Clinton Publishes Op-Ed About What She’s Learned from Millennials

On Monday, Mic published an op-ed by Hillary Clinton titled “Here’s What Millennials Have Taught Me.” In the article, Clinton explains that the millennial generation is the most open and diverse generation of Americans, and she has learned a great deal by talking with millennial voters over the past year and a half. She then outlines three things she plans to do to help millennials: reduce college debt, create jobs, and cap the maximum out of pocket cost for childcare. Clinton asks for voters support at the conclusion of the op-ed saying, “So let’s stand together to show the world what our country, and your generation, really stands for. Let’s overwhelm division and intolerance with compassion, understanding and unity. Let’s make clear that Love Trumps Hate — not just this November, but always.” A copy of the op-ed is below and can be read HERE.

We hear a lot of things about the millennial generation. But too often, the people who are busy trying to define you are the ones who have spent the least time listening to you.

Here’s what I have learned: Your generation is the most open, diverse and entrepreneurial generation in our country’s history. And if we work together to take on the barriers that are holding you back and unleash your full potential, that won’t just improve your lives — it’ll make our entire country stronger.

From the first days of this campaign, you have shared the problems that keep you up at night and the hopes that get you up in the morning. You’ve reached for the opportunities that come with a college education at the highest rates of any generation in history — but faced ballooning tuition costs and crushing student debt like never before. Many of you entered the workforce during the worst recession since the Great Depression. And you’ve come of age during two deadly, costly wars in the Middle East.

And yet, despite all these challenges, you’ve never given up. Not even close.

Instead, you’re leading the way to a brighter future for all of us. You’ve fought for some of the most important accomplishments in our nation’s history, like the Affordable Care Act and marriage equality. You’ve come together to challenge our country to protect human rights and strengthen families by fixing a broken immigration system, reforming our criminal justice system and ending the era of mass incarceration. And you’ve demanded that people of color be able to live their lives without fear of being killed at a routine traffic stop.

And it’s nothing short of inspiring.

Around the time I graduated from college, our country was in its own moment of soul-searching. We were mired in a war in Vietnam, and reeling from the shooting of peaceful protesters at Kent State and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. At the same time, we were making progress on important fronts. The Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, and the Voting Rights Act broke down barriers that prevented too many people of color from casting their ballot. Women were entering the workforce like never before, challenging attitudes and expectations. It felt like all of America was struggling to decide who we were going to be.

Today, many of you have told me you feel the same way. We’ve seen the rise of a presidential candidate who pits Americans against each other and traffics in prejudice and paranoia. I’ve heard how uneasy this race has made many of you feel — how chilling it is to see protesters beaten at political rallies while the candidate eggs them on. When he talks about making America great again, it’s code for taking America back to a time when many of us — women, people of color, immigrants, LGBT Americans, people with disabilities — were marginalized, ostracized and treated as less-than.

But that’s not what our country is made of. And it’s not what I see when I look to your generation. In large part because of all of you, I am convinced that America’s best days are ahead of us.

There’s a lot that needs fixing — and we’re going to fix it together.

To make it happen, we need to change both hearts and laws. Starting with my first job at the Children’s Defense Fund, I’ve learned that if you want to help the greatest number of people in our democracy, you have to push for reform from both the outside in and the inside out. So we need activists and advocates, entrepreneurs and innovators, teachers and mentors, and everyone who changes lives every day in a million quiet ways. But we also need to do the slow, hard business of governing. We need to win elections, write laws, allocate resources and find common ground. Doing both is the secret to making change.

Let me tell you about a few things I want to work with you to change as your president.

First, everyone who wants to go to college should be able to without drowning in debt. That’s why I worked with Sen. Bernie Sanders to design a plan that will let everyone attend college debt-free. If you already have loans, we’ll let you refinance them, defer them to start a business or forgive them if you spend 10 years in public service. You can even see how much you and your family could save under our plan by looking at the “college calculator” on our website. And we’ll make sure a four-year degree isn’t the only path to a good-paying job by supporting apprenticeships and other high-quality training programs.

Second, everyone should be able to get a job that pays the bills and can support a family. And not only that, you should be able to do work you love and find meaningful. So we’ll create more good-paying jobs, raise the minimum wage and guarantee equal pay. This will help a lot of Americans, especially young people struggling to find footing in a difficult economy.

Third, no new parent should have to face the impossible choice between caring for a child or family member and losing a paycheck or even a job. It’s outrageous that in 2016, the United States is the only developed country in the world without paid family leave of any kind. So we’ll make high-quality child care and preschool available to every family in every community.  I’ve spent my career fighting to make a difference for children and families, and I can’t wait to do even more as president.

