We drove the two hundred fifty miles to the balloon field in Indianola, Iowa for the 37th (and final) Harkin Steak Fry, one of the signature Midwest political events for Democrats, leaving at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning so that we could arrive for the media preset and claim main riser space. We did and we did.
The Ready for Hillary PAC (not affiliated with any candidate) had a formidable presence at the steak fry.
Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton were the featured speakers, so there was a significant amount of national and international media present. The steak fry folks ran out of printed press credentials.
While we waited for the press entry with about two hundred other media types we ran into the great Charles P. Pierce (Esquire – Politics Blog). He’s an approachable and friendly person. And he tells very funny stories. We introduced ourselves and explained our connections – especially the Vicky Hartzler “the Chinese are spying on us through our toasters” meme.
The media scrum, waiting for entry into the steak grilling photo op – for about an hour and a half.
A crowd of steak fry civilians gathered from across the balloon field as the media waited for the press only steak grilling photo op. At the point that the gates were opened and almost everyone ran for position you could hear those observers laughing at the media.
Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Tom Harkin at the steak grilling photo op – Harkin Steak Fry, Indianola, Iowa – September 14, 2014.
AFSCME members at the steak fry.
Listening to Tom Harkin.
The crowd.
We’re not certain, but our Show Me Progress road trip group came up with a consensus estimate of seven thousand people in attendance.
Not everyone who attended was from Iowa. If you asked those in our party who were in and around the crowd about its reaction to Hillary Clinton’s speech they would tell you it was way more than enthusiastic. They’re ready and armed for bear. To quote a commenter at Charles P. Pierce’s place:
Do you talk to women who are not very political? They ones I have are really, really excited about Clinton running. There are a lot of people who don’t see her as a retread.
“I’m back.”
The Texts from Hillary photo as a public service announcement on the back of the Ready for Hillary PAC bus.
Oh, if you’re curious about what six or so inches of rain a few days before the event and seven thousand pairs of feet will do to a balloon field in Iowa on a sunny Sunday afternoon – there was mud.
We made the four and a half our drive through the rain to Indianola, Iowa for the 36th annual Harkin Steak Fry, held this year at the Warren County Fairgrounds. The featured speakers were San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro and Vice President Joe Biden. After a few early bouts of rain the sky held back for the rest of the event. There was well over a thousand people in attendance, not counting a significant contingent of national media.
Our friend from previous years, Nick Lucy.
Senator Tom Harkin, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, and Vice President Joe Biden.
Vice President Joe Biden greeting steak fry volunteers.
San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro.
Vice President Joe Biden.
Part of the crowd and the main media riser.
After his speech Vice President Biden spent well over a half hour greeting people on the rope line.
After we checked in at the media table at the Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa on Sunday we had a few hours to eat, walk the Warren County Fairgrounds site, visit with people, and take a few photographs before the press availability with the host, Senator Tom Harkin (D), and his guest, the featured speaker, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.
We gathered with the rest of the media at the appointed hour and were ushered to an area next to one of the outdoor grills.
Senator Tom Harkin (D) at the press availability at the 35th Annual Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa on September 16, 2012.
The transcript:
Senator Tom Harkin (D): …So, welcome again to the thirty-fifth Harkin Steak Fry. Uh, we’ve had a lot of great speakers in the, in the past and we have another great speaker today, a good friend, uh, the Governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley who has just done great things in his state. I’m kind of jealous, really, quite frankly. Uh, I chair the Education Committee in the Senate and, uh, you know, we look at all the different states and what’s happening. And it was brought to my attention that Maryland now, uh, exceeds all states in the number of kids who pass through advanced placement tests. To me that says something about Governor O’Malley’s devotion to education in his state. He’s kept tuition down in his state. Uh, and so, the way I see it, he’s put money in to, in to schools, rebuilding schools, school construction, renovation, so, uh, my way of thinking, he’s a, he’s my education governor and has done a lot of great things for education. Since we take pride in our education in Iowa I wanted to have him come out and meet Iowans and, and, uh, talk to our steak fry. So, nice to have Martin O’Malley here from Maryland.
Governor Martin O’Malley (D): Senator, thank you. I’m a huge fan of your senator. Senator Harkin, more than any other senator, I think, in the U.S. Senate has accomplished things that reach all across our country. I mean, I don’t know another senator that’s, uh, touched as many lives in as many real ways as he has with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Uh, every family, every community, we were talking on the way up here, how gratifying it must be to run in to people from towns and places you’d never ever been who thank you for what you’ve done for their family members and, and for themselves. So, uh, look, I’m, I’m honored to be here. Uh, we, uh, I’m also the chair of the Democratic Governors Association and, uh, this is state that we intend to win in two thousand and fourteen. Democratic governors are all about doing the things that work in order to improve, uh, education, improve public safety, create jobs and expand opportunity. We’re not ideologues. We believe that you bring people together to do the things that work. And that’s the sort of leadership that Senator Harkin brought to the U.S. Senate. And, uh, so, uh, I’m, I’m very, very honored to be here. Thank you for the nice things you’ve said about what the people of my state have accomplished. In the toughest of times our state’s been able to move forward, improving education, improving public safety, and, and really giving our kids a better shot at being winners in this new economy. So, I’m honored to be here and it’s been great to meet all your friends and look forward, uh, to working with you to, uh, help the people of Iowa elect a new democratic governor in two thousand fourteen…
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley at the Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa, September 16, 2012.
…Senator Harkin: And carry it for Barrack Obama this year, too. We’re gonna, we’re, we’re gonna work hard to carry, uh, Iowa for Iowa. He carried it last time. It’s a close race in Iowa. Uh, I, I, rode out on the plane with him a couple of weeks ago and as you know he’s taken a bus tour across Iowa, he’s been to, here a couple three times, he was here with, uh, Joe Biden and Jill, and his wife just a couple weeks ago, well, just the day after the, after the convention. And he’ll be here a lot of times, uh, uh, Vice President Biden’s gonna be here the next couple of days here in Iowa. So I can tell yah, uh, President Obama told me personally that they are investing a lot in this state and they intend to win Iowa. And we intend to carry it for him.
Question: Governor O’Malley, how difficult is it to begin this process of testing the waters in Iowa before the two thousand twelve election has actually even been held?
Governor O’Malley: Oh, I don’t know, that’s not what I’m doing. I’m here for, uh, I’m here because my friend Senator Harkin asked me come. And Iowa’s a very important state to President Obama and to the reelection of the President which is very important to the people of my state. I mean, in Maryland the things we’ve been able to do, Race to the Top, improving education, improving public safety, those things wouldn’t have been possible without President Obama help, without the help of, and the courageous votes of people like Senator Harkin. And, um, Democratic governors, uh, need our President to be reelected so we can continue to make progress for our people. It’s, it’s a great honor to be invited here and, um, I’m, I’m looking forward to, uh, meeting the senator’s friends, and, most importantly, I’m looking forward to helping the people of Iowa, uh, as we move forward and, and elect more Democratic governors across our country in the years ahead.
Question: Governor, since you’ve brought up twenty-fourteen, uh, in your roll with the Governors Association, are you actively scouting Democratic candidates for governor here? And have you had any conversations specifically with former Governor Culver.
