Elizabeth Warren brings kitchen table talk to Council Bluffs forum

With the Iowa caucuses looming as the first official 2020 tally, Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren brought her campaign back to the Hawkeye State this weekend with a swing that wrapped up in Council Bluffs.
Her latest trek through the state included town halls around Des Moines on Saturday and then to Clarinda and Council Bluffs on Sunday.
The Council Bluffs stop - her third here - played to a crowd at Woodrow Wilson Junior High.
Warren set the table for some kitchen table talk by tweeting about her proposed wealth tax prior to the town hall then entering the to room to the tune of
. After a recitation of a quick bio she went straight to a Q&A that went straight to economic themes.
She said big government has created a system that hinges on big money and the average American is getting trampled by that. When you see a government only working for the privileged, she said, "that is corruption pure and simple and we need to call it out for what it is."
The senator told the crowd that fixing that is going to take, "big, structural change," and she said, "It's why I'm in this fight."
Warren championed her proposed wealth tax designed to find untapped resources from the country's most prosperous.
She said those who have built big fortunes have done so with people whose educations have been paid for by all of us, "and we're glad to do it," she said but, "all we're saying is when you make it big, pitch in two cents," so everyone else has a chance.
She said trickle-down economics dating back to Ronald Reagan "have failed miserably in this country." It's given us 40 years of the rich just getting richer.
She said it's time for the major money players in America to pay their share. "If you paid a single dollar in taxes," she said, "you paid more than Amazon."
On health care, she said her top priority is to keep community hospitals open. On prescription drugs she noted the high price of insulin and said the president has the authority to step in and negotiate the price down.
"On day one I'm going to use that federal law to lower the cost of insulin, lower the cost of EpiPens and save Americans millions of dollars. Boy it's going to be fun to be president."
The first major step toward that comes at the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3rd.
The richest Americans with the biggest fortunes keep getting richer, and the wealth gap just gets wider and wider. We need a #WealthTax to level the playing field and fund opportunity—to ensure every family has a chance to succeed. https://t.co/MEGAE4c5Fg
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) December 29, 2019