Warren on beating Hillary: 'That's not a question I put any energy into.'
RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren used the Code Conference stage to again insist she is not running for president.
But the liberal Massachusetts Democrat came to the tech confab to discuss some of the issues she is most passionate about, and at times she sure sounded like a candidate.
"We have to invest in brains and the people are willing to do the long arc research" she said. "The way I think we get change is we get more people engaged in the political process."
She hammered home the point that we have to get to the point we're we're "mad as hell" and not going to take it any more.
Warren says it has been "forever" since we've passed a transportation bill, and that we have $3.4 trillion in"deferred maintenance."
"A 21st Century country needs 21st Century infrastructure," she said. "Everybody relies on the infrastructure we're all building, We invest in education, we do it together. We invest in roads and bridges and do it together. I don't think that's any different in Silicon Valley."
Warren said that big investment in research stopped in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected president.
"This is just not haves and haves not. Its about what's the job of government?" she said.
Asked directly about her own political future and whether she could beat Hillary Clinton, Warren dodged. "That's not a question I put any energy into," she said. "I have a full-time job."
But Warren went on to say that too many people in Washington don't represent the people who elected them. "We need boldness in our leadership," she said.
She also is comfortable being called a "populist," and said that, ""we do not have a sufficiently progressive tax structure."
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