Amy Klobuchar Delivers Remarks After Completing Tour of Iowa’s 99 Counties
DES MOINES, IA — Tonight, Senator Klobuchar addressed supporters, volunteers and caucus-goers in Des Moines to celebrate the completion of her 99 county tour in Iowa after visiting Emmet, Kossuth and Humboldt counties.
Senator Klobuchar is now the only candidate on the January debate stage that has visited all of Iowa’s 99 counties — marking a major milestone with just six weeks left until caucus day.
Remarks As Delivered:
Klobuchar: I want to tell you how excited we are to have made all 99 counties today, every one in Iowa. That was great. And also, it was a very, very big moment of pride for me to have my family with me, John and Abigail, when they went to that last county. And so, we were on Christmas Eve, like many of you here, we were at church and we went to see the little, the little nativity play they had during the service. And it reminded me of a story many, many years ago when Abigail was in the nativity play at that same church and she was, back then, now she's 24, then she was four. And she was to play the angel, and they had her draped in these big angel wings, and we were in the pews and she wouldn't go out to practice. And I say to her, "Why won't you go out there? Why won't you go out there?" And she goes, "Mom, I want to be the donkey!" And I said, "No, no, no. Jimmy and Joey are the donkey, you can't be the donkey," these two hot teenage boys who are in the costume. And she says, "Well then I want to be Mary." And I go, "No, Mary is 14." I said, "I don't understand. You have the coolest part. You get to go out at the end and spread your wings. I don't get it." And she finally looked way up to the top of the church, she says, "Mom, I don't know how to tell them I don't know how to fly." And I said to her, that moment, "Honey, not all angels fly."
So, I want to start by thanking you for being here on a Friday night when there are a lot of things you could be doing with your time. And you are truly the guardian angels of our democracy because you are giving others that may not even know you, the wings to fly by caring this much about our country and being part of this great process that we call democracy. So, thank you for that.
So, I made this promise to visit all 99 counties before I maybe knew just how far apart or that I'd be visiting a planetarium at 11 at night, but that was, we did that! Or that I thought there maybe would be a hearing coming up, an important one in the next month that maybe I'd have to get 27 counties done in three and a half days. But the point of this, which is you should learn something about me, is I kept my promise.
More than that, it was a statement of purpose for me. And that is that I believe that we need someone as president, who's going to be the president for not for half of America, but all of America – someone who will unite this country and bring people together, not only for a big victory, which we so badly need, but also for even bigger victories to take on the pharmaceutical companies, to bridge the rural urban divide with infrastructure and broadband and expanded child care, and housing. And yes, to save our climate once and for all.
The fact is, we can take back the White House, but we don't want to have that victory by eke-ing it out at four in the morning--yes, it would be nice. But we know if we don't do that, that state at four in the morning will not be Iowa. My theory of the case is if we want to get all of these important things done, we can't just win by a little, we have to win big. And that means keeping the House of Representatives strong, reelecting Abby and Cindy and electing Rita and JD and winning the US Senate seat in the state of Iowa. That is how you send Mitch McConnell packing,
We have this opportunity, an opportunity to turn back the division and exclusion – the bitterness and the hate. We can actually work together again. We have a chance to defeat a man who treats facts just like a brochure copy for one of his fail real estate deals – who’s publicly lied--ready for this? The Washington Post keeps track of this. Who has publicly lied over 15,000 times, an average of 14 times, every single day of his term, who cheats the American people like he cheats on one of his golf courses. The difference between the people on the golf courses, is it's people's lives that are at stake when he's President of the United States.
Instead, we can start believing each other again, we can start trusting each other again. We have a chance not only to defeat Donald Trump, but to defeat what stands for. My profound advice, after seeing what has happened around this country, is that we better not screw this up.
I’m Amy Klobuchar and I'm running for president. I’m sure, as I noted on that debate stage, that you all have heard Donald Trump say that he is self-made, but in fact, he started off with a small loan--his words--of over a million dollars from his dad, but actually, over the course of his career, he got $413 million from his dad. $413 million, and the last three years have shown us that that $413 million windfall left him with a sense of what? Entitlement, a sense of actually, vindictiveness for some reason, a sense that even the presidency is just another cookie jar that he can raid.