Of course, to do any of these things, we can’t have secret unaccountable money poisoning our politics. So I’ll appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Citizens United and even propose a constitutional amendment to do the same. And by doing that, we’ll make sure that no special interests can get in the way of protecting and expanding civil rights, LGBT rights and all human rights.

Many of you have shared with me that it feels like you’re out there on your own — like no one has your back. It shouldn’t be that way. If I’m fortunate enough to be elected, you will always have a champion in the White House. But I can’t do it on my own. I need you to work with me, keep fighting for what you believe, hold me accountable. I can’t promise we’ll win every fight on our first try. But I can promise you this: I’ll never stop fighting for you.

So let’s stand together to show the world what our country, and your generation, really stands for. Let’s overwhelm division and intolerance with compassion, understanding and unity. Let’s make clear that Love Trumps Hate — not just this November, but always.

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

News Source: Mic

Hillary Clinton Announces Plan to Combat High Prescription Drug Prices

On Friday, Hillary Clinton announced a plan to combat the rising cost of prescription drugs, particularly the excessive rise in costs of live saving prescriptions like the EpiPen. Clinton’s plan would create a federal team to monitor drug prices and track increases. Her plan also provides several actions the government could take when drug prices have been raised excessively such as fines and increased access to treatment programs. An outline of Clinton’s proposal is below, and the full plan can be read on The Briefing.

• Making alternatives available and increasing competition
• Emergency importation of safe treatments
• Penalties for unjustified price increases to hold drug companies accountable and fund expanded access
• Dedicated oversight to protect consumers
• Strong new enforcement measures to respond when there are unjustified, outlier price increases that threaten public health
  • Directly intervening to make treatments available, and supporting generic and alternative manufacturers that enter the market and increase competition to bring down prices
  • Broadening access to safe, high-quality generic and alternative competitors through emergency importation
  • Holding drug makers accountable for unjustified price increases with new penalties – and using the funds to expand access and competition
• Cap monthly and annual out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs to save patients with chronic or serious health conditions hundreds or thousands of dollars
• Clear out the FDA generic backlog
• Prohibit “pay for delay” arrangements that keep generic competition off the market
• Ensure American consumers are getting value for their drugs
• Stop direct-to-consumer drug company advertising subsidies, and reinvest funds in research
• Require drug companies that benefit from taxpayers’ support to invest in research, not marketing or profits
• Allow Medicare to negotiate drug and biologic prices and demand higher rebates for prescription drugs in Medicare

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

News Source: The Briefing, The New York Times

Meet the Clinton-Kaine Transition Team

Hillary Clinton’s campaign released the names of the Clinton-Kaine senior transition team. The group will be tasked with building an administration if she wins in November. The group will begin working out of Washington, DC. The full detailed release from Hillary for America is below.

Two weeks after paperwork was filed to formally establish the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, John Podesta — the Chair of Hillary for America and the President of the Transition project — announced several top officials who will lead the transition planning over the coming months. This senior leadership team will oversee a Washington-based operation that is dedicated to preparing for a potential Clinton-Kaine administration, enabling the Brooklyn-based campaign organization to stay exclusively focused on the task of electing Hillary Clinton as the nation’s 45th President of the United States.

Ken Salazar, former Secretary of the Interior and United States senator from Colorado, will serve as Chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project.

Salazar will serve alongside four co-chairs — former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, President of the Center for American Progress Neera Tanden, and Maggie Williams, Director of the Institute of Politics, Harvard University.

Ed Meier and Ann O’Leary, two top campaign policy advisers, will shift full-time to the Transition team to serve as co-executive directors and manage the project’s day-to-day operations. Heather Boushey, the Executive Director of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, will serve as Chief Economist.

“We are extremely pleased that such an accomplished group of public servants has agreed to lead the transition planning for a potential Clinton-Kaine administration,” Podesta said. “While our campaign remains focused on the task at hand of winning in November, Hillary Clinton wants to be able to get to work right away as President-elect on building an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. These individuals, who bring a deep level of experience in the work of presidential transitions, will help us build a team that is ready to govern after the general election.”

“Once Hillary Clinton makes history by being elected as the nation’s first woman President, we want to have a turnkey operation in place so she can hit the ground running right away,” Salazar said. “A Clinton-Kaine administration will build on the progress we’ve made under President Obama, and tackle a new set of challenges both at home and abroad. This transition team will undertake the preparations necessary to ensure our next President has the resources and staff to carry out this all-important work.”

