Why Americans want Warren to run

Elizabeth Warren was the guest of the hour at the Washington Ideas Forum hosted in Washington, D.C., by the Atlantic and the Aspen Institute this week. She emphasized her connection to former Speaker Newt Gingrich and how they would like to both increase the funding for the National Institutes of Health.

We can all agree that the funding of medical research has stalled and that the purchasing power of medical research has been cut, said Sen. Warren. As both the former speaker and Sen. Warren have said, brain research is a must and is important for the sustainable future of America.

Jim Pinkerton, along with the Hudson Institute's Hanns Kuttner, St. George's University and WINDREF Institute, embarked on a two-year study of cures, and what the cost to America will be. They examined the costs of doing nothing and the benefits that doing something would add to our economy. Pinkerton found that it would be an investment for America to seek to find cures for our most prominent diseases. Elizabeth Warren and Speaker Gingrich are on the right track.

Warren, like others from the Democratic Party side of the aisle, said Republicans have been spending time and energy on the Planned Parenthood debate rather than on bigger problems our country faces.

She said, "We should be talking about Glass-Steagall (she ran for Senate on this issue and it separates banking and investment practices of banks), we should be talking about bankruptcy laws." She took sharp aim at the attempt to change the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the attempt by some in Congress to make it a five-person board. Warren also took aim at the Security and Exchange Commission.

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Warren, continually asked whom she would endorse, said Hillary Clinton is running along with other people who are getting their ideas out there. She passionately gave a laundry list of important issues such as college debt and launching into a report card on American families. Warren said, "Democrats are getting in touch with what really matters."

She referenced historical data on families, noting that from 1925-1980 families were doing better and making up about 70 percent of the economic growth. But from 1980-2012, there was a zero percent income growth among working families, which she attributed to trickle-down economics, which has become clear "even in the bubble of Washington."

Again taking aim at Republicans, Warren mentioned GOP presidential contenders Donald Trump and Jeb Bush and how they are talking about closing tax loopholes. She argued that billionaires should not be paying less in taxes than teachers and firefighters.

When asked if she had seen the Planned Parenthood tapes and if they bothered her, Warren used the topic as a jumping off point on women's health, carefully avoiding the direct question but saying that "2.7 people get health care from Planned Parenthood" and Republicans say the first priority is to defund Planned Parenthood. Warren argued that this battle is really about women's access to abortion, and Republicans want to make it harder for a woman who is making the most difficult decision of her life. She went on to say that there was a time in the past where women committed suicide over abortion decisions. Animated, she said, America is doing a straw poll – the 2016 elections, and, "If they want to shut down women's access to abortions, which are not paid for by the government, they will have a real fight on their hands." She also said Republicans want to take women's health back to 1955.

Warren was asked about her lunch with Vice President Joe Biden, and she neatly avoided the question of whether she might run as Biden's vice president or support Clinton. She said both Biden and Clinton "talked about how we are going to rebuild America's middle class," and "how we can create opportunities for poor people." About her disagreements with Biden, Warren said, "Joe Biden cares about America. We have disagreed very sharply over the bankruptcy law. We are still on opposite sides of that issue."

Warren – although a politician, and at times a careful one – still is less scripted than many of the Democratic and Republican Party candidates. That is why people want her to run. This is so far the year of the outsider. Unlike Donald Trump, she isn't taking the presidential bait quite yet, but wait until 2020; I predict she will be right there, the insider's outsider.

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