Presidential Campaigns Avoid Specifics at Rural Assembly

Tom Daschle pledged Barack Obama’s support for health care availability for all Americans. The South Dakotan also reiterated Sen. Obama’s determination that 25 percent of the nation’s energy supply would come from renewable sources by 2025. In response to a question about the rapid consolidation of meatpacking firms, Daschle said that Barack Obama supports full and complete antitrust reform and enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act for open and transparent markets. Ranchers have asked for federal intervention to block mergers of meatpacking companies.

Daschle, too, promoted a more bipartisan attitude in Congress. “We’ve got to put the dialogue back” in Washington, D.C., he said. “And I believe more than anything that Barack Obama has that capability.”

Perhaps the sharpest disagreement between Brownback and Daschle was over the use of budget “earmarks.” McCain has promised to veto any bill containing instructions directing federal funds to specific projects. Brownback noted that he had used these so-called earmarks to direct money to rural communities. (“I’ve used earmarks and I publicize ‘em,” he said.) But the McCain representative said his candidate opposed earmarks because McCain believed they damage “people’s confidence in government.”

Daschle, meanwhile, said that earmarks gave senators and representatives “an ability to weigh in on priorities.” Listing a half-dozen rural projects paid for by earmarks, he told the gathering, “Those are investments that ought to be acknowledged and fought for.”