Delaney visited Iron Horse Neighborhood Grill

Democratic presidential candidate Congressman John Delaney visited Iron Horse Neighborhood Grill Jan. 14 to talk with local voters.

Delaney spoke about the declining population of rural counties in the United States.

“I think it’s a crisis in this country and it’s a problem for the people in these towns and for the institutions in these towns,” said Delaney.

Delaney spoke about the importance of opportunities being available for everyone in rural and urban counties. The example he used was that each state, no matter the size has two U.S. senators which even the playing field. Delaney spoke about needing to support rural America in order to even the playing field of opportunities.

Delaney’s ideas include using the government contracting processes. He proposes 25 percent of the government contracts go to firms that have half of their employees in communities that are struggling. He wants the work to go to communities that need the jobs to create an incentive for companies to go into those areas.

“I want to do something to help workers by taking something called the earned income tax credit... I want to double it,” said Delaney. “Which means 14 million more Americans will get it and on average they’ll get $2,000 more a year.”

Delaney believes in universal health care with a choice. He does not believe that private health insurance will ever become illegal and doesn’t see the point in running on that platform. He wants everyone to have healthcare available through the government without taking away any insurance that people currently have.

Delaney also said he supports the U.S. military and veterans and wants to support veterans more. He spoke about gun laws as well, telling the crowd that he does believe in background checks, red flag laws and wants to limit the access people have to military style weapons.

Education was a topic that Delaney was passionate about at the visit. He wants to see the expansion of early childhood education, with universal Pre-K, which is already in Iowa. He wants to have more technology in K-12 and he is a big advocate of community college and career and technical training. Delaney does believe that the rate of student loans should be lowered but is not calling for free four year college. He told the group that taking money to make college free creates a bad incentive, because not everyone should go to college.

“If we were is a position to make a huge investment in education, which I would love to do, I want to spread it out,” said Delaney. “I want some to go to early childhood. I want Pre-K. I want money for teachers and technology in the classroom. I want community college and career technical training to be available to all citizens. And I want to do things like lower the rates on student loans.”

Delaney also wants to create a program for high school graduates to have the opportunity to serve the country, but not necessarily in the military. Military service would still be an option but so would community service, working on infrastructure or national parks. Delaney proposes two years of in-state tuition for one year of national service.

“That’s not giving someone something for free, they’ve got to serve their country to get it but it creates a way to make education more affordable,” said Delaney.

After an hour of Delaney speaking and taking questions from the crow everyone was served their meal provided by Iron Horse.