Warren Q&A

Before her speech, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren sat down for a 15-minute interview with The Laconia Daily Sun. News was just breaking of six police officers wounded in a shooting in Philadelphia.

Recently, she received criticism for a tweet about the officer-involved shooting death of Michael Brown five years ago in Ferguson, Missouri. The officer was never charged with any crime, but she said in her tweet that he was murdered by a white police officer.

Daily Sun: I wanted to ask about the Michael Brown tweet. As a former law professor, you know the term "murder" has a certain definition, and I noticed you used the term in a tweet. Do you regret that in any way?

Warren: I think the important thing to focus on is that we’re in an active-shooter situation, we’ve got folks in Philadelphia who are under fire and a reminder that our police face danger every single day, and it’s important for us to think about how to improve public safety. Part of that is guns. There are way too many guns and too many very, very dangerous guns out there. I put out a big gun plan last Saturday. It is another way to look at gun safety, something that is important for police, for civilians, for all of us.

Daily Sun: Police in some respects are concerned these days that there is a certain public sentiment against them that wasn’t there before and they are concerned about terms like “white officer murders a black man” when it has not been adjudicated as murder, when the officer has never been indicted or charged. Is it really fair?

Warren: I understand concerns. I also understand concerns in black and brown communities that feel like people are not safe from those who are sworn to protect them. We can work harder on making sure that everyone is safe. Part of that is around guns, part of that is around criminal justice reform. All of it is important.

Daily Sun: In Laconia, there is a hospital, Lakes Region General Hospital, where they recently stopped labor and delivery services. You talk about hospital consolidations. Tell me what your plans could do for a local community like Laconia.

Warren: Last week I put out a comprehensive plan on how to make certain that rural and small-town America has the same opportunity to prosper as every other part of America. It started with access to health care. When hospitals close or when they shut down basic services like labor and delivery or emergency rooms, young families can’t move into an area, and seniors often feel they have to leave in order to be closer to health care services.

My plan starts with reversing the presumption on hospital consolidations from assuming they go through to assuming there are no consolidations unless the hospitals involved can demonstrate that access will be guaranteed into the future. Not just empty promises, but guaranteed for all the local residents. That’s Part 1.

But Part 2, small-town hospitals operate on very thin margins and that means they can’t absorb uncompensated care. Everyone who walks in the front door needs health care coverage. In order for the hospital to stay afloat, that means Medicare for all making sure everyone in this country is covered and hospitals and doctors are not trying to cover uncompensated care.

Third part, as a country, we need to be willing to make investments in rural hospitals and doctors and nurses to ensure there are enough available so that access is meaningful and easy for people in every corner of America.

Daily Sun: Will the “ultra millionaire tax” pay for it all?

Warren: Yep. It not only pays for universal child care, universal pre-K, raises the wages of every child care worker and pre-school teacher, technical college, community college and four-year college, $50 billion into historically black colleges and universities, cancels student loan debt for 95 percent of the kids who’ve got it, puts $100 billion dollars into ending the opioid crisis and still has hundreds of billions of dollars left over. The amount of money that that raises and the way it lets us reinvest in America is truly transformative. It’s amazing what you can do for 2 cents.