EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
Hello Houston!
Results from South Carolina are coming in and I want to
say congratulations to Vice President Biden. I’ll be the first
to say that the first four contests haven’t gone exactly as
I’d hoped. But Super Tuesday is three days away and
we’re looking forward to gaining as many delegates to the
convention as we can -- from California to right here in
Texas. It might take days or even longer to know the full
Super Tuesday results, but they will be critical in sorting
out who our nominee will be this year. My campaign is
built for the long haul -- and we’re looking forward to these
big contests.
Thank you for welcoming me back to Texas. I did some
real growing up here. Finished college at the University of
Houston (Go Coogs!), had my first job as a law professor
at UH and then UT (Go, Longhorns!).
Usually, I begin my events talking about how we’ve
become a country that works better and better for those at
the top and worse and worse for everyone else, and I love
to talk about plans for making this country work for
everyone.

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 But tonight I’d like to use our time together a little
differently. I’d like to skip my usual stories, and instead talk
about a crisis that is upon us -- and then cut to the allimportant selfie line.
For nearly a year, I’ve expressed concern about
weaknesses in our economy. I’ve called attention to a
manufacturing sector tumbling into recession. Talked
about debt loads that were unsustainable. Discussed an
economy dependent on household and corporate
borrowing instead of rapidly rising wages. The data make
it clear that our economic foundation is shaky. A number
of smaller shocks -- or one big shock -- could cause it to
crumble. But despite these warnings, the Trump
administration has failed to act.
And now that shock has arrived. The coronavirus is
spreading worldwide and here in the United States. The
stock market had its worst week since the crash of 2008.
The impact on our families, particularly on babies and
elderly people and people with other health challenges
could be severe. The impact on our economy could also
be brutal, putting jobs at risk, threatening savings,
undermining economic stability, and even potentially
destabilizing our giant, globally intertwined banks.

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 The time to start preparing for a public health crisis was
years ago. And the time to prepare for the coronavirus
specifically was months ago. We can’t go back, but we
also can’t afford to waste any more time.
This is a time for honest leadership that respects science,
that draws on serious experts and that delivers real
results. This is both a public health crisis and a potential
economic crisis, not just here in the United States but
worldwide.
In the coming days I will be releasing an expanded plan to
deal with the public health and economic effects of
coronavirus. These are steps that Congress and the
President should take immediately to keep our people and
our economy healthy.
Here are some key elements:
● First, every American -- whether they have health
insurance or not -- should be able to get
recommended coronavirus testing and receive any
future recommended vaccine for free.
● Second, no one should face thousands of dollars in
medical bills and lost wages if they are put in

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 mandatory quarantine by the government. That is not
only the moral thing to do, it keeps us all safer.
● Third, anyone exhibiting symptoms should get fully
paid time off to see a doctor and, if necessary, to get
tested and treated for the virus. No one who is sick
should feel like they have to go to work and potentially
spread this virus faster just because they can’t afford
to miss a few days’ pay.
● Fourth, we should pass a major, targeted fiscal
stimulus to counteract the economic harm that
coronavirus is about to cause. Our financial response
should include providing direct support to businesses
of all sizes that have seen their supply chains
disrupted by manufacturing slowdowns across Asia.
I’m also calling right now, tonight, for the Federal Reserve
to take action to help out American companies. During the
financial crisis, the Fed quietly gave big banks access to
trillions of dollars in low-cost loans to prop them up. The
Fed should stand ready to offer low-cost loans to
companies that agree to support their workers and that
need a little help to make it through the next several
months. It is important that these companies do not lay
people off or go under because of a short-term disruption
in their supply chains.
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 Those are concrete steps we can take right now. But this
moment is a reminder of what qualities we need in a
president -- and what qualities are so sorely lacking in the
one we have.
Ultimately, that’s what this election is about. With fears of
an economic crisis and recession rising, with fears of a
global pandemic rising, Americans must ask themselves:
who do you trust to actually run this country?
Donald Trump has already shown he’s not up to the task.
So who should the Democrats nominate?
Let’s be blunt. This crisis demands more than a billionaire
mayor who believes that since he’s rich enough to buy
network airtime to pretend he’s the president, that entitles
him to be president -- and whose track record as mayor
shows he’ll govern to protect himself and his rich friends
over everyone else.
This crisis demands more than a former vice president so
eager to cut deals with Mitch McConnell and the
Republicans that he’ll trade good ideas for bad ones.
This crisis demands more than a Senator who has good
ideas, but whose 30-year track record shows he
consistently calls for things he fails to get done, and
consistently opposes things he nevertheless fails to stop.
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 I’ve said many times that any of the Democrats running
would be a better president than Donald Trump. And that’s
still true. But this crisis is a reminder that this primary isn’t
a game. We are picking a president -- and we need
someone whose core values can be trusted, who has a
plan for how to govern, and who can actually get it done.
I will be that president.
I’ve been at the center of this kind of crisis before.
My preparation started right here, teaching law at
University of Houston, and then at University of Texas. I
loved teaching. I knew it was what I was meant to do. I
taught the money courses -- contracts, bankruptcy,
secured transactions, finance. And in my teaching and in
my research I was always studying one simple question:
why are so many American families going broke?
Here in Texas, I first dug into the data to figure out what
drove families into bankruptcy. With my fellow
researchers, I went around to courthouses all over the
country copying thousands of bankruptcy filings to begin
understanding why so many American families turned to
bankruptcy.

