Here's Every Single Time Someone Scapegoated Profit During the Dem Debates
Several candidates seem to view profit as one of the biggest threats facing America.
The opening round of Democratic presidential debates is over. A variety of ideas were presented. But one thing in particular kept coming up. Namely, a number of the Democratic presidential wannabes kept badmouthing profit.
In fact, several of the Democratic candidates seemed to view the existence of profit-making enterprises as one of the biggest threats facing America.
Here is a list of every time someone demonized profit during the Democratic debates.
- Elizabeth Warren
So we've had an industrial policy in the United States for decades now, and it's basically been let giant corporations do whatever they want to do. Giant corporations have exactly one loyalty, and that is to profits. And if they can save a nickel by moving a job to Mexico or to Asia or to Canada, they're going to do it.
- Cory Booker
Health care—it's not just a human right, it should be an American right. And I believe the best way to get there is Medicare for All. But I have an urgency about this. When I am president of the United States, I'm not going to wait. We have to do the things immediately that are going to provide better care. And on this debate, I'm sorry. There are too many people profiteering off of the pain of people in America, from pharmaceutical companies to insurers.
- Elizabeth Warren
The insurance companies last year alone sucked $23 billion in profits out of the health care system, $23 billion. And that doesn't count the money that was paid to executives, the money that was spent lobbying Washington. We have a giant industry that wants our health care system to stay the way it is, because it's not working for families, but it's sure as heck working for them.
- Cory Booker
I have been to some of the largest private prisons, which are repugnant to me that people are profiting off incarceration, and their immigration lockups.
- Kirsten Gillibrand
The debate we're having in our party right now is confusing, because the truth is there's a big difference between capitalism on the one hand and greed on the other. And so all the things that we're trying to change is when companies care more about profits when they do about people.
- Kirsten Gillibrand
I believe we need to get to universal health care as a right and not a privilege to single payer. The quickest way you get there is you create competition with the insurers. God bless the insurers, if they want to compete, they can certainly try, but they've never put people over their profits, and I doubt they ever will.
- Bernie Sanders
Let's be clear. Let us be very clear. The function of health care today from the insurance and drug company perspective is not to provide quality care to all in a cost-effective way. The function of the health care system today is to make billions in profits for the insurance companies.
- Bernie Sanders
We will have Medicare for all when tens of millions of people are prepared to stand up and tell the insurance companies and the drug companies that their day is gone, that health care is a human right, not something to make huge profits off of.
- Kirsten Gillibrand
But the worst thing President Trump has done is he's diverted the funds away from cross-border terrorism, cross-border human trafficking, drug trafficking, and gun trafficking, and he's given that money to the for-profit prisons. I would not be spending money in for-profit prisons to lock up children and asylum-seekers.
