The Democratic candidates for president Monday night unanimously endorsed an increase in the federal minimum wage to at least $4.25 an hour from the current $3.35.
The six Democrats joined in a debate at Tulane University to scorn the priorities of the Reagan administration of increasing the defense budget while cutting spending for social programs, but each candidate restated the particular solutions that each has outlined throughout the campaign.
The Democrats, who see social policy as one of their strongest suits in the presidential campaign, sought to reclaim the mantle from Republicans of being concerned about the average person, from the underclass to the working poor to the middle class.
”People who have been hurt in the Reagan years, hold on,” Jesse Jackson said. ”Don`t you surrender. Hope is on the way. We`ll win in 1988.”
One of the ways the working poor can be helped, the Democrats agreed, is by increasing the minimum wage, which was last raised in January, 1981, to $3.35 an hour from $3.10. Most said that $4.25 was an acceptable level, but former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt said $4.50 would be better.
Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts touted his state`s programs in education and training that have slashed unemployment and moved 40,000 families to a payroll from the welfare roles.
Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.) said that Dukakis` plans do not go far enough to help people in Louisiana and Iowa and suggested his Guaranteed Jobs Opportunity Program, a reworking of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration to retrain workers and give them public service jobs.
Sen. Albert Gore (D., Tenn.) said, and no one disagreed, that education beginning at the preschool level was the key to ending the poverty cycle.
Jackson said, ”We can afford economic justice” by cutting the defense budget.
Rep. Richard Gephardt (D., Mo.), saying the ”best economic program is a paycheck,” touted his trade amendment to halt what he said is unfair trade competition and open up jobs in the U.S.
But Babbitt challenged the whole group with how they are going to pay for the programs they espoused to increase health care, education, economic development and job training.
”We`re ducking our responsibility to the poor with flim-flam,” Babbitt said. ”It seems to me as Democrats we have got an obligation to be a little more tough-minded.” Babbitt suggested his plan to impose means tests for government programs and to impose a 5 percent sales tax.
Dukakis countered with his idea to collect $110 billion by enforcing tax compliance. Babbitt said again that such a program ”is flim-flam.”
Jackson and Babbitt joined in criticizing Gephardt`s trade amendment, with Jackson calling it ”protectionism” and Babbitt saying it was pulling
”up the drawbridge.” Gephardt responded, ”If standing up for American workers and insisting on prying open foreign markets is protectionism, than I want to be a protectionist.”
Monday night`s session was the second in the Super Tuesday Education Project sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, the group of moderate and conservative party leaders who are trying to persuade candidates not to concentrate their appeals solely on the activists who dominate the first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire next February.
The council is trying to get candidates to pay more attention to the 20
”Super Tuesday” primaries and caucuses, 13 of them in Southern states, that will be held March 8.
But unlike the last council debate, during which Gore tried to sound tougher on defense, the Democrats were in general agreement Monday night on the kinds of social programs they believe the country needs.
Simon noted that the candidates were talking about national solutions and not focusing on any region in their comments, a mild slap at the council`s contention that the mainstream Southern voter has to be addressed differently than liberal voters in Iowa or New Hampshire for Democrats to win the general election next November.
