Sen. Warren says she's concerned about Hillary Clinton's ties to Wall Street

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren told a Club audience Wednesday that she was was concerned about former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's ties to Wall Street but when asked if she wished she had run for president, the Massachusetts senator said, "No."

Then, she responded to a question about taking the No. 2 spot by saying, "If I were running for vice president, that would assure an all-women ticket."

Asked about Wall Street donations to Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nominaton, Warren said: "I"m concerned about everybody's ties to Wall Street. Look around Washington. I am worried about the influence Wall Street has on Washington."

Following up on her address to the Senate Tuesday on the refugee crisis, Warren said, "It is our responsibility to protect our country, But we don't do that by turning our back on refugees who are fleeing the butchers of ISIS....The idea that we would turn back children and babies to the murderers of ISIS is fundamentally unamerican."

Warren devoted her entire prepared speech -- as well as her answers to questions from the audience -- to the wealth accumulated by huge corporations at the expense of average Americans. Her speech particularly targeted the overseas tax havens used by corporations.

She said the proposals by chief executives and lobbyists for corporations to pay taxes on only half of what they bring back home were nothing more than "a giant wet klss."

Warren said the tax code was too complicated but said "what worries me most" was that the tax code had been reshaped, particularly in the last decade, to help billion-dollar multinational corporations.

Asked whether moderate Democrats would support her proposals, Warren said: "We'll find out." She said she was encouraged by bipartisan work in Congress on an education bill "that has some really good features" as well as more funding for the National Institutes of Health. She decried the paltry funding for Alzheimer research.

Warren, highly animated throughout her hour-long appearance, told of her own wretched background in Oklahoma. When she was 12, her father was out of work and the family lost their car and were on the edge of losing their house. Her mother got a minimum wage job that saved their home and family
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She voiced support for an increase in the minimum wage now and said that at its present level it could not keep a mother and a baby above the poverty level. She called an increase "fundamentally a moral question."