Anderson to Chafee: Your Saying You Didn’t Know What You Were Voting for with Glass Steagall?

COOPER: “Governor Chafee, you have attacked Secretary Clinton for being too close to Wall Street banks. In 1999 you voted for the very bill that made banks bigger.”
CHAFEE: “The Glass-Steagall was my very first vote, I’d just arrived, my dad had died in office, I was appointed to the office, it was my very first vote.”
COOPER: “Are you saying you didn’t know what you were voting for?”
CHAFEE: “I’d just arrived at the Senate. I think we’d get some takeovers, and that was one. It was my very first vote, and it was 92-5. It was the —“ [crosstalk]
COOPER: “Well, with all due respect, Governor —“
CHAFEE: “But let me just say —“
COOPER: “— what does that say about you that you’re casting a vote for something you weren’t really sure about?”
CHAFEE: “I think you’re being a little rough. I’d just arrived at the United States Senate. I’d been mayor of my city. My dad had died. I’d been appointed by the governor. It was the first vote and it was 90-5, because it was a conference report. But let me just say about income inequality. We’ve had a lot of talk over the last few minutes, hours, or tens of minutes, but no one is saying how we’re going to fix it. And it all started with the Bush tax cuts that favored the wealthy. So let’s go back to the tax code. And 0.6 percent of Americans are at the top echelon, over 464,000, 0.6 Americans. That’s less than 1 percent. But they generate 30 percent of the revenue. And they’re doing fine.”
COOPER: “Thank you, Governor.”
CHAFEE: “So there’s still a lot more money to be had from this top echelon. I’m saying let’s have another tier and put that back into the tax bracket. And that will generate $42 billion. “
COOPER: “I want to bring in Dana Bash.”
CHAFEE: “And then we can help the middle class and hard-earning Americans — hard-working Americans.”
COOPER: “Dana?”
BASH: “Thank you.”