The Clinton-Kaine Transition Project is a 501(c)(4) organization. It was officially established through the filing of paperwork two weeks ago in the District of Columbia, with Podesta named as the entity’s President and Hillary for America senior adviser Minyon Moore as Secretary.

A 2010 law, known as the Pre-Election Transition Act, formalized the process for the transfer of powers from one administration to the next, and provided new resources to both party nominees so they each could take steps ahead of the general election to ensure a seamless transition. In keeping with the law, the Obama administration will host initial, transition planning meetings with representatives of both the Trump and Clinton campaigns. After the two parties’ conventions, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough phoned both campaigns to indicate that, among other steps, workspace administered by the General Services Administration in Washington, D.C., was officially available to both campaigns to use for their respective transition planning.

Biographies for the leadership of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project appear below.

Ken Salazar, Chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, served under President Obama as the 50th Secretary of the Interior from 2009-2013. Prior to that, he was U.S. Senator from Colorado from 2005-2009. From 1999 until his election to the U.S. Senate, Salazar served as Attorney General for Colorado. He currently works as a partner at the international law firm WilmerHale.

Tom Donilon, Co-Chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, served as National Security Advisor to President Obama from 2010-2013. Donilon had leadership roles in the State Department and NSC transitions in 2008. He served as Deputy National Security Advisor before becoming President Obama’s top national security aide. Donilon served during the Clinton Administration as Chief of Staff at the Department of State. Donilon is currently Vice Chair at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers.

Jennifer Granholm, Co-Chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, was the 47th Governor of the State of Michigan. Prior to her two terms as Governor, she served as Michigan’s Attorney General from 1999-2003. She was the first woman in state history to be elected to either position. During her tenure as Governor, she led Michigan through a severe economic downturn by diversifying the state’s economy, strengthening its automotive industry and investing in new sectors such as clean energy. After leaving office, Granholm served as an advisor to Pew Charitable Trusts’ Clean Energy Program. She is also a Senior Research Fellow with the Berkeley Energy and Climate Institute.

Neera Tanden, Co-Chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, currently serves as President of the Center for American Progress. Prior to that, she served as a senior adviser for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services, working to help enact President Obama’s landmark health reform law. During the 2008 campaign, Tanden served as policy director for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, then became the director of domestic policy for the Obama-Biden campaign during the general election. Earlier in her career, she was Legislative Director for Clinton in her Senate office, and deputy campaign manager on Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign.

Maggie Williams, Co-Chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, is the Director of the Institute of Politics (IOP) at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is the former Communications Director for the Children’s Defense Fund; served as the 1992 transition director for First Lady Hillary Clinton, and as Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to First Lady Hillary Clinton. Maggie is founding partner of management consulting firm, Griffin Williams CPM, from which she took a leave of absence in 2008 to manage the presidential primary campaign of then-Senator Clinton. Maggie is Vice Chair of the Trustee Board of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and serves on the Board of the Scholastic Corporation.

Ed Meier, Co-Executive Director of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, most recently served as the Director of Policy Outreach at Hillary for America. Prior to his work on the campaign, Meier served as Senior Adviser to the Deputy Secretary of State during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department. In addition to his service in government, Meier has worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and served as Chief Operating Officer at Big Thought, an education nonprofit in Dallas.

Ann O’Leary, Co-Executive Director of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, most recently served as Senior Policy Adviser at Hillary for America, handling issues including college affordability, health care and family economic security.  Prior to joining the campaign, O’Leary was senior vice president and director of the Children and Families Program at Next Generation. O’Leary was also founding executive director of the University of California, Berkeley, Law School’s Center on Health, Economic & Family Security, and a Deputy City Attorney for the City of San Francisco. She held a number of roles during the Clinton administration, including policy adviser to the First Lady and assistant to the President on the Domestic Policy Council. She was also Legislative Director in Clinton’s Senate office from 2001-2003.

Heather Boushey, Chief Economist of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, is the Executive Director and Chief Economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Dr. Boushy previously served as as an economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and the Economic Policy Institute. She is a leading researcher on the issue of income inequality and author of “Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict” from Harvard University Press.