I come from a different sense, a different set of values. My ancestors, they came to Minnesota as immigrants, looking for a better life. My grandpa was Slovenian, he worked 1500 feet underground in the mines up in northern Minnesota, the iron ore mines, and he did that so he could have a better life for his kids and actually, for his brothers and sisters. He was the oldest boy. And when his parents died, he made sure that they could make it too. And there were eight of them.
But he saved money in a coffee can with my grandma in their basement to send my dad and his brother to college. And my dad went to community college. So that money in a coffee can--and you cannot fit $413 million in a coffee can. That coffee can, that was my family trust. And this is what I believe, and my grandpa knew this when he was forging on the long and dangerous days in that mine. They used to line up the caskets in the church in town. My dad remembers this because so many were lost because our mines were unsafe, before the unions were a major role in making them safe. The opportunity my grandpa got, he gave to my dad, and my dad got a better education. He became a newspaperman. He got to see the world. My mom, she was raised with no money either in Milwaukee, and she came to Minnesota, and she taught second grade until she was 70 years old.
So our family story is a story of opportunity, that simple idea that when you are given an opportunity from a parent or a grandparent, from someone you work with, from a teacher, from a neighbor, from a friend, that should not leave you with a sense of entitlement. No, that should leave you with a sense of obligation. An obligation to lift people up instead of slamming them down. An obligation to lift people up instead of hoarding it for yourself.
So that's really how I got involved in public service. My family, yes, but also because when Abigail was born--she's here, so it's a really useful thing. You can see her beautiful face, but when she was born, she actually was really really sick, and she could not swallow. And it was a big surprise. We thought we're going to have this great, everything was going to be great, like all parents expect, but then, as Ruth Ann knows what happened with her little boy that she adopted, not everything is quite what you expect sometimes. And that's a measure sometimes of a parent, but it's also a measure of a community and how community handles that.
So when Abigail was born she couldn't swallow, total surprise. It was a total surprise. They didn't know if she had a tumor, she was in--passed every test. This little baby in an x-ray, x-ray after x-ray, after x-ray. And I had been up for two nights. And then they said, “We don't really know what's wrong, but she's in intensive care. She might have a genetic disease. She probably has a tumor, we don't know. But sadly, the insurance rules say you need to get out of here.” And I go, “What?” And they said, “That's the new rules. 24 hours. That's all you can spend in the hospital.” I had no sleep. I was a new mom. They were throwing all the stuff at me that I had to learn and they kicked me out of the hospital. And when John was wheeling me out of that wheelchair, I literally looked up--this is funny, I had this moment in the middle all this tragedy. and I go, “I bet this wouldn't happen to the wife of the head of the insurance company.”
I did say that. I did take that moment, but in a larger context. But anyway, weeks went by, she was in and out of the hospital. She actually didn’t get better for a number of years, she was fed by a tube. But at that very moment, she was hooked up to all these machines. And that was, by the way, a lot of gifts for me, the gift of seeing other parents. She ended up coming through that but a lot of parents whose kids have permanent disabilities, Ruth Ann's story, what they go through, the gift of seeing that firsthand was a gift I brought with me that I hold on to. But the other gift I learned was how to actually get something done. Because when I got out of there, I started reading about that rule and how bad it was for families, and I joined up with some other people in the legislator that had the same problems. I wasn't elected to office at the time so I literally went there as a mom and testified and told my story. And I learned a few things from that experience. Our whole goal was to make sure you got at least 48 hours in the hospital. And the first thing I learned was that, maybe some of our legislators will relate to this, but at the time was almost all men in the Minnesota Legislature and when you start talking about embarrassing things like episiotomies in front of an almost all-male legislative committee, I think they would have passed the New Deal like that. "Alright, alright, okay!"
And then the other thing that I learned was how to get things done. And in fact, the House and Senate bills were a little bit different. And people were trying to use that divide to try to make it a delay so it wouldn't take effect maybe for a year, maybe for even longer than that. So what I did is I brought six pregnant friends to the conference committee so they outnumbered the people that were trying to delay it. And when the legislators said, "Well, when should this take effect?" Because it usually takes effect August 1, and all my friends raised their hand and they were like, "Now!" So, not only did they not delay it, they moved it up so it took effect the day the governor signed it. That happened.