Governor O’Malley: Well. I know Senator, I mean, I know Governor Culver. In fact, Governor Culver and I both traveled to Iraq together. And, uh, you know, he, uh, his soldiers, his men and women in uniform were serving there with men and women from Maryland and we’d swap flags and cell phone cameras whenever we came across groups of our, our people. So, I like, uh, I like Governor Culver and his wife, Mary. They’re good friends of mine. I mean, ultimately, in every primary the Democratic Governors, kinda, the DGA takes a step back and people in every state have to figure out their own, uh, politics in their primary. And, uh, it’s, having spent some time in Iowa I believe that the people of Iowa, when we give them a choice of moving forward or falling back, always choose to move forward. That’s in your DNA. And I think that’s what you’re going to do again when the opportunity, uh, of the governor’s race comes up.
Question: Senator Harkin, what’s the number one message you hope to communicate during today’s program?
Senator Harkin: Well, I think that the number one message is sort of what, uh, Governor O’Malley said. Uh, progress. We gotta keep moving forward. We can’t go back. And if you listen to the Republican party’s platform, read it, and listen to what they’re saying, as I will say today, they want to take us back before Roosevelt. Not Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt. Uh, I mean, undo all of the, kind of the, the social contract that we have built up in America since the nineteen, early nineteen hundreds. Uh, the social contract dealing with education, with health care, with the environment, uh, jobs, retraining. We’ve built a wonderful social contract in this country. And, and don’t take my word for it, but, Bruce Bartlett who was President Reagan’s economic advisor said that this Ryan budget is a monstrosity. A monstrosity in terms of shredding the social contract. And, to me, that’s what’s at stake in this election. And that’s the message I want to get across, that, that, uh, we’ve gotta redouble our efforts and work hard. We’re not gonna have as much money. I saw a figure the other day, I, I can’t vouch for it, but in the super PACs and all these ads you’re seeing that you don’t know where a lot of the money’s coming from, that we’re being outspent over ten to one. So, it’s gonna take, uh, boots on the ground, people working hard to get our vote out.
[….]
Question: Is this, I mean, everybody says this is gonna be decided on the economy. How much is foreign policy starting to become a key issue in this race?
Senator Harkin: I, I think what, what Governor Romney did this week in stepping into this fray in Libya, terrible thing that happened to our ambassador and other Americans, I, I think, you know, when it comes to foreign policy you just can’t shoot from the hip. And I think it indicates to me, and this is my own view, Rod, I’m just saying this, that it seemed to me that Romney was more intent on scoring some kind of political points then he was in buttressing America’s foreign policy. And I think that’s why you saw so many Republicans running away from him on it. [….]
Governor O’Malley: I, I think, uh, I think you’re exactly right. The, it’s, it’s complicated, it’s a complicated world that we live in, but I think that when you look at, uh, when you compare our president, his stature, the, uh, the manner in which he carries himself in the international arena and the, and guides our country, and moves it forward and contrast that with former Governor Romney, who has a difficult time even being a good guest at another nation’s Olympics, I think there’s really no, no contest there. I mean, uh, President Obama is our commander in chief, and, uh, in a complicated time, uh, he’s moving our country forward, leading us forward, and I think that that’s, uh, pretty clear, uh, as people, uh, make their decisions about this race. I mean, there is no progress without jobs. But at the same time, one of the jobs of our commander in chief is to represent us in an increasingly complicated international world.
Question: Governor, you’ve mentioned that you’ve been to Iraq. Are there other ways that you have, uh, moved to inform yourself about foreign policy, um, as a governor?
Governor O’Malley: Oh, I don’t know, as Democratic Governors we focus on jobs and opportunity and bringing people together to make the tough decisions now. Uh, and, and that’s what we do. Uh, and at the same time we also know that the more we can open up markets around the world to the services and the goods that are produced in our states, whether it’s Maryland or Iowa, but that creates jobs here at home. And, uh, I think the people of Iowa and the people of Maryland actually share a, a pretty, uh, uh, a pretty inspiring opportunity right now, to figure out new ways to feed, fuel and heal this world of ours. And you see innovations happening in our state and, and here in your state, uh, that allow us to do that, from biofuels to wind energy to, uh, the cures that allow us to be a healing force in the world. I, I think it’s an exciting time, uh, to, for us as, uh, to be American.
The 35th annual Harkin Steak Fry was held at the Warren County Fairgrounds in Indianola, Iowa this afternoon. When there’s a contested Democratic Party presidential primary race in the year before the quadrennial presidential election this event is the place to be for candidates and political activists and followers in Iowa. In other years there are always prominent national Democratic Party speakers, Iowa candidates and office holders, and maybe a future presidential candidate or two testing the Iowa waters.
There’s food with plenty of speeches after the food. The outdoor venue includes a seating area for the speeches along with tents and long tables for dining (and watching the goings on). No, they do not actually fry the steaks, they’re grilled. Today there were approximately one thousand people in attendance at the event.
The weather was comfortably warm with partly cloudy skies. In past years we’ve slogged through the rain and mud or had gloriously beautiful weather. Either way, it’s all a fun part of the event.
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (D) (far right) and Senator Tom Harkin (D) (right) at the press availability
at the 35th Annual Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa on September 16, 2012.
Christie Vilsack (D), former Iowa First Lady and candidate for Congress in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District.
The Harkin Steak Fry is also an opportunity for Iowa Democratic Party activists and supporters to get together and share their politics.
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (D), the featured speaker at the 2012 Harkin Steak Fry.
A number of Iowa Democratic party candidates and organizations had information tables with campaign and issue swag.
“…She saw through the eyes of an immigrant maid who had lived that American dream. And I never forgot that. And the whole ride home that day she left me with these three words. She spoke, by the way, three languages. She was fearsome smart, just not formally educated. But the whole ride home, three words. Only in America. Only in America. And what she meant by that was not the purple mountain’s majesty and the amber waves of grain…”
Paul Begala speaking under the big tent at the Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa on September 18, 2011.
Paul Begala was one of the featured speakers at the annual Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa on Sunday. The final portion of Paul Begala’s speech:
….Paul Begala: …And, and today, apparently, it’s in the papers, the President is announcing that he is going to call on Congress to pass a Buffett tax, not Jimmy Buffett, [laughter] uh, although with some of my friends you tax a margaritas you make a pile of money. [laughter] Uh, but this is Warren Buffett, the second richest man in America who said, who wrote an op-ed a little while ago and said, raise my taxes. He says, it is unjust that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. And it is and he is right and the President is moving to address that now. [applause] God bless [inaudible]. [applause]…
…You know, and all he’s trying to do, I have these right wing friends, all these rich friends, trying to do is, is, we’re trying to do is get this thing moving again. Jump start this thing. ‘Cause here’s the dirty little secret, if we do what the President and, and these senators are trying to do, you know what will happen? We’ll get the middle class moving again. And what happens when the middle class gets moving again? [voices] It lifts people up out of poverty, the American dream lives again, and, guess what, Warren Buffett gets all the richer still. I’m all for it, but the only way to do this is to lift everybody up to get this thing humming again. It’s, see they’re two very, very different approaches to this. Their approach is classic elitism. Right? It’s, it’s, they believe this. Let’s target all of our resources to a tiny elite at the very top and it’ll all trickle down to the rest of us. [voices] Well, we tried that. And it failed. It was the Bernie Madoff strategy basically. [voice: “Yeah.”] Well, we’ll just trust old Bernie and it’ll all come down to the rest of us, right? We have a completely different approach. And that approach says, as we say back home, let’s put the jam on the lower shelf where the little folk can reach it. [laughter] Let’s empower people so that they can live a better life and earn a better income and raise their families and, and everything then moves up. Look, this is what happened the last time Democrats ran the House and the Senate and the White House. We did this. We know how to do this. We balanced the budget and created twenty-three million jobs and ushered in the greatest economic expansion that the whole world had ever seen. And we did it by focusing on the middle class, not on a few elites at the top. [applause] That’s what worked. [cheers] [applause]
You know, I, I mean, it’s, and it’s not that Republicans don’t love the poor. They must, ’cause they’ve created so many of ’em. [voice: “Yeah.”] [laughter] But they have a different view. It’s an honest to God true story. I have a friend in Houston who is a wealthy, wealthy man, but grew up poor. And God bless him, he’s still a Democrat. But he lives in the richest part of town and he told me this story a couple months ago. One of his neighbors came out and they were shooting the breeze. And the neighbor, of course, a big Republican, equally wealthy and grew up poor, and so he says to my friend, well, why do you still help all those Democrats, how can you be a Democrat and their, you’re such a liberal and, you know. Why, basically? And he said, well, heck, you and I both grew up poor, we got into good schools, we’ve lived the American dream and I want, and he looked around and there was a gardener across the street. And he said, well, I want that man, that gardener and his son to live the same dream that we lived, don’t you? And you know what that Republican said? [voices: “No.”] That gardener’s son will be my son’s gardener. [voices: “Yep.” “No.”] Friends, that is their belief. It is the death of the American dream. They believe that the only way they can advance themselves is to tear the rest of you down. [voices: “Yep.” “Fascism.”] And we have a completely different view [voice: “That’s right”], which is, we’re all in this together, friends. We’re one nation, under God, by God, and we’re gonna [applause] go up or down together. And that’s [applause], that’s why this is so profound. It is not even simply a debate about economics ’cause there’s no debate. We know what works, right?
