When a reader asked Warren, who lives in Cambridge, what she feels are the problems facing the Pioneer Valley, employment was at the top of her list.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren answers questions from the MassLive.com readers on Friday, Aug. 3, 2012 from her campaign headquarters in Somerville, Mass. (Photo courtesy of the Elizabeth Warren campaign)More politics news
First Lady Michelle Obama talks achievements, values in fundraiser speech at Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield
With more than 130 in attendance, first lady Michelle Obama delivered a stump speech aimed at energizing the local Democratic base as she campaigned for her husband's re-election efforts.Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren discussed rebuilding Western Massachusetts and helping small businesses, among other topics, during a chat with the MassLive.com readers on Friday.
Warren, who is taking on incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts, said that in and around Springfield, addressing the problems means taking a look at the short and long-term solutions.
When a reader asked Warren, who lives in Cambridge, what she feels are the problems facing the Pioneer Valley, employment was at the top of her list.
"Let's start with jobs. Springfield has a higher unemployment rate than the state as a whole. We can deal with that in two ways: short-term and long-term," Warren wrote. "Short-term, we need a jobs bill to put people to work, and those working people will have paychecks to spend in local businesses, which helps jump start the local economy. Last fall, Congress voted on three jobs bills in a row that would have meant jobs here in Western Massachusetts, but Scott Brown and the Republicans blocked all three bills."
As for long-term solutions, Warren said that continued investment in infrastructure, such as the Union Station transportation facility and developing the Knowledge Corridor among the dozens of area colleges and universities, would attract businesses and pay off for years to come.
One reader voiced to Warren his dissatisfaction over her declining to participate in two community forums on rural issues in Chesterfield and Orange last fall.
"As a senator, you have to represent the whole state and not just the cities," the reader said. "Given that 9.2% of the state’s 6.5 million residents live in rural towns, why have you not campaigned in rural Massachusetts?"
Warren's response involved defending her campaigning schedule and saying that she has been hearing similar concerns in small and large communities.
"I've been campaigning all over the state--big cities and small towns, north and south, east and west. And I'm hearing a lot of the same issues across the state: What are our plans for building a future for ourselves and our kids?" Warren wrote. "When I'm out, we talk a lot about investments in education, in roads and bridges, in communications and power--things we will need for all our children to prosper."
On the topic of tax reform, another reader asked Warren how much she felt the wealthiest Americans should pay in taxes, while citing a Congressional Budget Office report that showed from 1979 to 2009, the average individual income tax rate for the top quintile fell from 15.9% to 13.4%, after peaking at 17.6% in 2000.
Warren said that she believes in taxpayers paying the same rate, regardless of income.
"I think billionaires should pay taxes at the same rate as their secretaries," she wrote. "When this came to a vote in the Senate in the spring, Scott Brown voted against the Buffett Rule, saying it was fine with him to let billionaires pay at a much lower rate."
When Brown voted with Republicans against the bill in April, he said that the legislation "is a political stunt – it will raise in one year only enough revenue to pay for less than a day of federal spending. It doesn't create a single new job, or cut the national debt."
One reader who identified herself as a second generation small business owner asked Warren about a statement she made at a gathering last August which has since been reiterated by President Barack Obama and attacked by Brown and the presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
In August 2011, Warren said "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. You built a factory out there, good for you…but you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate."
When Obama made a similar statement recently, the Republicans used it to paint their opponents as foes of small business, although Warren has said and repeated in her response to the reader, that the opposite is true.
"When I get the chance, I talk about how Washington is rigged against small businesses. Right now, there are profitable companies in the Fortune 500 that pay little or nothing in taxes. They get special breaks because they can hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers to create special deals for them or loopholes that they can take advantage of," Warren wrote. "When those giant companies park their money overseas or take advantage of other loopholes, they leave it to small businesses and working families to pick up the slack. That isn't fair to people like you who are working hard to build a future."
The exchange, however, prompted the Brown campaign to fire off a press release saying that she is the "originator of the 'you didn't build that' philosophy."
Another reader referenced the partisan gridlock that has virtually crippled the federal government, leading to few pieces of legislation being passed. While Brown has reinforced his image as an independent legislator, Warren has not addressed the idea of bipartisanship much, until now.
"I will work with anyone--Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian--so long as they are fighting for working families. The middle class is getting hammered, and I'm running for the Senate to try to turn that around," Warren wrote. "I headed up a bipartisan panel that took on some of the most contentious issues during the financial crisis. We didn't agree all the time, but we were often unanimous. I focused on the things we could agree on, the basic principles, and worked out from there."
Brown has agreed to participate in a chat with the MassLive.com readers but is yet to schedule a date.