That is how we passed one of the first laws in the country, that later became a federal law when Bill Clinton was president, guaranteeing new moms and their babies a forty-eight-hour hospital stay. And after that, I loved this life. I love getting things done for people, I knew you could do it if you just set your mind to it and you're creative about how you got it done. And I want to tell you something very clearly; I am a proud progressive. But I am someone that believes that you can be both progressive and practical at the same time. Because that story, that story I just told you, that was about taking on powerful interests, that was about getting things done, but the only way we got things done was actually by finding some common ground.
In that case, we got really strong support on both sides of the aisle, and we were able to get it done. Common decency, common goals; that's been the hallmark of my work since I got involved in politics, standing my ground while seeking common ground. When I got elected to the Hennepin County Attorney, I was the first woman in that job, I pushed to improve the criminal justice system. I supported, was a strong supporter of drug courts, I still am. And I fought to ban assault weapons even way back then. And I took on hate crimes. When I got to the Senate, I have been responsible, as was mentioned by Andy, for passing over 100 bills--and Ruth Ann--where I am the lead Democrat, including forty-one that broke the gridlock of this administration. That's a nice way of saying Donald Trump signed the bills into law.
So if you cannot make progress, how can you truly be a progressive? You can say you're a progressive, but at the end, after you're there, you're on and you're in, you better have something to show for it. I'm running for president to put an end to the polarization, to the gridlock, to the dysfunction, because it is our only hope of making the American dream real, of giving everyone the opportunity I just told you in my story and I know that you all have your own stories as well.
I will end this president's shameful efforts to gut the Affordable Care Act it’s protections for pre-existing conditions. And by the way, as I listened to Ruth Ann’s story, you think about that, the people that most came up to me when that was going on in Congress, when that bill was pending, that vote was pending, was people with kids with disabilities. I remember a mom in a small town parade, who was pushing a stroller and she said, "This is my son. He has Down Syndrome." She said, "I will do anything to fight for my boy to keep his health care. But remember," she said. "This is what a preexisting condition looks like." That's what that fight was about. And by the way, if we look at the Affordable Care Act, I want you to remember one thing as we look at--do you blow it up, do you do this, you know where I am on this. I think we make it better--the Affordable Care Act is now ten points more popular than the president of the United States.
So, as president I know we can build on Obamacare by doing a few things. First of all, ending the privatization of Medicaid right here in Iowa, bringing down the price for consumers with a nonprofit public option. And we can be both progressive and practical by taking on this issue in a smart way, not by kicking 143 million Americans off of their current health insurance, but by making the Affordable Care Act stronger.
You do that with that non-profit public option, you do that by taking on big pharma. And I have been leading that effort since I got into the US Senate. That means getting rid of that provision in law that bans Medicare from negotiating--bans Medicare, it doesn't just say, "Oh uh." It bans Medicare from negotiating for better prices for our seniors. They got that in because they have two lobbyists for every member of Congress. They think they own Washington, they might, but they do not own me.
Also, we can also greatly improve the Affordable Care Act and our healthcare system by finally reckoning with the addictions that we face in our state and in our country, and with mental health care. So I combine these two into one policy. They are different in many ways, but my funding sources are the same because so often mental health gets left behind. Yet one in five Americans suffer from mental illness sometime in their life. There are only 64 public mental health beds in the state of Iowa right now. That is a travesty. So we need a president that's willing to come to grips with this and take it on. For me it is personal; my dad struggled with alcoholism most of his life. When I was growing up, by the time John and I got married, he had three DWIs. Two of them were back in the 70s so there wasn't much consequence and he kept drinking. But by the time he got the third one, by the time he got the third one, the law has changed. And the judge looked at him and then he said to him, "You know what, you got to choose, jail or treatment." And my dad chose treatment because he had insurance that covered that treatment and because, in his words, he was "pursued by grace". He had his faith. He had his family. He had his friends and it changed his life. And so right now--by the way, a little quick note, he is 91 years old. We just saw him at Christmas, visited him in the assisted living. And about a year and a half ago, he was telling me how his AA group still visits him in assisted living. And in his words, "Well, it's hard to get a drink around here anyway."