It is also a debate about values. Values matter most. And, and think about how we were raised. And that’s why you’re here today, right? Think about this. And I’ve tried to raise my children this way, and certainly, my parents and, and the teachers and priests and coaches I had raised me this way. And they told me this, I still remember this, what was the first question ever asked in human history, recorded human history? The first question. Well, we know what it was, right, it was in the book of Genesis, right? When Cain and Abel, were the first two children of Adam and Eve, and they both were called upon to sa, to serve up a sacrifice to God. And, and Cain offered some of the fruits of his field and Abel offered like some goats and livestock, I guess the Lord preferred the, the meat. I don’t know [laughter], God’s not a vegetarian, I don’t know why. [laughter] But, Cain was, was thrown into a jealous rage. And so he picked up a rock and he slew Abel. He killed his brother. And so God, who wanted to spark conscience in humanity, he knew, God knows all. And he knew. So he said, though, to Cain, where is your brother? Even though he knew, ’cause he wanted to spark guilty conscience and knowledge of his own, Cain’s own sinfulness. And Cain said to the Lord, God, the first question any human being ever asked, Am I my brother’s keeper? [voice: “Yes.”] Am I my brother’s keeper? And I was raised to believe and I am raising my children to believe that how you answer that question will determine, frankly, whether you are good person or not. Right? [applause] Certainly, what, whether we’re [inaudible] or not. [applause] Am [applause], am I my brother’s keeper? [applause] Am I my sister’s keeper? [applause] And some of our friends have lost sight of that. Or they give the wrong answer, they go, no. No, I’m not, right, if you get work, but you’re on your own. Well, that’s not how I was raised. And that is not, I don’t think, it’s not the real values of, of the real Texas. It’s certainly not the values of Iowa and Iowa families. Because we all know this because we live it. Right?
We got here because we were all in this together. There’s this huge myth that they always say, oh, you know, the self made man. You know, well, actually, particularly out here and certainly out in Texas how did we get here? Well, you know what we did? We all pulled together. And a bunch of strangers, they formed a wagon train, but they all came out together. And they each protected the other. And then they got here and they cleared each other’s fields and they built each other’s barns and then they built a little one room school house and they all chipped in together to help each other. And that’s what they meant when they said, from many one. [voice: “Yep.”] That’s what they meant. And this is, in our time, how we all get here. I mean, I, I, I don’t know about you, but, I mean, I’ve lived this dream. It’s why I’m so passionate about it.
You, know, my grandmother was a maid. She came to this country, she didn’t speak a word of English, she didn’t have a nickel in her pocket, she came from Hungary, but she knew she wanted to be free. And she got the only job she could get. She never even went to a day of high school. But she had a strong work ethic and a great belief in freedom. And she got to America and she started working as a maid. And, you know, because it’s America she didn’t stay a maid. She got on with the phone company, she met an electrician at the phone company, they joined a union at the phone company [cheers][applause][inaudible], and, they had to be paid a minimum wage, they had to be given decent health benefits, they had to, the company had to help pay for their retirement and their pension. They, they were required to give them a safe workplace so that they didn’t lose fingers and hands in the machinery. They were able to send their son, my father, to free public schools, unimaginable in the old country. And my father got a good education and he got a college degree. My grandmother lived to see her son wear a suit and tie every day and be a businessman. She lived to see her grandson go to law school and advise the President of the United States. She was able to live in dignity, in Social Security. When her health needs came up she was able to go to Medicare which she had paid into all of her working life. And she lived the entire American dream. She lived to be ninety-four. And we, we lost her seven years ago so she’d be right almost, just over a hundred right now.
And, and I still remember, best day I ever had, honest to goodness, working the White House. It wasn’t, you know, the state dinners and all of, you know, the proms, and even getting to meet the Pope, which for a faithful Catholic was one of the great moments of my life. It was when I got to bring Grandma Begala to the Oval Office. [laughter] [cheers] [applause] Let me tell you, you talk about the American dream. [applause] And, you know, you can imagine, you know, President Clinton, and that is a room, one, one day you should all go to the Oval Office. It is the most spectacular room I’ve ever been in, believe me. And, I never got used to it I thought. And I had special reverence for it, even though I started every day in that room for a couple of years. And I saw four star generals turn to puddle of goo in that room. [laughter] I mean, it’s an intimidating place. Well, you should have seen Grandma B. She was about five foot nothing [laughter], little spitfire. She comes charging in like she owned the place. She goes over to the fireplace. There’s those two great wingback chairs there and the fireplace. And she says, Mr. President, come here. I said, oh, Grandma, we don’t say that. [laughter] he kind of ambles over, you know. Is this a working fireplace, Mr. President? [laughter] [voice impression] Yes, ma’am. [laughter] Why, why do you ask? [laughter] She said, well, these andirons that hold the log, they’re so clean. What do you use when you polish them, Mr. President? [laughter] Well, she’s a maid, right? She saw through the eyes of an immigrant maid who had lived that American dream. And I never forgot that. And the whole ride home that day she left me with these three words. She spoke, by the way, three languages. She was fearsome smart, just not formally educated. But the whole ride home, three words. Only in America. Only in America. And what she meant by that was not the purple mountain’s majesty and the amber waves of grain. They have those in Hungary. I’ve been.
