3 Democratic Candidates Share Tame Urban Forum

Three of the remaining Democratic presidential candidates Monday called for increased federal funding for low-income housing, education and the war on drugs, during the latest of some 30 presidential debates.

Illinois Sen. Paul Simon, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. voiced agreement on nearly every issue in a tame 90-minute forum on urban problems before a crowd of about 2,500 at Fordham University.

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, a leading contender, was absent from the debate and was criticized by the organizer of the forum for his failure to attend.

The candidates criticized President Reagan’s policies toward public housing and said, if elected, they would increase funding for public and low-income housing.

“When Mr. Reagan took office, the budget for Housing and Urban Development was $30 billion,” Jackson said. “Now it’s less than $10 billion. It seems the only public housing he wants to keep fixing up is the one he lives in.”

Simon said he would also increase rent subsidies and suggested that nonprofit agencies could be encouraged to build and operate low-income and temporary shelters for the homeless if they were given federal guarantees that they would not lose money.

Jackson proposed using a portion of federally guaranteed public pension funds to invest in low-income and public housing construction.

All three candidates also said they wanted to scatter low-income housing in middle-income neighborhoods instead of lumping it all together.

The candidates also pledged more federal support for education, primarily in the areas of adult and preschool education.

“We now devote less than 2% of the federal budget to education,” Simon said. “We know what to do, we just have to allocate the dollars.”

Gore said one major area would be to increase the number of quality teachers through incentives and increased pay.

Jackson said that while he agrees government should provide an opportunity for all Americans, students have a responsibility to do more for themselves as well.

“I challenge a generation that watches five hours of television every night and thereby chooses entertainment over education,” he said.

The candidates said they would beef up efforts to eradicate illegal drug consumption in the United States, starting first with the countries that produce the drugs smuggled into America.

“We have to understand that a drug policy is first a foreign policy crisis, not a domestic crisis,” Jackson said. “When our government deals with known drug dealers, we have reached a moral low.”

Gore said he would establish a “drug czar” to coordinate the attack against illegal drugs and place that person in a Cabinet-level position.