Best Lines of the Democratic Debate in Brooklyn

— -- Less than a week before the New York state primary, Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders went head-to-head at the Brooklyn Navy Park in Brooklyn, New York.

The night was full of one-liners as the presidential hopefuls offered their final pitches to the voters of the Empire State in a debate hosted by CNN, Thursday.

Here are the best lines of the ninth Democratic debate:

ON HILLARY CLINTON’S QUALIFICATIONS

BERNIE SANDERS: “Does Secretary Clinton have the experience and intelligence to be a president? Of course, she does, but I do question her judgment.”

The Vermont senator added, “I don't believe that that is the kind of judgment we need to be the kind of president we need.”

Clinton fired back, “Well, it is true that now that the spotlight is pretty bright in New York, some things have been said, and Senator Sanders did call me unqualified.”

She added, “I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, that was a first,”the former New York senator then quipped. “I think you need to have the judgment on day one to be both president and commander in chief.”

ON BREAKING UP THE BIG BANKS

HILLARY CLINTON: “When asked, he could not explain how that would be done [breaking up the banks].”

Sanders then interjected with laughter.

Clinton continued, “When asked about a number of foreign policy issues, he could not answer about Afghanistan, about Israel, about counter-terrorism, except to say if he had some paper in front of him, maybe he could. I think you need to have the judgment on day one to be both president and commander in chief.”

CLINTON: "I will move immediately to break up any financial institution [that fails the test in Dodd-Frank], but I go further because I want the law to extend to those that are part of the shadow banking industry, the big insurance companies, the hedge funds."

SANDERS: "She called them out. My goodness, they must have been really crushed by this. And was that before or after you received huge sums of money."

ON RELEASING TAX RETURNS

Sanders promised to release his 2014 tax returns Friday and joked: “I don’t want to get anybody very excited. They are very boring tax returns. No big money from speeches, no major investments. Unfortunately I remain one of the poorer members of the U.S. Senate.”

ON RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE

SANDERS: “We're going to raise the minimum wage to $15 bucks an hour, and number two, while we may end up paying a few cents more for a hamburger at McDonald's at the end of the day, what this economy desperately needs is to rebuild our manufacturing sector with good-paying jobs.”

CLINTON: “I have supported the fight for $15. I'm proud to have the endorsement of most of the unions that have led the fight for $15.”

Slammed Sanders: “I am sure a lot of people are very surprised to learn that you supported raising the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour."

Reacted Clinton: “Wait a minute. I have said from the very beginning that I supported the fight for 15 [dollars an hour.]”

ON GUN VIOLENCE

CLINTON: “90 people on average a day are killed or commit suicide or die in accidents from guns. 33,000 people a year. I take it really seriously...We need a president who will fight for common-sense gun safety reforms,” she said.

ON THE 1994 CRIME BILL

“Look, I supported the crime bill,” Clinton admitted. “My husband has apologized. He was the president.”

Clinton added, “I want white people to recognize there is systemic racism. It’s also in employment. It’s in housing, but it is in the criminal justice system as well."

(The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was passed by then-President Bill Clinton in 1994 and included multiple initiatives such as, imposing tough prison sentences and eliminating federal funding for inmate education to fight crime.)

ON CLIMATE CHANGE

CLINTON: “It’s easy to diagnose the problem. It’s harder to do something about the problem.”

She continued, “I’ve set big goals. I want to see us deploy half a billion more solar panels by the end of my first term, and enough clean energy to provide electricity to every home in America within 10 years.”

ON ISIS

SANDERS: “Our fight is to destroy ISIS first. And to get rid of Assad second.”

ON NATO

SANDERS: "I would not be embarrassed as president of the United States to say to our European allies, you know what, the United States of America cannot just support your economies."

CLINTON: "I will stay in NATO...Of course they should be paying more. That doesn’t mean if they don’t, we leave. Because I don’t think that’s in America’s interest.”

ON WOMEN'S RIGHTS

CLINTON: "We've not had one question about a woman's right to make her own decisions about reproductive health care...we have a presidential candidate by the name of Donald Trump saying that women should be punished and we are never asked about this."

(During a town hall held by MSNBC late last month, Trump said that women who undergo abortions, if there were a ban on the procedure, should be punished. The Republican front-runner reversed his position less than 24 hours after making the controversial statement.)