In fact, I went when the Berlin Wall was coming down I went with a congressional delegation, actually, uh, as a staffer. And, and she didn’t want me to go. She’s like, oh, Paulie, I got you out of there, you don’t need to be going back. [laughter] I said, I think it’s going to be all right. She said, no, no, no, if I had stayed there you’re father, he’d be poor. And you, and she stopped for a second, she said, you, oh, they’d have shot you. [laughter] That, that mouth of yours, honey, they’d a shot you quick. [laughter] I said, Grandma, I believe it’ll be okay. So, she didn’t mean what the poets meant. She meant the moral America. She meant the America that you all have done so much to build, where neighbor cares about neighbor, where people help people, where families lift each other up and hold each other up, and actually even reached down to the people who haven’t come up yet. It is not the America of every man for himself and dog eat dog. It is the America of the founding fathers, it is the America of the people in this tent, and, most of all, it is the America of Tom Harkin and that is why I’m so glad to be fighting with Tom Harkin. God bless you all. [applause] Thank you very much. [applause][cheers]
“…President Obama, with help from the senators who are here, is going to sustain Medicare. Which works. Which helps. And let me tell you something about, this is what I’ve learned. My father is alive today because of Medicare. He’s old right wing guy, used to be a salesman in the oil field industry. But he is alive because of Medicare. And now, he voted for Reagan when I was working on him, he’s a big conservative, you know, now, oh my goodness. Don’t get between him and his Medicare. Right? He’s now the chairman of old right wing white guys in Texas for socialized medicine. [laughter] [applause] [cheers] You know why? [applause] Here’s the dirty little secret, now don’t just think it’s my daddy, we really like being alive…”
Paul Begala speaking under the big tent at the Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa on September 18, 2011.
Paul Begala was one of the featured speakers at the annual Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa on Sunday. The second portion of Paul Begala’s speech:
Paul Begala: ….And so, yeah, Senator Harkin mentioned now my, my governor, last night we were having a, a dinner. And he was pointing out that, that, by the way, it’s been a great year and, and I do thank the Lord for the rain, because it’s been a great year for Iowa farmers. He said corn exports is up, bean exports are up, hog exports are up. And he asked me, what do you all export in Texas. And I said underachieving governors. [laughter] [applause] That’s about all we’re raising down there now. And so, now we have inflicted Rick Perry on you all. [voices: “Oh.”] Yeah, the pride of Texas A and M. [laughter], which is this little remedial school we have in Texas. [laughter] I’m a Texas longhorn, listen that’s way bigger than [inaudible]. So, if you meet him, be nice to him but talk real slow. [laughter] And somebody, now get this, this, this is a man, he took office and he’s running, he’s running, oddly enough at all, he’s running as a Republican. I thought he was running as a joke. [laughter] But, apparently now he’s running as a job generator. Now, just know this about my beloved state of Texas. On the day Rick Perry became governor unemployment in Texas was four point two percent. Today it is eight point four percent. And he thinks that’s a miracle. [laughter] Holy smokes, what if he becomes president? What’s he gonna take it to, eighteen? You know, and, and now they released his transcript from Texas A and M. He got a D in economics. Now we understand. [laughter][voices: “Oh.”] Um, but for a guy who got a D in economics he’s made millions while being a public employee, which is pretty remarkable. So, he must be fairly astute. My favorite thing in that transcript, though, he got, this is true, he got a, check my notes, a C in animal breeding. [laughter] Hell, I got goats that got an A in that. [laughter] I mean, how stupid do you have to be [laughter][applause] to get a C in animal breeding. Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it, governor. [laughter] Holy smokes. So, ya’ll can have him. Uh [laughter], he, he may win the Iowa caucuses, I don’t know, but he ain’t gonna win Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader. [laughter][applause] I don’t know who they’re gonna nominate. It’s none of my business, but I’m just enjoying it, enjoying the show…
…Uh, there was one poll, before Perry got in, that showed, um, Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin tied. And I thought, well, you know, not to be disrespectful, but, you know, one of ’em is just kind of another pretty face, obsessed with hair and clothes and makeup, and the other, the former Governor of Alaska. She’s a little [laughter], she’s a little more substantive, she’s a little tougher than Mitt. She’s got a lot more to her. Uh, I , I think. But he does. He’s beautiful. [laughter] He looks like the guy in the picture frame that you buy when, you know, the drug store. [laughter] [applause] But, of course, you know what happens. When we get home we take that out and put a real person in, don’t we? [laughter][applause][cheers] He, he, too, he, too, wants to run on his record of jobs. He has created thousands of jobs in Bangalore, India,[laughter] but shipped thousands of jobs from America over there. At least five different companies he took over, loaded ’em with debt, pulled out millions of dollars for himself and then shipped those jobs overseas. [voice: “Right.”] That’s astonishing. And he wants to run as the jobs guy. And as Senator Harkin said, now he goes out, and he was here at the state fair, right? And he said, yeah, well, corporations are people, too. And I felt like saying, well, people are people, too, Mitt. [laughter] How about treating us like corporations? He actually said in one of the debates that it was immoral, that was his word, immoral to have disaster relief. Immoral to help our neighbors when, when the floods have hit Senator Sanders’ state of Vermont, the fires have hit my state of Texas, it would be immoral to help them. He wants to privatize it. He did. He said we should as much as this over to the private sector because, you know, Enron and BP will be all over it. Man, right there. [laughter] That’s all they want to do is help. [laughter] It’s astonishing. So my advice, actually, to the folks in, in Vermont who, who need assistance or in New York or New Jersey where they’ve got terrible, terrible flooding or in Texas where there’s wild fires? We gotta couple options, I think. One, is to hope that somehow Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld invade us. [laughter] Because then, oh my God, then they’ll flood us with aid, right? [laughter] And then they’ll , they’re big for rebuilding those countries. Or, the alternative is, incorporate yourself as an oil company. ‘Cause, boy, they will be there for you then. [laughter] They’re great at subsidizing the oil companies.
Um, I did see that Ms., uh, Congresswoman Bachmann, who I guess is a native of Iowa. [voices] Is still running pretty strong here. [voices: “Oh.”] Oh, come on, if I have to deal with Rick Perry you all [laughter] can take Michele Bachmann. [laughter] And she, I saw she went out, she went out to Waterloo, right, isn’t that where she was born? [voices: “Yeah.”] And then she bragged that that was the birthplace of John Wayne. [laughter] Even I know, Winterset, the Duke. [laughter] Waterloo, John Wayne Gacy. Oh. [laughter] [applause][inaudible] She also said that the, the Revolutionary War began in New Hampshire, not in Massachusetts and that, that, that Paul Revere was riding to warn the British. [laughter] The Americans are here, the Americans are here. Well, no. [laughter] No, congresswoman, we were already here, they were coming. [laughter] Um, but that’s what she, she congratulated Elvis on his birthday when it was actually the anniversary of his death. [voices: “Yeah.”] My suspicion is that she has hired Sarah Palin to be her fact checker. [laughter][cheers][applause]
I, I’ve seen Rick Santorum running. I, I, in fact I worked for, uh, uh, Bobby Casey, Senator Casey, Bob Casey, uh, who defeated Rick Santorum, made him an ex senator. And so, I don’t want to speak about the Santorum campaign because I was raised not to speak ill of the dead and that campaign is dead, dead, dead. [voices: “Oh.”]
But I can’t, I cannot resist a little shot at our friend Newt Gingrich who is ap
parently still running, right? [voices: “Ssssss.”] Yeah. No, I, I , I asked, it was, I was, at, I was downtown DesMoines and I asked somebody about that and said, is Newt still running? This man said, yeah, we were just laughing about that a minute ago. [laughter] But he is one of the finest minds of the twelfth century [voice: “Oh, yeah.”] And so we [laughter], we’re glad to see him.