But that changed him. And I think everyone should have that right to have their life changed. I think everyone should have a right to be "pursued by grace". That's one big way that we can improve on the Affordable Care Act. Another, by the way, instead of re-litigating this by lawsuits like Donald Trump is trying to get rid of it, we can actually stop those lawsuits. A president can do that herself. Stop those lawsuits, let it be, improve it, and then take on the elephant that doesn't even fit in this room, and that is long term care. We should be dealing with the big, big challenge of long term care, which is everything from finding a cure to Alzheimer's, which is going to affect 14 million people by the year 2050, to improving long term care insurance, to making it easier for people to live in their homes. That is what we should be dealing when we see a doubling of our senior population.
So what else can we do if we have a president who wants to do it? Well, I will take on big oil and take real steps to fight the climate crisis that threatens our existence. I'm not taking a dime of profiteer money in this campaign. And on day one of my term, we will rejoin the international climate agreement. When we got out of that agreement, there were only two countries not in it, Nicaragua in Syria. They have now gotten in the agreement.
I’ll take on Big Oil, and take real steps to fight the climate crisis that threatens our existence. I’m not taking a dime of fossil fuel money in this campaign. And on day one of my term, we will rejoin the International Climate Agreement. And out of that agreement, there are only two countries not in it: Nicaragua and Syria. They have now gotten in the agreement. We are the only ones not in the agreement. On day two, we will bring back the clean power rules from the Obama administration which would make a big difference. On day three, we will bring back the gas mileage standards which the car companies in the US had wanted to do until Donald Trump tubed it. And on day four, five, and six, I will introduce sweeping legislation to deal with climate change. And on day seven, we will rest. We won’t actually.
So, I actually I was having this issue with my announcement when there was a blizzard with four inches of snow on my head, leading the president to send out a tweet making fun of me for talking about climate change in the snow and giving me the name that I actually liked: “Snow Woman.” To which I wrote back, “Mr. President, the science is on my side and I like to see how your hair would fare in a blizzard.”
So, what else. What are some other big challenges that we have to take on? One is taking on the NRA. And like Minnesota is a proud hunting state. So is Iowa. And I look at these gun safety measures and I say do they hurt my Uncle Dick in the deer stand? They do not. Universal background checks do not hurt my Uncle Dick in the deer stand. And the most amazing transformation has happened in our country. It didn't happen when I was in law enforcement when we tried to reinstate the assault weapons ban. We couldn't get it done. Not even with the police chiefs. It actually sadly did not even happen after Sandy Hook when those parents valiantly tried. It happened when those kids in Parkland stood up. That's when things changed in a different way. When those kids stood up, kids across the country saw them and they started asking questions. It was not unlike what happened with gay marriage. Yes, I am aware that Iowa was one of the first states.
What happened was the kids started to say to their dads and grandpas, including boys. Wait a minute, I know I like to go out hunting too but why can't we have universal background checks? Why can't we have a limit on magazines? Why can't we at least have the right amount of time to vet things? That’s what changed things.
So you’ve got to elect people like Abby and Cindy to the Congress that were willing to vote for universal background checks. And I think you know where the story is now. This story is not over, because this story is going to have a major, major chapter in front in 2020. But the chapter on a way was 2018 and that is when the House passed universal background checks after the new Congress came in, they closed the Charleston loophole, which will give police more time to vet and they close the boyfriend loophole which is my bill that I've been trying to push for years that I wrote that says that domestic abusers, convicted domestic abuser should not be able to get an AK-74.
Well guess what happened to those three bills despite having some Republican support in the House? They are all sitting where? On Mitch McConnell desk along with 400 other bills that are awaiting action. So we get back to my original premise that if we want to get these things done, we can't just win by little; we have to win big.
What else do we need to do? We have to end the unfair economic policies of this president who gives billionaires handouts while the rest of us get stuck with the bill. We will never forget his words when he went to Mar-a-Lago after passing the tax bill, surrounded by his friends. Were any of you there? I didn't want to embarrass anyone if they were there. Just wanted to make sure because what he said in that room when he said was, he said, “You've just got a lot richer.” That's what he said. We will not forget that. That's what he did. He went into that room and said this. Me, I want to come back to this room and say, I got you universal child care. We did that for your retirement, we did that for our seniors, that we did something about climate change. That means representing the people that you were elected to represent. It means connecting an affordable education today’s economy, doubling programs for public and private colleges, providing free one and two year degrees. That's what that's what Ruthanne was talking about. Respecting the dignity of work, remembering that we're going to have over a million openings for home health care workers in this country. We are. So if they can't get by and they're not able to afford to live, that's not going to work very well for seniors. So we have to figure out a way to do that. And that means respecting the dignity of work.
