The Boston Globe reports:
The Massachusetts Democrat and 2020 presidential candidate was first asked about how — or if — she would use the executive power of the White House during an appearance on “The Late Late Show with James Corden.”
“If you were in office, to you, what would constitute a national emergency?” Corden asked.
“Oh, let’s do the list: climate change, gun violence, student loan debt — right off the top, ” Warren replied…
Just this week, Warren also introduced legislation to address two other national crises: affordable child care and the opioid epidemic.
“Donald Trump’s ridiculous wall isn’t a ‘national emergency,'” she tweeted Wednesday. “But our country’s opioid crisis is.”
The Corden interview is here.
Her child care proposal, the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act, includes:
- Ensure universal access: This plan would provide federal funding to establish and support a locally-run network of Child Care and Early Learning Centers and Family Child Care Homes so that every family, regardless of their income or employment, has high-quality, affordable child care options for their children from birth to school entry.
- Guarantee affordability: Families below 200% of the federal poverty line (about $51,200 for a family of four) could access these child care options at zero cost. According to an independent analysis by Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi and Sophia Koropeckyj, 8.8 million kids would have free access to child care and early learning options through the program. Families with higher incomes would pay a subsidized fee based on their income, similar to the military child care program. No family would pay more than 7% of their income for these public child care options.
And much more. As for the opioid epidemic:
Warren, along with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), in 2018 introduced what experts regularly cite as the best bill in Congress on the issue: the Comprehensive Addiction Resources Emergency (CARE) Act. The bill would authorize $100 billion over 10 years to combat drug addiction, funneling money to cities, counties, and states — particularly those hardest hit by drug overdoses — and other organizations to boost spending on addiction treatment, harm reduction services, and prevention programs.
“Our communities are on the front lines of the epidemic, and they’re working hard to fight back,” Warren told me in an interview. “But they can’t do it alone. They can’t keep nibbling around the edges.”
…. There’s wide agreement, among activists and drug policy experts, that much more action is needed to reverse the opioid crisis. Congress has changed some regulations and rules to open up access to treatment, and it’s allocated some funds here and there, in the single-digit billions, to the crisis. But advocates and experts argue something far more comprehensive — tens of billions of dollars over the next few years — is needed. Republicans, however, have resisted such calls, voicing skepticism of running up government spending (outside tax cuts for the wealthy).
Yet so far, no presidential candidate but Warren has put forward a concrete plan to confront the opioid epidemic. Her Massachusetts Senate seat has likely influenced her actions: Like the rest of New England, Massachusetts has seen a disproportionate number of overdose deaths. Its rate of drug overdose deaths was 31.8 per 100,000 people in 2017, far above the national average of 21.7.
The CARE Act makes the kind of commitment that advocates and experts have called for.
Let’s hope all our candidates come forward with bold, achievable policy solutions to address the real problems Americans are facing.