So this, this, America, this, Iowa, is what they have put up. This is what they have put up. This is what we have to put up with. But this is what they have put up to lead our country, the only super power left on God’s earth in some of the most difficult challenging times we have ever had. And I know some of us, we get frustrated, we get disappointed, I hear the grumbling, believe me, about our president and our party. But, here’s the deal, as a political strategist, you know who our chief political strategist for twenty-twelve needs to be? Henny Youngman. [laughter] Remember Henny Youngman? Every time somebody asked him, how’s your wife? He said, compared to what? [laughter] That’s all I want to ask. Every day. How’s our president? Well, compared to what? [laughter] Right? Compared to Republicans who want to roll back the clock on equal rights and civil rights and women’s rights Barrack Obama signed the law that Senator Harkin and Senator Sanders helped to pass, the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act. [cheers][applause] You know it, so, if that’s the choice that’s easy. I’m for Barack Obama. Right. The Republicans have said, Mitt Romney said it himself and all the rest of them repeated it. If they get a chance to put, uh, justices on the Supreme Court they will be justices like Thomas and Scalia. [voices: “Oh.” “Boo.”] Okay? Compared to what? [voice: “Yeah.”] Barack Obama appointed Justice Sotomayor and Justice Elana Kagan two, two brilliant [cheers][applause] , brilliant justices. Compared to what? [applause] The Republicans, Senator Harkin used to say this, the Republican’s idea of, of a good farm program is Hee Haw. Right? [laughter] Compared to what? [laughter] Barack Obama, who has worked with Harkin for years to try to save family farms, I know in that choice, compared to what, who I’m for. I’m for Barrack Obama. It’s an easy choice [applause] for farmers here in Iowa. [applause] Compared to a Republican Party that wants, as Senator Sanders and Senator Harkin said, they want to, uh, in Rick Perry’s case, abolish Social Security. [voice: “Yep.”] He believes it’s unconstitutional. It’s criminal, he says. So we have to abolish it. Oh, and the so, the moderate is Mitt Romney who just wants to hand it off to Wall Street. Which is the functional equivalent, friend, right, what are we gonna do, invest it in Enron and, and Lehman and, you know? This is their position on Social Security, compared to what? Barrack Obama, who is gonna preserve it and protect and defend Social Security so that my mother can [applause] retire in dignity. [applause] I know which side I’m on in that fight. [applause] And the same goes for Medicare. You know, when, when Paul Ryan, the Republican House Budget Committee Chairman, passed his budget through the House of Representatives it includes an attack on Medicare so complete that the Wall Street Journal, not exactly a left wing institution, said this, it essentially ends Medicare. [whistle] Because it does. And ask Mitt Romney if he would sign it, he said, yeah, we’re on the same page, yes I would. He would essentially end Medicare. And all the rest of them are worse. Again, Perry thinks it’s unconstitutional. Right? It, it, apparently he thinks, the only thing that he’s ever read in the Constitution is the Second Amendment. He’s never read any of the rest of ’em. [laughter] President Obama, with help from the senators who are here, is going to sustain Medicare. Which works. Which helps. And let me tell you something about, this is what I’ve learned. My father is alive today because of Medicare. He’s old right wing guy, used to be a salesman in the oil field industry. But he is alive because of Medicare. And now, he voted for Reagan when I was working on him, he’s a big conservative, you know, now, oh my goodness. Don’t get between him and his Medicare. Right? He’s now the chairman of old right wing white guys in Texas for socialized medicine. [laughter] [applause] [cheers] You know why? [applause] Here’s the dirty little secret, now don’t just think it’s my daddy, we really like being alive. [voice: “Yeah.”][laughter] And we don’t want to join those forty-two thousand that Senator Sanders talked about, right? So, we’re gonna stick with Barack Obama who is gonna help preserve and protect and defend Medicare for my father and your father and all the other mothers and fathers who need it. This is the choice. This is the real world rock bottom choice that we have to face….
The final portion of the transcript will follow in a subsequent post.
Paul Begala (center right) speaking with the press at the Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa. photo – Jerry Schmidt, Show Me Progress.
Paul Begala was one of the featured speakers at the annual Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa on Sunday. Paul Begala’s speech:
[applause] Paul Begala: Thank you very much. Thank you. [applause] Uh, thank you, Senator [Tom] Harkin, uh, and, and Ruth [Harkin]. I want to particularly thank you all for coming out on a rainy afternoon, you know, on a rainy Sunday. And so if I may begin by quoting scripture, in the Book of Matthew, right, the Lord taught us the rain falls upon the just and the unjust. Which means somewhere Dick Cheney is soakin’ wet. [laughter][applause][cheers] I know I’m among the just under this tent, brothers and sisters. And talk about preachin’, how about Brother [Senator Bernie] Sanders. [applause][cheers] Preach it. Golly. That was wonderful. [applause] I could take you home to Sugarland [Texas] and put you in a tent, tent revival, Senator. That was fantastic. Thank you for reminding us of what’s at stake. [voice: “Yes.”] And what we can be when we are at our best. And he has been such a powerful voice for us in the Senate, so I really want to thank and honor Senator Bernie Sanders. [applause]…
“…the Lord taught us the rain falls upon the just and the unjust. Which means somewhere Dick Cheney is soakin’ wet….”
…And, of course, none of us would be here if it were not for Ruth Harkin. [laughter] Um, it’s true. [applause] As, as, as my wife likes to say, behind every successful man is an astonished wife. [laughter] Ruth has dragged Tom a long way in forty-three years and we’re grateful for it. [laughter] Uh, and of course, mostly, uh, our, our host, uh, I told him this, um, earlier this morning. Uh, my old boss, President Clinton, was, had to do Meet the Press and a bunch of these shows this morning ’cause he’s doing his Clinton Global Initiative. So, just like the old days he kinda got the old band together yesterday and we did a little prep session, you know. And it was just great fun, but, you know, we kinda wrapped up. And he said, you know, you gonna be watchin’? I said, well, I’m gonna try, but I’m gonna be out in Iowa for the Harkin Steak Fry. [voice impression] Oh, God, I love that thing. That’s great. [laughter][cheers] I swear to God, that’s exactly. [voice impression] You know, I, I’ve spoken there three times. I believe I hold a personal record. [laughter] [inaudible] He said, [voice impression] it was raining cats and dogs. Harkin was all worried. I told him it’d be just fine. The good lord just parted the clouds, just… [laughter] So, he loves, loves, loves Tom Harkin. He loves Ruth Harkin. And he loves Iowa and he loves you. And he wanted me to tell you that from the bottom of his heart. [applause] So, thank you for supporting Bill Clinton [applause] [inaudible].
