Economic Issues Foremost, Bentsen Says

Vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen said Tuesday that the Democrats in the fall campaign will continue to stress bread-and-butter issues such as jobs and economic growth and ignore Republican attacks on social issues such as abortion and prayer in schools.

“We are reaching out to the middle class, while they are reaching out to the hard right,” Bentsen told a news conference near Atlanta on Tuesday.

The Democrats are counting on anxiety among middle-class and working-class voters over the future of the economy to drive them back into the Democratic column. In their coordinated campaign attacks, Bentsen in the South and Dukakis campaigning across the North and upper Midwest hit hard last weekend on the recent rises in interest rates and unemployment.

‘Facing a Real Crunch’

“With these interest rates going up, young families are facing a real crunch . . . when they want to buy a home or a car,” Bentsen said. “I think the Democrats who voted for Reagan will come back to the Democratic Party in November.”

He pointedly dismissed the Republicans’ focus on the Pledge of Allegiance as a “phony issue” and an example of “demagoguery.”

On Tuesday, the first day of the school year in many parts of the nation, Bentsen stressed education in stops at a trade college in Georgia and at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.

“For eight years now we’ve watched as the Reagan-Bush Administration trashed educational opportunity in America. They led the assault on the college loans and grants that, for millions of our people, are the only avenue to higher education.”

The Democrats, hoping to recapture the education issue, say better schools are the key to regaining America’s competitive edge around the world. “We know that, if America loses the battle for educational excellence, we lose the contest for world leadership,” Bentsen said at Virginia Tech. “It’s that simple and that important.”

Saving for College

The Democrats have not actually pledged to spend more federal money on education. Instead, Bentsen said a Democratic Administration would help parents save for the cost of a college education, which for a child born today could run to $60,000, Bentsen said.

He said the Democrats will work to create special interest-bearing trust accounts--which he called “college opportunity funds”--which would allow parents to set aside money to pay for the cost of their child’s education.

Bentsen will be back in the Senate today and Thursday before leaving on a weekend campaign trip to California.