Sen. Raphael Warnock met with former Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting in Atlanta for a bipartisan talk on economics at the HOPE Global Forums 2024 Annual meeting.
During the meeting Warnock and Otting, a Republican who served under former President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020, exchanged ideas about how the public and private sector can work to close financial disparity gaps.
Warnock pointed to the “economic apprehension” Georgians experience, including “angst” about the rising costs of housing, education, childcare and healthcare. Warnock also emphasized the need to work across ideological lines, outlining his own efforts to find consensus on proposals that benefit the working class.
Some of those efforts include legislation to lower insulin costs and his push to address junk fees.
“People feel this angst. They feel a disconnect between what the talking heads are talking about and where they literally live their lives every single day, when they’re trying to do what ordinary people are trying to do, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, and that is, take care of their families be able to send their kids, not necessarily to a four year college, but to technical school and community college,” Warnock said.
Warnock touted his initiatives that have encouraged unionization and lower prescription costs as well as the passage of $175 billion in student debt relief for roughly 5 million Americans as evidence of his support for working class Americans.
“(Americans) want to be able to pay for prescription drugs and not go into bankruptcy in order to be healthy,” he said.