I am from Texas. I, I grew up there. Uh, I’m from a little town called Sugarland, Texas where our congressman was Tom Delay. [voices: “Oh.”] Oh, but he’s committed, so, so committed to public service that I believe soon he’ll be making license plates [voices][inaudible][laughter][applause] So he’s got a heart for service, you gotta admire that from, from old Delay. Um, but you know, I grew up in that town. It is, it is maybe the most right wing little town in my great big right wing state. [laughter] And, uh, I’d go home and I’d go see all the guys I grew up with and, and ’cause I lived in Washington and worked there, my friends would say, well, I would say to them, like how, what do you think about Delay? I thought at some point, you know, that car would run out of gas back home. So, I’d say that to ’em, how’s, how’s Delay doing? And invariably they’d say, well, you know, not bad, for a liberal. [laughter] Those are the people I grew up with, but I love ’em. [laughter] Um, I, I very often felt like the only fireplug at the dog show, but, you know. [laughter] It makes you tough. [laughter] And [laugh], and so what you do, maybe many of you grew up like that, right, what you do if you’re, first of all it is good for the soul. It gave me great respect, honestly, for the other side, and to learn from them, and to be honest, and have these discussions, and to know that I, I not only know, but I love people who are Republican. Some of them are in my family. Deeply misguided, my brother [inaudible]. [laughter] Um, but this teaches us, right, all how to get along. But, they way you kind of, people always ask me, you came out of this really right wing town and you’re big liberal and how does that happen? Well, in part, it happens because you have to seek your leadership. It’s not handed to you. You have to seek it. So, all those years in Texas I was not represented by Tom Delay. I was represented by Tom Harkin. [voices: “Yeah.”] [applause][cheers]
Every, every one of us, show of hands. How many of us, and I’m one of ’em, have a loved one who is disabled and now emancipated because of Tom Harkin’s Americans With Disability Act, the Emancipation Proclamation [applause] for the disabled community? Thank you, Senator Harkin for that law. [cheers] It’s a life changing law [applause] for a whole lot of people. How many of us have a loved one who can benefit from the stem cell research and the medical research and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Act that Senator Harkin wrote and passed and put into law [applause] to try to save lives [cheers] here in America? [applause] How many of us have been, could be, or would be denied health coverage because we committed the sin of having a preexisting condition? Or, as my wife likes to say, hell, life is a preexisting condition. [laughter] That’s no longer [applause] gonna happen because of Tom Harkin and the work he does chairing [cheers] that health committee in Washington. [applause][cheers] I want to thank Senator Harkin [applause] for his fight on behalf of all of us. And, and, by the way, for all of you who are in to agriculture, who’s here into agriculture, if you eat you’re into agriculture. [laughter] Some of you are into it a little more than others. [laughter] I, I have, you know, you’ll all laugh at this, but I have a little bitty sixty-three acre, uh, farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. And every farmer and every farm family in America owes a debt to Tom Harkin for the decades of service he has done for family farmers and small farmers all across this country. [applause] In your state and all the other forty-nine states, too. [applause] So we owe him so much. And I want him to know this in public, that all across America there are places where sometimes we feel like we’re represented, we don’t have a voice, no one is fighting for us, and then, by God, we can go turn on the television and see Tom Harkin and it says D Iowa, but it ought to say D everyone. [voices: “Yeah.”] [applause] ‘Cause that’s who he’s fighting for [inaudible]. [applause] And this is the thing. This is what I love about him. Is that he combines this wonderful big hearted compassion and this, this very broad sense of what winner circle ought to be in America with a willingness and ability to fight. [voices: “Yeah.”] [applause] You know, sometimes I think the definition of a liberal is someone who’s afraid to take his own side in a fight. [laughter] That’s not Harkin, right?
You know, I , when,
I, my wife and I first started dating, this is now thirty years ago, and, ad I’m a big sports fan and it was fight night at our college. And so I took her to the fights. And, and, you know, they, they begin and she’s real smart and full of questions, she said, well, why does the, the ref in the ring, why does he wear a bow tie? It seems sort of odd for a boxing match. I said, well, that, that symbolizes the civility, that there is some rules here and dignity and civility and that’s what he sort of represents. Then they come to the center of the ring and shake hands. She said, well, well, what is, what does that mean, they shake hands? I said, well, it’s, you know, it’s still a friendly fight. They’re gonna go and beat each other’s brains out, but, but then they’ll [laughter] come back and, and be friends again. And then right before the fight began one of the fighters in the corner did this. My wife, a Lutheran, I’m a Catholic, she looks at this, sign of the cross, and she says, well, what does that mean? And I said, well, honey, it don’t mean a damn thing if he don’t know how to fight. [laughter][applause] Tom Harkin knows how to fight. [applause] By God, he knows how to fight. [applause] And I love that about him. And we need that on our side, ’cause we can see the other side, right?
I don’t know how many of y’all saw the big Republican debate at the Reagan Library. [voice: “No.”][voice: “Yeah.”] Yeah. I, I had the, I had the sense that for some of them it was their first time in a library. [laughter] [inaudible][cheers] [applause] You know, they, they, they held it, I work at CNN, but I watched, it was on Fox News, and I highly recommend it. It’s the, Fox is this comedy channel pretends like it’s news, it’s hilarious. [laughter] But I do two things every day. I do. I read the Holy Bible and I watch Fox News so I know what both sides are thinking. [laughter] [applause] ‘Cause I believe in good and evil in the world. [applause] So I like to hear from both, so I tuned in and I watched that debate. And, oh, my stars, I mean, Senator Harkin is right, these, these, these folks, uh, Eisenhower would not have been welcome on that stage. Ronald Reagan woulda had the bends. I mean. They’ve gone so far right it was really astonishing. There was a point at which they were all arguing over who hates evolution more. [laughter] Right? You remember that? And, and I knew Rick Perry when he was first starting out, he was a Democrat, now he’s a Republican, so he supports evolution of a sort. [voice: “Yeah.”] Right? [laughter] And Mitt Romney? [laughter] [voice: “That’s devolution.”] Devolution. That’s right, that’s moving in the wrong direction. That’s, that’s going in the, uh, from, that’s going the other way in that ascent of man chart, you know, they’re about the third one from the left. [laughter] And, and Romney, he, I remember when he was running against Teddy Kennedy, God rest his soul, back in ninety-four. And he got up in a debate, I swear to you, you go look at this on YouTube, Mitt Romney, uh, still with that very perfect Grecian hair that he’s got. [laughter] Grecian formula, whatever it is. And he turns to Senator Ted Kennedy, one of the great progressive champions we have ever had, and he turns to him and he says, if I’m elected to the Senate I will be more pro gay rights than you will, [laughter] Senator Kennedy. And, I, even at the time I thought, well, Mitt, unless you’re like doing it with a dude you’re not gonna be more. [laughter][applause] And now [applause], now [applause], now he wants to amend our Constitution to discriminate against our brothers and sisters just because of who they happen to be and how God made them? That’s evolution of a sort, but you’re right, it’s going the wrong way. But, oh, no, they can’t say that anymore, right? They, they, now, it’s, it’s a litmus test.
Wolf Blitzer asked them at one of the debates, who here believes in, in the biblical, not the biblical, the biological theory of evolution? And, kind of, nobody raised their hand. And so a few sort of looked like they might have wanted to, but they didn’t dare and. [laughter] Course, they don’t let me out on the stage to do the questions or my follow up would have been, okay, how ’bout gravity or photosynthesis, [laughter], electromagnetism, any of that spooky science [laughter][inaudible]? [applause] My, my oldest, my, I have four boys and my oldest just turned nineteen, he’s starting college. He’s [inaudible] he wants to be a neuroscientist, right, so, he’s studying science. And so he’s studying evolution. By the way, he went to a Catholic school and the priest who taught him evolution explained to him that there’s no, there’s no, uh, uh, uh, conflict there at all. Uh, and so, my, my son was having one of these arguments with on of his right wing friends who said that, well, you know, evolution is just a theory. And my son said, yes, so is gravity. Lay down on the floor and let me hold a rock over your head. [laughter][applause] he’s a smart ass, he really is. He gets that from his mother. [applause]….
