Elizabeth Warren: "The system is rigged"
(CBS News) CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren slammed Wall Street, talked about economic issues and took the opportunity to sharply criticize Mitt Romney during her speech to the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night.
Warren, the Harvard professor who's locked in a tight battle with Republican Sen. Scott Brown, said she and President Obama are on the side of small business owners.
"People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here's the painful part: they're right," she said.
"Oil companies guzzle down billions in profits. Billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. And Wall Street CEOs--the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs--still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them."
As for small business owners, Warren added, "Not one of them--not one--made big bucks from the risky Wall Street bets that brought down our economy."
"I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters--people who bust their tails every day. Not one of them--not one--stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes," Warren continued, alluding to Democratic accusations that Romney is stashing some of his wealth in offshore accounts.
She also accused Romney of wanting "to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires...but for middle-class families who are hanging on by their fingernails? His plans will hammer them with a new tax hike of up to $2,000."
"Mitt Romney wants to give billions in breaks to big corporations - but he and Paul Ryan would pulverize financial reform, voucher-ize Medicare, and vaporize Obamacare," she added.
"After all, Mitt Romney's the guy who said corporations are people. No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people. People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die. And that matters. That matters. That matters because we don't run this country for corporations, we run it for people," Warren said.
Warren's high-profile, prime time appearance at the convention just prior to former President Bill Clinton serves two purposes: to fight back against Republican attacks, especially their continued use of the president's "you didn't build that" line, and to boost her profile for the final stretch of her Senate campaign.
"President Obama believes in a level playing field," she said. "He believes in a country where nobody gets a free ride or a golden parachute.
"A country where anyone who has a great idea and rolls up their sleeves has a chance to build a business, and anyone who works hard can build some security and raise a family," she added.
"President Obama believes in a country where billionaires pay their taxes just like their secretaries do."
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Elizabeth Warren to middle class: 'The system is rigged'
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Elizabeth Warren, trying to win a Senate seat in Massachusetts, told the Democratic National Convention crowd Wednesday night that they can work hard “but the game is rigged against them."
“I’m here tonight to talk to … people who work their hearts out but are up against a hard truth: The game is rigged against them,” said Warren, making her case that re-electing President Obama will restore the American Dream.
“Their fight is my fight, and it is Barack Obama’s fight,” she said before an overflow crowd at the Time Warner Cable Arena just before the headliner, former President Bill Clinton. “People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here’s the painful part: They’re right. The system is rigged.”
Warren, a Harvard Law School professor and among the Democratic Party’s most liberal candidates this election cycle, put the blame squarely on Mitt Romney and some of the country’s other most successful business people and job creators.
“Oil companies guzzle down billions in subsidies,” she said. “Billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. Wall Street CEOs … still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors and acting like we should thank them.”
She said Romney wants to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires but “hammer” middle-class families “hanging on by their fingernails” with a new tax hike.
"The middle class is being kicked, squeezed and hammered," she said.
Warren also said Romney and GOP vice presidential candidate Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan would “pulverize financial reform, voucher-ize Medicare and vaporize ObamaCare.”
She is in a tossup race with GOP Sen. Scott Brown, who in 2010 won the open seat of the late Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, in one of the county’s most heavily Democratic states.
An averaging of polls by the website RealClearPolitics has Brown ahead by less than 1 percentage point.
The race, which could give Republicans control of the Senate should Brown win, has been among the hardest hitting this election cycle.
Warren for weeks faced questions about her American Indian heritage and whether she used that for to her professional advantage.
On Wednesday night, Warren also delivered her own version of growing up in American, saying that her family, like others across the country, lived on the “ragged edge of the middle class,” more so after her father suffered a heart attack.
“After he had a heart attack, my mom worked the phones at Sears so we could hang on to our house,” Warren said.
Warren closed by saying the economic conditions of today are similar to those about a century ago “when corrosive greed threatened our economy and our way of life” and that President Roosevelt and “other progressives” brought the country back from the brink.
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