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

News Source: The New York Times, Vox

Clinton Proposes Universal Health Care

On Saturday, Hillary Clinton and her campaign released an expansion to her health care plan that provides additional details on how, as president, she would achieve universal health care. Parts of the plan are suggestions from the campaign of former Democratic rival Senator Bernie Sanders. The expanded plan has three primary points:

1. Work with state governors to expand Medicaid in every state.
2. Reign in the cost of health care by ensuring low premiums, reforming the prescription drug industry to allow for price negotiations, and capping the maximum out of pocket expenses for a family per year.
3. Expand Medicare to all Americans 55 years old and older.

In the release, Clinton stresses the importance of insuring all Americans and ensuring that everyone has access to affordable health care, dental and vision care, and affordable prescription drugs. The full plan is available on The Briefing.

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

News Source: CBS News, The Briefing

Clinton Unveils Prescription Drug Plan in Iowa

On Tuesday, Hillary Rodham Clinton continued addressing heath care issues by announcing her plan to curb the rising costs of prescription drugs. Speaking at Moulton Elementary School in Des Moines, Iowa, Clinton said that, “We’re going to add on to the good work that was done by the Affordable Care Act.” The plan she outlined would require pharmaceutical companies to reinvest profits into research, allow for the import of drugs from other countries, expand opportunities for generic medications, allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug costs, and cap the out-of-pocket expense for everyday Americans with chronic health issues.

Clinton made it clear that she would tougher on the companies, especially since many of them receive tax payer funded grants from the government to supplement the funding of their research. Then, they charge an exorbitant amount for the drug. She said, “That is not the way the market is supposed to work. That is bad actors making a fortune off of people’s misfortune. Pharmaceutical companies can charge astronomical fees, far beyond anything it would take to recoup their investment and far beyond.” Read a full fact sheet of Clinton’s plan from The Briefing.

Clinton also made headlines during the event when she declared that she is against the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline. She said, “I think it is imperative that we look at the Keystone XL pipeline as what I believe it is: A distraction from the important work we have to do to combat climate change, and, unfortunately from my perspective, one that interferes with our ability to move forward and deal with other issues. Therefore, I oppose it. I oppose it because I don’t think it’s in the best interest of what we need to do to combat climate change.” The video below is not complete and will be updated when/if a full is available.

For all the latest updates, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

News Source: USA Today, CNN, NBC News

Center for American Progress

Monday, March 23, 2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton took part in a roundtable discussion hosted by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the America Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The event focused on issues in urban areas, and she discussed the benefits of creating partnerships between the public and private sectors to provide solutions for urban issues. Clinton focused largely on income inequality and wage stagnation and how the two are related. Clinton said, “We need to think hard about what we’re going to do now that people are moving back into and staying in cities to make sure that our cities are not just places of economic prosperity and job creation on average. But do it in a way that lifts everybody up to deal with the overriding issues of inequality and lack of mobility.”

The roundtable also included CAP President Neera Tanden, Housing Secretary Julian Castro, and AFSCME President Lee Saunders.

A video from the event is available by CLICKING HERE. While the whole conversation is important, Clinton begins speaking at 5:40 and speaks for a second time beginning at 47:30. Her final remarks begin at 58:20.

Video Source: CSPAN

New Source: US News and World Report

Center for American Progress Roundtable

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Hillary Rodham Clinton took part in a roundtable event on women’s issues at the Center for American Progress. The event covered a variety of topics, and Clinton took the opportunity to talk about the issues of equal pay and family friendly work policies. Clinton blasted Congress for being out of touch with the issues facing American women. She said, “”Unfortunately, reality is not always the context in which these decisions are made. The Congress increasingly — despite the best efforts of my friends and others — is living in an evidence-free zone. What the reality is, in the lives of Americans is so far from the minds of too many who don’t place the highest priority” on those issues.”

The roundtable also included Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Senator Patty Murray, Representative Rosa DeLauro and CAP President Neera Tanden.

The video above is incomplete. A video of her full speech will be posted when/if available.

Video Source: YouTube

News Source: NBC News

Clinton Contributes to The Shriver Report

On January 12, The Shriver Report and the Center for American Progress released a joint report entitled The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink. The report contains essays written by politicians, celebrities, and scholars about the state of women’s rights in the United States. Once of the contributors to the report is Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the report, Clinton argues that the “clock is turning back” on women across America and that the advancement of women and girls should become a priority. Other contributors to the report includes: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, NBA star LeBron James, singer Beyonce Knowles-Carter, the Aspen Institute’s Anne Mosle, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, and more.

I highly encourage everyone to read the report. To access it, you may visit the Center for American Progress or The Shriver Report. The full reported may be purchased from Amazon by clicking here.