The remainder of the transcript will follow in subsequent posts.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont)(left) out in the rain at the Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa. photo – Jerry Schmidt, Show Me Progress.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (i) was one of the featured speakers at the annual Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa on Sunday. Senator Sanders’ speech:
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont): [applause] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
And let me begin by thanking you, not only for allowing me to be with you for a few minutes, but also for sending Tom Harkin [voice: “Yeah!”] to the United States Senate. [applause] Tom and I serve on the same committee, the Health, Education, Labor, Pension Committee, which he chairs. He has picked up the mantle from Senator [Ted] Kennedy. He is doing an extraordinary job. And I have to tell you, when it comes to the issue of children, when it comes to the issue of labor, when it comes to the issue of the environment your senator, Tom Harkin, is consistently out in front and a real national leader. Tom, thank you very much. [applause]
What I’m going to tell you this afternoon in many ways is what you already know better than I do. And that is that this is a pivotal moment in the history of the United States of America. [voice: “Amen.”] It’s [applause], it’s a pivotal moment because of the work that so many people have done for so many years, so many struggles that have taken place, so many sacrifices by our veterans and others to make this country a great and Democratic country, a country which has been the envy of the entire world. [applause] And now there are forces afoot who want to roll back every victory that has been won by working people over the last eighty years. They, they have a belief that what America is supposed to be about is that every person is in it alone. And you saw a glimpse of it just the other day at the Republican debate. Somebody asked one of the candidates, well, what happens if somebody doesn’t have health insurance and that person becomes terribly ill? What happens to that person? And the answer was, well, too bad, guess he has to die. [voices: “No.”] That is not our belief. [applause] [voice: “Thank you.”] What our belief is is that we are a nation, historically and today, which understand that when one child goes hungry, when one senior cannot afford the prescription drugs that she needs, that all of us are in it together to make sure that we address those needs. [applause]…
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) speaking under the big tent at the Harkin Steak Fry. photo – Jerry Schmidt, Show Me Progress.
…And what we understand is that this country is great, not because we have more billionaires than any other country, we are great because we have tens of millions of people who go to work every day, do their jobs, create the wealth that provides for all of us. [applause]
Now let me very briefly tell you what you already know. It’s not a pretty story. But we cannot go forward unless we are honest and straightforward in discussing the realities of today. Not pleasant realities. Let’s get ’em out on the table so that we can begin to address them. First reality, the great middle class, the people who have built this country and made it the envy of the world, that middle class is collapsing. That’s the reality. No hiding it. What do I mean by that? Today unemployment in America is not nine percent. Unemployment in America, real unemployment, is sixteen percent if you include those who have given up looking for work and those who are working part time. Second of all, you have millions of American workers today who are employed, they’re working longer hours at lower wages than they used to work. Third, median family income is plummeting, gone down beyond, below three thousand dollars as what it was ten years ago. What we have in this country today are young people who cannot get work, older people who are working for lower wages, lower wages, and twenty-five million people who have no work at all.
The first issue that [Senator] Tom [Harkin] and I are gonna be working on is a major jobs program [cheers] to put our people back to work. [applause] [cheers] And let me tell you how we’re gonna do it. [applause] Let me tell you how we’re gonna do it. In my state, I don’t know about Iowa, but in my state we have major infrastructural problems. Let me tell you what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is that we have roads that are in disrepair, bridges that are crumbling, we have water systems that were built before the Civil War, or rail system is totally inadequate, there are many parts of the state we can’t get good quality broadband or cell phone service, we have got a lot of schools that are not serving our kids well and need to be rebuilt. If we begin addressing the infrastructural needs of this country, if we understand that today we are spending two percent, two point two percent to be exact, of our GDP [gross domestic product] on infrastructure, China is spending nine percent. They’re building high speed rail. They’re building airports. They’re building sustainable energy. Now is the time for us to rebuild our infrastructure. When you do that, not only do you make us more productive, more internationally competitive, you’re gonna put millions of people back to work. [applause] Let’s rebuild our infrastructure. [applause]
Second of all, we are spending as a nation three hundred and fifty billion dollars every single year importing oil from Saudi Arabia and other countries. I was in Saudi Arabia some years ago and I can tell you that the royal family of Saudi Arabia is doing just fine. [laughter] They don’t need any more money from the United States of America. Our job is to move to energy independence, to move to energy efficiency, and to move to sustainable energy. [applause] And when we do that we create millions of good paying jobs. [applause][cheers]
Lastly, I want to, in terms of job creation, I want to touch on an issue where there are differences of opinion. There are differences of opinion, but I’ll give you mine. When you talk about the collapse of the middle class, when you’re talking about the loss of millions of good paying jobs in recent years in this country, when you talk about workers’ wages going down what you are talking about to a significant degree is the decline of manufacturing in the United States of America. Now I don’t know about Iowa, though I suspect it’s the same, but in Vermont you go shopping, you go to a store, you go to a mall, you buy a product. You know where that product is made? [voices] It’s made in China. That’s where it is made. In the last ten years alone, if you can believe this, we as a nation have lost fifty thousand factories. [voice” “Augh.”] Vermont has never been a major manufacturing state, but we had a number of jobs. Last seven or eight years my guess is we’ve lost twenty-five percent of our manufacturing jobs. One of the reasons for that in my view is that we have had a trade policy which has worked very, very well for the CEOs of large corporations, not very well for American workers. [voice: “That’s right.”][applause] I am talking about NAFTA, I’m talking about CAFTA, I’m talking about permanent normal trade relations with China. What these trade agreements are, in my view, by and large they’re saying to American workers we want you to compete against people in the third world who are working for pennies an hour. That’s your competition. And when wages go down and down maybe we’ll ring some of those jobs back. Here is a sad story I’ll tell you, two sad stories reflecting what’s going on in America
today. In Detroit, Michigan where the UAW is strong, new jobs being created, we hope this being changed as a result of the new agreement signed by the UAW, but last year the good news was that Chrysler and the other companies were adding new jobs. That’s the good news. The bad news is that those new jobs were paying workers fifty percent of the wages that the other workers were making from twenty-eight bucks an hour down to fourteen dollars an hour.
There’s another story. Someplace, I can’t remember the state. Good news is that a company, American company, had gone to China, they were coming back to America. Do you know why they were coming back to America? ‘Cause the wages were so bloody low they could make more money paying people seven fifty an hour in the United States than doing business in China and paying the transportation costs. Those are not the options we want to be looking at.
What do we want? Seems to me pretty obvious. Turn on TV tonight and all you’re gonna see is ads telling you, buy this product, buy that car, buy these shoes, buy this, buy that, buy the other thing. If these large corporations want us to buy their products the time is now for them to build those products here in the United States [applause] of America and to rebuild our manufacturing sector.