On all of these issues, we will be progressive. Yes, but we will also be practical. Real plans, not pipe dreams. A real plan means you’re going to know how you’re going to pay for it. Check my website, I showed--dotted every single “I,” crossed every “T,” unlike our current president. And you can pass it into law. A real plan means I will not promise what I cannot deliver. I believe as long as we win by a good margin, we can get all these things done.
Now, we all know there are powerful interests standing in our way. That's why I put forward that 100 day plan. FDR was the first president to do it and he did it because he was facing an economic crisis. We are facing a trust crisis right now. So what we need for people to understand the government has their back is to act immediately. And in that hundred day plan--I suggest you look at it--137 things a president can do without Congress that are legal.
That is the key. And even the lobbyists will not be able to sign off some checks to stop it. A president can do it. First off, it means jump starting the real immigration reform, leading to passing a bill by the end of the year. It means standing with our allies rather than cozying up to dictators, and subverting an election. You've heard of the three r’s: reading, writing and arithmetic. Well, I have the five R’s for foreign policy. That means restoring American leadership, repairing our alliances, rejoining international agreements, responding to threats around the world in an appropriate way, and reasserting American values. You can really just get it down to one R. And that means returning to sanity in our foreign policy.
And there is something else we must do at home if we hope to lead the world and and we hope to work together as one America to meet the challenges we face. We must heed the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, that we are all quote, “tied in a single garment of destiny, whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” That means when white supremacist rally in support of hate, there aren't good people on both sides. There's only one side and that is the American side and that is the good side. We have to respect all people again, regardless of their race, or their religious faith, or their national origin, or sexual orientation. We have to replace meanness, meaning polarization with cooperation. This means, as I mentioned, taking back the Senate and getting rid of the number one polarizer on Capitol Hill.
It is easy to hurl insults, to peck out angry tweets in your bathrobe, and kick the real work--It's just a bad image, I know--and kick the real work of governing, the real work of leading down the road. It's easy to draw a line in the sand and sketch out grand ideological schemes that may never see the light of day. The hard work, the unglamorous work as these guys sitting behind me know, the real work of democracy is finding what we have in common, what united Americans, what we can actually achieve together. I learned from my grandpa that the real glory comes from doing not what’s easy, but what’s hard.
I learned that from my dad’s struggles with alcoholism that really what matters is you can have the determination and grit to get through whatever obstacles are in your path. I learned from my mom decades in the classroom, that real progress takes patience, not taking your marbles and running home. And I learned in my three terms as a United States Senator, something that the president will never learn. And that is to get across the bridge, you have to build one, not blow one up. And that is what I’ve learned and it’s what I've learned in life that has allowed me to win every single congressional district every single time, three times in every district in Minnesota. And by the way, when I run I help lead not just run for myself. We have flipped the state house every single time I've lead our ticket. We have flipped into Democrat. So if you want to broaden our tent and widen our coalition and to lengthen our coattails in this country, we have to run with that philosophy. If you want to bring common sense to our national debate then I hope you'll work with me. If you want to bring heartland humility to the White House, come join us.
I got in this fight as a working mom. I just told you that story. Like so many of you, who saw injustice and rallied other moms to stop it. That's all it takes, all it has ever taken the will to stand up and say stop. You heard Andy tell the story of Joseph Welch, that lawyer who grew up an immigrant family from Primghar. He was the one that stood up to Joseph McCarthy and said “have you no sense of decency?” So many times we see the people that you least expect to win, that you least expect to be the ones that stand up, end up being the ones that stand up to the decency of this nation. So I'm asking you to stand up with me to restore the decency of this nation again, to rise up to make this country work for everyone again, to fight for an America that stands its ground, while seeking common ground. And I'm asking you to join our campaign to make our cause, your cause. And I promise you this, if you do that, the best is yet to come.