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 At every turn, I saw a government that had been captured
by wealthy people and powerful corporations. At every
turn, I saw the people in power -- regulators and Congress
– happy to do the bidding of big banks and Wall Street, but
ignoring the signs of the coming crisis, a crisis that would
cost millions of Americans their homes, their jobs, and
their savings.
In the early 2000s, when I saw the early signs of what
became the 2008 financial crisis, I rang the alarm bells as
loud as I could. In 2003, I called out subprime lenders for
tricking unsuspecting families -- especially Black families
and Latino families -- into refinancing into overpriced
subprime mortgages. In 2005, I warned that families were
getting deeper into debt and hanging on only by borrowing
against their homes. I explained that these families were
walking a financial tightrope in which even the slightest
breeze would send them head over heels into financial
chaos.
By 2006, I flagged that foreclosure rates were climbing,
but that the mortgage lenders were still churning out loans
because they had passed on the risk of defaults to distant
investors in the form of mortgage-backed securities.
Those trends -- shady subprime lending, rising household
debt, a mortgage market where lenders didn’t bear the risk
of their loans -- set the stage for the 2008 crisis.
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 Yes, I rang the alarm bells as loudly as I could, but the
people with the power to stop the crisis didn’t listen -- not
enough of them anyway. Not the banks, not Alan
Greenspan, not other federal regulators, not Congress.
And when the crisis hit in 2008, working families lost it all
while the big banks that broke the economy got a fat
taxpayer bailout.
When the crisis came, Congress came to me and asked
me to head up the Congressional Oversight Panel to try to
get some accountability on how that bank bailout was
working.
As the crisis unfolded and Congress began drafting
reforms for the financial sector, I saw my chance. We
could end this corrupt system that worked great for the
banks and kicked dirt on families. So I pushed hard to get
my idea for a consumer financial protection bureau passed
into law. People told me not even to try. The idea was too
big, it would be too hard.
But we built a coalition, and we mobilized people all
across the country to push politicians to stand with
consumers instead of banks. The banks fought back,
spending $1 million dollars a day of lobbyist money to

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 flood the halls of Congress. But we fought harder, and we
won.
And then President Obama asked me to come to
Washington to set it up -- and I built the agency from 2
employees to about 1000 employees, got it all operational,
made it all work, and really put in place the kinds of
safeguards we need to keep banks from boosting their
profits by cheating people.
I loved the agency. I loved how it showed we could make
government work, not just for the rich and powerful, but we
could make it work for everyone. And when Republican
Senators blocked me from running it permanently, I went
back to Massachusetts and ran for office against one of
those incumbent Republican Senators -- and I beat him. I
became the first female Senator from the state.
This campaign for president has reminded me a lot of my
time traveling and meeting families that were going
through bankruptcy. The stories of why American families
are struggling today have the same root causes: It’s a
one-two punch of government corruption and corporate
greed.
During the course of the campaign, I’ve introduced a
gazillion detailed plans that are actually all really just one
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 plan: how we transform a corrupt government and a rigged
economy that only benefits those at the top into a
government and an economy that builds opportunity for
every single person. Everything I plan to do as president
flows from that.
That’s why I’m in this race -- and that’s why I’m asking for
your vote. If you think we need both progressive ideas and
progressive results, then join us. Go to
ElizabethWarren.com, pitch in five bucks, sign up to
volunteer.
Because the time to choose is upon us. The crises we
face are real. 2020 is your chance to choose a president.
And I’m ready to get to work.
Thank you all for being here. And I look forward to talking
with each and every one of you in the selfie line.
Thank you.

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