Now, when [Senator] Tom [Harkin] and I go back to work on Tuesday what we’re gonna be looking at are a series of attacks on programs in the United States of America that have been unbelievably important to the well-being of working people. Social Security, in my view, is the most successful federal program [applause] in the history of the United States of America. [cheers][applause] And do you know why Republicans hate Social Security? They hate Social Security because Social Security is working the way it was supposed to work. Social Security is successful, which is why they hate it, why they want to privatize it, and why they want to send it to Wall Street. We take programs like Social Security for granted. We shouldn’t. As a result of the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street the crooks on Wall Street, and I use that word advisedly, the crooks on Wall Street led us into this recession. [applause] And when this recession took place not only did millions of people lose their jobs they lost their homes and they lost their life savings. That’s what happened. For seventy-six years Social Security has paid out every nickel owed to every eligible American in good times and in bad. Not one penny has been denied an eligible person. And we’ve done that in a very cost effective administrative way. Furthermore, when you hear people telling you Social Security is going broke, that is a lie. [applause] Social… [applause] the Congressional Budget Office came out with a report a couple of weeks ago, Social Security has a two point five trillion dollar surplus, can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next twenty-seven years. Social Security, and everybody’s got to understand this, yeah, we do have a serious deficit problem, Social Security, however, hasn’t added one nickel to that deficit because it’s paid by the payroll, [applause] payroll tax. So we have got to stand tall and say, no cuts to Social Security. [applause][voice: “Yes.”] In my view if you want Social Security to be strong, not just the next twenty-seven years but for the next seventy-five years, there’s an easy way to do that. And that is, you lift the cap. [voices: “Yeah.”] [applause] And if you do that [applause], and you could start at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, you do that Social Security is strong for the next seventy-five years. And that’s what we should do [applause][cheers] and that’s the legislation that I’ve introduced. [applause]
Now there are some folks out there, our Republican friends, [voice: “Not here.”] they want to voucherize Medicare. [voices: “No.”] [booing] Here is their brilliant idea. If you’re old, you don’t have a whole lot of money, and if you’re sick, maybe you got cancer, maybe you have some terrible disease, and you’re sixty-eight years old, they’re gonna give you a check for eight thousand dollars. Lotsa luck, that’ll last for at least two days. [laughter] That’s what they want to do. And then there are other people who say, well, maybe we don’t want to go that far, but, you know, we got a serious deficit problem, we want to raise the eligibility level from sixty-five to sixty-seven. [voice: “No.”] Well, you tell me what happens to a sixty-six year old worker when he or she gets sick. We are not going to let them raise the eligibility age [applause] to sixty-seven. [applause]
Then you got Medicaid. We have fifty million people today with no health insurance and many others are under insured, large deductibles and high premiums. And there are some who say, well, let’s cut a few hundred billion dollars off of Medicaid. Brothers and sisters, forty-five thousand of our fellow Americans die every year because they don’t have health insurance and they don’t get to a doctor on time. We are not gonna throw millions of children and working people off of Medicaid. No cuts in Medicaid. [applause]
In terms of health care the sixty-four dollar question that we have got to answer is the following. Why is it that with fifty million people uninsured, with costs soaring, with forty-five thousand Americans dying each year because they don’t get the medical care they need, why is it that we end up spending almost twice as much as do the people of any other country? Why is it that in this great country we are the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care to all of our people? My view is, and I hope, I hope that my small state of Vermont is gonna lead the nation in a new direction. We need a Medicare for all single payer [applause] health care program. {applause][cheers]
The day has got to come [applause], the day has got to come when health care is a right and not a privilege, that people don’t have to stay at a job [applause] only because of health care. That’s what we’ve got to do.
Let me conclude ’cause I promised [Senator] Tom [Harkin] this would not be an eight hour speech. [laughter] [voice: “Why not?”] [voices: ” Go on.”] [voice: “Give ‘eh hell, Bernie.”]
I mentioned before that the middle class is collapsing. I mentioned before, as you all know, that poverty is increasing. I want to say a word about poverty. Poverty is not something we talk a whole lot about in this country. And mostly it’s because, you know, at the political level poor people don’t make major campaign contributions, you know, many poor people don’t even vote. But I want to tell you something, about poverty. When we think about poverty we think, well poverty’s a bad thing, people live in inadequate housing, they don’t have a good car, maybe they don’t go to the movies on Saturday night. We just did, on Tom’s committee, the health committee, we just did a hearing last week. And you know what we discovered, what doctors told us? If you are in the lower twenty percent of income earners you will die six and a half years earlier than if you are in the top twenty percent. In other words, poverty in America is a death sentence. And as a nation we should profoundly embarrassed that in America we have, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth. Twenty-one percent of our kids. That is something that has got to end. [applause] Instead of investing in the wars [applause] let’s invest in our children and make them the best educated and the healthiest kids in the world. [applause] [cheers]
Now what’s going on in Washington is you have, as I know you have here in Iowa, you have some extreme right wingers who have taken control of part of our government. And I will tell you from the bottom of my heart that these people do, are a fringe group who represent relatively few Americans. You go out on any street corner in the state of Iowa and in the state of Vermont and you say to people, people who walk by, and you say, do you think it makes sense to give tax breaks to b
illionaires and cut Social Security? Ninety-nine percent of the people will say, that’s crazy. Do you believe it makes sense to have a trade policy which literally gives tax breaks for companies who shut down in America and go abroad. [voice: “No.”] People will say, that makes no sense at all. But what is happening in America is the wealthiest people in this country have developed a new religion. They’re very religious. [laughter] But their religion is not love, it’s not compassion, it’s not concern for their fellow citizens or for the children. Or for the weak. Their religion is greed. [applause] And they want more and more and more. [applause]
In America today we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income. I know that’s not covered on CBS or NBC too often, but that is the fact. You’ve got the top one percent earning more income than the bottom fifty percent. And listen to this, you have the top four hundred wealthiest people in America owning more wealth than the bottom half of America, a hundred and fifty million people. And many of these people with their money, what they, and I don’t understand it, I really don’t. It’s a, it seems to me to be almost a sickness. They can’t control themselves. They want more and more. They’re stashing their money abroad so they don’t have to pay taxes to the United States, shutting down plants in America, moving to China so they can make some more money. That’s what they’re doing.
And that’s what this fight is about. So let me conclude by saying this. They do have the money. They have incredible resources. Citizens United, absurd Supreme Court decision, has decided that a corporation is a person. I know people when I see it. Goldman Sachs is not a person. [applause][cheers] But what the fight is about is whether we developed the kind of organization that you are about, working people from all over this state and my state and the other states, whether we come together when we get our brothers and our sisters and our cousins and our aunts involved in the political process, making sure they understand how important it is, what happens in Washington or in the state capitols. Those guys do have the money. We have the people. We have justice behind our back. And what this fight is about, it is not just for you or for me, far more importantly it is for our kids and our grandchildren. [voice: “Amen.”] Too many people for too many years have sacrificed and struggled to create the greatest country on earth, the greatest Democracy on earth where everybody has opportunity, where everybody has the right to a decent standard of living. Those people have struggled. We do not have the right to turn our backs on those people or on the needs of our kids and grandchildren. The fight is too important. So I can tell you that the people of Vermont stand with you to fight for a progressive, progressive movement so that government works for all of the people and not just the wealthy and the powerful. [applause] Thank you all very much. [applause][cheers]
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). photos – Jerry Schmidt, Show Me Progress.
One of the great Fall political events is the annual Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa. This morning we drove the almost two hundred fifty miles to the Balloon Field in Indianola to listen to Democratic Party and other like-minded luminaries address a large crowd of Iowa Democrats at the outdoor venue. The weather wasn’t too cooperative, ranging from a persistent drizzle to a steady downpour. Never mind – we brought our rain gear, old shoes, and large umbrellas. The big tent covering the dining area (and venue for speeches) also helped keep us relatively dry.
The featured speakers, in addition to Senator Tom Harkin (D) of Iowa, were Paul Begala – Democratic Party strategist and senior staffer for President Bill Clinton – and Senator Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont. They fired up the audience of over five hundred under the big tent.
“I Back Barack – 2012”
Volunteers on the food serving line. Note the Obama campaign buttons.
Paul Begala.
Paul Begala (right) and an Iowa Democrat conversing out in the rain.
Senator Tom Harkin (D) (left) and Paul Begala at the grill.
Paul Begala speaking to the press.
Senator Tom Harkin (D) speaking to the press.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I) addressing the crowd under the big tent.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I).
Listening to the message.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I).
Applauding Senator Bernie Sanders.
Senator Tom Harkin (D) addressing the crowd under the big tent – Ruth Harkin (left).
Paul Begala enjoying one of Senator Tom Harkin’s (D) many punch lines.
Taking it all in.
Paul Begala addressing the crowd under the big tent.
