If you believe that America must work for all of us, not just the rich and powerful, if you believe we must reject the politics of fear and division, if you believe we are stronger together, then let's work our hearts out to make Hillary Clinton the next President of the United States!
— Elizabeth Warren
When giant companies wanted more tax loopholes, Washington got it done. When huge energy companies wanted to tear up our environment, Washington got it done. When enormous Wall Street banks wanted new regulatory loopholes, Washington got it done. No gridlock there!
Some of these biggest financial institutions are out there trading in commodities. They're buying oil tankers. This is not a financial system that has calmed down and is there to serve the American people.
I held my father's hand while he died of cancer, and it's really painful when you do something like that up close and personal. My mother was already gone, and I was very, very close to my father.
Every time the U.S. government makes a low-cost loan to someone, it's investing in them.
In 1978, we adopted a new Bankruptcy Code in the United States, and a principal part of this was designed to adjust to the new corporation, to find ways to let a corporation that had gotten into financial trouble reorganize itself. A big part of the selling point on this bankruptcy law was, 'It will preserve jobs.'
It worries me about what happens if people in government are looking for that next job: 'Yeah I'm working now, not as much money as I could be making, but when I leave here, that's where I'm headed.' That ultimately infects whatever it is that they're doing.
If President Barack Obama had not been in the White House, we would not have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today.
Rising student-loan debt is an economic emergency.
Banks were once places to hold money and were very careful in lending to finance families as they built a future - bought homes, bought cars, took out student loans.
'Middle class' used to be synonymous with secure, with steady, with boring, because middle-class people were people who were pretty much safe from the time they first started work on through retirement and until their deaths. No longer.
It is easy when you are successful to think that you did it all by yourself and to forget that you didn't. You got here because a lot of things broke your way. You were lucky enough to be born into a family that could afford to take care of you well.
Raising the minimum wage means we have workers paying more in to support the Social Security system.
I grew up in a family that nearly lost everything, but I ended up in the United States Senate because I grew up in an America that invested in kids like me and built a real future for us.
There's a lot of talk coming from Citigroup about how Dodd-Frank isn't perfect. Let me say this to anyone who is listening at Citi: I agree with you. Dodd-Frank isn't perfect. It should have broken you into pieces.
I don't want to go to Washington to be a co-sponsor of some bland little bill nobody cares about. I don't want to go to Washington to get my name on something that makes small change at the margin.
I'll work with anyone - and I really do mean that - Democrat, Republican, independent, Libertarian, contrarian, vegetarian.
I'm not someone who thinks Republicans are always wrong and Democrats are always right.
I got married at 19 and graduated from a commuter college in Texas that cost $50 a semester. The way I see it, I'm a janitor's daughter who became a public school teacher, a professor, and a United States Senator. America is truly a country of opportunity!
In the 1960s, a minimum wage job would keep a family of three afloat.
You can put handcuffs on people who push the envelope. When they break the law, they deserve to have handcuffs.
When I first started talking about running for office, a lot of people said to me, 'Don't let the consultants change you,' and I'd always assured them that I wouldn't allow it to happen. But like it or not, I had to change. Not because of a consultant, but because I started to understand the cost of a stupid mistake.
A pension is nothing more than deferred compensation.
Early 2000s, we get Enron, which tells us the books are dirty. And what is our repeated response? We just keep pulling the threads out of the regulatory fabric.
Homeowners refinance their loans when interest rates go down. Businesses refinance their loans.
Bankruptcy is about financial death and financial rebirth. Bankruptcy is the great American story rewritten. We're a nation of debtors.
I loved teaching, but every day that I went to work, I carried the worry that I was hurting my kids because I wasn't at home with them.
Truly successful lives are about family.
Others have said it before me. If you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu. And so it is important that we have women in the United States Senate - strong women, women who are there to help advance an agenda that is important to women.
Big corporations have money and power to make sure every rule breaks their way; people have voices and votes to push back.
We need to align the incentives so that colleges have an incentive to keep down their costs... to graduate students on time with degrees in areas where they're going to be able to get jobs and going to be able to pay back those loans.
Does anyone believe that Goldman Sachs is gonna give up a deal that would yield millions of dollars because someone fussed at them behind closed doors?
There are very few people at the decision-making table to argue for minimum-wage workers. Very few people.
There are lots of families who - who make irresponsible purchases. There are also a lot of families who have debt on credit cards because they use those credit cards to pay for medical bills.
Democrats fought to get health insurance for more Americans. Democrats fought for a strong consumer agency so big banks can't cheat people. We fought, we won, and we improved the lives of millions of people - thank you, President Obama!
If nobody can sell mortgage-backed securities based on trillions of dollars of unpayable instruments, there's a lot less risk in the overall system.
I think Hillary Clinton is terrific.
If Federal Reserve loans are subsidies, it doesn't show up in the federal budget.
Other countries around the world make employees and retirees first in the priority. For example, in Mexico, the bankruptcy laws say if a company wants to go bankrupt... obligations to employees and retirees will have a first priority. That has an effect on every negotiation that takes place with every company in Mexico.
We all understand that we are living longer, and we are more likely to spend more years as frail, elderly people who can't work. We also recognize that the wonderful advances in medicine also come with wonderful price tags. Those are things you can't budget around.
I don't think anyone went the polls and said, 'I am casting my vote to make sure that Wall Street has better chances to make bigger profits off the backs of the American people.'
In America today, a young person needs more education after high school just to have a chance to make it in the middle class. Not a guarantee, just a chance to make it.
No matter how good a deal sounds, if your name goes on the bottom line, you need to understand it and be sure you'll be able to pay. You are responsible for yourself forever. Forever.
My mother had taught me about the importance of finding a 'good provider,' so when my boyfriend proposed, I said 'yes' in a heartbeat. I was still just a kid, and I didn't know what was coming in life.
I think I grew up with a profound sense of watching people who were good people, who were smart people, who were hardworking people - God, nobody on this Earth worked harder than my mom and dad - and they had very little.
We should stop having a conversation about cutting Social Security a little bit or a lot.
Thomas Piketty assembles the facts to prove a central point about trickle-down economics: Doesn't work. Never did. He has cold, hard data showing how the rich keep getting richer and how the playing field is rigged against working families.
Citigroup has a lot of money, it spends a lot of money, and it uses that money to grow and consolidate power. And it pays off.
I'm not running for president.
Regulators all meet with Goldman Sachs executives and employees day after day after day. They don't see the people who get tricked, the people who get cheated, the people who get fooled by the products that Goldman turns out.
