NEWS

In passionate Iowa speech, Elizabeth Warren decries GOP agenda

Jennifer Jacobs
jejacobs@dmreg.com

In a passion-filled liberal stemwinder, Elizabeth Warren shouted down the GOP agenda, which she said is all about cutbacks and doing the bidding of millionaires, and warned the crowd that Iowa's tight U.S. Senate race could come down to how hard Democratic activists work.

Warren, a Massachusetts U.S. senator who some Democrats hope will jump into the next presidential race, made nary a mention of 2016. Instead she gave a fist-pumping speech centered on rousing Iowa activists to fight for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Braley until the polls close in the final hour of Election Day in two weeks.

"The people that are going to determine this election are right here in this room," Warren said in a 30-minute speech at the Hotel Fort Des Moines in downtown Des Moines.

In a full-throated rallying cry, she called out: "Are you ready to do this?"

The audience, which the Braley campaign estimated to be around 600, cheered zestily.

Warren said she just came from Minnesota, where Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken won his seat in 2007 by just 312 votes. In Iowa, Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Joni Ernst has a narrow lead – about 2 points, according to polling averages. Ernst and Braley are battling to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, 74, in one of the most consequential races in the country.

On her first visit to first-in-the-nation Iowa of the 2016 presidential election cycle, Warren shared some of her personal history, but focused most of her speech on the benefits of government spending on education, infrastructure and research a generation ago.

Democrats believed that college students were entitled to try to get an education without being crushed by student loan debt, she said. They believed that investing in interstate highways and bridges and dams and airports would spur business, she said. And research investments created "a giant pipeline of ideas" that turned into opportunities for the children of the future, she said.

"We believed in it!" Warren said. "Here's the amazing thing. It worked! It absolutely positively worked."

But in the 1980s, the GOP had a different idea, she said.

The first thing they did was "fire the cops on Wall Street," she said.

"They called it deregulation. But what it really meant was have at 'em boys. They were saying in effect to the biggest financial institutions: Any way you can trick or trap or fool anybody into signing anything, man, you can just rake in the profits."

Braley stood on stage next to Warren, nodding and clapping, sometimes mouthing the words "That's right" and "yes."

Warren said Republicans then started cutting back on all those other investments.

"What puzzles me is how Joni Ernst thinks she's going to win," Warren said.

Ernst, she said, backs the budget cuts proposed by Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan - and thinks Ryan's cuts didn't go far enough. "Love that," Warren said.

Warren said the GOP vision is that government should work for those at the top - those with money, power and armies of lobbyists. "Republicans, man, they ought to be wearing a T-shirt. ... The T-shirt should say, 'I got mine. The rest of you are on your own.'"

Warren said her agenda, and Braley's, is to make government work for the people.

In response, the Republican Party of Iowa said Warren's presence with Braley undermines his claim that he's "bridge builder."

"Warren recently said on MSNBC that one of her top accomplishments in life was 'throwing rocks' at people she disagrees with," Iowa GOP spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a statement. "Warren is a partisan fighter who wants to cut funding for Iowa's agriculture industry, which begs the question: why is Congressman Braley appearing with her?"

Warren joins a roster of potential Democratic presidential candidates who are making the trek to Iowa in coming days to root for either Braley or Ernst. Warren spoke earlier today in Iowa City.

Though Warren has repeatedly stated that she will not run for president in 2016, any top-name politician who steps foot in Iowa, home to the lead-off caucus vote, fires up speculation about White House aspirations. Warren left without taking questions from reporters.