First 2020 Presidential candidate visits Decorah

Democratic Congressman John Delaney from Maryland is the first person to officially announce they're running for President in 2020.  Delaney hopes to get a head start on other candidates--he has already visited Iowa eleven times.

On Friday afternoon he stopped at Java John's in Decorah and spoke to a crowd of around 30 people.  "A big part of my campaign is telling the truth," he told the audience.

For instance, he says funding issues involving Social Security are "easy to fix--you just need the political will."  He stresses that Social Security is NOT an entitlement program and "the last thing we should do is privatize it."  He says the program has been the most successful program ever run by the federal government, reducing the percentage of elderly people living in poverty from 50 percent when the program started to just 10 percent now.  Delaney says raising the maximum Social Security payroll taxable earnings above its current level of $128,400 would bring in the right amount of money to keep the program solvent.

Delaney says fixing health insurance will be a tougher job.  He says health care costs are out of control--especially the costs of prescriptions--and wealth is being transferred from taxpayers to owners of pharmaceutical stock.  Delaney says he would give everyone under the age of 65 a basic government health plan, then allow insurance companies to sell supplemental plans that would cover what isn't covered under the basic plan.

Delaney's stop in Decorah was part of a tour of 11 cities in Iowa over the weekend, including Waukon and Cresco.