Why I support Elizabeth Warren for President

In the late 1930s, America struggled to survive in the grip of The Great Depression. A small number of banks and corporations had gathered power over our government and economy and used it to build their own fortunes. The gap between rich and poor reached a breaking point.

William O. Douglas, then a young up-and-coming finance regulator and later an Associate Justice for the Supreme Court, gave speeches to Wall Street titans about how the Roosevelt administration’s plans for big structural reform would end the culture of reckless profiteering and reinvest in the American way of life.

“These groups, collectively divorced from social responsibility, are the chief agents through which our economic and financial blunders accumulate until the next blood-letting process,” he said. “This is called a crisis. But it is nothing more than the rhythmic breaking out of the pent-up forces of abuse, mismanagement, and maldistribution of economic effort and income.”

Douglas continued: “Academic economists have tried to endow cycles and crises thus created with natural attributes. In this way they have cleverly washed the hands of high finance and excused it from social responsibility. But the cycles and crises thus created are not inescapable. We may in years to come look at them as monuments to the folly of the human race.”

The Roosevelt administration passed reforms that stopped the forces that caused and profited from economic crises for decades after FDR’s time in office ended. America drew away from a system that made a few rich by putting the rest of us through the wringer. However, deregulation over the past four decades has reintroduced the cycle of extreme booms and busts and paved the way to the crisis of limited opportunity and widespread fear we are living through now.

One candidate in a strong field of 2020 Presidential candidates has the persistence, the heart for accountability, the experience, and the comprehensive plans we need to lead the fight for all Americans. Her name is Elizabeth Warren.

Elizabeth is leading a movement to create the big, structural change needed to make government work for us again. She has the biggest anti-corruption plan since Watergate to make our federal government responsive to the people, not lobbyists in Washington. And as President Elizabeth will break Wall Street’s stranglehold on the economy.

Once she roots out systemic corruption, Elizabeth will equitably invest in generations to come. She’s laid out that investment in more than 50 plans, starting with an ultramillionaire tax —  a two-cent wealth tax on fortunes above $50 million. 

With the money raised by a wealth tax on the ultra-rich, Elizabeth will invest in end-to-end education by creating universal child care, making public college tuition-free, and canceling student loan debt for 42 million Americans who hold it. This will open doors previously closed to students like me and empower generations to build financial mobility and pursue our passions. And, as a former public school teacher, she’ll fight to elevate our educators and public schools to ensure that opportunity lasts.

As someone who may inherit a serious genetic preexisting condition, the fear of getting sick and going broke because of it is on my mind every single day. Elizabeth has a plan for that. The wealth tax is one small part of Elizabeth’s plan to transition to Medicare for All, a system that eliminates all out-of-pocket expenses, provides the freedom to see the doctor of your choice, and removes the need for folks to worry about how to access and pay for health care. She’s all in on the fight for quality universal health care.

By relieving the burden of the costs of education and health care —  two important parts of a larger intersectional plan to make government work for everyone —  we will no longer have to chase high paying jobs just because they’re the only way out of debt.

Elizabeth isn’t shying away from the fight to build a better America – she’s leading it. She is fearlessly fighting to empower Americans across the board to compete on a level playing field. She is the accessible, accountable, and prepared advocate I think we need. That’s why I support Elizabeth Warren for President.