“WHO STOLE TAXPAYER DOLLARS?” Slotkin Calls for Accountability and Trump-Proof Government Reforms

Thank you for being here. Thank you for coming out. Thank you to Majority Dems for bringing us together so soon after an amazing election that gave some hope back to us. Yes. I'm the senator, now the senior senator from the great state of Michigan, and I was asked to speak about what is next. And many of you know I have a national security background by training, and in that world, in order to talk about what is next, You have to talk about the lessons learned from what just happened. So here's what I think we just saw a couple of days ago during our election. Most of it can be encapsulated by my experience two weeks ago knocking doors in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Thank you for the one person who cheered for Sterling Heights, Michigan. I was knocking every single door and to a house, everyone is clutching my arm, some of them in tears, talking about the economic choices they are making, the economic stress they feel, the shame they feel because they can't provide for their kids what was provided to them. A feeling like someone else is getting rich while they are getting poor, and then on top of that, a feeling like AI and technology is going to make that worse. They're making trade-offs between prescription drugs and food. They're deciding which of their children gets to go to college. These are the kinds of things that are leading to a deep sense of shame, and their vote on election night was because they cannot handle that level of stress going forward. So the lessons for me on what we need to take, as happy as we all are, are very sober. They're threefold. First of all, the economic crisis, the talk of affordability is actually much bigger than that. The thing that we have going on right now is whether we will have a middle class in this country, whether the American dream in this country is real or not. And it is up to us to deliver and make sure we demonstrate how we feel about that. Number two, and I would just say, I am a national security person, but the existential crisis in this country, the existential threat, is not coming from some other country abroad, it is coming from that threat to the middle class. Number two, on election night, people voted very clearly for a new generation of leadership. That was very, very clear. People won all over the country, and to be honest, they did not wake up in the morning and say, well, I'm a progressive, or I'm a moderate, and this is the way I'm, they voted for a new generation who thinks differently, and works harder, and never forgets who they serve, and I just want to say, because we're at a conference of Democrats right now, Now, I think Michigan gave a really clear demonstration that whatever side of the Democrats you feel like you're on, that is not what is important right now, okay? Teamwork is what is important, and if you have elected officials who are spending all their time fighting progressive versus moderate, then they have missed the plot of the election. Right That new generation is not going to be defined by progressive versus moderate. That new generation, quite simply, is are you on team fight or are you on team flight? Those are the only two distinctions we have. And I think... For me, the third thing that came across so clearly in these elections is that people are desperate for big and bold ideas. They do not want marginal change. They do not want small bureaucratic changes in a bill. They want big swings. So what does that mean if those are the lessons from this election? It means going forward that, number one, we have to be ruthless about fighting for our middle class. That means passing legislation, as we just heard in our last panel, that takes big swings, first of all, to mop up what President Trump has done with the war and the tariffs and the Medicaid cuts. But it also means putting our money where our mouth is on big swings on health care and prescription drugs and housing and then daring the president to veto them. Number two, we have to have accountability for people who broke the law and who stole taxpayer dollars. We have to be a country of rules and laws. So picking signature cases of people that really abused the law and taxpayer dollars and going and demonstrating that you can't do that. This should not be a controversial statement. It has become controversial, including for me last night when the Department of Justice Indicated that they are again threatening to criminally indict me for those exact words on accountability. And then number three, we need to make sure that a very unsexy group of people are thinking very hard about how to Trump-proof the government going forward so that no leader can do this again, no leader can enrich themselves on the backs of the American people, Democrat or Republican. So we had a great night on election night, right? It gave us hope in a way that I think I'm so glad for my Gen Z staff that they got to experience what it was like to feel hope on an election night, right? It was great. I was particularly thrilled, I got to say, as a good Midwesterner to see all the wins in the Midwest. Thank you. Because I think the Midwest is a place that understands core values that can be very, very useful at this time, right? Putting your head down, being practical, being neighborly, pulling together when your community and your country needs you. Because we are in a moment of an economic crisis, but it is not the first time our country has been in this kind of trouble, right? We do have experience of coming together and getting through tough times. Let's think about what was going on in a city like this, in the middle of the Depression, right? Every single time our country has been at a tough economic moment, we get through it with two things. Engaged citizens and principled leaders. Every single time, engaged citizens do a little bit more than they're used to doing because their country they love needs them. And then there are principled leaders ready to receive the ball and do something about it. So thank you for being here. Thank you for participating. Thank you to all the voters who came out and voted. You are engaged citizens because you love your country and you love your community. And I am so thrilled to be up here on stage and will do everything in my power to be the principled leader that you all deserve. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Appreciate you. Have a great one.