a woman you're going to be discriminated against because of gender bias and sexism. If you're a black woman you might be discriminated against because of racism and the burden on that black woman is so much harder because she has to deal with racism and sexism at the very same time. And if you explain that to someone who might not know what that word means they're going to say "That's right. That is right."

And then you give them a few facts like well you know if you're a black woman in New York City and you went to go have a baby you are 12 times more likely to die in childbirth because of institutional racism. If you explain to someone law enforcement really isn't that fair.

And if you are black or brown man you are 10 times more likely to be arrested than a white man in New York City and four times more likely then rest the country for marijuana possession. So that's why I'm for decriminalization because how it is, how people are treated is unacceptable. It isn't. And when someone's been arrested and put in jail for possession of marijuana you know how their lives change? They might have missed work that day. They might be fired. They might have just lost the one job it took them a really long time to get if their mom lives in one of the housing authorities in New York City and they wish... Well they want to go visit her on Thanksgiving. They can't. If that somehow gets in their record and they go for a job interview and this employer says "have ever been arrested?" And he has to say "Well yeah when I was 18 I-" the job interviews over.

And so criminal justice has to be important. And in the economy. Like you'll see one of the issues you guys have talked about is postal banking. 30% of our country doesn't have access to a savings account. Do you know what? It's very expensive to be poor in this country. It means that you have to wire some money to your your mother who is in Puerto Rico, they're gonna charge you maybe 20% of what you just sent her or if you want to buy a couch for your house well your only option is layaway and the predatory lending aspect of that you're going to pay $500 dollars for a couch that was $200 because you had to, you couldn't pay it all in one go. So I think as a white woman it is my responsibility to take on these, these issues of institutional racism as if they were my own because that's my job and it is not, should not be left as a burden for black and brown people to fight these, their own on their own. It should be me who can lift up their voices can can make sure their voices are heard. And so that we could end it.

And so those are my responsibilities as a woman who seeks to serve. So I will talk about that in red, purple, and blue places and I promise you if I told any mom in America that if you're a black lady and you go to have a baby you're going to more likely die they're going to be as mad as I am because it's not OK. It's not OK. So you just have to take time.