2020 hopeful Castro says all should have chance to prosper

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro said Tuesday that he favors affordable health care for all, a fair tax system, raising the minimum wage and early education for children.

“If we’re going to be the most prosperous nation in the world, it means everyone has to prosper,” the 44-year-old former housing secretary in the Obama administration told about 600 people at Boise State University.

Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, stuck to familiar Democratic themes on his visit to Republican stronghold Idaho as part of his plan to visit all 50 states leading up to Democrats selecting a presidential candidate.

But he said Idaho voters approving Medicaid expansion last November with a 61 percent margin gave Democrats some hope.

“The fact that 61 percent of the people of Idaho, one of the reddest states in our union, voted to expand Medicaid just shows you that too oftentimes the politicians on one side of the aisle, in this case Republicans, are out of touch with what even other Republicans want,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press before the speech. “I believe that Medicare for all, universal health care coverage, would gain popular support.

Still, President Donald Trump won Idaho with about 60 percent of the vote.

“Donald Trump is different in 2020 than he was in 2016 because he has a track record, and in so many ways he has failed Americans,” Castro said. “He said that he would drain the swamp, and instead it’s swampier than ever in Washington D.C.”

On climate change, he said on his first day as president he’d recommit the United States to the Paris climate agreement that Trump withdrew from.

On immigration reform, Castro said he favors a system that includes an earned path to citizenship for people in the country without documents.

“The president believes we have to make this false choice between border security and treating people humanely,” he said.

He said that as president, he’d be thinking every day about how to make sure Americans could have jobs, have good health care, and how their children and grandchildren could get a good education.

“I came out here to Boise because there aren’t a lot of Democrats that do that,” he said. “I want you to know that everyone is going to count again when this administration is gone.”